Financial faux pas and other disasterous decisions

moo2moo

Plans for today:

• Keep pottering around the house. Its slowly getting (and more imporatnatly staying) tidier which is making me fee l more positive about things
• Purchase an iron which will enable me to clear the chair of ironing. Clearly I should be shoping around for the best price etc etc but thanks to the local post offices new 2 day wait between missed parcels and the ability to collect its unlikely I'd get my hands on it before next weekend plus the fuel involved to collect it etc etc. I'm just making excuses aren't I. Will check out Argos, Mr A and Mr T on-line before parting with cash.
• Visit a supermarket as the fridge contains half a dozen carrots and some jars of jam. Attempt to spend less than £50 but will have the DDs with me and we need cat food and fish food and stuff for next weeks lunches and cereal and milk and Calpol....... perhaps £50 is a tad optomistic.
• A minimum of half an hour uninterupted WiiFit time. I fancy going for a run but its far too icy and besides if I go I have to take the DDs on their bikes which makes it more like a five mile sprint (with a bit of uphill pushing) than the gentle jog I have in mind.
• Some very therapeutic baking of calorie laden something or other for lunchboxes and nibbles. Will send the DDs to find suitable recipes which should keep them out of my hair for a bit.

moo2moo

Ugh 20 minutes on the Wiifit later I'm sweaty and achy. I am far less fit than I'd imagined. Think 6 minutes of Hula Hooping had quite a lot to do with that though. Also reminded me that I really do need a new sports bra more than I need a severe case of joggers nibbles.

moo2moo

Yesterday ended up being another super spendy day. Blew £56.03 in Mr Ts which included a new iron the resultbeing a trolley heaving with food which should see us through at least the next 10 days with the exception of milk.

Came home and ironed absolutely everything which needed ironing. The laundry mountain is no more. DD1s is now acting as floor insulation in her bedroom. We'll be having words about this later today. I threw out half her clothes last time she coplained there wasn't the space to put everything away. Wonder what todays excuse will be.

OH rattled through a very frivolous £70 on non-essential bits for his rifle becuase he fancied them. One step forward, several giant leaps backwards. Budget is well and truly shot this month. Still tomorrow heralds the arrival of March and with it a new page in my spending diary. I am learning rather a lot from obsessively documenting everything mostly that we spend far far more than I think we do.

Days to payday: 16
Money in purse : £5
Money in emergency jam jar: Home to a few moths
Money in bank: £221.61 (with £35 of cheques written which have yet to clear)
Money spent in February: £2222.93
Money remaining of this months portion of the live on £20K challenge : £555.93
Part used smellies used up and disposed of: 16
Gift vouchers for X-mas 2010 and all the birthdays in between: £60.00

Intergalactic_Floozie

I think February has been bad for a lot of us for some reason! I long to be snowed in again!

moo2moo

However you look at it Februarys month end figures are dire. 10 days ago I was hoping for an underspend of £700. Turns out thats almost what we've overspent by instead thanks to an awful lot of unforseen events.

Whilst things don't look great on paper they should actually be worse. Theres no way OH only smoked his way through £10 which means there are an awful lot of recieps that I've not seen. Things are probably £250 or so worse than I can document so....


....................................... Estimated .....Feb
Groceries ............................250 ..........312.61
Domestic Fuel .................... 170 ..........209
Comms and Entertainment ...222 ..........427.17
Insurance ........................... 105 ......... 38.52
Cars ....................................350 .........592.54
Clothes ................................40 .......... 60
Fags and OH .......................100.......... 10.96 * not accurate
Everything Else .................... 430 ......... 573.23

Total ....................................1667 ........ 2224.03

Pants. Means this months overpayments will be a lot less than I'd like them to be.

moo2moo

Whilst I'm blethering as way I may as well fill you in on the exciting news that slapping three packs of 80p Tesco value kippers into half a pint of white sauce and coating in a layer of parsnip and potato mash topped with extra mature grated cheese makes for a surprisingly tasty and rather filling dinner for four with sufficient fish skin to keep a very demanding cat quiet for quite some time. Whilst the oven was on we baked 2 1/2 dozen giant buns chock full of sultanas which will be liberally caked in lurid coloured icing with as many different cake toppings as DD2 can physically cram onto them later today. Will then spend several fun filled hours scraping lurid coloured icing off the drawer handles and door handles and the floor and anywhere else that DD2 manages to spread it whilst confined to the kitchen.

DD1 and OH have gone to a shooting competition and will be gone for most of the day so DD2 and I are planning a cake munching session followed by a Wii tennis tournament and a bike ride to the park assuming it stops raining for long enough.

Need to send OHs friend a gentle reminder as the cheque he promised to cover the boys toys maintenance hasn't arrived yet.

moo2moo

Managed 40 minutes on WiiFit before I gave in to naggy pants who was desperate to show me how the downhill skiing should be done. Managed a long run, a lap of the island, two step pluses, four minutes of manic hula hooping and three attempts at downhill ski-ing first though. DD2 is now sorting tweenis out so that she can prove just how much better than me she is at that too. Not because of her ability to play but more because her competitors back away from the telly in fear for their lives as she wields the Wii mote like a fly swat in the hands of a hyperactive lunatic.

Mags_cat

moo2moo wrote: »

Whilst I'm blethering as way I may as well fill you in on the exciting news that slapping three packs of 80p Tesco value kippers into half a pint of white sauce and coating in a layer of parsnip and potato mash topped with extra mature grated cheese makes for a surprisingly tasty and rather filling dinner for four with sufficient fish skin to keep a very demanding cat quiet for quite some time.

Om nom nom....sounds delicious. I made something similar for a house guest this week with poached smoked haddock and two of those pre-smoked mackerel fillets. Kippers sound way better though. I kippers!

moo2moo

Still slobbing around avoiding just about everything. Not really feeling in a constructive frame of mind. Still need to do yesterdays washing up. The dishwasher is v. tempting but that needs emptying too. Second load of washing is in the machine. DD2 is still happily playing tennis - on her own because its safer that way.

Have bunged another load of detritus from the junk pile in the front garden into the wheelie bin. Another year or so of that and it will all be gone. Would be so much quicker to take it to the tip but its the wrong type of carp for the nearest one meaning a 20 mile round trip to the other tip which is no longer a tip but a giant recycling yard full of people who tell you that whilst your car conatins an assortment of bricks they'd like the red tinted ones here and the yellow tinted ones there and the whole ones stacking neatly here whilst the half ones go over there and before you know it an hours gone by and you're still waiting to get near enough to unload in the first place. No wonder flytipping is becoming more prolific.

moo2moo

OH arrived home yesterday with a twin pack of the Co-Ops truly irresistable chocolate puddings whoopsied to 50p - by jove I think hes finally got it despite them coming firmly into the heading of unnesessary luxuries. Nuked them in the microwave. They smell foul. Like hot carnation milk. They taste revolting even the bottomless pit that is DD2 abandoned it as inedible. Why is it when you're really looking forward to something it never seems to go according to plan. Won't be buying those again mind you at £2.36 I wouldn't have bought them in the first place.

Still rambling away avoiding all the things that I should really be doing. OH will be back in another hour or so by which time I should have at least attempted the washing up and walked the dog.