The ultimate incentive worked! Now onto phase two

Dinah93

Tete_en_l'Air wrote: »

WHAT?! There's no way I'm spending E50 on evening meals, I'm sure we'll be able to find something cheaper than that! (All prices I'm quoting are per person btw not both together, we have separate finances. Does that make my budget seem a bit better?!)

Ah that makes your budget a lot better, I thought that was for the two of you. And to answer your question Cinny, food didn't get all that expensive, the pound just lost all value against the euro.

Meeting was completely pointless, basically we tried to think of ways to argue our jobs are worth keeping, yet fully acnowledging that its almost definitely already been decided and this is just lip service to make us feel like we had imput before they cut our posts! Then I went to another meeting, and I just sat there bamboozled how these people could care so passionately about acronyms, action plans and integrated working.

Sorry you had such a rubbish day too Birdie.

NIM only managed to get 4 MS jobs done today, and I discovered I still owe £86 to British Gas from the old flat so I'm just in a generally sulky mood. NIM is desperate to go see this Shaloin Monks thing at the theatre, and its so rare he asks for something I want to find a way we can go, but simple fact of the matter is this weekly to monthly arrangement is killing us atm, and with over £60 of MS jobs lost today, and this British Gas bill, and needing tickets to see his family and no doubt food and socialising while we're out there, I have no idea where to get the money from.

Going to go pout now.

Lara44

Aww - sorry you've had a really harsh day. I really feel for you on the money front. Is there a way some of your challenges could be temporarily loosened for a few weeks until you get back on your feet? You could still write an IOU to yourself. It's horrible seeing you work SO SUPERHUMANLY hard and not getting to enjoy even a little bit of it.

Are the 20k and house deposit challenge going into the same pot? Could you combine the two of them and round down to £11400, giving you £188 as a chunk to tide you over? I'm so sorry if that sounds sacreligious - you know we all respect your challenges so much on here. L x

Dinah93

The 20k challenge is just a basic maths thing, to keep track of my progress this year, all the money was going off the debt, now it goes into the house deposit.

Just paid the British Gas bill. I now have exactly £13 in my bank account to last until the 25th. Car has an almost full tank of petrol, but even so I think I would be pushed to get it to last that long (although is going into the garage tonight, if it stays there all week I might make it since I only have to go to work 3 days next week). So the meal for date night on Wed is off I think (we do have 2 MS meals at the weekend though), and we're 100% rellying on NIMs Irish bank account having enough money left in it to get us train tickets. The hotel in Dublin is off the cards really, going to have to do the 5am get up for the 6am train instead.

He's going to cash in his Irish premium bonds which should cover our spends over there, I'm just feeling rubbish about it all today as he's so down and we don't seem to be having much sucess with keeping the bank balances positive since getting debt free.

Worst part is an O2 bill came out today, £41! It's supposed to be a basic rate of £20 a month, I need to find out what I did to take it so far over.

Dinah93

Have hit the chocolate. Bad. Very bad.

Pilchard

Hi everyone

Well it seems like a lot of us had bad days today. I did too and now I'm home I know I should go for a run but I just want to curl up and count the days til I leave - but I won't, I'll do some competitions I think and then tackle mount ironing before nipping onto Facebook. I might even check out other MS sites cos I'm getting nothing with Grassroots or GFK at the moment and Retail Eyes never has anything in my area apart from airport jobs.

Hope everyone has a good evening and a better day tomorrow xx

Flower08

Hi Dinah, sorry your having such a rubbish day moneywise today. Makes two of us!! OH had been keeping a £200 phone bill he got secret from me as he knew i would go mad, now need to try and find a way of paying that.

Eating lots of chocolate is a good thing!! I plan on doing exactly that myself!

Dinah93

How on earth did he run up £200?! I got through to my o2 online bill, mine was £21 due to £19.50 of calls made in Egypt, and I called my bank a couple of times, so now I know it was only over as a one off, I feel calmer.

Flower08

Something to do with the fact that its a new contract, have to pay 2 months upfront - not really sure. Apparently they told him this when he took the contract out, but he never thought to warn me about it! He tells me to take control of all the finances as hes pretty useless when it comes to that, and then 'forgets' to tell me about phone bills!!

Dinah93

His phone is £100 a month?! :eek::eek::eek:

Aye it usually is 2 months upfront, least its only for the one month, but still, £100 every month is insane, it ought to do the dishes for that much money!

Tesco_points_addict

Dinah I don't mean to make things any worse for you, but are you aware NIM has a male other half as well as you? It must be true I read about it on the Mystery Shopping thread:rotfl::rotfl:
(Got everyone wondering now!)

For what its worth I think you are very hard on yourself, why don't you use your 'wedding stash' money? Then next month you could open (yet:p) another account and start saving regular amounts into that. I know how you feel, sometimes it feels like one step forward and ten back but you of all people should be so proud of what your single minded determination has gained you over the last year. I know your reasons for wanting to move things along quickly but don't forget you and NIM have not even been together for a year yet and lately you havn't had much 'together time' please enjoy this time together, you both deserve it so much xxx

TPAx