The ultimate incentive worked! Now onto phase two

Dinah93

I thought you only got one tax allowance, NIM certainly pays tax on his second job but no way does he earn more than £4250 a year at it. Might be worth asking on the tax board?

NIM is in the bad books this morning - he took my lunch and my bankcard! And he forgot the satnav so won't be able to find the hairdresser!

Dinah93

Great news on the new laptop Birdie!

Cinny91

Uh oh, NIM better watch out!

Dinah, I'll have a proper look into it all tomorrow after work as I read somewhere else that it's around £110 a week you can earn extra. Confusing stuff! Plus my first read of £4250 was in Glamour magazine (treat with the free Bad Lash mascara and finally beating my trich!)

So cute of your OH making little yous Birdie! Sounds like you got a great deal too, getting laptop envy as mine takes about 5 days to load up :rolleyes: can't afford a new one atm, but there's an apple mac in mine and OH moving in budget (little does he know..) so I'll just make do until then. Sims 3 looks great, I'd be tempted to get it but my laptop would load one disc and think 'nah, that's enough now. I'll just switch off for no real reason'

Dinah93

Gotta say having tried and used both long term, I'm very firmly in the pc camp. My ex was obsessed with apple mac's and I just don't know why, it was 3 times the cost of my pc (enough of a reason for me right there to stick with the pc!), the graphics were a lot worse (I play a lot of games, this matters to me), he couldn't get loads of programes that I could (and used!) and he just kept whittering on about the 'cutting edge design' (oooh, white. Not impressed!) and being 'the only computer for creatives'. Well mine ran my photo and drawing packages, and his didn't, mine had a better screen resolution, and the only thing he ever created was a mess so just owning one clearly didn't make him this amazing designer!

Sorry, rant over, lack of food makes me cranky and my breakfast was in my packed lunch too. Living off 'Ribena really light' today, he has 4 jammie dodgers in his lunch too I could eat, but I'm more a sandwich and fruit girl and he doesn't have those!

Cinny91

Dinah you should go out and get something! Or at least stand around people looking sad until they feed you.

That's one thing that puts me off macs, all the difference in programs! I have to admit though, it's the white prettyness of them that draws me in! Saying all this it'll come to it and I'll be way to sad to part with all the pennys and we'll get a normal computer, but until then I can daydream of my dream house with macs, smeg fridges, laura ashley curtains.. *sighs*

Dinah93

I'm with you on the fridge and curtains (well, I want to make ones that look Laura Ashley!). Have a sad looking reduced price petrol station sandwich sitting in the car for lunchtime. I figure we're aiming to get the house in 2 years, if I enter every comp going between now and then hopefully I'll win the snazzy fridge!

Birdie85

Oooh, is it new Glamour time? I want my free Mascara!
My old laptop was awful, it took ages to load, the memory was ridiculously low, my games took forever to load and were jerky when finally they decided to work... in OH's words, it was 'f****d'! This one is soooo cool, we but a blu ray on just to see what the quality was like and it is brilliant, and it's got an HDMI port so we can plug it into the TV and play hi-def though it- I've spent too long with OH and become a tech geek!
OH has agreed that this is to be the last 'big' spend for a while now and that we have to put lots of money into savings for the wedding now, but it sounds like we'll get halfway to target before even trying, we get paid 4 weekly so we have one mortgage/bill free pay period a year so that'll be £1200 towards savings and we get a bonus twice a year (getting £250 in next paycheck!) so that'll go in savings too. I think we're overpaying into the joint account too so once we've figured out how much we're overpaying by and OH is back at work so his half is going in at the same time every month we can siphon what isn't used into savings. He is also wanting me to keep a tally on what is spent on the wedding to the last penny, he likes to know what his money is being used for and won't settle for vague figures!

Birdie85

Ohh, speaking of Smeg, have you seen the Smeg washing machine? I really wanted it for our place but it was about 4x our budget! One day...

Dinah93

I'm very aware NIM and I have no budget for furnishings or moving fees. That'll have to be addressed nearer the time I think!

poddle911

Birdie85 wrote: »

Ohh, speaking of Smeg, have you seen the Smeg washing machine? I really wanted it for our place but it was about 4x our budget! One day...

OMG, I hadn't seen these before, but now I want one! They're so pretty!

I think there's more to Macs than being pretty, but I'm not one of those mac snobs who virtually spit if anyone mentions a PC! I've used a mac at work for about 3 years and I love the fact that it never crashed or got a virus, which is much more than I can say for my PC!

Birdie, your money plans sound like they're taking shape and good that you've got a shiny new laptop in the process I can't wait until I can start moving money around and paying stuff off again!

Cinny, I have a feeling that that £4k tax-free allowance is specifically for income by taking in lodgers and stuff and not just on any second job, but it would be a good thing to know!