DFSD's motivational ramblings...

debtfreesomeday

Thanks findingmyownway - and nice to hear it's not just me who struggles with the last week!

debtfreesomeday

I had 4 ebay sales that finished last night and didn't get chance to check them until well after they ended, so I was chuffed to bits to find that I'd made nearly £60 on them - especially considering 3 of the items were free in the first place!
So, I have those to pack up tonight, ready to send tomorrow. I have three other things finishing at the weekend, but only one has a bid and I don't think they'll sell for much, if at all.

The second batch of the online Christmas presents I ordered turned up yesterday too, so I wrapped a few more of those. I also went to Tesco's yesterday and bought a few foody gifts that were half price. Only 2 and 2 halves of presents left to buy!

I had a couple more surveys last night too and gained just over £4 by doing those. I also had another one emailed to me this morning but I can't open it at work so will do that when I get home.

Our house is now on the market too, so I'm really hoping it sells quickly...

I am yet to sort out what state our budget is in. I didn't have time last night but I shall try tonight for sure, or faililng that, sit down for a couple of hours at the weekend and do it. Although I am tempted to leave it a couple of days until all the ebay and Amazon payments have gone into my account so I know what is in there. Amazon in particular takes so long to process that I lose track of what is going in there and when, especially with lots of little payments are going in there one after the other. Paypal are the same - they're quick enough to take your money but take an age to pay it in!

I also have to update my signature with the balance on the previously cleared egg card, once I add the receipts up and calculate what the damage is...

debtfreesomeday

Well, I did it... I looked at the damage done on my egg card this month, that had nothing on it before, now it stands at £423.24 :shocked: This has been spent on Christmas presents online, a bit of grocery shopping when I lost track with the budget and my debit card wouldn't work in one supermarket machine - no idea why?!; and general laziness on my behalf with the 'buy now, worry about it later' state of mind. Really annoyed at myself as we'd been doing so well up until now. BUT, it shall be paid of in 2 months now, just means I'll have to pay less off on the virgin card for the next two months :mad:. I had been keeping the egg card for 'emergencies only' - ie., the car breaking down, my debit card not working, being abroad and needing to pay for stuff etc etc, but now I'm starting to think as soon as it is cleared again I should just cancel it. I don't know what to do, any thoughts anyone? It scares me not having that back-up available though.

On a plus side, we sold some more surplus household stuff last night bringing our total 'in the pot' to £80. I shall keep this aside for things we may need next week whilst moving, and for things in the new house as a few bits need doing there, but if we can do without using it, we shall, and I'll use it towards the egg card instead.
My paypal payments are starting to show up in my bank account too, so over the weekend I shall use them to pay at least £120 to the egg card balance. When we get paid next week I shall also be making the main payment to the card. Hopefully Quidco should pay out soon too, that will go a big way to help the egg-card-clearance project!

I picked up some free boxes for moving from work today so I don't need to scout the supermarkets for some at the weekend :T. My weekend shall mainly consist of sorting and packing - anything else I find that we don't need is going on ebay! Oh, hubby has also decided to sell his old game console and games too, so I shall be putting that on ebay this weekend. That'll be a little bit of extra cash in the pot. :j

debtfreesomeday

A nice little surprise at lunchtime - some luncheon vouchers came in the mail for me from doings surveys - a coffee in Starbucks at the weekend for us now! :j

debtfreesomeday

Urgh, Monday morning. Don't you just love 'em?!

Not too bad a DFW weekend for us. We finished and wrapped all of the Christmas shopping, bar a few chocolate-based gifts which we'll get nearer the time. £22 extra went on the egg card, but £69 got paid off it which is a good start considering it's not pay day until tomorrow. Will pay a whack off of it tomorrow too. I shall update the signature as soon as the payments have caught up on the statement. It shall now be taken out of my wallet, and MAY BE cut up - still can't decide whether to file it away or cut it up. Not sure about the whole 'not having the means to pay for emergency situations' with no credit card available to us, as we have no real savings to fall back on either. Any thoughts on that matter would be greatly received!

Apart from the last of the Christmas presents, we didn't spend much this weekend - although we did treat ourselves to the M&S on the '2 dine for £10' offer for the first time - it was great - and we still have a dish left from it to use for dinner tonight!

We also made another £15 on ebay through things we were going to Charity Shop, so that will be added to the pot. We have one more item on which won't be finishing until next weekend so hopefully that will make a bit extra too.

But, the best news is: IT'S PAYDAY TOMORROW AND WE'RE NOT OVERDRAWN!!! :j
For the first time in well over a year, (I think), we're not overdrawn at the end of the month. Largely to the fact that we've made quite a bit on ebay this month, but I'm so pleased. Whatever's left in the bank tomorrow before our wages go in we'll use to pay off the credit card as an extra payment. :T

I've paid another £157 off of the virgin card this morning in preparation for payday tomorrow, as it takes ages to come out of my account for some reason. I would've liked to pay off £300 again like usual, but obviously I now have to pay off the egg card too. I'll pay some more off of that tomorrow once I see what's left in the bank before the wages go in! It will be a minimum of £150 though. I know I should be paying the egg off first if I stick to the rules of snowballing, but mentally I have to pay a chunk off of the virgin card too to see the amount going down. The egg card will hopefully be cleared again by the end of the year so I can get back to the £300+ payments on the virgin card from January.

We're getting the keys for our new house this week, so we have a busy week ahead. Let's hope it's a DFW one! xx

DFSD

debtfreesomeday

Just paid another £254 off of the egg card, leaving the total left on it at £143.

We have been saving money monthly to pay off our sofas in a lump sum before the interest free payments start next October (we didn't have to pay anything for a year). But decided tonight, that there is no point in us putting money away in an account with rubbish interest when we're paying interest monthly on our credit card (well, the egg card, anyway). Plus, when we do start having to pay for the sofas, it is interest free! So, we have decided that, we will withdraw the £275 we have already saved and use it to clear the egg card and put the leftover bit towards the virgin card as an extra payment. Then, we can pay a bit more off the virgin card monthly too instead of saving for the sofas. We wouldn't have been able to clear the virgin card by then but it will be much, much lower than it is now and not such a scary debt!

My head is now clearer!

debtfreesomeday

Well, after our earlier decision not to save money towards the 0% sofas and to pay it off our credit cards instead, it now means that, as soon as I can get to a bank tomorrow to withdraw the cash from one account (no online facility on that one) and put it into the main bank account, the egg card has been CLEARED! :j The damn thing is coming out of my wallet and hidden away somewhere until I can decide whether to cut it up or not! (see earlier posts!).

It also means there's another £132 paid off the virgin card which was in our saving pot, bringing it down to £4368. Now that egg is paid off, I can continue with our £300+ payments on virgin from next month - woo hoo! :j

I can't wait to get rid of that virgin card, there will be a DFW party when I do!!!

debtfreesomeday

:j:j:j IT'S PAY DAY!!! :j:j:j (about time too!)


Well that seemed like a very long month. We also received some backpay this month, so are able to pay for our passports, put £100 in the pot instead of the usual £50 towards our car insurance/tax which is due in February, and still have a decent amount left over to live off for the month.

I'm also really please about the amount we're paying off the credit cards this month - a total of £686 :j:j:j

Think I've decided I'm going to cut up and cancel the egg card too next month... that'll be our last credit card. We have the Virgin card, but that was cut up as soon as it arrived as we used it for balance transfer only.

I have to go to the post office today and post two more ebay parcels from sales at the weekend. No more sales via Amazon for a while, but I'm happy with what we did make on that anyway, and we cleared quite a few books too.

We're going to give the ebay/Amazon thing a rest for a while now once the last item's ended and concentrate on moving house and hopefully relax with family and friends over Christmas, I can't wait! xx

debtfreesomeday

It's been nearly a week since I last posted, and what a week it's been!

We're in the process of moving house and doing the new house up a bit as it wasn't left very clean or in great condition. My wonderful parents have been helping us no end, and it's finally looking a bit more like our home now. We still have quite a bit of stuff to move but shall do it gradually in the evenings this week. Most of the heavy stuff is done now.

It hasn't been an incredibly DFW week as I've had to buy things for the new house, but it has been quite good considering. I haven't used my debit/credit card for payment once and it's all been paid in cash which we had saved. In fact, we haven't touched our bank account since payday, apart from DD's and SO's, oh, and one tank of petrol which I used the debit card for - we haven't withdrawn any cash or bought any other food/shopping etc with the debit card yet. Not bad going for us - nearly a week after payday!

As you may see from my signature though, I haven't managed to pay the egg card off or reduce the virgin card by that bit extra as previously mentioned. We have used the cash allocated for this to pay for things for the house move as above, instead of having to put it on the credit cards. The egg card will hopefully be cleared by the end of this month and the virgin payment upped to the previous regular amount of £300 per month. We do need to buy a couple more things though but will try and budget for these out of the main account.

Our last auction for a while finished on ebay yesterday, making us a profit of around £50 after P&P. We also had a payout of £21 or so from Quidco today too.

I went to Tesco's with my Mum yesterday and bought 3 boxes of their finest chocolates at half price - down to £4.99 - for our friends for Christmas which means our Christmas shopping is absolutely finished now! :j (Paid saved cash too!).

Also got the bargain of the century at the weekend with some chairs massively reduced at Tesco's, spending £22. The same items on their website would have cost me a total of £178!!! I have no idea why they were so cheap, but I was looking at the very same items online last week, and nearly even bought them but decided we couldn't afford it. I was so chuffed! We were definitely in the right place at the right time there. :j

We also received 2 boxes of new home movers pack from moveme.co.uk - had some handy bits and pieces in there (lightbulb, kitchen towels, cif samples, cleaning stuff etc) and obviously great as it was all free!

DFSD
x

debtfreesomeday

Definitely not a DFW day for me today! Have had to spend over £500 :eek: on getting a few things fixed up in the house, which has gone on the egg card. (Shall be updating my signature as soon as I know the full extent of the damage!)
That should be most of the expenses paid for now until at least after the new year (when we need to get new carpets!) and we can work on getting the egg card balance down again which will take us about 2 or 3 months to pay off. I'm not beating myself up about this too much as it is pretty unavoidable - we have to get the house habitable and there's no other way of paying for things at the moment. I know this is a 'glitch' on our previously great DFW quest, but it is a one off - we're not moving again!!! (Not for a long time anyway!). And it will all be paid off as soon as possible. Once everything for this month is paid for, we shall throw everything that's left in the bank at the egg card balance to reduce it further as an extra payment. Urgh, why is life so complicated?!