Reach for the stars...

Happytogetdebtfree

So close nicca so close it's exciting :-) x

niccatw

It is exciting! In a terrifying way. Which is a bit mad! But it's nearing the end of a very long haul and some big, big learning curves. Not just about financy stuff but about me too.

Payslip yesterday shows the student loan is still coming off salary at source. And the direct debit is suppoesed to start this month too - so that'll be 4 payments they'll have received that weren't calculated into the D/D. Which more or less means it'll be paid off. But work being work, and the very slow way in which payroll works, I suspect the money will keep coming out until either April (end of financial year) or September (when work and student loans eventually seem to hear each other after the end of the financial year!) which means I should at least be due something back but also means there's could be £118 deducted from my salary for the forseeable future.

Heyho! And my menage money from work is due this week (I only recently learned what this word meant and they pronounce it very differently in the EAst coast of Scotland (where I'm from) to here in the West so I have taken to calling it it magic menagerie money instead. Anyway, Ihave a choice... I get £500 and keep paying. Or I take £260 and I don't have to make any more payments. Given HFC is currently £270 (with £45.15 D/D coming off on Friday), I think I might do this!

I downloaded a budgeting app to help me track spending... I haven't looked at it since

I seem to remember having this very trouble with tracking my spending right back at the start of this journey!!! Time to battle it again methinks if I have to have any chance of learning how to budget when I have money to play with!

Which really means I do need to tackle those 9 boxes hiding behind the bedroom door - there's various bits of paperwork hidden in them that very probably would help me feel organised!

I'll maybe leave that for another day...

Happytogetdebtfree

Hi niiccaaa guess what oh was accepted for a virgin 21 month 0% that means we can attack the secured loan and let the little remaining cc negative wealth pay off at a manageable rate at 0% im so excited 2014 cant come quick enough x

niccatw

:j Woohoo! Great stuff Happy! We're getting there!!! Get those balances transferred

I've been looking at curtains online tonight - wow! They are so expensive! And my window is 69" wide, so I miss the smaller width by 3" and need to go for 90" - which makes it more expensive. Need to see curtains in person though as my feature wall is "teal tension" and I need to colour match!

I toyed with the idea of making them on my sewing machine - remeber that? (I still never finished my dress I made in class. ) But I suspect I'd pay as much for material and then be terrified of putting it anywhere near a sewing machine I'm in charge off!

I also looked at the TV I have my eye on. What does PVR ready actually mean? I decided I don't need a smart TV as I can link my laptop to a normal telly which would be way cheaper. And let's face it, I'm most likely to watch OnDemand and iPlayer or listen to Spotify. And I really don't need a telly with apps for that.

As my pay has just gone into my bank, I think it's time to step away from the laptop!!!!! Buy nothing Nicca!!!!!

Happytogetdebtfree

Slow but sure we will win the race it's nice to feel the help of 0% credit and know that I have learned my lesson use if wisely then shut it down lol. Ah curtains can be so expensive when they are nice I love Laura Ashley myself lol x

MatyMoo

I have just got a smart tv

In my defence I didn't know it could do all these things & I have probably only worked out half of it so far But it was a bargain (£130 off RRP) and in the price band I was prepared to pay for an HD tv with built in freeview.

niccatw

Then Maty, you are well within your rights to get a clever telly! I have been looking at them for a while and was all set on getting one... but most nights I don't even switch the telly on. Right now for example, the TV is lifeless in the corner. At the weekend, it goes on on a Sunday night for Dancing on Ice. So I put my sensible hat on; it's daft of me to spend a couple hundred more than I need to.

Especially with such a big list of things I neeed/want/covet... To which I have recently added a matress. Keep waking up feeling as though someone has beaten me up in the night and sincce I don't have a partner blaming it on his sleep-walking, it can only be my matress. Maybe?

I can get a telly and a matress for the price of the smart telly I had my eye on.

Mind you I could get anything I wanted if I stopped spontaneous spending! I'm wondering if today balanced itself out!!!

• £15 on re-heeling 2 pairs of heels and 1 pair of black knee-high boots (yay, I can wear them again ).
• £7 on grown-up cutlery! I exchanged a christmas gift of cutlery I wasn't so keen on for 2 sets of cutlery in the sale that I preferred - so if more than 4 people want to eat at my flat, I can now given them the same, brushed stainless steel elegant cutlery instead of mismatched, falling-to-pieces cutlery. (Will keep the falling-to-pieces butter knives though. I like them. )
• £50 diesel
• £10 2 half-price birthday prsents form Waterstones. Stood in queue with a £15 book for me in my hand. Felt a bit guilty... put it back...
• £20 in Warehouse... Didn't even feel a pang of guilt as I tried on the pretty dress (at £15) wondering when I would wear it... also got 3 belts for a fiver. Discovered when I got home that belts have sizes! May need to take one back if I don't want to snap myslef in half! Probably would have done well not to nip in to Warehouse for a wee look!
• £12 in Boots. I only bought the moisturiser and eye make-up I went in for. Paid using my advantage card. Stepped away from the perfume I was spraying about!
• £20 on a bamboo pilllow. It's so soft and fluffy. And mine are not! One is memory foam, which is great for reading but maybe isn't so good for sleeping. It might be impacting on the sore back. I'll need to experiment. I was looking for teal curtains in this shop! They were all too light a teal/wrong size/too fussy a pattern for me.
• £12 food shopping. Not planned. Only went in for potatoes...

Erm, so yes! A lot of money. Not really budgeting here am I! I know a spending diary would be good... I still haven't started using the coin keeper app I downloaded! Now would probably be a good time to do that!


Or maybe tomorrow...

niccatw

Oh dear. So on the way to work last night, the light on my car that looks a coil started flashing. This morning on the way home, the light that looks like a car squiggling all over the road came on. Both of these lights came on over a week ago, just before the car went back into the garage just after it's service. This morning it was raining sleetily and lying on the road. And as I made a sharp left coming out of the Clyde tunnel my car did exactly as that squiggly car light portrays! How I managed not to go head first into the reservation, I'm not very sure! I am absolutely fine. And thankfully there were no other cars about! Even the car looks ok; the alloy is ****ed and so the wheel possibly is too. Because the car continued to move, and because you don't really want to be broken down where I was, and because I was only 5 minutes from home, I proceeded cautiously and am now ensonced in front of the tennis in my big, fluffy dressing gown with a cup of lapsang souchong!

Monday will be a pain as I will need to figure out which garage I am supposed to use (because it's a lease car, where you go for a service and where you go when you've broken down are different!). And that will take up a lot of time when we have to audit what we are doing for every 15 minute slot of every work day for a fornight! Personally, I think it needs to go back to the servicing garage as the same lights came as did previously... but hey, what do I know. Common sense never usually comes into these things! :cool:

I'm ok. No-one else was about, so the rest of the Clyde tunnel drivers at 9am on a Sunday morning are also ok. The car could have been much worse. So it's all good.

The tennis is helping me procrastinate from cleaning though! And I notice it is free listing weekend on Ebay this weekend too... I still have all those things to list!!! To justify that pretty dress that is hanging up where I can look at it lots! Do you think I could do the cleaning in it?

Maybe I should the same as at work and record my activity in 15 minute slots for the day!!! :cool:
0-15 - texting and messaging 2 friends
15-30 - making and drinking tea
30-45 loading the washing machine and faffing about
45-60 - uh oh! Put the laptop on...

Some things we'd all like to see in those 15 minute slots -
cleaning
Ebaying
Sorting out some of those boxes of paperwork
Reading
Ironing (:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:)
Faffing about (you always should make time for faffing about!)
Watching Dancing on Ice later
Watching tennis when there's no feet scraping going on!
Wearing pretty dress for no reason at all
Yoga

Taking your best guesses for what makes it and what doesn't...

niccatw

Ok, so I jinxed the tennis! Instead I decided to try and salvage my friend's ivy plant. She ratherly rashly entrusted it to my care and now I am slowly killing it, despite assurances ivy is impossible to kill! Having looked into the pot, only half of it was full of soil so I've topped that up and gave it a good soaking in the shower. My friend wants me to put it in a bigger pot but it's already in a massive pot and I have no idea where I'd put it if it got bigger! It can't sit on top of the wardrobe as it non-ivy bits hit the ceiling - so I want it to stay as it is really!

I also posted an electrics job on rateed people. Sine I got my plastering done, the lights in my bedroom and living have not worked. No, it's not the trip switch or the bulbs. And if you have the bathroom light on and then switch the spare room light on, the bathroom light goes off. I also want rid of the chandalier type shade things and just have normal pendant shades up - that'll save me about 8 light bulbs for a start!

I didn't mention that I'd also like a new intercom fitted. Or that the element in my oven is blown and the dial of the top oven doesn't match what is actually going on. Or that I think any electrician will take one look at my switchboard and tell me it needs to be upgraded. (S)he'd be right! It looks like it's from the last century! So I have 20 minutes to do that before work tomorrow. Forgot I needed to call the garage and without a car it will take longer than 10 minutes to get to work. Oops!

Ah well. I have gutted the living room, including scrubbing the arm of the sofa (which I have been meaning to do since the lodger moved out!) and the marks on the rug.

I have started moving things around in the spare room with a view to tidying it. But clearly I got bored because I had gone into faffing mode and now I'm here...

And hungry... time for foraging in the kitchen methinks (which probably needs cleaned first).

The bag of shoes for eBay has been moved into the newly cleaned living room. It has not been further touched!

niccatw

I have listed 2 pairs of heels on eBay. By 'eck, it doesn't half take an age - and that's using the app on my phone which is much quicker than on the laptop! Sunday's are too short to spend more time doing any more!

The rest of the flat has been cleaned. The old TV stand has gone. I have attempted to pot a basil plant (and some of the ivy in case I do actually kill it! ) All the washing has been done - clothes and dishes.

And I had a very grown-up dinner with my grown-up cutlery! Veggie haggis, baby potatoes tossed in cracked pepper and carrots, broccoli and spinnach. It's probably the most grown-up thing I've cooked in a while!

Dancing on Ice duly watched. Some faffing squeezed in... now contemplating wearing pretty dress whilst doing some ironing... :rotfl: (I might just continue eating wispa bites and drinking tea...)

(Even managed to wear my fab wellies today too! And sneaked in an NSD.)

I think I need another weekend to recover...