Minniepoos versus The Black Hole

minniepoos_2

Getting closer - 8 days til payday and a grand total of £83.29 left in our accounts. Should be ok I think, possibly might need diesel and some milk and odd bits, but that should be it.

I think the reason I panic is because in the stupid days we use to get closer than this and still have direct debits to go out, which was what fuelled the use of credit cards (and the very shameful practice of withdrawing cash from the CCs and putting it in the bank to cover the DDs ). Now, even though I know I've sorted out the accounts so the first thing we cover is the DDs and CC payments, I still seem to freak out a bit about how little cash we have left. Old habits die hard I guess, but at least we've kicked the most damaging part of it.

I'm having a bit of a hard time sleeping at the moment. Very odd for me - I'm usually an olympic champion sleeper, but I'm just having a hard time switching off. Or I'll get to sleep, sleep like I'm dead, then wake up feeling like I've been running around all night. I've been literally soaking myself in lavender oil too which normally does the job, but no joy. Hopefully I'll snap out of it soon. I'm not normally this down for long. Just as well, because I start annoying myself if I'm like this for too long. I know it's stupid but I kinda think of this as a character flaw, and when it rears its head like this it makes it so much harder to believe in what we're doing now.
I've just realised how I managed to make my depression sound a little like the Despair Squid in Red Dwarf, and wierdly it's made me feel a little better.

Hmm. Hate the D word.

minniepoos_2

I think what I was trying to say last night was that we're close to the cash limit now, but it's a controlled closeness, which I'm finding a bit hard to get used to. But the 'safety net' of the CCs turned out to not be that safe at all....

I've got some herbal sleeping tablets that I might have to resort to tonight. And I've got enough Nectar points to get £5 off Argos, which makes the other blackout blind that we need for our bedroom only a fiver. Might have to get that now, rather than wait for payday. I got £5 from a MS company paid in to my account today, so that's that paid for I guess. I think sleep might have to be a priority for a few days.

minniepoos_2

Right! I'm back and my head is (almost) in the right place again

Things are still ok to get through to payday. OH has just given up his gun licence, so has got a bit of money from his guns and cabinet. He's bought a paid of much-needed wellies, but that still leaves £95, plus he saved us the expense of renewing it, which I think was £40 plus the cost of some photos. Definate bonus, so well done him! :beer:

I'm supposed to be writing an assignment at the mo, but just can't seem to focus on it. Got a 1000 word essay and a 150 word short answer to do, but here I am on MSE
I've even been thinking about cleaning the oven - that's a major avoidance technique!!

Sleep has been a little more forthcoming for the last couple of days. First I tried 2 herbal sleeping tables, some hot milk and the lavender oil, which seemed to work quite well together. The next night OH and I had a wee glass of wine so that did the trick, then last night we had a walk along the coast in the evening, and the sea air worked a treat! Thank god, because I think I was starting to go a little mad :eek:

I've been reminding OH every week to phone LTSB to ask for a DD form, and he's been putting it off every week as they always want to ask loads of questions and he hates it. I was starting to get a teeny bit uptight about it, but this morning I was looking for a Tesco envelope to get green points for an empty ink cartridge, and instead I found a LTSB DD form that they sent us in the middle of last year when we were late making payments a couple of times, so I can finally get that sorted out

minniepoos_2

Almost forgot - I got a cheque for £3.06 from Envirofone today too, so will be posting that to the bank on Monday

minniepoos_2

Right, here it is. The much awaited EOM figures (by me, anyway ). It seems from my spreadsheet that we spent £157.63 more than we got in, which sounds bad but we started the month with some savings, and with a pot with £72 of £2 coins in, and they have both been plundered. Still have £40 in the savings, but it was closer to £150.

Spending has been a little high again - grocery etc spend was higher than I wanted but still only the 3rd highest since September, so wasn't too bad really. Petrol (and diesel now) was mighty high, and we ended at £284.24:mad: This is the highest since I started counting everything back in Sept. We had some car problems again, and then had to put extra fuel in the new car, so it all adds up. On the plus side though it should be a better month next month, because the tank is 3/4 full at the start of the month. This new car should be more economical too. Fingers crossed.

The dreaded 'other spending' was massive too - £505.10:eek:
That included £112 car tax (should get most of that back in a couple of weeks), £97 MS spending, (which should all come back in the next month), £20 car parking for our weekend away, £68 childcare (will be lots more next month ), as well as extras like wellies for OH, and a new printer (only £35 though!).

We cut it closer during this month than I like to get, and I have learnt not to take on too many MS jobs that have a high spend involved.




Plans for June:

1. Sell our old car
2. [strike]Sort Direct Debit for LTSB[/strike]
3. [strike]Do another Quidco Bingo deal[/strike]
4. Put at least 6 things on Ebay
5. Catch up with my course
6. Get a Fairfx prepaid credit card for booking Ryanair flights
7. [strike]At least just think about catching up with my ironing[/strike] :D Well, I did an hour of it. That's a start!

That should do it for now.

minniepoos_2

And just to get the month off to a good start I just made a £3.06 payment to MBNA as I promised myself I would use all mobile phone money to make overpayments. Will have a Quidco payment to follow it next week too.

I'm also going to work on bringing the overdraft down by at least £10 each month from now on, and just see how it goes. I know that's not our most expensive debt, but it might be something we can do without even really noticing. Its £500 at the mo - well it was, I've just made it £490 (on my spreadsheet anyway), so will see if we can do it.

minniepoos_2

minniepoos wrote: »

Petrol (and diesel now) was mighty high, and we ended at £284.24:mad: This is the highest since I started counting everything back in Sept. We had some car problems again, and then had to put extra fuel in the new car, so it all adds up.

Hate quoting myself, but just got reminded (Thanks OH x) that we also had a weekend away that cost us about £65 in fuel in the old thirsty car, plus now I'm working 5 days a week that's another £25 miles each week that we're doing extra. And as the weather has been so good we've taken the dog to the coast a few times, which we hadn't done last month as it was cold and manky. So the high fuel cost should be expected really.

We got the cheque for the cax tax refund today, so will pay that in tomorrow

minniepoos_2

I've now been paid for the month, so have transferred enough to the direct debit account to cover everything, and have paid all the bills that were waiting for today (and from the look of it, there's no more due until next payday - except the DDs of course, but they are all covered).

It all looks ok, at this moment in time we seem to have £497.38 to last us until the 26th June, plus we have approximately £130 on the Clubcard+ for Tesco stuff (I put £300 on as soon as OH gets paid). I'm still expecting another few MS payments, and OH will have another 2nd job payday in a couple of weeks, which will hopefully be another £45 ish. Sounds pretty good, eh? So where do we keep going wrong????

We have some planned spending - a trip to the Midlands for DD to enter a tournament. We're not staying over this time though, and will take as much of our own food as we can (although a lot of centres get very unhappy if you bring your own food in).

We've got a couple of birthdays to buy for too, although won't be spending too much at all.

I plan to buy a that prepaid payment card I've been whittering on about, so will probably have to put at least £50 on that, to cover 1 of the flights.

Need to buy some gloss paint too, for the bathroom cupboard that OH will hopefully finish one day :rotfl: (I'm not too bothered really - he does work hard, so I'm not going to nag him).

We've got some friends coming round for a meal next weekend, so will have to get some beers & wine in for that. Will be looking for whatever's on offer though.

There'll probably be a few drives to the coast, but we have no nights out planned at the mo - no MS ones either - and will probably keep it like that.

I made some more money for us on Quidco last night. I joined Jackpotjoy and deposited £10. They had a special deal (that finished last night) where you get £25 back on Quidco, so made £15 already, then I won a couple of games too, so made another £22!:D I've withdrawn the £22 already, so we're not out of pocket, then should get the Quidco money in a month or two. I'm soooo loving Quidco at the mo!

Edited because I forgot something important - we have to give OH's friend £200 for the car! Can't believe I forgot that. Think we might have to do it tonight, to get it out the way.

minniepoos_2

I've just had another look at the Fairfx payment card and you have to put at least £100 on it, so I might wait until the car has been sold. Lot of money to tie up this early in the month. Although it can be spent anywhere.....
No. There's a 1.5% charge each time you use it, so will be just using it for flights.
I'll wait.

minniepoos_2

I thought I'd better update my sig to remove the £2 coin savers total. We raided it last month, and if we reimburse it this month we'll be short again and the end of the month, so will leave it for now. I'm still saving 1s, 2s, 5s, & 10s in jars to make overpayments with, but just feel we need the £2s in my purse for now. No point cutting ourselves so short that we HAVE to raid it later and bum ourselves out.

I'm now going to attempt to list some things on ebay. Can't really get in the mood, but hopefully it'll get a little bit of money in.

I checked my clubcard+ balance last night and it's a little more than I thought - £153. Hopefully that's enough to get us through the bulk of the month, although I wouldn't be surprised if we had to go over a little.
Maybe another job for this month would be to work out what I should put on there on payday to get through, seeing as £300 doesn't quite seem enough for a month's worth of groceries and fuel. I've just checked and the lowest we've spend in a month since September if £443, so it seems it does need to be raised. I'll see what happens this month though, as the new car should be more economical. (The highest is £695:eek::eek::eek: but that was the first month we recorded it, and I'm very pleased to say it's come down a lot since then).