Cloudy's 'bring me some sunshine' diary!

Kepp

It's worth sticking with - you'll be so pleased when you go under 10K!

Cloudy456

Not a lot to report, just plodding along! Got my first mystery shopping assignment today for nearly 3 weeks so hopefully that will pick up again soon. I'm going to be really pushing it to make the under 10k target this month, as I still have to get through 2 weeks and 2 days but I'm trying very hard to keep my spending down. Also doing lots of surveys at the moment, I've got Onepoll back up to £11.65 and have almost £15 on Valued Opinions. I spent £7 on groceries today but now have enough food for the rest of the week. Also am going to a gig on Wednesday but am planning on not drinking so will only spend a couple of pounds on a diet coke :-)

Cloudy456

Having quite a good MSE weekend so far, I really hope it lasts! Last night I stayed in at BF's and he cooked dinner, then today I have two mystery shops to do including a free sandwich and coffee so that's me sorted for lunch! House warming party tonight which means I should only have to buy a bottle of vino, so I'm doing well on the money saving! Tomorrow I have free cinema tickets for BF and I and then we're going out for lunch so will spend about a tenner on that but overall a cheap and entertaining weekend!

The budget is actually looking ok at the moment, I have about £130 to last me until a week on Thurs when I get paid. That should really be enough if I am very careful and nothing unexpected crops up.

But the really good news is that I have a job interview! It is close enough to home that I can still walk to work and I would hopefully be looking at a pay increase of 3-4 grand on top of the £20,500 I currently earn. Which would be FAB but I don't want to get my hopes up, as it is dependent on the interview going well enough to be offered it, then actually wanting it (not completely sure yet as its a bit more specialised than what I do now) then also being offered it at enough of a salary increase to be worth the risk of moving jobs! But its really made me happy as I've been looking for jobs for ages and its been completely dead in my sector, so just getting an interview feels like a big step forward. Keep your fingers crossed for me a week on Weds please!

Right, am off to do my mystery shops and to do a few other jobs. Have a good weekend everyone :-)

Cloudy456

Well in the end it was a very cheap weekend - I only spent about a tenner plus another £9 buying food for the week. So now I have the chance to get to about Thursday without spending a thing if I can be really careful! I have my lunch made for tomorrow, enough food until I go away for the weekend on Thursday night (day off on Friday, yay!) and no plans for the three evenings, so am quite hopeful of a cheap week. I have £83 left in my budget, plus whatever I've got from mystery shopping (about £15 I think) so I am looking at around £100 left. I am away at my BF's family this weekend so shouldn't spend too much but I am very aware that there are 10 days to go until payday and for me, an average spend of £10 a day is quite ambitious!

Cloudy456

Ok, I have a confession to make so please go easy on me….I have decided to go on a skiing holiday in the new year. It will cost me around £800 all in.

Before you cry ‘why, you are in 10 grand of debt!’ let me explain my reasoning:

a) I haven’t been on holiday since last year and feel in desperate need of a proper break (winter sports are my favourite holidays so I would rather spend on this than a summer holiday)
b) Almost all of my debts are on 0% deals and so the length of time taken to pay them off won’t cost me more, its more for personal satisfaction and peace of mind that I want to see them gone asap
c) I am due a Christmas bonus (hopefully a couple of hundred pounds) which will help towards the cost
d) I have worked out that it will basically set me back around 3 months of money saving over the coming months which isn’t too bad given the almost zero interest costs (see above!)
e) I’m hoping that the guilt will spur me on to be even more strict with everything else, which will minimise the impact in terms of damage done to my spreadsheet!

I feel like a massive hypocrite given that I criticised someone else on here for booking a trip whilst in a lot of debt (true, the debt was a lot more and the trip was a lot more too but the principle is the same and I feel sheepish!)

I still know though, that so much has changed with me – I have actually weighed this up, done sums and made a rational and considered decision as opposed to the old me which would have bunged it on the credit card and worried later. I am determined that it will be paid for out of cash without adding a penny to my credit cards, so that is my new challenge. The trouble is, I also have the cost of Christmas plus a couple of other big-ish expenses coming up (car insurance etc) so it’s not the best timing.

From the word go I have acknowledged that I could clear my debts a lot quicker than I am, but that I am determined to have a life alongside the debt paying. If I was wasting a huge amount on interest each month I would be more prepared to take the ‘short term pain for long term gain’ approach, but I am young and I want to still enjoy my life whilst I make up for enjoying it a bit too much in the past! This is the first major expense that I have decided to take on since I began debt-busting, and it will be interesting to see how well I juggle it and the effect it has on my progress and levels of motivation (bad on the former, good on the latter I suspect!)

So please feel free to tell me I’m an idiot, but I’d also love some support as I forge on and try to pay for it whilst still making some kind of dent into my credit card balances. Wish me luck!

PS on a more MSE note, I have done a few surveys today and had a NSD. With this kind of progress I’ll have the skiing paid for in no time!! *Gulp*

brizzledfw

Hi Cloudy..no, you're not an idiot. Hope you're going as MSE as possible though..taking Lunch out on slopes with you, self catering etc..makes a real difference to the final bill. Do you have some stuff to wear etc? Can you ask for any stuff you need for Xmas?

My whole family love it so couldn't tell you not to go.:D

Cloudy456

We're going catered but to me that's part of the whole experience, the lovely dinner waiting for me in the chalet! Plus with the prices in ski resorts vs the amount of food that you get in a catered place, I think its better value! But will definitely take lunch out and I've either got or can borrow all the stuff I need to take. And thanks for saying I'm not being too stupid!

Only 9 days until payday, can't wait to update my signature and hopefully get a 9 on the front of my total!!

Kepp

Being the person who is going on the more expensive trip while in more debt I won't be telling you that you're stupid!

Your just realising that the debt can't be got rid of overnight and trying to find the balance between that and having a life.

Could you set yourself the challenge of raising the money for the trip through mystery shopping, surveys and ebay sales by the time you go?

Cloudy456

Thanks Beccie, that's really nice. People on here are so supportive and its lovely. Yes I was thinking about doing that challenge. Quite hard to keep track of but I might just give it a go! I already have a spreadsheet showing my mystery shopping earnings so if I add surveys etc. and all extra income it would be interesting to see how close I can get!

Anyway, the feeling bad about it spurred me on to another NSD today - 2 in a row! Haven't managed that for ages, so fingers crossed for a hat trick tomorrow! I've got lunch made ready and no plans in the evening so should be fine. I'm sometimes a bit sceptical about how helpful the whole NSD thing is, as I've always been of the opinion that spending £1 a day shouldn't be seen as a problem whereas spending nothing for 5 days then spending £10 is seen as fine (if that makes sense, I think overall spending levels are the main thing rather than how that spending is distributed). But today I was on the train home and was really thirsty and had no drink. If I'd have already spent something today, I would have spent about £2 on a drink; however knowing that doing so would ruin a thus far NSD I convinced myself it wasn't worth it, resisted and waited until I got home. And then it clicked that actually that is probably how the NSD thing works - it makes you really, really not want to make those small purchases, which over the course of a year or even a month, can really add up!

So 7 days left until payday and £103.21 left in the budget - I'll be pretty annoyed if I can't make that last with some left over for the ski trip fund!! No more mystery shops lined up at the moment, but a couple more surveys done today.

Kepp

I know what you mean with the NSDs. It doesn't help if you spend loads even if you haven't spent anything for 3 days before, but then like you say, if it stops you spending so that you don't ruin one then it works, confusing!

I don't do NSDs as I don't think they'd help me.

I think that tracking all your spending and then trying to get the lowest average possible could be a good one to do, as it'll keep spending low anyway and then NSDs would lower the average anyway