New job, new beginnings.

patman99 · 13 September 2010 at 6:00PM

Looked at my debts today. I owe £11k in loans, £1600 on Egg, £1450 on M&S &money card, £1000 on Paypal card & £800 on Leeds B/S card.

At least I still have a small part of my redundancy package left + compo from an industrial injuries claim.

Next week I start a new job, but still no sure of starting salary or hours yet. This despite asking for them.

The plan of action upon starting employment is to top-up my ISA, then use £1k of my savings to pay-off as much debt on the highest-interest card.

Tomorrows' job is to phone BT and pay next year in full to save £30.

Am thinking of putting £10 p/w into a fund for an OU degree, but need to reduce my debts first.

beanielou · 13 September 2010 at 8:22PM

I think you would be best to pay as much as poss from your debts rather than saving in an ISA TBH.

Rainmaker_uk · 13 September 2010 at 8:27PM

beanielou wrote: »

I think you would be best to pay as much as poss from your debts rather than saving in an ISA TBH.

Absolutley savings are pointless if you have debt at a higher interest rate. Just make sure you have a 'rainy day fund' but after that pay down the debt.

The alternative spend is to spend the money on your OU course. I would consider this very seriously. If by doing a course you increase the wage you can demand and your general life prospects then this maybe should be your prioirity?

patman99 · 15 September 2010 at 5:04PM

I made a life-choice a while back that I would push my educational level up to degree level, however, this is not as important as generating an income.

Yesterday was a bad day. I took my new car to my mechanic to have a vibration investigated. Acting on the mechanics report, I decided to return the car to the car yard and reject it. Only one problem, between 8.00 in the morning and dinner-time the whole car yard, sales office and all, had vanished.
Looked-like I was stuck with an expensive repair bill. However, spoke to my mechanic today, and he told me to drive it till it went bang, then get the RAC (I told him I was a member) to recover it to his garage and he will source and fit a replacement engine. Apparently 1.8 Zetec engines are plentiful, and a replacement can be had for £150 or less.

On the plus side, went to my final Wednesday bootsale prior to returning to the world of employment.

patman99 · 16 September 2010 at 4:40PM

Re-sealed my £2 pot again and put back in all the £2 coins I had taken-out plus new ones collected. Now about £130 in it. Added another couple of quid to my 20p pot as well.

Might be a good idea to pop into Barclays and deposit about £20 in lose change via their coin machine. From there, I can transfer it across to my ISA.

Made a decision to break the seal on the £2 and 20p pots on 1st Dec. each year, bank-up the coinage & deposit it into my mortgage, thus reducing the overall amount. At the moment, for every £161 I can over-pay, I reduce the term by 1 month.

Another 4 payments and my rellies will have paid-up their outstanding catalogue balances, and I can cash-in the commission and pay that into the mortgage as well.

Don't know why, but am getting quite nervous about starting my new job, may be down to getting little or no support from my OH. Still, at least I will know one of the workers, as he is a former colleague of mine from my days at Trane.
Another good friend of mine is also applying for a work placement at my new employers via the Jobcentre. Looks like a Trane worker take-over!!!!.

Need to consider whether on not I stick another years tax on my van. As far as I'm concerned, it has always been the one vehicle in the household that has never let me down, and has seen-off 2 cars so far. This year it has shifted £120 worth of scrap metal from friends having a clear-out, and enabled me to do a couple of boot sales without the hassle of spending most of an evening trying to pack more boxes into my car than it will physically hold.

NewLeaf_2 · 16 September 2010 at 4:53PM

well done on the new job!!

patman99 · 17 September 2010 at 2:09PM

Phoned my potential new employer this morning to check on start-times only to be told 'the dept you are starting in has not even been set-up yet, are you sure its not at the Romsey factory?'.

Phoned the agency, and they promised to check things out and get back to me.

patman99 · 19 September 2010 at 8:00PM

Agency never got back to me re: start-time of new job. I did however, find the email address of my (potential) new employers Production Manager yesterday, so fired-off an email about my concerns.

Wondering whether or not to turn-up tomorrow just to see if they have a job for me or not. The way I'm feeling at the moment, if they tell me they were not expecting me, I am likely to tell them to shove the job up their useless fat ar5e.

On Saturday Itook family + M-i-L to Tiptree so they could look round the 'Cheap Shop' and the jam factory shop. Treated myself to a book from the Jam Factory shop. On the way home we called in to the 'Original Factory Shop', and I got myself a new pair of hiking boots. Had to take the boots back today as there was an eyelet missing on one of the boots.

Just hoping next week will pan-out better than this week did.

patman99 · 20 September 2010 at 9:00PM

Finally got a response from the agency, they told me I now have a confirmed start date of Oct. 4th, I then informed them this was the date of my eye op, so now will be starting on Oct. 11th, so have 3 weeks more off.

I'm sure JC+ are going to love me when I sign-on this Friday, and hand them my form with no job seeking evidence on it for the last fortnight.

Might un-seel my £2 pot to give me some spending money for 2 more bootsales.

patman99 · 22 September 2010 at 5:05PM

Re-opened my £2 pot and went off to the bootsale with the contents.
Ended-up buying 9 CDs for £8.50, and a new cabinet for the telly for £30.

Wee bit of a problem with TV 'stand' (actually, a baby changing unit with draws), removed the top 'flip-over' shelf as this would make it too high to go under wall shelving with TV on top. Due to the height of the cabinet sides, the TV won't sit on the now-exposed 2nd shelf.

Explored 2 options.
1, cut down sides of cabinet to accommodate TV.
2, return TV to original cabinet & use new cabinet for storing OH's card-making stuff.

Chose option '2' which pleased OH. She now has a nice sturdy cabinet to stack her boxes of materials on instead of a rickety old ex-bedside jobbie.
I even took the waste down to the civic amenity site. Whilst there, I spotted a nice box of wall tiles, unfortuanatley 3 bin-rakers also had their eyes on them, so no freebies this time round ( where's a big van to shield your actions when you need one?).

Did some shredding of old paperwork today as well. Also added-up my c/c debt. I owe in total £4,675. Quite shocking really. When I return to work, I intend to up the payments on the highest interest rate card by at least £25 a month.

Jobs to do this week include -

Find the remote for the PVR now I've hauled it out and set it up again.
Find at least 1 of my 2 bottles of Mer so I can polish the car.

patman99 · 25 September 2010 at 1:38PM

My dad is unbelievable. I am a season ticket holder at my local football club, my dad is an occasional supporter. I told him in the past that if he wants to go to see a home game, let me know, and I will get the tickets & parking permit as I get 10% off tickets & 30% off parking.

On Sunday, I asked if he was going to the game against Tranmere, and he would not commit himself. so on Thursday, I asked him again (I would get the tickets on Friday when I sign-on). He informed me that he had already got the ticket & parking permit the day before. I was fuming, especially as I had already explained to him that I could get a discount several times before.

He really has no idea about money-saving at all.

Had I already started my new job, parking would not be a problem as my new employer is only 10 minutes walk from the stadium, so free parking for home games and other events is within my grasp.

On the plus side, only 1 week to go before my cataract op., this will save me £300 p/y in new glasses, so is quite a bonus.

New job, new beginnings.

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