Further financial faux pas and even more disasterous decisions

catspaw

And there was me thinking I'd pop into the diary and take a sneaky peak before doing the ironing......2 hrs later I'm still here:D

Tesco_points_addict

cherisong wrote: »

Happy New Year Moo, I truly wish for you everything you wish for yourself. X

I actually wish you everything WE all would wish for you, as you do not appreciate what a wonderful person you are, and how much you actually deserve.

TPAx

moo2moo

Morning all! Had another pleasant evening and another great nights sleep. Even OH seemed to sleep well. He seems to be undergoing rather a lot of unexpected changes rather more quickly than he thought. The most noticable being baggy trousers. His stomach has deflated quite considerably since his innards are no longer at war with the contents of his stomach. Rather more plesantly he no longer farts of burps continuously or looks like hes permanently really uncomfortable. Hopefuly thats one more small thing to convince him just how far out of hand everything had got.

He spent yesterday shopping with us voluntarily and other than a long glance towards the drink section managed to bypass it completely. Spent £73 on what should have been a big top up shop but which should last us well into next week. Filled the freezer up with whoopsied meat as well as splurging on overpriced but v. yummy traybake bread for dinner. Yes, yes, very extravagent and I do have a bread machine thats in need of dusting off but DD2 and I were having a bit too much fun making giant sausage rolls to bother with that. DD1 helped OH recable the PC desk so I no longer have to get eyestrain on the netbook inorder to surf, it does however mean that my typos are no longer highlighted and my spelling goes unchecked, but you can't have everything.

Had planned to get up at 6am and get lots done in anticipation of tomorrows back to workness but somehow it was 8:30 when I arose from the land of nod. Clearly far too warm and cosy under the duvet. May well need to set two alarms for tomorrow to stand a chance of actually getting out of bed.

The DDs are planning to start today with a bike ride despite the heavens disgourging their contents onto the house. Oh joy!

Still working on next years budget but allowing £300 a month for fuel to feed the cars and a further £150 in assorted maintenance and insurance costs (although I'm thinking £200 is more realistic) since two lots of insurance, three services and a set of tyres/ exhaust etc. comes to £1800 without anything else that can potentially go wrong. This car owning malarky is a v. expensive business. Duh... forgot two lots of Road Tax which adds a further £360... what a depressing thought.

moo2moo

The much awaited unveiling of the 2011 budget is thusly rather generously increased from the rather optomistic 2010 version by a whopping £333 and I've cheated by removing all the savings since this isn't actually money spent so realistically its 25% more generous than last year. Clearly there are the usual glaring anomolies and absences like the lack of school trips which seem to appear out of thin air but am hoping I've left enough leeway in the entertainment category to cover this even if DD1s residential trips last year did come to a rather astronomical £700.

Interest…....................................... 60
Council tax.................................... 115
Electricity....................................... 85
Gas............................................... 70
Coal and logs....................................60
Water rates.................................... 15
Telephone, mobiles and internet.......... 30
TV Licence..................................... 13
Supermarket spends and pet food...... 387
Clothing and shoes........................... 50
Petrol/diesel................................... 300
Car Ins, tax and maint. ................... 225
Dental.. ……………….…........................ 40
Pet insurance/vet bills...................... 80
House insurance.............................. 20
Entertainment and frittering............. 100
Riding Lessons................................. 80
Martial Arts Classes ………..............…… 40
Fags.............................................. 80
Pension.......................................... 80
Chicken feed………………..……................20
Holiday Childcare …………............…......50


Total monthly expenses............ 2000

In theory this leaves a smidgen over a grand unaccounted for which should go a long way to shifting the noose around our necks by Christmas 2012. Clearly no mention has been made of Project Land Rover in the official budget as I'm hoping OHs overtime will cover that although if OHs current lack of enthusiasm continues no progress will be made so no money spent although I really would like to get rid of the various bit from the house.

moo2moo

Another fun filled morning spent bleaching mould on ceilings, this time in the walk in wardrobe... oh yes, we have such palatial things however they are not to be recommended in ye olde worlde houses. Whilst it seemed such a fab idea at the time the reality has seen us having to install a radiator in it in addition to puting up an air gap against the external wall after an awful lot of stuff went very very mouldy the first winter we lived here.

Haven't done much else othre than rummage through my craft stash in the hopes of rehoming some of the stuff I won't ever use with someone who stands a greater chance of using it. When its all in one place theres a heck of a lot of it. In fact if I live to be 100 I'd probably still have more than I'd ever need.

moo2moo

ps. This was a v. good excuse to light the stove in the bedroom meaning it will be v. toasty tonight. An early night with a v. trashy novel beckons me thinks although OH is making the most of it at the mo. so have had to stop vacuuming. Damn shame!

mooomin

Craft stash you say?

Remember to ping me a link to eBay when its time to rehome things

moo2moo

Am feeling just a tad guilty at the mo. Yoyo-ing between accepting that 2k a month is an acceptable amount to pay whilst allowing me room for manouever particularly since I haven't had a credit card bill under a grand in rather a long time, thats despite clearing it every month. Really need to reign myself in a bit. In theory I could shave at least a hundred off the food shopping bill, especially since the four legged fiend will be eating normal food by the summer rather than extravagently overpriced puppy food. Equally if I cook more then OH won't serve up pasta bakes which will save both money and the assault on our taste buds.

Its quite funny though looking back on previous years. In 2009 I was convinced that we needed 2.4K a month to cover everything, even though this included £375 of cash that went into savings accounts.

In 2010 I budgeted for £1667 which included £220 of savings compared to this years budget thats an actual budget of £1447 or 25% less than this year.

Assuming that electricity costs and council tax, the mortgage, pensions, gas and wot not are going to stay pretty much as is apart from whatever compulsory price increases the thieving barstewards dream up version two of the budget looks like this:

Coal and logs..................................60
Telephone, mobiles and internet........ 25
Supermarket spends and pet food..... 250
Clothing and shoes.......................... 50
Petrol/diesel.................................. 235
Car Ins, tax and maint. .................. 200
Dental.. ……………….…....................... 40
Pet insurance/vet bills..................... 80
House insurance............................. 20
Entertainment and frittering.............. 50
Riding Lessons................................ 80
Martial Arts Classes ……….............…… 30
Fags............................................. 60
Chicken feed……………..............…..…….20
Holiday Childcare …………...........…......50

Total monthly expenses............ 1250


This equates to 15K for the year after essential bills which is considerably more realistic than the previous incarnation of the budget. Hopefully because it only includes those things that I actually have any control over I'll stand a chance of actually sticking to it (yep, you can fall about laughing now).

moo2moo

flying_fresian wrote: »

Craft stash you say?

Remember to ping me a link to eBay when its time to rehome things

You'd be v. disappointed, its almost all cross stitching stuff. I still have a large pile of magazines going back as far as 2002 despite selling almost a hundred earlier in the year. I also have something like 400 different shades of thread and still never have quite the shade needed for whatever it is I'm going to do. I have a huge pile of aida and evenweave and linen in a rainbow of colours thanks to only being able to buy it by the metre width despite only needing a 4" square. I don't have the time to do all the things I want to do. Nor if I'm honest do I have the space to store them.

Mags_cat

moo2moo wrote: »

You'd be v. disappointed, its almost all cross stitching stuff. I still have a large pile of magazines going back as far as 2002 despite selling almost a hundred earlier in the year. I also have something like 400 different shades of thread and still never have quite the shade needed for whatever it is I'm going to do. I have a huge pile of aida and evenweave and linen in a rainbow of colours thanks to only being able to buy it by the metre width despite only needing a 4" square. I don't have the time to do all the things I want to do. Nor if I'm honest do I have the space to store them.

In which case *I'll* be watching your eBay page :T