DFSD's motivational ramblings...

debtfreesomeday

Hiya Chocs :wave:

Well I must've done it right as I got the £5 bonus ok. Didn't win anything though - but came close a couple of times. :rolleyes: Got hubby doing them after a while and we had a laugh over it as he was on the edge of his seat, anticipating a 'big' win - doesn't take much to amuse us eh?! Should have the bonus again tonight, so more of the same later. Actually, it cheered us up - we were both severely miserable and down last night. It was my Mum's birthday yesterday but she's still in hospital and had a bad day yesterday - collapsing and then in a lot of pain, so I didn't get to talk to her. It was also so dark and windy here last night by the time we got home from work, we really didn't know what to do with ourselves. Not wanting to spend a night in front of the TV, I wanted to do some baking, but I didn't have all the ingredients and didn't want to go and spend any money buying them!

I know what you mean about working in a large place - when I worked in a town it was so easy to pop out at lunchtime for a breather, with the best intentions of not spending any money, to come back with a nice lunch and a 'bargain' I didn't really need. Now I work in the sticks, I couldn't buy anything if I needed to!

I try and wirte down everything I spend 'spare' money on (ie. the bit left over once everything is paid). If I stick to it, it really helps me to see how much I have left as I count it down from the amount available. Lately though I haven't been getting past the middle of the month with that...:o

DFSD
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debtfreesomeday

Just had an email to say I've won a copy of the new Delia 'Happy Christmas' cook book in a competition I entered in October. :j That's the first win in ages! Now the DFW in me is already thinking sell it on Amazon! They're going for about £10 at the moment, which I guess would be about £8 profit by the time fees come out. Shame I've already bought all our Christmas presents, might've been a nice gift for someone. Will see what it's like when it arrives, maybe I could use it to make some yummy gifts.

Haven't entered any competitions in weeks now, I suppose I should start doing them again...

debtfreesomeday

Well the idea of not spending any more money until payday has completely gone out of the window. :eek::o I don't even want to add it up...

To start with, hubby's expenses hadn't been done in the week as I thought they had, it is now going into the bank on Monday and is £10 less than we think it should be but not much we can do about that. :mad:

We had to put petrol in today as practically running on fumes. Car took £40.64 to fill up! :eek::eek::eek:

Also had a shopping delivery yesterday. I'd planned not to have one until next week, but we were running out of fresh stuff and store cupboard things and I was aware we were nipping out for things as we needed them and it was getting difficult to keep track. So, had a delivery yesterday, including the basic stuff I needed to make up the gift jars, shopping came to £70.:eek::eek::eek: Amount spent on 'nipping to shock for urgent extras before shopping delivery £15. :eek::eek::eek:

I made the jars up today, took me ages, and I ran out of stuff half way through - I completely underestimated the amounts I would need so had to jump in the car and nip to the local supermarket for extras - cost £9! :eek::eek::eek: Also bought a belt whilst I was there - my last cheapy one broke last week and my jeans have been falling down all week, quite embarrasingly - cost of belt £4.

Toilet seat in the main bathroom broke, had to buy a new one - cost £14 :eek: (could've got a cheaper one, but this was the cheapest with metal fittings, not the plastic ones which last 5 minutes and send you flying across the room when the seat breaks mid 'activity'!:o). Also had to buy a pack of 'special' bulbs for a light that had gone - £3.50 for two.:eek:

£10 on a pressie I forgot about.


I think that's it.


The petrol and grocery shopping are coming off NEXT month's budget! There's no way we can afford to be overdrawn by that much, so we have started spending next month's shopping and petrol budgets early! I will work it all out on payday but should be able to claw some of it back...

Got my £5 bonus again on BB, still now ins after 4 or 5 days on it, but I just remembered to do the free scratchard on TAB bingo, won 10p, used the total bonus balance I had of 90p to buy some bingo cards and won £10.23 which is winging its way to my bank account now. It's a start I suppose!

Might have to 'Music Magpie' some cds tomorrow if we can sort out the ones lurking under the spare bed for next year's car boot sale. I don't think MM offered much for them last time I tried, but anything will help at the moment. They're just collecting dust upstairs presently.

We also have the spare change jar I could count and bank (although I'd really like to wait until it's full), and there's £12 in my £2 coin collection which should really go in the bank to help pout I suppose.

Goodness, I wonder if there'll ever be a time when we actually have money to spare at the end of the month.

I should get off to bed now or I'll look even worse in the morning!

DFSD
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debtfreesomeday

Well we're having a NSD indoors today (except for hubby buying a paper with shrapnel this morning), we're trying to make some money instead!

I've entered all our 'car boot' cds on the music magpie site - they offered us £8.71 for 28 cds and 1 DVD! I know it's extra money, but they're all quite new / modern artists and I think they'll sell better at the boot sale. I don't think it's worth it to send these off for less than £9, so they're going back under the spare bed for next year's boot sales instead. :cool:

I did the usual TAB scratchcard - won 50p - used it for a game of bingo but didn't win anything (the TAB scratchcards can't be withdrawn - has to be played). Another £5 bonus on BB today, played it through and won £5, :j so have withdrawn that to the bank account. That's just over £15 going back in there this weekend to chip away at the overdraft a little.

This morning we've been on a cleaning mission and have cleaned the bathrooms, hoovered up and down, dusted lounge and dining room and cleaned the floors in the kitchen and the hall. I've also touched up the paintwork in the kitchen a bit with some paint we have in the garage. :T Feels nice to be in a shiny clean house!

I'm going to have a look at the freebies board and maybe the comp board, then off to count our spare change jars, and hopefully hubby will take some into the bank tomorrow when he pays his expenses cheque in.

Have a good Sunday afternoon everyone.

DFSD
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debtfreesomeday

The penny pot had £12 of bankable change in there. There's probably about £16 - £18 in there, but I can't make up full bank bags with the rest so that'll stay in there for next time. Hubby is going to bank the £12 tomorrow. :cool:

I dug out two old mobiles we had in a drawer, when I eventually found out what model number they were I checked the mobile checker thingy but they would only give us £1 each for them so hardly worth it! :rotfl: Will keep them in case ours ever go wrong. :rolleyes:

I've got some pizza dough in the breadmaker, and have chopped up lots of bits for toppings. I'm going to make small ones and freeze them for lunches and snacks.

The roast dinner is in the oven, a lovely breast joint of turkey my folks gave us. :ASure there'll be leftovers, so maybe turkey sandwiches for lunch tomorrow or something aong those lines. Maybe a curry.
I've cooked extra potato today and got mince out of the freezer, so it's cottage pie for tomorrow night. Not sure where this new domesticated me is coming from but I hope she stays!

DFSD
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Chocforever

DFSD/Domestic goddess

You sound like you've had a nice weekend. You are making me hungry with all this lovely food. I've just had a quiet one which was good as I have had a cough/cold and it has given me chance to recuperate. (This is really a thinly veiled excuse for doing nothing when I should have been doing something productive!)

I have been watching some sport which is not like me, but prompted me to do a bit of betting. I was rubbish yesterday, but made a bit today so I have reached my £10 a day target for November.

I might have a good bingo win to report next week. My computer was playing up so I didn't see the what happened, but when I logged back in I had lots of money. More than I thought I was playing for LOL, so not entirely sure it is real! I'll wait and see if it gets to my bank account before I spend it.

CF

debtfreesomeday

Ooh, fingers crossed the bingo money transfers ok - how exciting to come back and find lots of cash in your account! Tonight I need to check to see if I've got today's £5 bonus for BB. I think I may have scuppered it by taking out the £5 I won, but I'm not entirely sure - only realized after that that may be an issue!

Hope you're feeling better now too, a weekend of doing nothing is needed now and then to recharge the batteries.

Have a good week and keep us updated on the bingo front!

DFSD
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debtfreesomeday

As it's payday in two days, I've worked out the credit card payments for this month. As things have gone a bit haywire budget wise, and hubby is changing jobs in the next month (so pay packets may be a bit different), I'm not going to overstretch us. Plus, we get paid early in December - by a week! :eek: - so it'll be a long time 'til January's payday.

Instead of paying £411 off the virgin card as per this month's planned snowball, we'll be paying £231.67, which would've been the last payment due in February to clear the card. Now we only have 3 more payments of £411 left until that card is cleared. :T We're also paying the last £77 off the Lloyds 'emergency, now defunct' CC, clearing that one too. :j We're only paying £300-odd off the cards instead of £411 but it means we'll have a bit more money this month, and hopefully not have to go into the overdraft again. We need to be really strict with ourselves this month in order to achieve this.

Off to earn some more pennies...

DFSD
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debtfreesomeday

Signatures updated with new CC totals. Virgin's not under 1K this month as I would've liked it to be, but no point making ourselves short when it isn't going to be paid off any quicker.

No wins on bingo last night; also realised my £5 win didn't get withdrawn to my bank account as I'd asked - I think I should've deposited some money first and then withdraw it all - serves me right for not reading the rules properly! 10p on TAB scratchcard last night. :rolleyes:

I was a bit of a coward last night - I drove to the nearest WW meeting and even had a voucher for money off joining fee, but I chickened out and didn't go in. I saw lots of ladies going in in groups and pairs and didn't have the guts to go in on my own. I now find it so hard to do these things on my own and in an area that, although I live here, I'm not local to when I have zero confidence. (People in the past have not been too friendly because I'm not from 'round here' :mad: they seem very suspicious of 'new folk' and are so set in their ways it's unbelievable in this day and age.)

I was really annoyed and upset with myself. I went home to hubby, who had offered to come with me but I couldn't justify the cost, and he suggested we really knuckle down to eating well at home and weighing ourselves every Monday. So, as our scales are broken and give us a different reading every time we stand on them, I went and bought a new pair. The cheapest digital ones in Tesco were £12, so bought those and a £2 toilet brush and some salad /fruit/ veg, spending £18.

So, I weighed myself :eek::eek::eek: and I am the heaviest I've ever been. I was shocked at how much weight I'd put on recently. Something has to be done about this, so I am now on a mission.
I've made a nice healthy salad with leftover turkey breast from Sunday and planned meals for this evening. Shall plan for the rest of the week tonight.

I also sorted out some clothes for the charity shop bag tonight which is being collected this week. I sorted a couple of brand name bits for ebay too, which I will list when we can get use of a camera.

Payday tomorrow, so will initiate CC payments today. Hubby is paying in the £12 in change today and also his expenses cheque of £47 which he didn't have time to do yesterday. I need to sit down and work out the budget tomorrow when everything's come out / gone in, as I don't really know what's what at the moment.

What a long old ramble, most of which probably doesn't make sense!

DFSD
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debtfreesomeday

:j:j:jWoohoo! Just won £20 on BB! :j:j:j
That's withdrawn and on the way to the bank account already! :T:D