Cloudy's 'bring me some sunshine' diary!

Cloudy456

Another NSD - woohoo! 3 this week, I'm very pleased with that although its been because I've had no plans and worked late a bit, so not a great week but at least a cheap one! I've worked out that I have £30 to last me for 7 days until I get paid, plus the £10 Tesco voucher if I need, so in all honesty I can't see myself making it really! I've got a night out planned on Saturday and although I have enough food in for a week, something else will crop up as it always does!!

I changed onto a new energy tariff with the same supplier, which should save us about £200 per year! I'll get £15 cashback in a few weeks which will be a nice surprise too as I'll probably forget about it by then! Anyway hopefully I can reduce our direct debits by about £20 which would be another tenner off the standing order that I pay into our bills account along with my flatmate. Every little helps I guess! Oh and I've done a few more surveys, 50p on Valued Opinions and I'm up to £31.15 on Onepoll!

Anyway not much to report other than that, as I said, a quiet week! Bring on a fun and cheap weekend I hope, with a few less drinks bought than last weekend!

Cloudy456

Not so much good news to report this week unfortunately - I have to buy new glasses which will cost me around £100. Quite annoying but can't be helped. Anyway I'm going to pay for them on Friday when I've been paid, so I won't be able to put the £200 aside from my salary that I had hoped :-(

Also, the weekend got a bit expensive so I had to use about £40 of the money I had put aside over the last month. I have about £70 that I'm hoping to have left on Friday when I get paid, and I will either pay that straight off the Barclaycard or maybe leave it aside to build up a bit more for a lump sum payment. That £400 I wanted to save over the next 6 weeks is looking very unlikely though!

Also I did my first mystery shop yesterday, so I'm waiting for that all to be approved then I can hopefully sign up to more as soon as some become available.

Other than that, not much to report. Just a quiet-ish week waiting to get paid and then assess how much I've fallen short of my target this month....its a depressingly familiar feeling!! I know that I would have done better this month if I hadn't shuffled my debts and incurred balance transfer fees but that was the right thing to do, it just always feels like there's something that stops me paying off as much as I wanted to, however valid the reason!!

Cloudy456

Had a NSD today - yay! Aiming for another tomorrow then payday on Friday - double yay!

Did a few surveys on Onepoll and the mystery shop I did on Monday was marked as completed so the £5 will be paid in 2 weeks. Hopefully I will get more before then so the payment is more than a fiver, but pleased that the first one was completed ok and I did it right!

Also I went and chose my glasses, which in total will only be £82.50 so a bit less than I had feared which is good. I'm going to order them on Friday when I get paid - this is still a novelty concept, the whole budgeting and not just spending as and when on a credit card. In the old days I'd have put it on the CC saying I'll pay it off on Friday, then not done it and just left it on the credit card. So I'm doing ok with the whole 'not buying it until I have the money in the bank' thing...a skill I wish I'd picked up a few years ago!!!

Cloudy456

Got paid on Friday and updated my signature - not looking great, but another small step forwards!

My tactics have shifted slightly since I got so much of my debt on to 0% interest - instead of paying off everything I can I am paying the min payments of about £120 per month and making use of my usually empty spare 'savings' account and putting aside a bit of a collection which I will either pay off in a lump sum or use for a holiday (feeling in serious need, haven't been away for ages) which I would pay for with cash not a credit card for the first time in I don't know how long! Anyway I have put £75 from the salary I got on Friday into that account, taking it up to £108.03. Everything 'extra' that I make through the month from mystery shopping, surveys etc. will go in there, and I'm hoping to have over £200 by 25th October when I next get paid. I've got another mystery shop lined up for Monday but hoping to get a few more.

This weekend is going well so far, have spent about £20 on drinks last night and some toiletries and bits I needed today (braved poundland and emerged relatively unscathed!) and tonight I'm going to a friend's house for dinner so won't spend anything. I've also got some food in for dinner tomorrow with my BF so we're not tempted to go out for an expensive roast!

Cloudy456

Had a lovely weekend, feeling tired and Sunday night-ish now though! Managed not to spend a penny today, went to the cinema with my BF but he paid.

I've budgeted about £400 this month for day to day spending which is about realistic for what I usually spend (especially beings as there are 5 weekends between paydays this month!) but I'm going to try and average £10 per day which would mean spending £310. That would be fab, leaving me with an extra £90 at the end of the month. So anyway I'm tracking all my spending for the month in my iPhone (have a fab app for it!) and after 3 days I'm ahead of schedule, having spent £25. I know that next weekend will be an expensive one as I'm away visiting friends in London so I need to try and have a very cheap week to make up for it in advance! I have food for at least 3 days, and not many evening plans, so feeling hopeful!

Kepp

I'm sure you'll be able to manage £10 a day, that sounds very do-able.

Iphone app sounds good too!

sparkleisshopping

Hi Cloudy, sounds like you're getting there! What is the iphone app you're using? I downloaded one but it was rubbish

Cloudy456

Hi - the app I'm using is SpendingLite - its free which is a bonus, and although it isn't as all-singing all-dancing as some of the ones that you pay for, I've found that its more than good enough for what I want. The only annoyance is that there aren't many different categories for recording spending and you can't edit them on the free version, so I put a lot of stuff down to 'other' and type in my own details. But I figured it wasn't very MSE of me to pay for an app to stop me spending!!

Did a mystery shop at lunchtime today and have done a few more surveys, but had to spend £32 on my train ticket for the weekend :-(

Also managing to make quite a few plans for the week, so the cheap few days seems to be going out of the window fast!!

Cloudy456

Well I've had a NSD today and am staying in tonight so it should stay that way :-) But I went out for dinner and the cinema with a friend last night, both were on vouchers but I still spent £11. My average spend per day so far sine payday is £12.65 so I need to get that down to £10 if I'm going to hit my target of living off £310 this month! I quite like this new way of measuring my spending, think I'll keep it up! My spending is always so up and down that its a useful measure for me. Anyway it will only increase over the next few days as I have a weekend away in London with friends. but I will try to keep the spending as low as possible so I can have a frugal week when I'm back and get the average down again!

Did a few more surveys today but thats about it, nothing else to report really! Oh apart from I had a phone bill which was £7 over the basic contract tariff which never happens, so I need to register for itemised billing online and check it out. So I'm planning a productive evening doing jobs like that and making lunch for the next 2 days. Oh the excitement!

Cloudy456

Sooo tired! Had a fab weekend but its crazy how much being in London rinses my money...spent a lot more than I hoped for this weekend. On the actual weekend's entertainment I spent about £115 (bad enough) but I also spent £102 on clothes. Eeek. Seeing it written down like that it seems horrendous but I knew I would be taking some of it back, I just needed to make the decisions at home as things always look different away from the shops! So the £115 which is definitely spent is not good, not good at all, but with some hard work for the rest of the month its not so bad. But I decided that any of the clothes money that stays spent (i.e. I don't take the things back, that will come out of the 'savings' account I've got aside with a bit of a buffer fund in.

So I did actually need some clothes for winter as I am short on some things and others are getting very worn. I got a good pair of jeans which were £30 then a dress which was £35 (reduced from £60) and two tops. I've decided to return the dress as I don't honestly need it, and keep the jeans. Still deciding on the two tops. If I take both of those back I will get £72 back and have only spent £30 on something that I honesty needed. But I really like the tops!! Aggh!

Anyway I'm too tired to decide, that can wait for a day or two. Tomorrow I have a mystery shop at lunchtime and will be pushing hard on the Onepoll surveys as I'm only about £3 off the £40 pay out limit now. New week, new start. I have free cinema tickets on Wednesday from a preview website, so that will be 'date night' with the BF sorted without spending. But I have pretty much no food in so I need to stock up. I'm aiming to spent no more than £10 before Friday in penance for my ridiculous weekend!

Anyway hope everyone had a lovely weekend and here's to a good MSE week ahead!