The long and winding road to debtfreeness

yesterday was not a NSD

The cats had their vaccinations £80 but budgeted for. We also had to pick up some cat litter and some snacks for the theatre.

THe show last night was Fantastic.
The singing was excellent. there were a few adult jokes thrown in that the kids wouldnt get.
I did end up spending £22 though :eek: They were selling fox tails and ears on a headband for £6 so i though i would pick one up for DS2 as it is world book day soon and that his costume sorted. I got one for his friend too, but while i was at the counter in the intermission i noticed that they were selling pots of ice cream. so i asked for 4. They were £2.50 each :eek: they were only little pots.
DS2 and his friend had a great time and even OH who doesn't normally like plays and musicals and that thought it was really good.

today should be a NSD as i'm not planning on going out. I have my little brother here today and overnight so DS2 and him are playing in DS2 room.
To do
-Make the kids lunch before they die of starvation
-Have a really good tidy up of the house as its a tip - ive spent the last week and a half barley doing anything with this illness.
-Passports

I'm not very good at posting am I? Must try harder.
So what's happened since I last posted…

Very kind MIL and FIL did end up giving us £3k so we had a driveway put in last month. Its great. No more parking on the road and hoping my wing mirror doesn’t get knocked. :j

I have recalculated our starting debt again (because I forgot to include some figures and I want an accurate picture of where we started up to now) So starting debt (Final final amount) is £42,102.35. This is made up of Cards, Loan and overdraft £29,981.66, my car £6,261.84, HMRC tax credit overpayment £799.78 and OH bike £5,059.07.
Debt as at 30.06.17 is £19,600 (53.45% cleared) made up as

MBNA - £2,950 - £665 0% to Aug 17 & £2,285 0% to Dec 17
Halifax 1 - £1,650 - 0% to Aug 17
Halifax 2 - £960 - 0% to Dec 17
Creation - £4,250 - 0% to Apr 18
B/Card 1 - £5,705 - 0% to Sep 17
B/Card 2 - £4,085 - £2,030 0% to Sep 17, £960 0% to Oct 17 & £1,095 0% to Jul 20

We have a few 0% coming to an end but we have plenty of available balances on the B/Cards to do some more 0% transfers.

Holiday - Passports are sorted and we have the £2k saved up for the spending money. Will probably need to buy some clothes for the holiday but I will do that in August and we shouldn’t need much.

Fitness - I signed up for the gym in May (£40 pm) and even though I have been going and getting my moneys worth I'm not losing the weight. I want to use the weights but every time I go in there I feel really intimidated and just end up using the cardio machines.
In light of that I have just signed up for an 8 week crossfit kickstart. You can go as many times as you want during the 8 weeks and they will basically walk you through everything - they make sure that your form is correct etc. They have classes Mon-Thu that start a 5pm. I finish work at 4:45 and the gym is round the corner from my work. So I plan to finish work, go straight to crossfit and then home.
There is no obligation to sign up to a membership at the end of the 8 weeks and at £60 per month I probably wont. For me its just about giving me the kickstart I need to be confident in the gym.
I will be going sometime this week to get measured and have a chat about my goals and then the 8 week start on 3rd July. Perfect timing to finish before our holiday.
Ideally I want to lose around 21lbs but as long as I lose inches then I'm not too bothered about what the scales say.

Work - my job is going ok - plodding along nicely, however there have been some issues with OH job. :mad:
They have four teams of three people comprising of two analysts and one shift leader. His work has decided to make all of the analysts redundant and keep the shift leaders. OH is a shift leader so is keeping his job, however at the moment he does shifts - four twelve hour day/night shifts with four days off - they will now have to go to days Mon-Fri 8 to 4 and be on call for a week every four weeks. Its going to be a shock for him as he has been doing shifts for so long. Its also been a real pain with the summer holidays as there are now a lot more days that we need to find childcare for. :mad:
The plus side is that we will now have every weekend together :T to do things as a family. The new hours also comes with a small pay rise so that’s good. The pay rise will just cover the increased fuel, extra afterschool club costs and extra holiday clubs costs so we wont really be any better off.

Health - My big toe has a numb spot just to the side of the nail and I keep getting pains in my toe. My foot has that feeling of slight numbness - you know the feeling if you have been lying on your arm for a little bit and then you shake your arm and you can feel the blood running to your hand? my foot feels like it needs to shake and have the blood running through it.
My mum was panicking me by saying that it’s a symptom of diabetes (both my mum and my nan have it) so I went to the doctors this morning - He doesn’t think it is diabetes as i don't have any other symptoms and is leaning more to a trapped nerve or something, however given my family history I will be having some blood tests done. I have to go on Friday to have the blood taken. They are testing for diabetes, B12 and folic acid deficiency as they can cause nerve issues.
Fingers crossed its not diabetes.

I had fun last night adding Emojis to YNAB. I also did the boring bit and made sure that everything was up to date and ready to start the new month on Saturday.
I booked my Crossfit induction session for Friday at 2pm - Classes start 3rd July
Busy day in work and I ended up spending 30p on some mini eggs.
It's OH last night shift tonight and he is going to have a takeaway with his colleague as its his last shift. OH is then off tomorrow and then in on Friday for a bit of rare overtime - New hours start on Monday. I think he is on call the following week.
It looks like OH company might be sold :undecided. If it does go ahead we are potentially looking at getting some money as he pays into a sharesave scheme and he has some bonus shares.
Possible lump sum of about £8.5k ish :T- of which about £5.5k is profit and the rest is our contributions.
it will be fantastic if it does happen and OH keeps his job - it will be a great amount to clear off the debt and it will bring our DFD forward from Jun 19 to Apr 18 - 14 months. But i'm not holding my breath. We will find out in the next month or so.

I updated OH's expected income for this year with HMRC and his tax code should now increase - I think he is now on a cumulative tax basis which means he should get taxed a lot less this month to make up for the last four months. I'm thinking £375 ish in July wages. Most of this will be used for School uniforms and school shoes as both kids have completely outgrown their current ones. DS2 came home the other day with two holes :eek: in his jumper. I repaired them and told him that it had better last until the end of the term cause i'm not buying any more until August.

We have been having discussions about after school care for DS2. Due to OH new hours he will need to go Mon to Thu every week instead of the odd day or two at the moment.
We are looking at around £130 per month.
OH suggested we get DS1 to pick him up and keep an eye on him until OH gets home. About 45 - 60 min.
DS1 is very sensible and very grown up. We live just around the corner from the school so they don’t need to walk far to get home (2 min)
MIL is also going part time in September and she lives just round the corner too so can be there if needed.
I'm not sure though. I think I might prefer to pay the £130 per month. If we do look at it doing it I might try just one day a week and see how it goes.
DS1 has been coming home from school to an empty house for 3 years now and he has shown himself to be very sensible. He always rings me as soon as he gets home, and knows not to open the door etc.
Thinking about it my reservations don’t have anything to do with DS1 but rather how DS2 will react to DS1 being in charge.
We are looking at October at the earliest so we have a little while to have a think about it.

Had a to pop to asda on the way home to pick up cat food. I had a shock when the bag of cat food was £15.50 - i usually only pay £10 - £11 ish. I picked up a small bag instead and will look around to see what shops have it on offer.

Right - need to get onto DS1 to sort the recycling and rubbish out then im off for a bath and early to bed as im shattered.