DFSD's motivational ramblings...

Chocforever

Hi DFSD

You are a lady on a mission today. I have only just surfaced . I had a nice day yesterday and met a friend for lunch. I was wrapping parcels the rest of the day to help out a charity. I quite enjoyed it and raised a bit of cash for a good cause.

Today I need to get a few things done around the flat, but otherwise I just want to take it easy before another busy week starts at work. I'll see if I can get a few things on Ebay.

Regarding your post last night, I still worry that if you put off having a family on the basis of money, you will only regret the previous spending for more years to come. It feels like you need to look ahead and maybe there is something you and OH could do to change your circumstances. Perhaps if you worked out what the shortfall would be in £s, you could decide whether it is worth bridging that gap with an extra job for a couple of years. Or maybe if your work pays better, you go back to work and OH looks after the children. Not very MSE, but what about extending the term of the debts if that is what you need to give you some leeway.

Enough of the heavy stuff, enjoy the day. Good friends and good company sound like a nice Sunday.

Best wishes,

CF

debtfreesomeday

Hi Chocs,

Your Saturday sounds lovely - I love wrapping presents and making them look lovely too so your charity work sounds like lots of fun to me! It's just wrapping ebay stuff that I dislike for some reason... I'm an odd one, I know!

Hope you had a nice relaxing Sunday. Ours was quite nice - AND - I only spent £3.25! I was very good and only bought what I went for. Getting very disciplined now - it's about time! We had lunch out with our tesco vouchers, and hubby paid the extra little bit, but we were both glad to get home and away from the hustle and bustle of Christmas shoppers. We must be getting old. Since then, we've been sat on the sofas reading papers and snoozing, listening to old-time Christmas carols! 30, going on 70 today I think! My early start has done me absolutely no good at all, I'm shattered, and we have people come round for dinner in an hour. :doh:

Thanks for your advice on the children issue, it's nice to hear someone else's take on things. The daft thing is, I think we'd actually be ok. It would just mean that we'd have to stop overpaying the loan by an extra £400 or £500 a month as we will be doing soon - that is my main issue. I just don't want that loan dragging on for another 5 years, I really want at least one of those loans gone, and that's the only one we can overpay. It's also the fact that we have no savings as we've been debt-busting. That worries me a great deal. We have been discussing overpaying the loan until, hopefully we're lucky enough to get pregnant, then stopping overpayments and ploughing that extra amount into a savings account for 9 months... Urgh, think I should think about all this when I'm less tired!

Oops, gotta save the roast spuds....

debtfreesomeday

Urgh, I'm so tired today, I woke up about 3am this morning and struggled to get back to sleep. Think I shall be finishing early today!

The £216.73 a month loan has come out of the account today, so another month marked off that account in the snowball calculator. It's quite exciting seeing only three more credit card payments on there now, when we started it was a long, long list!

This morning I have checked out our company's maternity policy in more detail, just so we have a general idea of how much we'd be entitled to if and when we decide to start a family as I think I have been worrying largely unnecessarily without looking into the financial situation in more depth.

It seems we'd be pretty fine for the first 18 weeks of maternity pay as it is 90% for weeks 1-6 and then only about £230 less than my normal monthly wage for weeks 7-18, but hubby's new job should cover that. From week 19-39 I'd only get SMP which we'd struggle on, and it would be then that we'd need to dip into savings. I'd figured we'd need about £2500 in the bank to cope with those 5 months which would take us about 6 months to save if we stopped overpaying the loan.

I'm not taking tax credits or child allowance etc into account as I have no idea what we'd be entitled to, if anything, and I think we'd just see anything extra as a bonus! I'd rather base it just on our wages first, so we know the minimum we would receive.

Hmm, definitely a lot to mull over and talk about there...
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Back to today... which will be a NSD. Dinner will be an omelette or something equally quick and easy. Lunch and brekkie have been bought to work with me so no danger of buing anything extra.

I've also made another £22.50 today :j from a sale at work. £2 coin included in it which is going in my £2 pot, (£14 in there now ). The nice crisp £20 note will be kept, and hopefully forgotten about, until payday. If I still have it by then, it's going off the credit card.

Had to fill the car up with petrol again yesterday - £32 - so £40 left in the petrol budget now. Don't think that will be enough, so that's where the £20 will go, if anywhere.

I need to do the scratchies and bingo bonuses tonight after work.

Think that's about all for now.
Have a good Monday all.

DFSD
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debtfreesomeday

Just paid that £20.50 off the credit card after remembering hubby is owed some expenses for petrol this month which should be paid this week.

So, outstanding balance now at: £1,171

debtfreesomeday

10p and 10p on the scratchies today, no wins on the bingo. :rolleyes:

Chocforever

A quick hello as I also didn't sleep well last night and hoping for a better night tonight. I'm pleased the maternity pay situation is better than you thought. It might be worth looking into the tax situation just to get an idea.

The credit card and HP balances are getting soooo close to being sub £1,000.

Another day and another MS, but other than that I've nothing much to report. Oh, I had a £20 bingo win, and now can't decide whether to withdraw or use to buy more tickets. Mmm, too hard a decision for me tonight!

debtfreesomeday

Withdraw it! Better in your account than theirs! Hope you had a better night's sleep...

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10p and 25p on the scratchies today, no wins on bingo br!tain. Am sure my bonus must be expiring soon, hubby's is on for a few more weeks yet. :cool: He hasn't had any wins yet, sure he must be due one soon!

I had the smallest order from the M&S glitch delivered at lunch time - 2 boxes of whisky tasting gift sets and 2 port & mints sets for £4.25 all in including delivery! BARGAIN! They've emailed to say some of the books I ordered for next year's birthday gifts are out of stock :mad: and the rest will be late arriving, but there's no rush really. The second lot of alcohol gifts should be arriving in the next week, but no news on those being dispatched yet.

DFSD
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debtfreesomeday

I've canceled the M&S book order - I keep getting drip-fed emails saying items are out of stock and the delivery date keeps going back (now at 20th December!) so with only two books left on the order it's not such a good buy, so I've canceled it completely.

That leaves me with an extra £16 in the bank account though, so that's £28 left in there. Have updated the budget lists and we have £9 left for the groceries and £8 left for petrol! :eek: Groceries one is fine, can't see us needing anything else - maybe some fruit, but that's all. The one petrol one is an issue, although hubby's expenses should help when they get paid in. Will also save that £28 towards petrol too as we're going away at the weekend (but splitting petrol costs with friends so should be slightly cheaper!).

I need to go through my Christmas present list tonight - I don't need to buy any more, but may need to switch a few around if you know what I mean.

DFSD
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debtfreesomeday

Yay - another £10 won on Bingo tonight. :T That has been withdrawn straight into the bank account, but will have to stay in there rather than be paid off the card at the moment.

10p & 25p on the scratchcards.

I have relisted an item on ebay tonight that I bought from there the other day for our New Year's celebrations, but it's not suitable. Hopefully that will sell soon. Have my eye on another item which is £5 cheaper, so we'll see how those auctions go.

Got quite a few surveys to do now so off I go...

debtfreesomeday

80 points on a survey tonight, screened out of another one and one was not working. :mad::rolleyes:

One watcher on my ebay item already too.

Off to play a couple of games of bingo with my scratchcard bonus fund...

DFSD
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