twinparents07's joint diary 'doing it together'!!

chevalier

hi the twins, have read your thread and well done on tackling it together.
Have you actually done another SOA since the original one, just to see if you are keeping on track? Also what about child care vouchers, would they make a difference with the child care? Have you thought about doing the debt remedy on the CCCS website? Just to see what it comes out with. If you are struggling to pay your mortgage, then maybe you need to look at a Debt Mananagement Plan (DMP), from a free organisation, to take some of the pressure off.

I just wondered can you still get milk tokens for formula milk, and if so would you qualify.

There are two things that might help you, one is shop and scan, where you take their scanner round with you and send off the information once a week. I think you get vouchers for this. But there is also one (sorry I don't know the name) but you buy fruit and veg, and give them the receipts and they give you £25 of your fruit and veg spend back a month.

I would recomment bingoport, if you have the time it is a free bingo site, where you 'earn' points by playing game, and also contributing to the forum. But you can get amazon vouchers as the payout, and so I had a free christmas pretty much last year, cos of the vouchers from that (and other sites). I am not sure whether you can both sign up but one of you can and both of you play - it is a bit boring, but you do get to payout quite quickly.....

good luck with 2011
chev

twinmum07

Hi

Thanks for your reply. I have just got in from our school inspection so have cotton wool brain but will sit down and have a look at some of your suggestions once the little monkeys are in bed.
We are managing OK and the mortgage is only a struggle because we are leaving ourself with the minimum possible and trying to whallop the debts. We do need to redo the SOA as the old one doesn't reflect me working 3 days a week (or any of the extra costs that go with it!)
I'm not sure they still do milk tokens but if they do as we have a high household income i very much doubt we would qualify (If only they took expenditure into account eh!)

Looking forward to trying bingoport out - not heard of them before but it would be nice if i can do something productive whilst i watch tv

twinmum07

Right - I have no idea what I am doing with Bingoport but I am plodding away anyway. Is there a guide or thread for Bingoport anywhere that anybody knows of as I really don't know what I am doing!

We have sorted out some goals for our 100 day challenge, which spookily enough will end on 1/3/11 - our son's first birthday so a nice time to round off a few things, especially for me with post baby weight loss.

Our 100 day challenge

HOUSE
-Declutter kitchen
-Declutter dining room
-Declutter larder
-Declutter front room
-Clear mount ironmore
-Declutter bedroom
-Declutter junk cupboard

MONEY
-Pay £1443.41 off Virgin card
-Make £1000 over the 100 days

US
-B lose 20% of Oct 10 body weight so lose 41lb - 15.5lbs done
-J lose 15% of Oct 10 body weight so lose 33lb - 9lbs done
-B to be able to run 5k (no walking!) -

BUSINESS
-Get all stock on website
-Sort ending franking contract
-Sort ending World Pay
-Move 10 categories to ebay
-Do 5 craft fairs
-Do SMC accounts
-Do P accounts

twindad07

Its been a while since I've posted.

How to earn £1000 extra in 100 days?

At the moment I referee once a week and get on average £22, so that would give us about £300 extra over the 100 days - weather permitting - hopefully no postponements due to bad weather.

We have quite a few bigger items to sell on ebay - twin pram, high chairs etc, which should give us a few hundred pounds.

So we're aboout half way there!!! But none of it is definite income.

Now to work on the other half of the money!!!

Happytogetdebtfree

scale back where you can ? overtime ? tutoring ? extra teaching sub ? my rels earning a bomb tutoring i am somewhat jealous ! hope you are well i am just submitting my siggy to the 20 k challenge as it has drawn to an end and i am 7.5k short but 12.5k closer to debt freedom i suppose must try harder next year

twindad07

Well done on getting to £12500, thats still great in a year.

At the moment we have cut back where we can, but once we have done a full month with making the mortgage payment (end of Nov) we will have a look again at our SOA to see if we can cut back further.

I'm going to advertise locally to do some tutoring - now seems a good time as year 11's will have just done their mock exams or just about too.

I could see about doing extra refereeing but it will cut into our family time on a weekend and I'm not really prepared to do that.

We also have a few DVD's and books we can sell as well.

We also have the business which can also still generate some money through some weekly offers to get rid of stock. Everything is paid for so whatever we sell it for now is profit, less tax.

twindad07

I've also looked into extending our mortgage term to reduce the amount we pay, then throw the extra at the debts, shorter our DFD then once the debts are paid increase our mortagage payments to get our mortgage term down again.

It has the potential to give us an extra £400 a month to throw at the debt - if they agree to extend it.

Happytogetdebtfree

Im forever looking at ways to make the debt vanish but alas i have not suceeded :O annoyingly i am accepting that it will go when its good and ready, i suppose do what suits you that keeps you in the manageable zone and enjoy the family time you have if we could all lock ourselves away for 12 months im sure we would move mountains its scarily how much so but life has to be lived and on that note i must prepare for my shift xx

twindad07

Another income I've got is doing one to one maths tuition at school with some of the weaker students, its £25 an hour - (I'll lose 40% in tax) but it'll give an extra £120 a month after tax, It doesn't mean any further time commitment either as I won't have to stay any later than I normally do, but I'll be getting paid to stay.

Happytogetdebtfree

Yay lovely news twindad fingers crossed more comes your way xx