The Debt Monster Must Die!

Keebs

My debt monster, an insidious little beastie, has been walking by my side for many years now, but the time has come for us to part. A cheerful and friendly sole he whispers constant inducements to ‘buy, buy, buy!’ The more I buy the bigger he grows, the bigger he grows the more voracious his appetite. An expert in cajolery and wheedling, and blessed with an excess of charm and amiability he has managed to gorge himself to over £19,700 in size. In order to achieve such an enormous sum he employed the constant use of perception filters, whereby no matter how hard I looked I simply could not see the debt accrued. I knew it was there of course (I am after all no greater fool than average) but had no appreciation of the actual amount.

Fortunately (for me, not so much for my monster), a fault occurred allowing me a glimpse of my true borrowings. As of 1 Jan this year I owed a staggering £19753.33. Ack! From this point on my monsters death warrant was signed and I have been keeping him on starvation rations ever since. To date I have managed to reduce him to £15657.15 and he is feeling the pinch I can assure you (or is that me? am not entirely sure). By dint of reducing my monthly outgoings (i.e I have simply stopped frittering) I find I have a sizeable sum available to pay off my debts each month. Current calculations (allowing £1800 for a much coveted {but not yet paid for :whistle:} month long holiday next Feb) show my monsters demise will take place Dec 2011. :T

Alas though t’would seem he is refusing to accept his eventual demise and has now begun a counter attack. His current weapon of choice being (rather bizarrely) a hammock stand...

I cannot tell you how much I want that hammock stand, and want it NOW! This morning I have come within a hairs breadth of forking out over £400 for a beautiful wooden stand. The rational route would be to put aside some of my allocated monthly spends money (well, OK, most of my allocated monthly spends money) and purchase a lesser metal stand a few months from now. Certainly the stand won’t be as pretty but I shan’t see it as I blissfully laze in my cotton cocoon, and so prettiness need not be a factor. It’s also blimmin freezing outside right now whereby I’d need to employ 3 fur coats (fake of course) and a balaclava to enable me to spend any time in it (none of which I currently own thus requiring further unnecessary spending). This logic holds no sway against my monster though and sadly I suspect I may be losing the fight.

As a last ditch effort I have decided to go public (public failure is somewhat less supportable than private failure I believe). Not that I expect anyone to be masochistic enough to wade through this drivel, but the possibility that they may should hopefully (fingers crossed!)keep me on my determined path.

FatVonD

Excellent, somebody else basing their money saving on the weightwatchers 'weigh in of shame' technique

Just say no to the hammock, a waste of money and, yes, your bum WILL look big in it

Mags_cat

I *could* tell you about the marvelous company that I bought a hammock from for my parents....but I won't

I like your style - I'm off to subscribe so there'll be someone else watching your monster shrink, too.

Best of luck with it :T

missmental

Hello Keebs!

Good luck with your attack on your debt monster! :j

Don't give into it; ditch the hammock, will probally rain all summer anyway??

Keep it up, MM

Keebs

Well, I am absurdly proud to announce my poor old hammock still languishes in a cupboard as I currently remain without the means from which to hang it.

FatVonD you make a very valid point. It is indeed a certainty that my bum will look big in it for, alas, it long since transpired my bum will always look big regardless of how it is clad. A valiant effort at dissuasion (for which I thank you) but I find that so long as I don’t have to gaze upon the monstrosity (and being positioned as it is I, rather fortunately, find I’m rarely forced to gaze upon my own behookie) it can be cheerfully ignored.

Mags_cat, if you could just whisper the details of that fabulous hammock company I am hopeful my monster will not hear! I am also most curious about your Trans-Siberian adventure, please drop by any time to tell me more.

I’ll admit I hadn’t thought of the rain missmental and it gave me momentary pause for thought. Rather unfortunately those thoughts turned all Ray Mears on me (after all how hard could it be to bodge some sort of a shelter?) and now find I am most looking forward to listening to rainfall overhead as I lazily swing in my hammock.

Mags_cat

Whispering very quietly.....have a look at this post here....Oh - and this picture here. No blaming me if the monster's got ears like radar, ok?

The Trans-Siberian adventure starts in 12 months time! I'm 40 next year so have decided to have a proper mid life crisis . I'll be going from Birmingham to Vladivostok on 5 trains, taking 18 days. I'm so excited I could burst...and there's still a year to go :eek:. (Mind you, it'll take me that long to save enough money to go!)

missmental

Wow, that sounds a real adventure good luck with it. I love trains!

Keebs

Mags cat you are the man in seat 61, and I claim my £5! What a fabulous and romantic adventure, I find myself most envious. Will you be lingering at Vladivostok when you arrive? How do you plan on making the return journey? I do hope you’ll blog your adventure when the time comes.

I alas have nothing so worthy to announce, instead am bound to admit that as a DFW I am a miserable failure as I am now the proud (but secretly a little ashamed) owner of one brand new sparkly hammock stand.

Keebs 0 - Debt Monster 1 :mad:

There are various [STRIKE]excuses[/STRIKE] reasons as to why it came into my possession, most of which centre round the fact that my sis and her hubby are currently living with us and, more to the point, so are the vast majority of their belongings. Consequently I find that most of my belongings (including all garden and camping goodies) are buried behind a mountain of wardrobes, dressers and coat stands etc. Well, to cut a long story short, the sun has been blazing down all week and I needed something to laze upon in the garden… :whistle:... really,my monster was most insistant on this matter! and I'm kinda siding with him on this one

Anyhow, I content myself in the knowledge that whilst I am outside enjoying my forbidden fruit I cannot be inside browsing the delights of the world wide web and hence my impulse to spend will be strictly curtailed. Actually, seeing that written down it looks jolly like monster logic to me, sometimes it can be hard to tell the difference :think:


So, as the months end approaches (for me that is, I get paid next Wed :j) I find my monster has grown a little fatter than intended, both by dint of the hammock spend (£65 though, a bargain compared to the original £400 temptation) and the balance transfer fee on a 0% offer. Exactly how fat remains to be seen, he won’t step on the scales so I am forced to await next months statements to be sure.

Hope everyone else out there is staying strong against their monster.

Helen105

Good luck with dealing with your monster, at least you were temporarily able to appease him with just the £65 stand instead of the £400 one.
Could you not tell DS & DBIL that it is her fault and guilt trip her into paying for it?

Mags_cat

Keebs wrote: »

Mags cat you are the man in seat 61, and I claim my £5! What a fabulous and romantic adventure, I find myself most envious. Will you be lingering at Vladivostok when you arrive? How do you plan on making the return journey? I do hope you’ll blog your adventure when the time comes.

I most certainly am not :eek:

(I may, however, be the woman in seat 61...:D)

Of course I'll be blogging - photo blogging at least. I have a Flickr page so that's where the piccies will be going (link's on my homepage - but they're standard non Russian photos at the moment - and lots of fish...).

Yay for hammocks - I like the logic of it keeping you away from spending on the web. This is of course reliant on you not having a laptop in the garden with you....

Keebs

Payday! :j

Somehow managed to achieve a £33.43 surplus from last months budget, no idea how as spending diary shows deficit of 42p. Hmmmm, no doubt it will return to bite me on the bum but regardless, have thrown caution to the wind and said amount is currently winging it’s way towards Halifax cc.

Was pleasantly surprised to see this months pay is £227 over my budgeted amount, thanks in the main to the ridiculous amount of unsocial hours worked (grumped about it at the time but am now a very happy bunny ). Have sent a provisional extra payment of £650 to Halifax cc (would have been more but there was *ahem* a small matter [STRIKE]regarding a hammock stand [/STRIKE]to be accounted for ), that should leave me a buffer of £20 or so to avoid accidentally dipping into the overdraught at a cost of £1 a day :eek: (ta very muchly for that Halifax for it was the introduction of that charge that triggered my LBM).

Need to wait for the end of month statements to work out where my debt stands now but am hoping to be just under the £14690 mark. T’would mean my monster is but three quarters of the beast he was at the start of the year. That’s got to have blunted a claw or two surely?

Really looking forward to your photo’s Mags cat, have had a sneaky peek at your flickr site and consequently am hopeful of great things. I’d love to do an overland journey too (from the UK to Australia in my case) but alas, due to year upon year of frittering it’s unlikely I’ll manage it before I retire. So, until I achieve that elusive lottery win* I shall have to content myself by travelling in absentia via your flicker site. No pressure then!





* Note to self: Must stop dreaming about winning the lottery, either that or I need to start purchasing some blimmin lottery tickets.