DFSD's five year plan... and all it brings along the way

debtfreesomeday

Today I've bought a wedding present from a gift list of one of the weddings we are attending this year, cost = £29.90. We used to spend £50 as a wedding gift on close friends but can't afford to do that now. The second couple will get around the same amount spent on them, although I believe they have asked for vouchers or cash, so £30 in cash. Wish we could give more, but we can't.

I have also bought a birthday gift for a close friend, cost = £15. Tonight I need to spend another £16 on an item for a family birthday - it should be £19 but I have a £3 off voucher I can use at home, so will wait until tonight to order it. There's two more birthdays to cover at the end of the month, but I've already bought things for those. Crikey, that's £90 spent on gifts already and it's only just payday (in a few hours!).

At the weekend, we picked the apples from our little apple tree in our garden as the wind was threatening to knock them all off. It's the first year we've had it and we got just under 30 good sized apples from it. I've just eaten one at my desk at work, how much nicer something tastes when it's from your own garden. We are hoping to pick some more blackberries in the week, maybe tonight, so I might stew some of the apples down with foraged-for blackberries.

Today, I have been looking online for ways of making more money by selling items etc. but think I've exhausted most of those routes already. We've 'Music Magpie'd' several times and I have a couple of bits that could go one ebay, but nothing of great value. Maybe I'll have another scout around for some possible ebay bits in the evenings this week, but not sure I'll find anything suitable.

I have been slack with the free scratchies lately and haven't done them for a week or so now. It was becoming a lot of effort for not many pennies, not sure I'll start those up again to be honest.

I am still doing surveys from two sites as and when I get sent any. I find with one, they dramatically reduce the amount of surveys they send as soon as you get close to payout which annoys me slightly. :mad: I am only 50 points away (a small 10 min survey or so) from a £10 amazon voucher payout on one and I was hoping to use it for one of these birthday gifts I've just bought. Guess I'll have to save it towards a Christmas gift instead.

I'm feeling a bit down about the debts and lack of progress lately if I'm being honest. There is nothing we can do about overpaying now, but I'm so sick of being overdrawn every month and only have myself to blame for it. I say it every month, but I really need to keep track this month, although how, with two 'far away' weddings and 4 birthdays to pay for, I just don't know.
One positive bit of news though is that our sofas will be paid off in 3 weeks time. :T That's another debt cleared and £103 extra to throw into the maternity leave savings.

DFSD
x

debtfreesomeday

We've been really productiver since we got home from work this afternoon, here's a bit of a round-up...

We picked up the 2nd hand car seat base on the way home, parting with £35 but it's well worth it.

I've ordered the 'family' birthday gift with £3 of clubcard vouchers towards it (it's a slow cooker - very MSE!).

Picked up a parcel from the post office which turned out to be 2 full size bottles of surf small & mighty washing liquid to test as part of a survey.

Picked runner beans chilli's and peppers from the garden, cut them down and have frozen them for later use. Also picked a big bowl of tomatoes to ripen on the windowsill; the tomato plants have started to go over now so not sure how many more we'll get from them.

There's a sundried tomato loaf in the breadmaker as I type and I now need to go and hang a load of washing out to dry.

We were going to go blackberry picking but think we might leave that until another night now.

DFSD

debtfreesomeday

It's payday today and although it's nice to have money in the bank again, it's going to be a very lean month, financially. Hubby has transferred 90% of his wages as usual and then about 30 minutes later, transferred another £60 over towards the credit card which we have booked the hotels on for the weddings we are going to soon. Big problem is the £60 has hit the account already but the bulk of his wages hasn't and it's all left his account, so where the heck has it gone????:eek::eek::eek: He's going to phone his bank this morning.

£100 has gone to the tax & insurance account, making that balance at £200. I've paid £100 off the credit card as hubby has saved £100 extra towards that. However, we were £124 overdrawn and petrol use this month is going to be huge, so it leaves us with hardly anything left over once everything has been covered. We're just going to have to do the best we can really and accept that it's not going to be great.

DFSD

debtfreesomeday

3 people are interested in the piece of furniture I'm selling via the notice board at work - had to drop the price by £10, to £40, just to get rid of it quickly (we need the space to start storing 'nursery' stuff as the cot bed and drawers are being delivered at the weekend:)). Hopefully one of them will want to buy it tomorrow after I've emailed them a photo of it.

I still have yet to advertise the other item I have for sale, but will sort the details for that tonight too so I can do it tomorrow. We need all the extra cash we can get this month!

DFSD

debtfreesomeday

Furniture has been sold for £40, which has gone straight out to pay for a sprung cot bed mattress which we spotted on offer from £120 to £39, but being a DFW, found a £5 voucher code and got it for £34.99 + Quidco. At a bargain price like that, we can't say no and are saving ourselves pennies later on.

I have also listed the other item for sale but don't think it will sell as it's quite specialist (to do with my uni course). I have also listed it on ebay, but again, not holding out much hope of a good sale.

The bank sorted out hubby's disappearing wage issue, so thankfully that's gone into the joint account today. I've also withdrawn £100 to use for grocery shopping. I've allowed £150 within the budget, but going to try and get it down to under £100 this month. We are away for a few weekends too, so won't need to shop quite so much. That's the theory anyway...

Last night I painted the smallest spare room which will become the nursery. It's early, I know, but as we dismantled and moved the bed from there that we've just sold, it was the best time to do it. We shifted the rest of the stuff out of there and freshened it up with a lick of white paint which we already had in the garage. So, a newly decorated room and no spending involved. I need to give it one more coat tonight and then it's done and ready to start moving stuff back into.

DFSD

debtfreesomeday

Just ordered a £10 Amazon voucher from a survey account. I will use this to buy another Christmas present, when it arrives. Shame it wasn't in time to use for the birthday gift I ordered earlier this week, but never mind.

I have just had another look at the bank account and something's not adding up. I think we will have a bit more left than I thought... I'm not entirely sure though as I thought I worked it out correctly on payday. Hmm, well at least there may be a chance we won't go overdrawn this month then...

debtfreesomeday

Haven't updated for a wee while, not a huge amount going on really. Been a bit of a worrying time with Mum's health not being so good, but it's a case of wait and see and taking each day as it comes at the moment.

We had a lovely, relaxing bank holiday weekend which involved catching up with relatives, cooking nice food and being cooked for , as well as a wonderful coastal walk and trip to a local beauty spot. We really enjoyed and felt like we had a break, although it went far too quickly as usual.

The nursery furniture was delivered at the weekend too. It's wonderful, and now we have a little nursery in our house which is very exciting. :D:D

Onto moneysaving, and I'm still a bit confused this month. Either I've forgotten to pay/account for something, or we have a lot more money than I thought we would...We have about £300 left for food and petrol once everything (I can think of) has been accounted for, and that's after spending £70 on food already and £50 on petrol... I just don't understand it as I thought we'd be very skint already this month. Guess I'll just have to wait and see at the end of the month.

I've bought a few Christmas presents today - I made the most of the £5 sale on play.com and have bought two gifts from there. If we do have money leftover this month I'd like to buy some vouchers that will save me buying in December when pennies are tight. I will also pay a bit off the hotel bills which we've had to put on the credit card for a wedding this month and other event next month. I'd also like to top the maternity savings up to £500 - it's currently at nearly £430 ish.

Another survey completed in the week has netted me £3 in my paypal account; still waiting on the Amazon voucher to show - they usually take a while.

I have on item on ebay ending in the next couple of days, but it's not doing so well at the moment.

Think that's all for now

DFSD

Chocforever

How exciting that the nursery is all ready

You seem to be doing well on the MSE front and as organised as ever. Is that spare money still, well, spare ?!

I had a really lovely week at the spa and then went to stay with family for a week. Spent too much money, but never mind. Once back in the habit of spending money on clothes, house stuff and eating out etc, I remembered how much I enjoyed it! But I am still keen to meet my target this year (balance to pay off is £11k after September payments gone out; was £28k at start of year) so I think I will go back to being careful for a few months.

If I have chance, I think I will get my spare autumn clothes on Ebay on Sunday and see if I can raise some money and clear a bit of wardrobe space .

Have a great weekend!

debtfreesomeday

Glad to hear you've had a lovely break Chocs, it was well deserved after your busy year at work.

Did you manage to get the clothes on ebay?

debtfreesomeday

This weekend we probably spent a bit more than we should - I'm guessing around £50 - but we really needed a good break and fee like we've had one.

We rented a free DVD on Friday night via the nestle pack offer; Saturday was a NSD and on Sunday we took ourselves off for a day out. We went to City about an hour away from us and had a lovely '2 course & drink included' lunch with a £10 voucher each, plus hubby had an extra little side dish & extra drink, so it came to £24 altogether.
Other spends included £3 spent on park & ride, £15 on bits for baby/nursery/coffee and cake whilst out, £8 on some medical stuff for hubby as he has a sports injury at the moment . We also picked up our free boots changing bag via the baby club, just had to buy a pack of nappies which will obviously be used anyway!

I also bought myself a jumper with a £50 voucher I was given months ago for my birthday; I tried it on this morning and it's awful so is going back! There's nothing either of us really liked in this shop so I may just sell the voucher for £40 on the staff notice board or something - I'd ebay it but am nervous about unscrupulous people saying they haven't received it etc.

Back to work this morning to the rather horrible news that the company is not doing well (which we all knew and have been trying to point out for ages :mad:) and there may be redundancies in the future. Marvellous. Not going to worry about it as I can't change it and worrying will do no good.

Tonight I'm planning on making a big bowl of cous cous salad to put in the fridge for lunches this week, and hopefully make some pizzas for the freezer for hubby's packed lunches. We have pasta for dinner tonight, if there's extra then it will make another lunchbox for one of us tomorrow, and most evening meals are planned for the week.

The sofas are paid off this week :j:j:j so we'll have an extra £103 a month to shove into the maternity leave savings. That pot should've been looking about £387.50 healthier than it is presently, but this month we have unexpectedly had to buy a new bed. both of us have been struggling with pain from our old one and can put up with sleepless nights no more! We have bought a good one for half the price it should've been, reasoning that we have the cash now and there's no way we will be able to afford it after the baby's born. So, next month there should be just under 1K in the maternity leave pot which isn't a bad start.

DFSD