Carry on Questing

Fire_Fox

:bdaycake:Congratulations! :beer:

Lula-Hula

Thank you sweetie,

your support & encouragement much appreciated

Lula-Hula

I'm still rather excited about jobby, and now as soon as I start the extra dasy I then have a valid reason to go buy some new clothes

The amazing thing about having white floors & a black cat is that I now automatically hoover every other day, if I dont then it just looks nasty & DD goes to school with fluffy black socks

I've done that, hung out 2 loads of washing & come to terms with the fact that Blackcat is a mean & nasty mouse murderer. He leapt into the bushes & emerged with said creature dangling from his mouth Considering that 2 days ago he was backing away from a Harlequin ladybird looking very worried, he's definitely machoed up :rolleyes:. Now having second thoughts about cat flap into the house & might put one on the shed door instead. I do not want to come home to a small creature graveyard.

Wrote all the official letters that have been sat on top of pc for the last week & posted them before shooting into co op to claim my bargainous £2 off.

I was worried about reaching my £20 threshold - my mental maths always goes wrong around the £13 mark ) so decided it was best to slip 2 bottles of Pink Elephant juice in to make sure :shhh:. I neednt have worried as the total bill after the discount was £24.52 so actually had 27p spare without the extra bottle. Better to be safe though & it wont go to waste Would have struggled to get to £20 without the wine though as nearly everything was reduced or a bogoff, reducing the bill by £6.83.

The point is however, that without the wine my shopping bill came to just 16.02 & what's more I received another £2 off voucher to be used by next friday so will have to go there again. If we dont need any foodstuff then I might as well use it for buying christmas type food/treats or drrrrrink . The only thing they didnt have was self raising flour which is very annoying but might curb my manic weetabix brownie & hobnob making / scoffing .

As to the funds :

Gas & electricity £ 280
Car Tax £ 0 until repaid by DD1
Car £ 40
Presents £ 30 - lets hope Santa is better organized
Clothes £ 5
DDs clubs etc £ 15

Not brilliant, but the Gas & Electricity fund is looking very healthy & I'm almost looking forward to getting the bill at the end of next month.

I have started to consider how getting paid monthly into the bank rather than weekly into my hand will affect my ability to budget efficiently, keep that grocery bill low low low & save for the funds. Frankly, I am terrified _pale_ I work very well with cash, I can see it disappearing & am very aware of how much I have left. Using a card for purchases does not have the same impact, I become very disassociated from the 'money'. I also really dislike how card transactions are never immediate & in spite of all my remonstrations can see how DD1 has often been fooled into thinking she has more disposable money than she really has

I have checked out the entitled to website & it appears that the amount of Tax Credits I receive wont change so as far as rent & bills are concerned, that will remain unchanged.

I think that I will have to withdraw a certain amount each week for food & funds & then continue as I do now in order to stay ahead of the game. It may be real life debt, but to me the repayment part of it is a game. A game with ever changing rules & targets which requires constant updating of new tactics & strategies & which eventually, I will ultimately win

Enough of the battle cries; while there is still flour in the house, there are hobnobs & brownies to be made.

Horace

Well done on getting 4 days a week full time..ditch home jobby if you can. Re money - I am used to getting my WTC weekly but I have always worked on a monthly basis so my DDs go out each month and I withdraw a monthly amount to be put towards food and other essentials. LVs are used for Starbucks in Selfridges - I have around 6 books of them now:cool: I hope you wrote your letter to Tatco about their snotty staff?

I had a hynotherapy session this morning for free now to be honest with you I am not convinced that I was hypnotised and went along with it anyway - I won't be going again because I refuse to pay money to listen to some chap drone on about writing numbers and words on blackboards with white chalk and rubbing them off with a board rubber and then talking in the hope that he was speaking to my subconcious mind when all the time my subconcious mind was telling me that it was all a load of old guff - let's say that the white chalk became a chalk of many colours because it was just too boring..if I wanted to be hypnotised then stick me in a room with Gordon Brown whilst he umms and aaahs about which chocolate biscuit to have:rolleyes: Anyway it was an opportunity to sit in a comfy chair and to rest my eyes for a while.

Fire_Fox

I work much better with cash than with cards, Lula. My wages go into my bank account directly and DDs/ SOs are set to come out at the start of the month, then the ex-Mr. Fire Fox used to give me his bills money in cash - if I had over £200 I'd put it in the bank, if my cash was getting low I'd just buy essentials such as my bus pass. Using cash means there aren't too many transactions on my internet banking so I always have a handle on what has and has not been paid.

ZTD

Lula-Hula wrote: »

I have started to consider how getting paid monthly into the bank rather than weekly into my hand will affect my ability to budget efficiently, keep that grocery bill low low low & save for the funds. Frankly, I am terrified _pale_ I work very well with cash, I can see it disappearing & am very aware of how much I have left. Using a card for purchases does not have the same impact, I become very disassociated from the 'money'.

People have different coping mechanisms for that.

Some pull out a big wodge (tm) at the beginning of the month, and then stuff the amount into envelopes for weekly spends.

Some go to the cash machine outside the supermarket, withdraw a pre-determined amount of cash, and then spend it inside.

Just depends exactly how you operate.

Lula-Hula

Blimey Z, I am now truly honoured :A

what you doing slumming it on the dark side :rotfl:

I 'operate' best when on a very stric budget, it suits my perverse nature ... then again I have always been rather fond of a big wodge

Hope you dont start clucking like a chicken Horace, or pole dancing at the bus stop

Glad it's not just me Fire Fox that still has to have 'pocket money' style budgeting :rolleyes:

ZTD

Lula-Hula wrote: »

Blimey Z, I am now truly honoured :A

Honoured about what?

Lula-Hula wrote: »

what you doing slumming it on the dark side :rotfl:

What do you mean? I *am* the dark side...

Lula-Hula wrote: »

I 'operate' best when on a very stric budget, it suits my perverse nature ... then again I have always been rather fond of a big wodge

It does seem to be popular with the girls...

Lula-Hula wrote: »

Hope you dont start clucking like a chicken Horace, or pole dancing at the bus stop

Glad it's not just me Fire Fox that still has to have 'pocket money' style budgeting :rolleyes:

Loads of people do. Guy I work with does the "get the cash out before you spend it, so it feels like you're spending money" thing.

Bowski_1011

:beer::j:beer:CONGRATULATIONS:beer::j:beer:

Fantastic news Lula!!!! You totally deserve it :A

Lula-Hula

Well hello my lovelies

I've actually had a rather enjoyable weekend inspite of certain stress trigger points.

I've spent a fair amount of time in the car, delivering my bike to DD1 so she can ride to station rather than walk in the dark :eek: then delivering her over to her friends house, & then collecting her from work & delivering her back home again as there were engineering works on the train line & a 2 hour wait is not much fun really :rolleyes:.. she is very very grateful & I forseee many many nights of little sister sitting ahead for months to come

I also did a bit of shopping for her as I was concerned that train fares were eating up all her grocery budget. Cooked a couple of her favourite meals & took some carbs & protein over; her job is physically & emotionally demanding & she has a super speedy metabolism as well as the SVT so needs to keep eating lots.

The joy of having sorted my own budget & grocery shopping out is that I could easily find plenty of stuff to give her without it costing me a fortune

I spent £21 in Waitrose & although some of that was for DD1, that's still about right for my budget & DD & I dont need anything other than milk.

I've got all my washing down & dried on the line, including spare duvet & pillows. DD is finally seriously clearing out her room & we now have so much stuff I am wondering about a boot sale. We have loads of puzzles, box of lego, electronic dog thing, soft toys & loads of books as well as some decent clothes. Really cant be bothered with ebay, listing stuff, waiting for bids, packing & posting, fees etc ... but think stuff could net a bit of cash. I also have a box full of wooden toys but cant bear to part with them & a bookcase, 2 side tables & 2 wooden bed frames + very expensive cot bed that DD1 wont let me get rid of :rolleyes:. Although, recently we were talking about a couple of her school friends who now have children & we both decided that we actually preferred her debts to the idea of babies :rotfl:

This morning we spent a couple of hours at the allotment & I'm now viewing it as a serious way to provide food throughout the year rather than a bit of food, trial & error & mainly fun. My co allotmenteers are not aware of my debts but recognise that I dont have a large income so I dont think they'll mind increasing certain staple food planting to see us through the winter.

Today has been a NSD so I've achieved my target of 12 for the month

I've also just paid £58.30 to CC1 so that now stands at a very neat £2,600 & the total debt is now £5,696


Would love to get it under £5,000 by the end of the year ...