£70 a day's what the panda will pay!

lunar

Well done on your win! you will have to update us with some pics of all this work you are getting done on the house. Glad you are starting to get rid of the ebay pile, is your friend helping to pack and post everything as well? i hate posting everything.

pandapaws

No, sadly not! But I don't mind that bit too much...well, actually, I do, but because it's something that HAS to be done and has a deadline unlike listing which can just get put off forever then I just get on and do it. We've cut a deal where she gets a % of the profits if something sells rather than paying her to actually list each item, which will probably cost me slightly more in the long run, but means I don't have to shell out any cash upfront, and gives motivation to her to do good quality listings. Win-win really!

I've been considering...(hope you're sitting down...) a consolidation loan. "Nooooooooooo", I hear you all gasp, "they're evil!". We were talking today about how well our big loan is coming down with the £400 a month we pay to it, and how it seems that the credit cards just seem to keep going up, however much we pay to them . We're fine at making repayments, however big, but the problem is that there always seems to be something that we 'need' and so we end up re-spending whatever we've paid off the credit cards, so if we pay £2k off debt in a month, we may only see about £1k of that as a net reduction. The advantage of a loan is that the repayment would be fixed, so it would definitely be going down with no re-spend potential, and no balance-transfer malarkey every 6-12 months. The disadvantage is that it's harder to overpay chunks of it off. I know that the general concensus here is that loans are a bad idea, but if the intention is good, and it's more likely to reduce our debt, then should it be totally written off? I don't know if/how much we'd be able to borrow anyway, so this is all hypothetical, but it's been swimming around in my head for the past few days so I thought I'd just post it.

How's everyone else doing? I've been so busy doing Ebay I've not had the chance to catch up.

Karmacat

Hi Panda! With the consolidation loan, I think when it comes to matters of psychology, strict snowballing etc has to go out of the window, I think it does for everyone. As long as you close down the credit card accounts, you *can't* use them again - I think thats the only caveat I'd put on it all. Getting it done is important - like your ebay selling, better to get 60% of something (or whatever the percentage is with your friend) than get 100% of nothing.

Sorry to hear you've been so ill this year - thats probably another sign that you're doing the right thing in just getting this stuff out of the way, heaven knows a full time job and two little children is enough for anyone.

Hope you feel better soon.

lauradora

hiya panda, saw your post on freecycle yesterday about the table top sale. Hope it all went ok. Gave me much amusement

Looks like your really cracking on though well done :beer:

mickey_mouse

pops in to say keep the good work up Panda. Rushes off to work

pandapaws

You obviously saw it Laura, before the mods deleted it :mad: because it was advertising stuff for sale. Which it clearly wasn't - all it said was that anything I had left after the sale was free to anyone that wanted it, help yourself. Sale was a bit of a flop anyway, but I did Freecycle a bit!

Also Freecycled an absolute mountain of baby stuff tonight (Choca - will PM you in a bit) to a lady who's got 4 boys and pregnant with her 5th! She got rid of everything after No 4 as she wasn't expecting another. Lovely woman, slightly hippy-ish, not materialistic at all, and I just know everything will be well used, so I'm really happy with that. I ended up giving her stuff I'd planned to try and sell, just to be rid of it since I knew it was going to a good home.

Eva, bless her, is the nicest person I've ever met in the world (Polish girl who used to do ironing, left as she moved away, and came back today). She came with little pressies for the kids - fab bright orange slippers for Greg, and a little car and some Jelly Babies for Adam! And she's ironed over half of The Mountain.

I'm trying to think of somewhere we can go for a fortnight's holiday end June/beginning July that won't cost a fortune. Cheapest found so far is a caravan in France for about £800:eek: . Considered camping, but I think Greg's still too young. Not prepared to go to anyplace that you can do on a Sun hol - we're sick to the back teeth of chav-parks, and fancied something a bit nicer as we've never actually been on a family holiday that didn't involve collecting tokens! Any ideas?

hypno06

What about centerparcs - we love it and it doesn't matter what the weather does. If you go outside the school holidays it is not too badly priced and it is fantastic!

pandapaws

I looked into that when I saw the £199 breaks on hotukdeals, but for the dates we need to go (hard to get leave together - the only disadvantage of working in the same place) it's over £900 a week, and I really wanted to get away for a fortnight. And then there's the cost of everything on top of that too - looking at a couple of grand realistically which we cannot justify at the moment under any circumstances! I'm going to keep a look out for any bargain breaks they have though as I'd love to go.

mickey_mouse

pleased your mountain of ironing is being attacked:D

I love Centerparcs but it certainly isn't a cheap holiday especially if you are sporty as you have to pay for everything on top . It is fine if walking and swimming is your thing though. Hope you come up with a good idea for a cheapish holiday .

tyllwyd

We go to a caravan park at St Ives Bay, but don't stay at a caravan, they have some (basic) little chalets as well. Its a quiet family park, and you can walk out of the end of the park, down the sand dunes straight onto the beach at St Ives Bay.