Corona007's random ramblings

Corona007

Fingers crossed Lula. Hope Mr Branson is extra nice to you.

March seems to be turning out into a good month for me so far I'm pleased to say (mouse issues aside).

My cheque from GreedyLL has officially cleared and my work bonus has been paid in. I have therefore paid £3,000 off my Evil Halifax card which leaves around £680 left to go. I'm not leaving it there when I am so close so I phoned up HSBC and asked if they could balance transfer £600 over to my MasterCard which they agreed to for a £15 fee. The best part is that they offered me an 18% rate which is better than my base rate on that card so it is even cheaper debt than I planned for.

I have deliberately left £80 on the Evil Halifax card as my next DD payment is showing as being £79.38 due on 1st April and I think that would go out even if I had paid off the full amount off in the mean time - this has happened to me before and I ended up in credit and having the hassle of asking for it back and waiting days for a cheque to be posted and then clear. So once that DD has been paid, I just have the March interest to pay which will get applied on 9th April and then Evil Halifax is gone forever :j

I will be so pleased to see the back of that 27.95% rate that an unspecified quantity of Spain's finest red will be consumed in celebration when the final payment is made.

HSBC have also called me up today offering to upgrade my bank account to an HSBC Advance account. Apparently I have been with them for 16 years and am a "preferential customer" which I assume is banking jargon for "cash cow who pays our lovely big bonuses with his financial stupidity and we want more". It works out at £6 a month for three months then £12.95 thereafter which seems a lot but when I did the maths it will actually save me money overall (no overseas ATM fees and they will reduce my overdraft rate by 2% just for a start). So I said yes to that one and await another mailbox full of paperwork for the mouse to eat.

Lula-Hula

Great news all round Corona :j particularly on the impending demise of the Heinous Halifax :cool:

I've still not heard from Richard typical man; likes to keep a girl hanging in suspense.

Still no new & improved Council Tax bill either, I am not paying a single penny until I get the updated one, they can stick their direct debit form

Easy up on the wine , I've now gone 3 weeks & 3 days without even a sip of alcohol & frankly I've had enough so will be reintroudcing it into my life at the weekend :j

Bye for now

Corona007

Oh dear, I've not been on here for a while as I've been too ashamed to have to admit to everyone on MSE to some guilty spending (well to Lula at least, I'm not sure anyone else is still reading )

But firstly all the good news. Evil Halifax is now showing £82 due and I have set the direct debit to pay the full outstanding balance. Only a week or so now then I can call Halifax up and ask them to close the account forever.

Secondly my 2010 council tax bill has arrived and shock, horror my council have actually REDUCED their rates this year. What is all that about, I mean anyone would think that there was an election this year or something. Anyway they have applied my credit so my monthly bill is now only £62 :j

However there is less good news for me this month. I caved into the travel itch and booked my flights to that wedding in Kenya . I did use airmiles to pay for the flight but you still have to pay the taxes so I had to use £200 of my overdraft to cover it. Naughty I know but I'm still going to have paid back over £2800 this month.

Worse still, I got a call the following day inviting me to a stag do in Cornwall in the summer (not for the same wedding!) and so next month I need to find £220 to cover hotels, flights and activities if I am going to go.

It never rains but it pours.

Lula-Hula

Well done for 'fessing up

I'm about to run out the door now, but will be back to give you a proper ticking off/ congratulations later ...

Corona007

I've been doing my budget for April and it looks like it is going to be really tight. The reality is that whilst I have made great progress clearing debt so far, overall I am still spending too much - most of the clearance is due to bulk over-payments (GreedyLL, share sale, work bonuses etc). I don't know of any extra payments due in the next few months so for the first time in April I am going to be paying off only what I have saved or earned that month. :eek:

Time for a serious spending overhaul then and I'm going to set myself some strict targets and publish them on here so I can't hide from them (or Lula :rotfl:). Sadly top priority is going to be reducing my monthly shopping bill so my fondness for red wine may have to go unrelieved

Lula-Hula

Hello,

never did get back to you yesterday, sorry about that I was waylaid by my first alcoholic drink in 4 weeks .

I'm amazed at the amount you have cleared this month :A & now that you have booked your flights you need to be very very strict with your budget ... failing that, then I will be :eek:.

I too need to be seriously scrimpishly budgety in April as although I've been very good with avoiding non-essentials my shopping bill has rocketed. What was meant to be spends of about £150 has in fact gone over the £200 mark . Some of this has been due to stocking up on bargainous household items & chocolatey eggy stuff, but it's still too much.

I have an addiction to Waitrose & I just cant/wont give it up . I am on a ridiculously rigid clothes allowance for this year, committed to making this old pc last until debt free & not going abroad either ... there are however, limits to what I will put up with .

I have just 3 bottles of wine left & am determined to make them last for the month, should be easy after a whole month of none :think:

We can do this; there's safety in numbers :rotfl:

Will await your new & bravely public budget ...

Corona007

I hope you savoured that drink Lula, a month dry is quite an achievement (well it is if even your user name is a beer!)

I like Waitrose too but my local supermarkets are Sainsburys and M&S and they both please me as much (if not my bank manager). Given both are walking distance from my house I see no reason to seek out a cheaper supermarket that requires me to get the car out. Well that is my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

Anyway, so here we go on this budget thingy. After all my bills each month and the minimum payments on my credit cards I have worked out that I can throw an extra £200 a month at my AMEX card if I set myself a budget of an average of £16 a day for April. That sounds a lot but it has to cover everything I spend that is not on direct debit (travel, food, drink, clothes, entertainment, dry cleaning etc). Just filling up my car with petrol once will mean I then need 3 NSDs to stay in budget :eek:.

I have an application on my phone that I enter in everything I spend and I have been doing that since my LBM in January. So, I know for example that so far this year my average daily spend is:

January - £14.61 (2 NSDs)
February - £22.35 (2 NSDs)
March (so far) - £18.11 (8 NSDs)

January proves I can achieve £16 or better and March shows I can do 10 NSDs. So there is my target in black and white. If I do go to that Stag do in the summer then I need to raise the £220 on top by selling stuff or earning more. It is going to be a tough month.

Lula-Hula

Hmmmmm, that's an interesting way to work out your spending money :cool: & an extra £200 a month hurled towards Amex is great too :T

Grrrrr, now I know what your daily allowance is, I'm going to have to work out mine . My initial thought is that I spend way less ... but having just confessed to over £200 on groceries & knowing that I spend about £40 a month on petrol just getting to work & back & pottering locally then I'm now feeling less confident.

By the way, are you budgeting for car repairs, tax, servicing & mot etc ? I've set up a savings account that on payday I immediately filter £200 a month into which covers all those + gas & electric bills & a £30 a month emergency slush fund. I have a dream that one day it will be purely for savings :rotfl:

Hope your monday goes well

Corona007

Lula-Hula wrote: »

By the way, are you budgeting for car repairs, tax, servicing & mot etc ?

I am in the very fortunate position of having a company car that is taxed, insured and serviced for free by work - I only have to pay for petrol for any personal mileage. To be honest, living in London a car is a luxury and were it not free I wouldn't bother having one.

I realise 'average spend' is an unusual method of budgeting on MSE, but it is one I use in business as it gives you a more flexible budget to work because it covers not just what you anticipated spending but importantly also that which you didn't. The problem with having a grocery budget and a clothing budget etc is that if you overspend one, you don't normally tend to compensate by reducing another. You also can't account for something you didn't budget for and often write it off as a 'one-off'. Thus you just end up overspent.

If you start with an average budget target, you have the flexibility to overspend in one area and know you have to cut back somewhere else to make up for it. Furthermore it means things you haven't 'budgeted for' aren't swept under the carpet as they still hit your average spend and so once again you are forced to compensate.

Try it, you'd be surprised how much you really spend each day and it can be quite addictive trying to bring your average down by having another NSD or trying to go 2/3 days on the trot halving your target etc.

In theory it should include anything that you purchase using cash, cheques, credit or debit cards. The difficult bit is in finding a way of tracking every penny, every day that you can keep updated and so you can know at any one time how you are doing (thus a spreadsheet or phone app you update daily is the way forward).

Maybe I should start a new MSE challenge on this. See who can break the £10 average :money:

Corona007

Hello. It is a very quick check in from me to celebrate being another month closer to being Debt Free. Hope everyone else is doing well.

Anyway, on to business, unfortunately despite paying off such a huge amount from Evil Halifax I really blew my March budget by almost £200 :eek: and as a result I only repaid overall £2,805. Still a great amount but I'm kicking myself that I didn't do better. Total debt is now under £14k though which looks nice in the signature.

Must, must, must look to be more frugal next month otherwise I'll be sitting here in 4 weeks with increased debt overall.