The debt free journey of an easily distracted Moog

OrangeFairy

Camping in dorset sounds perfect. I want to find a few places to camp over the summer. Probably will keep to devon and cornwall to minimise fuel cost.

There is a great campsite only 15 mins from us. I am tempted to take the kids there. They won't know any difference and would be pleased they are not stuck in the car for ages. I think as long as they are in a tent spending time with us then it doesn't matter how far we've travelled! All about the experience

Sounds like you had a fantastic Anniversary! xxxxx :j:j

LittleMoog

I finished the 5 in 1h9m27s, just under my target of 1hr10
I'm dead chuffed, even though I was 303rd out of 304! The only person behind me was a local legend Ida, who's 84, and runs the marathon every year! About 70 people didn't turn up, probably due to the miserable weather, so I think I technically beat all of them too!
Under 1 hour next year.......

Great evening after the race, bbq and real ales, and the rain stopped so nice and dry this morning. Off for my haircut later, and we're going out for dinner to celebrate our anniversary properly. Cocktails first, then lovely Thai food

jtr2803

julespickles wrote: »

I finished the 5 in 1h9m27s, just under my target of 1hr10
I'm dead chuffed, even though I was 303rd out of 304! The only person behind me was a local legend Ida, who's 84, and runs the marathon every year! About 70 people didn't turn up, probably due to the miserable weather, so I think I technically beat all of them too!
Under 1 hour next year.......

Great evening after the race, bbq and real ales, and the rain stopped so nice and dry this morning. Off for my haircut later, and we're going out for dinner to celebrate our anniversary properly. Cocktails first, then lovely Thai food

Well done on the marathon time :j and I bet yopu can beat it by quite a bit next year!

I am glad the weather cleared up for the BBQ, are you pleased with your hair and how was the Thai? I absolutely adore Thai Food, only started eating it earlier this year but now we try and have a Thia/Chinese/Indian every week (which we cook at home I hasten to add!).

x

LittleMoog

jtr2803 wrote: »

Well done on the marathon time :j and I bet yopu can beat it by quite a bit next year!

I am glad the weather cleared up for the BBQ, are you pleased with your hair and how was the Thai? I absolutely adore Thai Food, only started eating it earlier this year but now we try and have a Thia/Chinese/Indian every week (which we cook at home I hasten to add!).

x

Sadly I only ran 5 miles, it's the 84 year old lady that runs marathons! Am thinking of entering the local race for life 10k at the end of July though, if my friend from work does too

Not convinced about the haircut yet, it looked nice when the hairdresser dried it yesterday, but it looks weird this morning, and it's definitely not what I asked her to do, too short and way too much shaping, I think it's going to be a pain to sort out for work everyday I specifically asked her to leave it long enough to tie up, and easy for me to style!

Thai meal was lovely, ate a bit too much though! We also often cook Thai meals at home, it's one of my favourites too.

Lazy day today, just a bit of housework, and maybe a short run if I feel up to it later. Still got sore stiff legs though, so probably not!

LittleMoog

Hello Diary
Well I didn't manage to go for a run yesterday. Didn't actually get dressed until 5pm Haven't been out today either, as I'm busy in the lab and couldn't spare the time for a 2 hour lunchbreak!

Payday today, so have sent off all the snowball payments. We had to put DHs car insurance on his CC last week, although he managed to get it down to only £300 this year :j. I keep thinking we should sort out monthly savings for annual bills. If we were saving that money each month though, our snowball payments would be smaller and we'd pay more interest in the long term, even though it puts the debt total up a bit whenever we have to pay a large bill. Something to work on for the "future SOA" though, which I'm constructing for when we've paid off all the CCs. You can tell I'm a scientist, love playing with a spreadsheet

DH has said that he's going to put most of his birthday money from his Dad onto the CC, so it sort of offsets his insurance. He's due a bonus in August, and he's already said he'll put most of that towards the CCs as well, so those 2 combined should knock a couple of months off the DFD

I've entered a 10k race for life in a month's time! I'm a bit worried about it, so far 5 miles is the furthest I've run, and 10k is 6.2 miles, but it's a very flat course, mostly on roads, whereas our running tracks at work are all very hilly and mixed terrain, so I'm hoping I won't struggle too much with it. It'll be good to get a time to work towards beating for the one I've already entered in October as well. Also, I'm the kind of person that needs a target to work towards, if I don't have one, I'm likely to make excuses and stop running

jtr2803

julespickles wrote: »

Hello Diary
Well I didn't manage to go for a run yesterday. Didn't actually get dressed until 5pm Haven't been out today either, as I'm busy in the lab and couldn't spare the time for a 2 hour lunchbreak!

Payday today, so have sent off all the snowball payments. We had to put DHs car insurance on his CC last week, although he managed to get it down to only £300 this year :j. I keep thinking we should sort out monthly savings for annual bills. If we were saving that money each month though, our snowball payments would be smaller and we'd pay more interest in the long term, even though it puts the debt total up a bit whenever we have to pay a large bill. Something to work on for the "future SOA" though, which I'm constructing for when we've paid off all the CCs. You can tell I'm a scientist, love playing with a spreadsheet

DH has said that he's going to put most of his birthday money from his Dad onto the CC, so it sort of offsets his insurance. He's due a bonus in August, and he's already said he'll put most of that towards the CCs as well, so those 2 combined should knock a couple of months off the DFD

I've entered a 10k race for life in a month's time! I'm a bit worried about it, so far 5 miles is the furthest I've run, and 10k is 6.2 miles, but it's a very flat course, mostly on roads, whereas our running tracks at work are all very hilly and mixed terrain, so I'm hoping I won't struggle too much with it. It'll be good to get a time to work towards beating for the one I've already entered in October as well. Also, I'm the kind of person that needs a target to work towards, if I don't have one, I'm likely to make excuses and stop running

I love days where there is no need to get dressed

It sounds like you are very organised with offsetting the balance on the CC, sometimes I wish I could almost go back to having a balance that I could chip away at as I think it would be a big incentive to see it going down all the time but I must admit that sometimes it is so much easier to have everything in one place like on the DMP.

I have every faith in you that the race for life will be well within your abilities!

Have a good day

LittleMoog

I can see how the DMP payment would be easier, and we're sort of treating our snowball payment like that - it's non-negotaible!
We decided back in March that the only way we were going to clear the CCs was to set a lump sum and pay them straight away on payday, rather than waiting to see what we had left at the end of the month (nothing!). So all I have to do is divide it according to the snowball calculator and make the payments :cool: Anything extra we can manage to pay is a bonus. I did think about saving it as a lump sum, but since none of our debts are with a DCA (luckily, I'm sure it was only a matter of months before they got unmanageable:() I don't think we'd have any luck with full and finals, so we're just clearing the balances as fast as possible.
It is very satisfying to watch the numbers go down on the spreadsheets, but as I've said before, I'm a science geek

LittleMoog

Hooray, have paid DH's birthday money off one of the CC, another £500 gone

According to my spreadsheet, we'll clear that card at the end of August, assuming DH gets the same bonus as last year (fingers crossed!). That will make £3000 on nearly 30% APR cleared since March

It's with MBNA and I've heard they're quite good about offering BT/low LOB deals to retain customers, so I'm hoping they'll offer a deal so we can move money off the Barclaycard (28% APR :eek:) which has ~£3500 on it.

LittleMoog

Hello Diary
I'm supposed to be out running this lunchtime, but I couldn't quite stir up the motivation to leave my desk, I was too hungry
Went to the supermarket last night to do a proper shop, so didn't get home til really late, but managed not to spend excessively, used half our monthly budget, but we were down to the last few things in the cupboards, and having to improvise meals from things Monday night:a few handfuls of mixed lentils (end of 4 different packets!), carrots and some sausages! made quite a nice lentil and sausage casserole, but it was a bit too warming for the weather!

Have decided to start bringing more interesting lunches to work. I've got so fed up of my normal lunches that I went to the work sandwich shop almost every day last month, which is bad. It's too expensive (although cheap for what you get) and I can't leave the shop without crisps and sometimes chocolate as well! No willpower if things are right in front of me, fine if I can't see them! Lunches are difficult for me as I'm allergic to eggs, so no mayo, I don't like tuna, and while i loooooove a cheese sandwich, it's too calorific to have every day for lunch (but is what I always get from the work sandwich shop ) So for the last 18 months it's been ham and salad sarnies, and i'm heartily sick of them! I've been throwing out packets of ham for the last few weeks and feeling very guilty. I don't have a large spends budget, and lunch at £3.80 a day eats into it very quickly.

Have bought lots of salad stuff, some salami, mozzarella and feta (both sainsbury's basics, but I can't tell the difference from the regular ) various nuts and seeds. Today (and tomorrow) was couscous with a lemon dressing, chopped celery and cucumber, with thyme and chives, toasted walnuts and a bit of torn up mozzarella. Yoghurt and fruit to follow. Lush I'm hoping this will work out at a similar price to normal lunches, as ham is so expensive (especially if you keep throwing it away ).

Nothing else to report. Must go for a run tomorrow though.

jtr2803

Morning Jules

That extra £500 payment is awesome :T

I sympathise with boring lunches, I keep bringing the same stuff every day - roll, cereal bar, banana etc and it gets so boring, then I decide to have lunch at work which costs £2 so I end up spending more! It sounds like you have a nice variety of new lunch items. I hate salad which is my main downfall but I love fruit, especially cherries which are so damned expensive

Hope the run goes well tomorrow