Earthgirl gets back on track!

twinklie

All sounds very confusing so I'll just say WELL DONE. :rotfl:

earthgirl

twinklie wrote: »

All sounds very confusing so I'll just say WELL DONE. :rotfl:

Ha ha, I know I confuse myself with the way I budget! But I have to be very 'reactive' at the moment and mess around with the budget - overpending here, underspending there, to make things stack up.

I guess having the house extended, being 7 months pregnant and having an OH that is not particularly bothered about paying off the mortgage doesn't help with making my budgeting an easier!!

SORRY!

earthgirl

I have been thinking for a while that I should move some of the money out of old ISAS to pay off the mortage. We out of a 'deal' at the moment with our lender, so I can overpay as much as I like with no penalty. At some point in the not too distant future, we will be fixing into a deal again, and so I needed to get this organised.

So in June so far, I have paid £2,000 into my new isa (bringing total to £4,500 for emergencies) and made a £1,000 overpayment. I also transferred £17,689 out of old isas.

I admit that the majority of this is just switching money around, but it looks good on the page! And brings the total we need to pay on our mortgage down to £19,992.05!!!

Right I need a do do list to get me going!!!

earthgirl

Must do today:

- check exam papers marked already, package up and send off.
-collect items ordered for kitchen
- collect prescription
- tutoring at 5pm

Maybe do some more marking!

earthgirl

Well a productive day doing all sorts of things that I don't need to do, and not doing things i should!

- Got a free voucher and used a code to get a free t-shirt for the baby from a v. expensive online retailer (love it when that happens!)
- had a random £10 credit into my bank account - No idea why, checked the usual suspects.
- Mr t rang and figured out they had over delivered by 24 bottles (I did ring to tell them, they wouldn't believe me!) so wine is being collected later on in week,leaving me with the £10 over - refund . Spurred me on to use our airmiles to buy 4 cases of wine, theres just no chance of us using the airmiles for travel with a little one, its so uncompetitive.
- bought a whole load of xmas presents from an online discount store, think buying xmas pressies this way is much better, and will probably save me around £100 on last year, plus with inflation, presents are better than vouchers!
- took a test drive of a car and got a form stamped, so should get £15 m&S vouchers for doing that.
- did a baby wool wash
- used all sorts of boots vouchers and things to get loads of half price baby clothes and nappy liners etc, and a massive pack of disposables for £15 (but my kitty has now gone down! )
- used some vouchers for fabric softener and got it for 25p.
- also completed one tutoring client, and rearranged an other.

So here are the things I should have been doing, and will have to do tomorrow/saturday:
MUST DO:
- exam marking Some done
- small business work incl. preparing for trade show on Sunday *REALLY IMPORTANT* DONE
- Prep for tutoring on Friday and Sat morning.DONE
- Water garden, pot on and plant more salad.

SHOULD DO:
- cleaning, washing, ironing YAWN
- clean car
- cancel old credit cards
- move boots points onto one card


I just have no inclination to do all the boring tasks when I am on hols!! But the more I do now, the less I have to do when I am back for the last long 6 weeks at work!

I will not look at MFW diaries again until I have made headway with my 'must do' tasks!

SmlSave

OMG you're soo busy EG! *faint*

when do you find the time to sleep?

Shame about the wine being re-collected

gerbiljo

this is a fantastic diary, congratulations on your pregnancy, its such a special time

earthgirl

gerbiljo wrote: »

this is a fantastic diary, congratulations on your pregnancy, its such a special time

Thanks, I love reading everyones diaries, it really encourages me, but I end up reading loads and doing nothing!! oops!

Today I kept my promise, and did the urgent things first, and didn't waste time. In fact I was up at 5am sorting stuff out.

Everything is ready for the trade show on Sunday, unfortunately OH is away, so I will have to run our stand, but another employee is coming to help. It will either be really good, or really boring, we shall see!

I have done quite a bit of marking, but still got plenty to do. Every paper earns me £4.77, so trying to see it as a stack of fivers rather than a stack of papers!!!

I accidently got my tutoring times mixed up today, and did an extra half an hour for a client just lost track of time , but I'll just do a short lesson on Monday.

Got the final electricity bill through from changing suppliers £253 :eek: My tutoring money for the month will cover it, and I have taken £20 out of OHs piggy bank as his contribution!!

We REALLY REALLY have to reduce our electricity bill - I could do with an energy monitor.

cha97michelle

Ouchy to that electric bill. We were paying £28 per month when we changed. I had a rebate from them for £64 last month, and then a final bill for £26 yesterday. Is it the builders making your bill so high?

I have an OWL monitor which i bought using free amazon vouchers. I have to say though, apart from the 1st week we pretty much ignore it. I read the meter once a week and enter on imeasure, and i think this has made me think much more and we have dropped usage by an average of 20 units per week. I am not even sure how. The only things we consistently do is turn the Wii off all the time apart from rare use, and i switch off the digi box and computer monitor every night. Other than that, we are in all day, have high usage of the telly and computer, have an eco kettle, and try to run full washing loads.

The new company are ovo, and we are paying £72 per month compared to £64 + £28, and last month we moved on the 17th so we are £42 in credit already.

Imeasure might be a better 1st port of call.

earthgirl

Thanks I'll give it a try when my other jobs are done. We don't have gas here, so its just leccy, we pay £80/month, but obviously it hasn't been enough over winter. I will set myself a challenge I think!!!