Hypno's "no more boom or bust" diary

Surfbabe

Morning - just caught up on8 pages since I was last on here!! Everyone has been busy busy!

re A Levels - my DS did Fench, Music, Biology and History. DD did Art, Pyschology, Maths and Biology. Best to do what interests them BUT if they have a rough idea of what they want to do if going on to Uni check to see if there is anything they should have at A Level!

Had a lovely walk yesterday at Wrest Park in Bedordshire. We got free English Heritgae membership with Airmiles so are making the effort to use it especially as there is only DH and I at home now!

Anyway, better go and get showered as I do have to go to work today ............. shame!

Have a good one

llamahead

chevalier wrote: »

llamahead wrote: »

40km north of Auckland, where are you?

Darwin, NT - for my sins!

hypno06

Surfbabe wrote: »

. DD did Art, Pyschology, Maths and Biology.

That sounds like the sort of mix my DD will do - she has a meeting with the connexions advisor this morning so may come home with a clearer idea.....or may just be more confused!

On my "aims for 2009" list, was "Have two no spend days per week".......and I have had difficulty in achieving this - so from today, I am going to do my best to have those 2 NSDs per week.

For this purpose I won't count petrol in the car, because we need that to get to and from work etc, but I will count any other spend, whether for me, or for the family ie groceries etc.....

I can't have a NSD today, because I have to get bits for DD to take to China,.......see, it is never ending :rolleyes:

taxi73

Morning Hypno and clan...must be very close now the China trip....she must be so excited.What a wonderful opportunity for her.

hypno06

She is off on Wednesday morning. I just need to get her a supply of sweets and chocolate for the journey, and to sneak in when she doesn't fancy the food :rolleyes: So I can actually get those tomorrow, and try and have my NSD today instead, which might boost the no spend confidence a bit!

Having cereal and cup a soup for lunch......times are hard :rotfl:

Karmacat

Some protein in there please - a value pack of roasted peanuts in Tesco costs 27p, and has at least 4 sets of nibbling in it!

hypno06

But that would ruin my NSD, KC!

I will have meat at dinner time this evening, so no need to worry.....right now, though, I could kill for a decent bar of chocolate, but as I have no money in my purse, I will have to manage......

I have been doing the number crunching again, as the various pots of money that I had set up for things such as holidays, skiing, house maintenance, etc, have all fallen by the wayside - standing orders were indeed set up, but because the pots are too easy to get at, they have had the money borrowed when the current accounts are running low, etc and surprisingly, (not) the money never finds its way back, meaning that all my lovely savings pots for various things currently hold an average of 19p per pot.....

Hmmm.....

So, another method is needed, not necessarily to avoid the pots being used in the first place, because that is a really good system (but then anything is a good system if it works, I suppose) but to ensure that we budget better - if we budgetted better, then we wouldn't run the current accounts dry within the first half of the month.

So.....we used to have debt repayments come out of one account, and other household bills out of another.

Now, everything is coming out of one account to keep it easy to see what we need to cover by way of "essentials" for the month - that account can then look after itself, as my wages will cover everything there, with about £100 to spare in case of unexpected phone bills etc.

The other account will have OH pay in it, but has to cover all food, petrol, skiing, holidays, odd £10s from the cash machine etc etc.

From this, I will transfer a weekly amount to a "housekeeping" account every Friday. What is left on a Thursday evening will be swept over to a savings account or as a debt overpayment. Every Friday, will be a new housekeeping day, so we should never have to go more than a few days of feeling skint, even if we have blown that week's allowance over the weekend.

The reason I am hoping this will work is because in years gone by, OH was paid weekly and I was paid monthly, and we had a similar system in place - which worked really well, as it was easy to budget week to week for groceries/petrol etc, and we knew that we only had to manage until Friday if we were running low, which psychologically was much easier to deal with than "its still almost three weeks til payday"

We shall see how it all pans out, but I am hoping that it will focus the budget mind a bit more rather than the hit and miss approach that we currently have, which is rather more miss than hit most of the time.......

Right, best get back to work.......

taxi73

That sounds like a really good idea Hypno.
I see no reason why it shouldn't work for you as you said you used to use the system before...it's just finding the way that suits you best.

hypno06

This whole debt free journey is about trial and error, and more trial, and invariably more error!

But eventually I will find something that works long term - over the past few years I have had to adapt to so many short term situations due to changes of income/amounts of debt repayment.....I'd quite like to get something in place that looks after itself now

taxi73

hypno06 wrote: »

This whole debt free journey is about trial and error, and more trial, and invariably more error!

But eventually I will find something that works long term - over the past few years I have had to adapt to so many short term situations due to changes of income/amounts of debt repayment.....I'd quite like to get something in place that looks after itself now

I know that feeling :D:D