Fire Fox's Debt-Free in 2009 Diary

Fire_Fox

Completed the supermarket run, and completely blown the budget! :mad:

£8.50 in Home Bargains - snacks plus cleaning products - AND £98 in Tesco AND £4 on the taxi home.:eek:

Expensive items were:
2 fleeces @ £5 each (will now return the £7 one I bought the other day)
4 cans of cider £2.60
2 bags of dried fruit £5
Large bag of rice £5.50
Value chicken breasts £6
2 packs sausages £4
2 packs lean mince £4.60
4 portions frozen cod £3.50
Value stewing lamb £3.70
Large bag grapes £2.40
Which totals about £47!!

Everything else was under £2, and I only bought branded stuff that was on offer at less than the price of Tesco's own brand. I must now have a lot of meals, so next time will try to only get fresh stuff (fruit/ veg/ bread/ dairy). I think I am actually worse with a list ....

What a disaster!!

Fire_Fox

Tried to redeem myself by cooking two meals from scratch when I got in from work after 9pm. Lovely baked trout using up on-the-turn leeks and shallots with reduced fresh herbs, plus a slow cooked Bolognese padded out with lots of onion, grated carrot and celery. We will have the latter tonight as Chilli con Carne with taco shells for him and rice for me; the leftovers I will probably take to work.

Read the electricity meter today (cue Mission Impossible theme tune as I sneak through the local dry cleaners!) and we have used 11.4 units per day since September!! Really pleased as it has been very cold this winter. We don't use the heating, but I do put the oven on with the door ajar if I can see my breath! :eek:

Fire_Fox

Just looked at my electricity bill online .... even though our usage has not increased over last winter, our direct debits will have to. :mad: I reckon to at least £30 a month, as we are now £50 in arrears. I don't think we can cut back any more; Mr. Fire Fox wore his hat indoors the the last two evenings, and today is colder still ...

In the process of slow cooking a sausage and red wine casserole - using ham leftover from Xmas, the last of the reduced herbs and some soup mix from the back of the cupboard.

Happy New Year to any MSE who reads this!
:A

wendz86

Hi,

Just wanted to say Happy New Year! I am quite new on here too. Am finding it hard to cut down on the spending but am finding the making more money thing quite good and is great to see the debt going down even if it is slowly!

Fire_Fox

Thanks Wendz86! Have been to visit you on your diary.

I have just been through Wepromiseto to get my free 30 day Experian trial! So cashback account now has £115 pending, with another £20 queried on a ticket.

The credit report is a tad scary because there were some financial 'misdemeanors' in 2002/ 03. It got all confused over my addresses for some reason so I have to wait for my change of details to be verified. First it had my present address twice (I had definitely given my last two addresses), then my second and third addresses, now it has the first and third addresses!!

I am therefore not sure I have the full report - there is nothing prior to 2004 - and it says I am not on the electoral roll (I have voted here!) and was only on for one year at my last address (lived there three years). This needs rectifying I should think.

I have seven listed accounts, all satisfactory but on the summary page it lists one default. I was late with a payment for my mobile this year, due to a minor dispute about my billing. I wonder if I can ask Orange to remove this?

However the credit card simply shows settled at the end of 2003 with no defaults (I am pretty sure I defaulted three times). All in all tho I am :j:j:j

Fire_Fox

Ooops, I have just spent £53 on the Cotswold Company website .... in my defence I clicked through Wepromiseto so effectively my p&p was free! I purchased three items that have been bookmarked for ages AND were in the sale: a set of white angular china bowls, a Brabantia brushed steel box for putting newspapers in and tough paper liners for the box. :cool:

Mostly I am just a sucker for smart matching stuff (I have similarly shaped wine glasses and tea mugs), but we do need to organise our recycling better. We have two cheap plastic tubs under the sink which just don't hold a week's waste.

I am making excuses to complete strangers, aren't I?!

mintymoneysaver

Fire_Fox wrote: »

I am making excuses to complete strangers, aren't I?!

Yes!:rotfl: Just a little suggestion...instead of using your Tesco points for jewellery you don't really need how about using them for your RAC membership if you have a car?

Fire_Fox

Thanks Minty, but I can't drive and Mr. Fire Fox doesn't own a car at the moment. I went through all of the Tesco deals and there's nothing I really use - no kids so no theme parks, mature student so don't eat out much, both work seasonally (opposite) so no holidays etc. I think I would really like to feel I had got something enduring with the vouchers since I now accumulated so many.

Today I have mostly been on MySupermarket, finding out how overpriced Tesco is compared to Asda: about a third more expensive for the products I buy! I have also realised how much I have been wasting on certain items - large onions are five times the price of Asda SmartPrice!! I thought I was quite good at checking the price per 100g but obviously not nearly as good as I thought. :rolleyes:

Mr. Fire Fox has gone visitin' so I am eating up leftovers all this week. We will waste food tho, as I bought loads of fruit at Tesco forgetting he was going home for a week. The TV has been off for two days so less leccy used!

Fire_Fox

Been reviewing my Experian credit report more thoroughly today. The missed/ late payments on my credit card are listed but the overall account status is green/ satisfactory! Also the report seems to suggest that this account will not fall off my record until December 2009, but the defaults from 2003 will actually be on my file for over six years ...

"Settled on: 9/12/2003

Summary of Payment History: In the last 36 months of account activity the number of status 1-2 is 3 and the number of status 3+ is 2.

Settled accounts are kept on file for six years from the settlement date."

AND ... for my present mobile phone contract I have an orange-coloured 1 instead of the right-hand green 0 which I think means I made a late payment almost a year ago. So ... it's not the time I queried the billing as I thought, it's when I bounced a DD due to my bank mistakenly withdrawing my student overdraft. Which is good, cos the bank admitted the error AND I contacted Orange right away. So I should be able to get this blemish removed!

I have also e-mailed Experian to provide them with my electoral roll number so that omission can be altered. Will do the same with Equifax once their website is back online. Soon I will have a new improved credit rating! This has been a very valuable exercise for me, making me realise how important it is to always pay on time.

:money:

Fire_Fox

Today I managed to access my Equifax credit report: must say they seem much more professional than Experian - very thorough with identity checks and very knowledgeable about the report and its implications.

In fact the credit card late payments (not actually defaults) are from February to June 2002 which means they are already over six years old. However if they were defaults they would have already disappeared but as they are not I have to wait for six years from the settlement date. :eek: I am not too happy with this cos I twice paid three months late so it looks pretty bad.

I am listed on the electoral roll for the last four years, and am also still listed as an associate of the man I divorced in 2004! This is probably OK for me as he had a very good job and was sensible with money but maybe not ideal from his perspective. I have requested we be dissociated and provided full details of my divorce.

Neither my current account nor my present mobile phone contract are listed so I don't have any recent data to cancel out the dodgy past. Just realised that the phone contract I neither use nor pay for makes me look quite good as I have never missed a payment!

:T:T:T