Morning,


I feel it's time to start a new diary. 2016 has been hectic and I haven't really had much time to concentrate on our family finances. I have spent most of the year March - August nursing my Father-in-law and his wife through illness. Father-in-laws wife sadly died in May so I have then had to help him plan the funeral, sort out all his finances, and he then came to live with us for 6 weeks while he underwent Cancer treatment. All this added together equaled not a lot of time for me to log in here and keep up with my old diary.


Here is the link if you are bored enough to want to know my back story

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.php?t=5385122&page=7



As you can tell by the title of my diary I failed miserably. I turned forty still with over 10k's worth of debt. .


I wouldn't have come back here to start AGAIN! for the fourth time but something has changed......I GOT A JOB!!!


I have had lots of money making ideas and false starts =


craft making and selling on Etsy = I didn't have enough talent
Training to be a massage therapist = no money
Making Christmas wreaths = Good money maker but incredibly seasonal.


My main problem is childcare. I have none!!. No grand parents alive or able to look after our children and no other close family.


So for the last twelve years I have just stumbled through daft idea to daft idea of things I can do at home to make money and none of them have worked enough to majorly help our situation.


This summer I just decided to go for a few part-time job interviews with the hope that they somehow would end up to be flexible. Well I got one . 17.1/2 hours per week working in a office about 10 minutes from home, they profess to be very flexible and to be honest I will cross the childrens holiday dilemma when I get to it. I have friends who have offered to help, my husband is self employed builder so he could have one in his van for the day and I am sure I will figure it out somehow.


Anyway, this will give me an average of £800 per month. Not mind blowing I know but I plan to pay my wages against the debt every month. We will still pay the minimum payments out of our joint account and my £800 will be each payments on my Snowball.


The snowball calculator says it will take me 1 year. Not overly happy with that but hoping when I start to see the debt decreasing I will be spurred on to find more money out of the household account to add to it.


Our finances have been all over the place this year with me not watching things and I must admit to making our debt worse by 2k . Hopefully now though I can start to make a big change.


Sorry for all the waffle, I will try to post here every day to keep me going.


I need to update my signature which I will do tonight.


Thanks all


Stressed Steph xx