Back in the black before baby

LittleMissKitty

Well today is payday and we have the grand total of £257 in the bank. We have approximately £1k of bills to come out on Monday and then the only income for the rest of the month is £150 tax credits in 10 days and then £185 child benefit a fortnight after that. I'd love to be able to say that that would cover the food and petrol but it wouldn't even cover half.

Add to that the fact that DH is going to Leeds for a weekend mid-month and any hope of even perching on the edge of the financial cliff disappears completely. We are well and truely stuffed this month. The small positive is that it's a short month so our usual £300+ grocery bill may be reduced slightly. However the best I can hope is that it'll go a little way towards covering the petrol and accomodation for the weekend in Leeds.
Oh yeah, and DH needs to repair his motorbike as a patch of ice, on a corner, at the bottom of a hill, on an unlit road at midnight got the better of him on Tuesday so that's more money down the toilet. But it's not his fault, it shouldn't cost much and some things are more important than money


Right, now to be more positive.

• DH is car sharing and splitting a room on his weekend away so that means a) I'm not entirely stuck in the house with three bored children and b) he's halving costs
• I already have a good store of nappies so may be able to avoid buying anymore for the first couple of weeks of the month.
• We also have two £12 off a £60 shop vouchers from Sainsburys so that knocks £24 off the shopping bill immediately.
• It's half term this month so a week without having to buy petrol for the car. Potentially a £40 saving.
• It's a council-tax free month! £116 we wouldn't normally have.
• Not a money saving thing in the least but has to be added to the positives list anyway - we have our 20 week scan at the end of February so I can see my baby again! :T

I WILL get out of this overdraft before July.

LittleMissKitty

Well, not too much money stuff to mention today. I'm pretty much just passing the time to see what the accounts are like once the bills have come out on Monday.

Good news on two small counts today. Firstly DH managed to fix his bike without costing us anything and secondly he's got a lift too and home from the club weblaunch party today So that saves us 30 miles worth of petrol! He'll probably have to invest in a new wingmirror in the immediate future but that shouldn't be much more than £20. Sooooo much better than it could have been!

However fixing his bike has reminded him that he STILL hasn't put it in for it's first service and he's had it for 6 months already. So that's booked for next Saturday and assuming all goes well we're looking at £120 :eek: let's hope they don't find anything sinister or God knows what kind of money we'll have to find.
I made him book the hotel today for the SWASH weekend but they don't take the money off the card in advance so I'll just have to mentally remove the cost when I'm tallying up the money. I hate having to do that.

One nice addition to the bank account though is the £200 cheque he somehow blagged off his Mum when he was over fixing his bike up. I don't know what it's for or why but right now it's going straight towards the bike service and hotel for SWASH. Certainly stops this month being quite as scarey as it once was. However I hate taking money from parents so I will add it onto what we owe them though they'll probably refuse it back if we offer.....

LittleMissKitty

I've finally totalled up the debts this morning - properly rather than estimating - and I NEVER thought i'd be that much. To all of our friends we're the ones 'with no debts', basically because we don't have any credit cards or loans. Somehow finance deals seem to pass people by when searching for 'proper debt', and parental loans never pop up either but as far as I'm concerned if I have to pay it back then it's a debt. So that's what I've added up. The total's on my signature..... and it scares me to look.

Before I can even begin to think about paying it back I have to think about the things we have to BUY this year. Come April/May we have to start looking for a new car, a BIG car. Baby is due in July and I want to be used to the car before I start ferrying them all about in it. We will be using our current car as part exchange but even bearing that in mind we're looking at £2k on top. Most of this will be covered by Maternity Allowance so it's not praying on my mind too much but it is still a consideration.

If finances stay as they are then we have about £100 a month spare. That means that the overdraft alone will take us a year to pay off. I'm also painfully aware that the mortgage rate is very likely to rise and if it gets too high we're actually going to be in big trouble. The light at the end of the tunnel is that really, the 'genuine' debts are all included in monthly outgoings. The black horse loan will be paid off in August 2012 and the DFS loan in April 2014, I try not to think about the mortgage.....

Both sets of parents are immensely flexible, in fact my parents don't expect to be paid back until we sell our house to move and DH's parents are probably thinking the same (the loans from them were to enable us to move originally). That leaves us with the overdraft, which is my biggest concern as it's the only thing thats actually accruing any interest payments, about £12 a month at the moment. So that's where the spare cash is being thrown for the time being.

On a positive note I switched our home insurance this morning. It will cost us £50 to cancel our current policy but by switching I've halved the monthly payments from £26 to £13! So that's a saving even bearing in mind the cancellation fee. I also went through Quidco, so, assuming the transaction all logs properly that's £100 cashback too straight off the overdraft.

mariagti

Hi littlemiss

Congrats on your pregnancy!:D

Good luck on your debt free journey.

Thats good your OH fixed the bike himself, fingers crossed they wont find anything wrong with it on the service.

maria xx

LittleMissKitty

Thank you mariagti I must admit the idea of 4 kids under 6 is becoming quite daunting! At least I'll have two at school next year.

In financial news I've just discovered that we're on a 10 monthly water plan as well as council tax! It hadn't come out yesterday so I figured I'd give it another look this morning. Still nothing (and Sky haven't taken theirs either for some reason) so I added up the total we've paid this year and checked the statement and it looks like we're on a 10 month DD. It didn't actually say this anywhere on the bill. In fact on the bill it quite clearly says 'payment due monthly until your next review' which I figured (as we'd started paying in April) would mean this April, not February.... but I'm certainly not complaining! I will, however, phone up just to check.

Couldn't cancel the home insurance yesterday as DH wasn't home from work till late (it's in his name) so I've bunged the paperwork in his bag so he can cancel it at lunchtime hopefully. However, upon perusal of said documents I noticed our renewal figure is actually £32 a month not £26 so now I'm doubly glad I switched! Especially as I've had the tracking emails through from Quidco to say it's logged aswell as a couple of comparison site tracks too I've had Quidco for over a year now but ALWAYS forget to use it so it so it's now my homepage. Annoying but probably worth it for the money!

LittleMissKitty

Well, I'm glad I haven't joined a NSD challenge this month because so far money has left our account every day since Monday! And just when you think it's about time to stop something else needs filling up or feeding.

Sold a bunch of bits on ebay last week, nothing big, just a few small clothes bundles, mostly to free up space in the house rather than to make any money. I went to Paypal to remove my small profit this morning (mostly with an aim of preventing me from giving it back via the medium of ebay ) and I can't get it out! I've had a paypal account for about 5 years now, all verified and linked to banks and cards etc etc. They seem to have no problems REMOVING the money when I make a purchase but for some reason unbeknownst to those mere mortals among us everytime I try to withdraw money I get told my bank account has been disabled from being entered into paypal. I can, apparently, resolve this problem by faxing them a copy of the bank statements showing where they deposited the verification amounts (about half a decade ago!) along with two forms of photo ID to their legal department in Surrey. The only problems here being I use electronic banking and I don't have a fax machine........

So I WAS planning to ebay a whole bunch of stuff this week, I even photographed it all ready for the tedious job of listing the sodding things but I'm (understandably?) reluctant to do that now. I must admit I had the money more earmarked for paying towards my overdraft than for making paypal more money in interest. The problem I'm having at the moment is that ebay's my only real chance of any extra earnings and it's that point in the month (the 4th?! I need to get more staying power!) where payday seems miles away and all I can see is money going out and nothing coming in. I was quite looking forward to that little paypal withdrawal just to boost the DFW enthusiasm. Ah well, I've emailled them and I've also just opened a new current account (through Quidco - free money :j) that I should be able to add anyway so it may take a while but I know I'll get the money eventually.

LittleMissKitty

Well we've finally cancelled the old home insurance policy. Cost £87 for the priviledge! :eek: Still works out at a massive saving which is kinda scarey really. But the fee's a chunk out of the months 'spare' money which is obviously a bit depressing

Next thing that I need to fit into the budget somewhere is moving our cherry tree from the front to the back garden. It's far too big for us to do ourselves but luckilly we can get mates rates on it. Timing is an issue as if we don't get it done before the end of March we'll have to leave it till next year and we've been working (slowly) on the garden for so long now I'm really not keen on leaving it any longer! We've been here for over 3 years now and we've spent the grand total of two days 'enjoying' the garden. I'm determined to have it done by this Summer.

Bike service tomorrow which is going to hurt, on the plus side we're then going to my parents for a full Ulster fry-up (yay, free food!) and we're also going to get rid of 2 sacks of wood to the in-laws for their ray-burn (and more importantly out of our garden). Hopefully the weather'll stay bright and sunny and I can send DH out to do some plant organising and make me think we're getting somewhere :rotfl:

Amusingly I've just had a phone-call from a rather impressive MOD company that rejected DH last year for a job saying they've been requested to re-interview him. Jobs like buses, couldn't get one for six months and now he's got one he's had three calls offering him interviews!

LittleMissKitty

Well yesterday started with my daughter throwing up all over herself in the car on the way to my parents she wasn't too bad though and perked up for long enough to have breakfast and play in the garden. Breakfast was great, thank you very much Daddy

We hung around at the parents for the morning while DH's bike was in the garage and discussed preliminary plans for our family 'art' website with my brother (he's a super-computing type). My poor little girl fell asleep sitting at the dining table so we carried her back to the car about lunchtime and went to get DH's bike. We'd been told when we arranged it that the service would set us back £120 basic rate plus any extras so when DH arrived with the invoice I was a bit confused (and more than a little chuffed) that it actually came in at £85! But it's all swings and roundabouts as we got an email saying that DH's competition blade would be ready for the SWASH meeting in a fortnight so we have to get £130 odd together for Wednesday.

It's only when you start writing things down that you realise how often money actually goes out. I've got pre-school fees to fork out on Monday and a school disco ticket for Thursday, we've got to fill the car up today and do the weekly shopping aswell. It's like actually watching the bank account hemorrhage money and I don't like it at all! However, having said that, if I'm careful I can still bring us in at the end of the month about £400 better off than we were at the beginning of this month. Let's keep our fingers crossed.

LittleMissKitty

I'm quite proud of myself, I managed to swallow my pride and pay the preschool fees in small change! So that didn't involve taking any money out which I'm counting as a small DFW victory. Still have to see if I can scrape together £1.50 for the school disco without resorting to coppers. I know I've got it in 2p's and 1p's (because I counted what we had in the change jar yesterday ) but the school receptionists are vicious individuals at the best of times....

We managed to avoid shopping and filling up the car yesterday so that's another day stretched out of the pantry and DH will do it when he gets in this evening. (unfortunately he also has to take out £130 from the cash point to give Chris for his sword ) His name is on the £12 off voucher so I'm afraid he's stuck with it this week and then we're back to the online shopping which I do so love. We have officially run out of food now though so I can't drag it on any longer. I'm attempting to get 8 days out of a shop now instead of 7 so I'll order Asda for next Tuesday evening (or Wednesday if I'm feeling particularly brave!)

Apparently the weather where DH is is looking like it might e ice over so he may have to take the car to work tomorrow and it's a club night too so that's 75 miles potentially in the car instead of on the bike. Please please please don't let it ice up!

Our left indicator and brake light on the car are playing up now as I was kindly infomed by one of the fathers at pre-school this morning. DH says it's probably just a loose wire but I want it fixed before we look to part-ex or sell because I don't want some little thing massively de-valuing it. I'm aware we won't get much due to the enorrmous dent and paint scratch down the side but it's a decent car and I need all the help I can get if I hold out any hope of getting hold off what I need without having to finance it :mad: oh the woes of having a big family! :rotfl:

LittleMissKitty

Right, before I start I apologise to anyone who chooses to read this as it's mostly going to consist of a hormonal rant!

I am SO SICK of being the one with the crappy house, crappy clothes and broken buggy that everyone looks at so scathingly on the school run. We live directly opposite the school and, as such, most parents see us either entering or exiting the house. We live in a lovely little village full of people whos daughters have ballet recitals and who horseride on Saturdays. It's lovely and quiet and exactly where we want to bring the kids up but suffice to say there's a bit of a class divide issue.

We moved here three years ago because we had to, fair enough we didn't have to move to THIS house but we had to move from where we were and it was the same price (read cheapest available price-range!) as all the others on offer and by far the nicest area with the best schools. Living in the South of England we had little choice but to mortgage ourselves to the eyeballs (being quite young as well, I was 23 at the time) and, as such, we couldn't afford to do much to actually decorate. We didn't exactly splash out, we live in a 2 bedroom mid-terrace house and ther're about to be 6 of us...... Each year we've given ourselves a DIY 'project' to spread the cost and last year it was the gardens. We'd just started the initial 'destruction' phase when DH got made redundant so we had to stop. Consequently our front garden looks like some kind of squatters live here. Much to my constant embarassement we even have a broken motorbike in front of the lounge window which we've offered to people but they're still 'thinking about it' so we can't even ebay it until they've made their minds up! The garden's raised about 2m from the pavement so we had to dig a mud 'path' to get the sodding thing to the window in the first place. I can't quite describe how awful it is and 4 times a day I get seen by EVERYONE struggling up the rediculous 'steps' with a buggy and 2 other children.

Add to this the fact that we hardly ever buy clothes, the children live off Christmas presents and I am currently sporting a hideous oversized beige winter coat that I bought 5 years ago when I was six months pregnant (to fit the bump!) and underneath a paint stained and cigarette burnt (from our 'student days') Black Sabbath fleece of DH's merely to keep warm and you get the picture, I look like a bag lady. It's embarassing and, combined with pregnancy hormones, makes me want to cry.

I think the thing that really gets to me is that our debt wasn't even accumulated by buying nice 'stuff'. It was big, arguably necessary, things. We've just bought new sofas in the January sales after planning to do so for 4 years. Since we got engaged 7.5 years ago we've been using old knackered cream leather sofas which were a hand-me-down to help us out. The leather has worn away leaving huge grey/black cracks in the seat and back. A rabbit nibbled through the seats years ago leaving huge holes in the cushions and, despite many attempts to keep them 'cream' they're in a worse state than the front garden. For £30 a month at 0% for life I cannot but feel justified in FINALLY getting new sofas. I'm a mother of (nearly) 4 and my house looks like a crack den. Those new sofas are the first step towards me having a real house, like a normal person.

Our second 'big' debt is a 0% loan for DH's bike. This was the only way he could get to his new job and we couldn't afford to turn down a job after 6 months redundancy - we were about to lose the house and renting around here would cost twice what our mortgage is. We seriously considered an ebay second hand purchase or a trader but the price difference was negligible and the difference with the warranty and piece of mind with him driving over 300miles a week on it was worth the extra cost. It'll be paid off in less than 3 years but it's still £133 a month we don't have to spend on life (by which I mean our front garden....).

Our overdraft and debts to parents were all from buying the house. We borrowed off parents to make up the extra deposit required and we had all the numbers perfect until 2 days before we were due to complete and our buyers called us and said that they'd pull out unless we dropped the price of our flat by £3k :eek:. It was already the cheapest flat in a 10 mile radius! I could have died. I left DH to negotiate, as it's part of his job luckilly, and he explained that we just couldn't do it but we'd meet in the middle. Eventually we dropped by £1700 and have lived in that overdraft ever since.

Basically I'm just hormonal and feeling a bit sorry for us. DH leaves the house at 7:30 every morning and gets back 6:30 on a good day. Most of the week he's not back before I'm in bed and he's been going in Saturdays too recently to help out as they're really really busy. He works so hard for us to stay afloat (doesn't get overtime, just doing it to help out because he's far too nice) and basically I'm a single parent a lot of the time. Soon number 4's going to come along and we're going to be the ones that everyone looks at and says things like 'shouldn't have that many children if you can't afford them' etc etc. DH has an international club meeting in April that he's been looking forward to for over a year. I REALLY want him to go because he deserves it but he's already told them he's not sure he can make it because of finances. I know we can find the money but it will land us back where we were at the beginning of the year and I'm torn between agreeing that it's too expensive and definitely getting this OD paid off before July and insisting he goes and has probably his last bit of fun for God knows how long.

Oh it's all so bl00dy frustrating!!!! :mad:

Sorry.

beverleyhills

LittleMissKitty wrote: »

Right, before I start I apologise to anyone who chooses to read this as it's mostly going to consist of a hormonal rant!

I am SO SICK of being the one with the crappy house, crappy clothes and broken buggy that everyone looks at so scathingly on the school run. We live directly opposite the school and, as such, most parents see us either entering or exiting the house. We live in a lovely little village full of people whos daughters have ballet recitals and who horseride on Saturdays. It's lovely and quiet and exactly where we want to bring the kids up but suffice to say there's a bit of a class divide issue.


Sorry.

Sorry that the hormones are winning today. The important point about your house is that when you go through the front door it is a home full of love and a santuary for your family. Not all 'posh' houses are homes.
Do you have a friend who could do your hair for you?