Eager Elephant's Effective Everyday Excursion ...

Eager_Elephant

It never rains but it pours in my house

Got home on Weds night from work and one of my cats was having problems breathing, took him to emergency vets and they said either astham attack or fluid on the lungs . They kept him in over night and put him in an oxygen tent which helped and they managed to do an x-ray when he was awake which showed something stuck in his windpipe :eek:
As he could breathe in the oxygen tent they decided that in the morning they would sedate him and x-ray him properly and see what was in his windpipe but that the cost would be creeping up :mad:
Anyway xray and endoscope shows a small stone stuck in his windpipe :eek: - no one knows how he managed to inhale it but they got it out and now he is a right as rain :T

But that stone was looking at costing us £700 :eek::mad::eek:

I had no money (which I told the vet the night he went in) so I transferred some money out of savings which takes 36 hours and they allowed him home as long as we paid by Monday.

Money arrived after lunch yesterday so rung to pay some off it and to query the bill as when DH collected him they did not tell us how much it would cost.
Turns out the bill is £385 :j but we are not sure if we have been charged for everything or not. I hope it does not increase by Monday.

I have paid £300 off (which was savings for Xmas) and will raid my credit union account on Monday and pay the rest.

So.........we have a cat who is fine, a small stone in a bag and no money for Xmas:rotfl:


Also DH has been told that his last day at work will be next Friday :eek: - we knew it was temporary and was only supposed to last a few months anyway.
So as mentioned above he did one day this week but will do 3 days next week.

He also has holiday to be paid so whatever he earns above his normal monthly amount I will put back in savings for Xmas.

Not sure what we will do, he could claim ESA (as not fit for work) or JSA or keep looking for work and just live on my income.
He has done a bit of handy man work for a lady and she will have more leading up to Xmas (we saw a note advertised at the Post Office months ago but by the time DH rung she already had someone but agreed to keep his details. Turns out the guy she had was not very good hence she rung DH this week). She previously mentioned that her friends might have work for him so maybe he needs to set up as a handy man as he is very good at DIY.

Still hoping to get the house sorted and will have to use our money wisely instead of wasting it - I am hopeful we can get the stairs and lunge sorted before Xmas :T


DD is going on a school trip next week, it cost £265 but has all been paid for and she is looking forward to it and they do things we would not do as a family so I don't begrudge her that.


Have also started putting the stamps on ebay - hopefully we can make some money from them.

pennywisepoundstupid

Hi EE, So sorry to hear about the cat and the huge bill :eek:, as you know we have been there so can sympathise.

Good news that your DH may have some handy man jobs coming his way, has thought about going self employed doing things like that, at least he could set his own hours and take a day off if things where to get on top of him.

Hope DD has a fun time on her trip. like you said at least it's all paid for.

Fingers crossed that the stamps sell on ebay.

debtfreewannabe321

Oh no so sorry to hear about the vet bill. Do you not have pet insurance? Or is it not covered for things like this?

Hope you manage to get the xmas fund back up to scratch again. And that your DH finds lots of handy man jobs! Does he do window cleaning we've had a new bloke round our way and he's found tonnes of business by just knocking on doors and word of mouth, perhaps whatever your dh skill is you could throw him out to look around for people that need him xx

Eager_Elephant

Hi DFW :T

Nice to see you back!!

We don't have pet insurance - I worked out that over the years if all our cats had been insured we would have spent over £10k but our cats have only cost us about £6.5k:eek: (that was 1 big bill of £4.5k (cat went missing in the end!) and the recent one plus the same cat has Legg Perthes and had an op on his hip last year which was £700, he will also need another op when his other hip gives up plus of course the usual injections and bites etc)

Don't think DH will do window cleaning although he could I suppose.

I think we are going to set him up as a handy-man/gardener (he says a ghandiman :rotfl:. I said he will have to wear a robe and flip flops) and see how that pans out.
We spoke to his acupuncturist last night and she knows loads of people that need work doing but everyone they use lets them down so I think we need to get rolling with this as DH can work the hours that suit him and shouldn't get too stressed which causes the pain to increase.

Not sure if I mentioned but the plasterer has been and the cost was goign to be £350 but he has come back since as DH has stripped the wall and he thinks he can do it for £200 as long as DH does the prep work which of course he can :T
So we might not have money coming in to the house but DH will be saving us money.

Hopefully I can build up the Xmas pot again as DH is due holiday and as he finishes this week it will go in his final pay :T

Piquant_2

Morning EE!

That's a lovely positive post you have there. It's lovely to see.

I love the idea of 'ghandiman' although a robe could cause a few raised eyebrows in the wind we've got at the moment, best make sure he wears undies :rotfl:

Joking apart, working as a handyman/gardener sounds ideal for your OH as long as he doesn't take on too many jobs at once he should have a nice stress free job with the reward of seeing something tangible for his efforts.

I am lucky in that my Dad pays for my cat insurance, it was a present last year that has carried on into this year.

pennywisepoundstupid

Hi EE, You sound really positive and on top of things, I'm really pleased your OH has decided to go down the handyman route.

Eager_Elephant

Not so positive today I'm afraid

I used to do a monthly budget on Excel and updated it every few days so I knew how much I spent in each category but since we have been back home (Feb) I have not updated it and now I cannot access the old records as DS broke my laptop :mad: (DH has a cunning plan and has taken the hard drive out of the laptop and can put it in my computer so I can get the files off)
I have just made a new spreadsheet which is very similar to the one I had before and I have estimated amounts for presents/cats/medical/clothes etc and our outgoings are £2200 per month + £114 to debt repayments but once DH has no income my income will be £1700pm :eek::mad::eek:
I was really shocked and said 'OMG', DH asked what the matter was and I said he didn't want to know and he said he did so I just said 'budget' and he said oh, no I don't want to know:eek:

It is so frustrating that I can't really talk about it with him - he would listen but then he would stress about the lack of money which would make his head pain worse and then he gets more depressed as he feels he cannot contribute to the household and then he talks about suicide so it's best I keep it to myself.

DH has been asked to do another week at work so that is extra money in the pot. :T
He has not been paid his annual leave so I guess he will get that at the end of November.

He is all up for starting as a handy man but I am not sure if in the short term we would be better off with him claiming JSA which at least gets him £71pw.

I need to wait for his P45 so I can ring Tax Credits and when I know what that is we might be able to get Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit.....

I have now split all this months money in to different accounts - I have left enough in the 123 account to cover DD's etc, moved money for petrol and car parking to another account (but seem to have lost the card for it :rotfl:) and then I have moved the food money across to another current account and the rest of the money has gone to a savings account ready to pay the plasterer and sort out carpets etc.

A few more move rounds to do on Monday but then everything should be square and once the money has gone it's gone. In the last 6 months I used to just spend on my account and then panic near the end of the month when there was not enough for DD's etc and move it in from the childcare account....well not this month I am going to be so good. I think DH will get a shock :rotfl:

I asked DD today what she wanted for her birthday (they can have an expensive gift for birthdays but xmas is smaller gifts as I think birthdays are more special) and she wants an ipad :eek::mad::eek: (BTW she is 11 on her next birthday)

It will all be fine so I am not sure why I am worrying but it does put my dreams of running a property empire a bit skewed :rotfl:

Eager_Elephant

Forgot to say I am reading Tilly's diary on MFW (followed from Elantan's thread ages ago). I am on Jan 2013 and it is so interesting and I can see where I can do so much better.

Tilly always talks about regretting the years she wasted their money until she discovered MSE and now I am regretting the last 13 years when we have just wasted money and not planned properly. :mad::eek::mad:

I don't want to blame DH but all of his debt was for non-essential items that he thought he needed and my debt seems to have come from using credit cards when there was not enough money left after paying all the minimum payments on his credit cards.
Never mind it is all behind us now and at least he can't run up any more debt although he has been buying a few bits off ebay and using the wrong account - this won't happen soon as if he spends the money meant for bills then I am not topping up his account. :rotfl:

debtfreewannabe321

An ipad :eek: ! My ds1 asked for one too, I told him to have a rethink and lower his standards :rotfl: he got a kindle fire hd and was happy enough

Good luck with the budgeting it's the same in my house I do the worrying too!!

Have a lovely Sunday xx

Eager_Elephant

Well the great storm came and went....

Our main issue was that our broadband router blew up when we had a power cut:eek:

A lorry blew over just outside the village :eek:- luckily the driver was not injured

I was fine, I drove to work although it was a bit scary with all these branches and leaves blowing everywhere.

DH was at home with the kids and he appear to have done nothing all day except dry some washing (I text him about it), fiddle with the router all day and move a light (which I did not want moved:eek::mad:).

Then when I got home I had to lock the animals up (my day but I thought he might have gone up to check for damage) and then cook tea while DH fiddled with a new router I brought :mad::eek:

And the he wonders why I am so stressed.

His answer to not doing any washing was that the electric went out - well what he forgot was that he had text me when it went off and when it came on so I knew it had been off for 30 mins:rotfl::mad:

The plasterer is supposed to be coming one night this week and I moaned the house was not clean and he said but the stairs is:mad::eek: (As though the man can walk to the stairs throguh the lounge without seeing the mess:rotfl:)

God I could kill him at times and no doubt today he will have a bad head as he will have been stressing over the router.

The router cost £50 :eek::mad: which I took out of the food budget but I am going to try and find the receipt for the last one as it has a 2 year guarantee or failing that as we have just changed broadband supplier ask them for one as I refused a new one because our one was still working :rotfl:.
If none of that works we will just have less food this month :rotfl: