Sparkle is sorting out her finances

keza

hiya - well done on the extra income! thats a fab amount! it really does motivate u when u get extra like that! which wedding dress you haveing? im having a mori lee dress! i love it so much! xxx

sparkleisshopping

Hey Keza!

I've just googled Mori Lee dresses and they are fab - you lucky thing, I'm sure you're going to look lovely I'm having a Candy Anthony - she does fifties style dresses which are short. I had such a lovely time trying on my dress and I love it so much - it's the best thing ever! And best of all, I thought I'd have to pay the balance on the dress at the weekend but it turns out I don't have to pay the balance until I collect it in July.
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Here's my monthly update on my finances:

Nationwide loan - was £772.60 now £579.45
Lloyds TSB credit card - was £4587.09 now £4319.87
Lloyds TSB overdraft - was £1201.37 now £832.87
First direct overdraft - was £193.30 now £100
Owed to boyfriend - was £360 now £360

Goodness me, that means I've paid off £922.17! I have £65 left in my spends account for this month, the freezer, fridge and cupboards have lots of food in them, there's a month and a half's cat food under the stairs and I have nearly a full tank of petrol. Good times

I'm having a house party this weekend cos it's my birthday on sunday - I reckon I'll spend £50 - £80 on food and booze for the party (I've asked people to bring a few nibbly bits with them to keep costs down). I just hope I'll be better in time - I have the most stinking cold right now - I ache all over, my throat is raw and I'm all snuffly and bunged up, oh and my ears are killing me too. I'm off work today as I hardly slept last night - I was knackered but just couldn't sleep and kept waking up feeling sick. Rubbish!

sparkleisshopping

Hallo

Well, I'm off work again today - I feel about 1% better than yesterday which is an improvement I suppose. I was on quidco yesterday and joined lovefilm for the £15 cashback which is showing as tracking but the £5 for joining photobox isn't showing. I will drop them an email about that. I'm doing the bingo on bingo britain at the moment and I just won £20 - hurrah! So, that's been withdrawn already and I'm just playing the remaining £3 of my bonus.

My boyfriend had a £2 coin in his change from the garage so I bought that off him and put it in my £2 tin. I'm well proud of him, he has really turned around his spending habits - he used to giggle at me as I'd only get petrol from Morrisons to get the points on my card for the £5 shopping vouchers - he ran out of petrol yesterday and he only put £10 in from the petrol station near his work and when he got home he topped up at Morrisons to get the points - bless him

Oh, another bit of good financial news is that I won a free haircut! My salon has a valentines promotion on their website so I entered the competition and won - hurrah! I can't choose which stylist I can have and the only timeslot is 9am next friday so I'll have to take a couple of hours lieu from work, but hey, a free haircut is a free haircut and my locks could really do with a tidy up.

I really want to do some more ebay listings but my brain is not functioning well enough to put the listings together. It's taken me about 30min to write this little post as I can't seem to get my sentences straight with this stupid cold.

sparkleisshopping

Well, it turns out that I'm a lot more poorly than I thought I was :mad: I've been off work all week and have been unable to get an appointment at the docs. My docs is great cos it's really close to where I live but cos it's a small surgery it's pretty much impossible to get an appointment. Well, I should have gone to the nurse today for a checkup for some other medication and rang up and cancelled it cos I was too poorly to attend. I had a massive coughing fit and the receptionist asked about my symptoms and said I had to ring the swine flu hotline :eek: They weren't much help but said I didn't have swine flu (thank god) but I had flu with complications so had to see the doctors immeadiately. So, I rang the docs and they said I wasn't allowed to come to the surgery with flu so they arranged for a phone consultation - turns out I have flu with a contagious bacterial infection - nice. So, went down to the docs with my OH, had to wait outside the surgery then the chemist while he went in to get my meds, waited outside the post office while he posted my ebay parcels; I think I need a sign saying "unclean" and a little bell to ring :rotfl:

I texted everyone and cancelled my birthday party - was going to have a house party on saturday but who wants to party with contagious-bacterial-infection-flu-girl eh?!? I'm a bit down in the dumps about that but there's no way I'm going to feel better by saturday. My boyfriend and I are going to stay in and have thai takeaway instead :cool: I ordered a valentines day card for him from photobox (via the quidco £5 cashback and £2.50 discount offer so it only cost £1.49) and it arrived today and is lovely Got my ebay stuff posted as I mentioned so that's £25ish to add to this month's ebay total. I must remember to add £11 as I had a payment on collection and the buyer paid cash (had to hide inside while boyfriend gave the man the item and got the cash, don't want to get negative feedback for giving the buyer flu :eek:)

Just seen that news item there ---> that the base rate hasn't changed. That's good as we need to renew the mortgage in a couple of months, just need to decide how long a fixed rate we're going to go for. I like a fixed rate, yeah I may be paying a little more but I know that the payment amount isn't going to change.

Tonight I think I will have a look at food options for after the registry office wedding, check out mortgages and maybe put a couple of things on ebay if I feel up to it. I did some work on the wedding invites last night, the first bit of them is nearly all done

sparkleisshopping

I had a couple of ebay sales last night totalling £15 and I have a few bids and watchers on my stuff so that's good. My boyfriend gave me a few ps3 games to sell, we didn't expect more than £2-£3 each for them (he normally trades them in at Game and that's the average price from them) and looking at prices for completed items, I think we can get £35 total for 4 of them so that's good too. I've made a start on the loft too and got a couple of carrier bags of stuff down to sell.

I'm still feeling rubbish :mad: I don't feel like I'm ever going to get better and I will be forced to watch cash in the attic and bargain hunt for the rest of my life.

Found a fixed rate mortgage deal that I think we're going to go for - the rate is better than our current one and we'll be £60 a month better with it. It's a 3 year fixed rate. I'm not sure if we have to pay the fee for arranging the fixed rate out of our money or we can put it on the mortgage so i'll have to find that out. Oh, I found that our mortgage insurance cover is the cheapest around too.

I emailed back the caterers for the Tipi part of our wedding and said we'd like to go with them, and I sorted out a restaurant for after the registry office part of the wedding. The restaurant were really nice and they've put us in their private dining room (didn't know they had one!) for no extra money and I didn't even ask for it so that's good Best go and check my bank account to see if our lodger has paid her rent for this month as that will cover the Tipi caterer deposit. Registry restaurant didn't even mention a deposit so I assume we can just settle the bill on the day which is fine by us.

Right, I'm going to download Turbolister and have a play with that I think.

linz

I noticed in your SOA that your RAC is due next month - why don't you let it run out, then go through a cashback site as a new customer & get your cashback? £20-39 on Topcashback, depending on level of cover and similar for AA..

sparkleisshopping

Hi Linz, that's a great idea about my RAC cover. I'm registered with Quidco, I'll have a look there and see if they have any offers.

I just logged onto my egg card account as my 0% on my Lloyds card is going to run out soon and I sent them a message to see if they have any offers on for existing customers or if it's "brand new customers only". I checked my balance and as if I'm £50 in credit there! So, I'll wait for a response to my message and then transfer the £50 back into my bank account.

An still full of flu - the doctor has given me a sick note for all of this week so it's Bargain Hunt and Cash in the Attic ahoy for me then. I'm going to walk up to the coop in a bit and get some of their overpriced fruit and veg as I have a sudden craving for lettuce and grapes. I also have 3 ebay parcels to post and the coop is right next to the post office so that's handy.

The wedding invites are coming on well and would be even better if I could find the chuffin' pack that the registry office gave me. I will buy a load of stamps today for posting the invites out.

I had a nice but quiet birthday yesterday. Got some lovely presents from my man and my friends My boyfriend gave me a new Angel perfume which has made me really happy as it's my favourite perfume ever but I haven't been able to afford any for the past few months (and I have a load of perfume minatures that need using up). The postman came this morning with a massive bunch of flowers, some chocolates, a mini birthday cake and a little teddy bear for me! How lucky am I? I've never had flowers delivered before so they've really cheered me up

sparkleisshopping

I'm finally on the mend - yay! Have been feeling loads better yesterday and today. I went into town today for my free haircut and I am looking superfly :cool: The wedding invites are all finished; I'm writing them out now. The stamps cost more than the cards :rotfl:- made my own cards (80) for £9.99 and 80 stamps cost £24!

Money wise, my paypal money has arrived in my account, I've joined onepoll and am up to £3.75 (if anyone needs a referral drop me a pm), got a couple of things ending tonight on ebay which will be £10 or more, OH's video games sold for £30 and it's payday next friday so that's all good. I so cannot wait for bonus month next month! Have just looked at the price of the hotel for my friend's wedding and it's £114!!! I checked and I can get 5% quidco cashback lol. Oh, speaking of quidco, my lovefilm £15 is showing as validated so I must remember to cancel it tomorrow.

Had a finances chat with OH the other night, turns out he's got a bit on a credit card which isn't great as it's a bit more than I was expecting and he's paying a ridiculous 29.9% apr on it. So, we'll need to see if he can get accepted to a 0% balance transfer deal to move it on to, or if he can't get a card then I will see if I can get one (which I'm quite hopeful about). Worst case scenario I will move the balance from lloyds cc to an egg cc I have which is 14.9% and then move his balance onto my lloyds cc which has 0% for 6 months iirc. I don't really want to take his balance as I got screwed over big style by an ex for a very similar thing but I doubt my OH is marrying me as some sort of elaborate ruse to get me to take his cc debt (I haven't even offered this to OH yet) so we can assume he's gonna be with me for the long time. Although this is all a bit poo and will take us a bit longer to get paid off I'm feeling positive and motivated about getting it sorted.

Today I will do the listings on Turbolister for the 10 things I photographed and weighed the other night.

sparkleisshopping

Just a quick update to say I'm still here and plodding along

I'll do my totals of what I've made this month and tomorrow I'll do an update of what I've paid off.

Ebay - £131.71
Bingo - £20
Credit balance on my egg card I didn't know about - £50.93
Mystery shopping - £12

Total - £214.64

It's been a hard week so I don't have much motivation to put things on ebay at the mo - I have relisted two things that didn't sell and I have £40.74 in my paypal (after fees) so I only need to make £9.26 til I'm up to £50 and another withdrawal.

edit - gosh that sounds really glum - I should be well chuffed with making over £200 this month - cheer up girl!

sparkleisshopping

Well, I'm feeling happier today A work colleague shared a problem with me which really puts little worries and concerns I have into perspective.

I've done well on paying off stuff this month and I can't believe I've made an extra £530.31 in two months - details are in my signature.

Going to have a look at my boyfriends finances for a mid month checkup to see how he's getting on with his budget and stuff - wish us luck!