A sorry state of affairs....

MrsNotAPenny

:beer: That's what I needed to hear! £80 is an obsene amount of money to see a grainy black and white picture of a person I'll get to see alot of very soon! (also, had quotes for a new carpet in new house and £80 was the price for baby's room!)

Sorry I've been missing for a few days, Toddles had a tummy bug, which he kindly spread around the rest of the household! He's a very thoughtful boy!:D

We have all recovered now, well MrP is still moaning like a child about it, typical man!

Ok, bad news first....

WE HAVE MORE FLAMING DEBT! TO THE TUNE OF: £265.24! :eek:

Not through overspending, careless or being wasteful, but because our Utilities suppiler had miscalculated our Direct Debit (probably a bit of our own fault for not keeping up with meter readings!) Goodness knows where I'm going to get the money to pay that from!

Now the 'not so bad news'

Rent for our new place will only be £50 more than what we are paying at the moment, 3 bedrooms, garden, drive, in a decent area, close to our parents, MrP's work. Pretty much perfect.

I think we'll manage this, SKY HD is up next month (saving £10pm) travel will cost us around £15(petrol and occasional bus fares) less, I'm going to get rid of the landline (guessing £10 as we'll be keeping the internet) So I'll only need to find £15 extra pm, which I'm pretty confident about as this months grocery shopping was less that £200.

Good news now....

Since I was last on, a few balances have decreased on the mean old debts! :j

Loan now stands at: £6,384.16
Paying off £600 before Santa: £519.81 remaining

I phoned the Maternity Allowance 'Hotline' and spoke to a very lovely lady, who assured me I would be entitled to Maternity Allownace because I had worked enough within the test period before the redundancy and it's a whopping (approx) £125 PER WEEK (It won't affect the tax credits either and I think this is for a total of 39 weeks) I have the forms to fill in, but can't apply until mid-October - which isn't actually that far away! My faith restored, help is available to us when we need it the most/

I'll also be entitled to the Health in Maternity Grant at 25 weeks for £190 and I think I'll be eligible for the Sure Start Grant, which is £500 but I'm not counting on this and if I do get it it will be used to get baby a cot/matress/chest of drawers (all I've found in Ikea!) probably a second stage car seat and some other baby/Toddles related goods. I feel like a massive weight has been lifted!

eBay-ing has gone pretty well this month, total profit of £84.59. Which has been padded and I was a bit cheeky and had lunch with a friend last week (£13) My lightbulb had been dimming a bit, but it's glowing stronger this week!!

Happy Monday Night!xx

beanielou

Looking good on the baby front

mooomin

MrsNotAPenny wrote: »

:beer: That's what I needed to hear! £80 is an obsene amount of money to see a grainy black and white picture of a person I'll get to see alot of very soon! (also, had quotes for a new carpet in new house and £80 was the price for baby's room!)

Hope you're feeling a bit better.

Sorry if I'm getting confused, but isn't your new house rented? If new carpets are needed shouldn't the landlord be stumping up for this?

I may have the wrong end of the stick right enough

Hurrah for being entitled to lots of shiny pennies for Little Bean, very good news :j

MrsNotAPenny

Yeah, we do rent from a private landlord, but this next house has been bought (by family) for us to live in (a bit complicated, boringly long story, but we've been very very lucky) we're decorating it to suit and it does need decorated.

Obviously, the rest of the house can wait until we have some spare money, but I want my babies to have new carpets and fresh walls! Not very Moneysaving though! We'll manage the 2 bedrooms for £200, carpets and decorating (BabyPenny's room will wait until after Christmas, Toddles straight away)

Septembers NSD have gone quite well, but I'm struggling to get this last day in!! Overall, pretty pleased with my first month as a debtbuster! One credit card cleared (still feeling victorious!) and the other on it's way down! Not worrying too much about the Utilities debt, Mr has been doing mega overtime so two months max and it'll be paid!

Had a pad of £1 today, to a savings pot - my account only had round pounds in it and I didn't want to 'break' them! Also had a lovely day with MrP. We had a mooch around home DIY stores and played the 'when we have loads of money this is what we're going to buy' game!

We had lunch at home before hand, but did get chocolate milkshakes at the supermarket afterwards - I needed to nip in for the loo! And on the way home we stopped in at the inlaws and borrowed some tea bags, I had forgotten to buy (probably the excitement of the milkshakes!)

Three sleeps until payday and there's still £11 left of the overdraft, £5 in my purse and £50 in savings! :j Hopefully this is how it's going to be in future!

MrsNotAPenny

MUST.NOT.USE.CREDIT.CARD.TO.BUY.BEAUTIFUL.NEW.MATERNITY.CLOTHES.OR.SNUGGLY.WINTER.BOOTS!

Had a miserable, long, rainy day in the house, with a demented Toddles - who was probably more bored than I was - he was literally climbing the curtains. Even I was getting hacked off listening to myself saying 'NO!'

Now he's on bed, MrP is at work and I am soooo fed-up!

Just been looking at a friends holiday pictures, she looks like she had the time of her life, all salon highlights, River Island bikinis and scrummy looking cocktails.The only mixed drink I've had in months has been a Nesquik Jealousy is not normally a trait I possess, but man alive, the green eyed monster has me in it's grips tonight! That sounds like I'm hideously ungrateful for my lovely husband, Toddles and Baby, I'm not, just think my hormones have be more concentrated today, probably the lack of fresh air or adult conversation!

*BIG SIGH*

Feeling well sorry for myself and my normal 'cure' is off limits

(Repeat:MUST.NOT.USE.CREDIT.CARD.TO.BUY.BEAUTIFUL.NEW.MATERNITY.CLOTHES.OR.SNUGGLY.WINTER.BOOTS!)

MrsNotAPenny

I thought today was going to be a debt busting disaster. MrP was paid yesterday and had arranged Toddles to be looked after while he took me out for dinner.

So, since yesterday I've been dreading it! I'm was determined not to spend any money on non-essential things this month and the thought of throwing money away on food that I could make cheaper at home seemed to send me into a bit of a panic! Anyhow, I got over the fear, MrP was doing a nice thing for me after my rubbish week and I should be grateful he made the effort.

Toddles went away at 2pm, we watched some film about Woodstock, I got showered and then off we headed to Nandos (since returning from Honeymoon in London, where I first had it, it's been on my top places to eat, bring on the spicy!)

We were there pretty early, 5.30pm. We ordered and to my surprise, 1 starter to share, 2 drinks (with free refills, we both had 4! I wonder how much that saved us...?) and 2 meals with extras came to £29.45. Brilliant, less than £30 quid for a night out. While we were at starter, the manager man came over, said the ovens were down and dinner would be in 16 minutes (a random amount of time I thought!) and would we like chicken wings while we waited, now that I'm a bit tightfisted, I said no. To which he replied, 'will be complimentrary deserts then' AWESOME, I loves a freebie!

After dinner, I got up to stand in the queue it was pretty busy by now, to order our deserts and MrP wanted a latte. I was standing for about a minute, when the manager came over and asked if we were ordering our free deserts, I said yes and a coffee, he said to sit down and he's bring them over. I was expecting him to charge us for the coffees, he actually brought 2, but he never! YEAH FOR MORE FREE STUFF!

I sneakily added up the freebies (MrP knew what I was doing, apparently I have a 'calculating face'!) and it came to £10.55! I was well pleased! Especially after having £1.51 written off my CC2 today.

Technically, we're better off by a total of £12.06. That got me thinking about my big monthly grocery shop yesterday, I had got some multisaves, but never bothered to check my recepit to see how much I saved. I've dug it out and we saved (between staff discount and multisaves).... £30.97 :D:D:D

ANDDDDD MrP usually gets 3 pouches of tobacco, which are around £12 each for the month, acounting for £36 of our shopping budget. However, this month, my parents brought him back 2 pouches from their holidays (£24 savings) then this pal came back his holidays and had brought him back 5 pouches, normally costing £60 here only cost us £25! Saving us another £35!

So all in all we *should have* an extra £100.52 this month. Should have! I did put £80 into our Housefund account yesterday, I've put £10.50 away from tonights savings. Another £10 and that's it all accounted for :rotfl::rotfl:

I am obssessed!

My efforts were dulling a bit the last week or so of last month, but this little count up seems to have re-fueled them and I thinking ahead to what I can save on next!

In fact! I forgot! MIL gave me 4pints of milk today, so what's that around £2? We always need run out of milk! I was thinking about buying a cow for our new garden

That was a massive post, but I'm just too excited about all my savings from the past few days!!

Very very Happy Saturday!x

(LOL, in my excitement, I had forgotten to log in, typed this whole passage - randomly selected and copied it, hit submit and it redirected me to log in! I think the copying might be the thing to do!)x

Keeping_Positive

What a great post

Good to hear things going well after a small lull. Thats the thing you need when you have a longish journey ahead.

MrsNotAPenny

It's been a nightmare!! We're offline at the moment, just popping on at in laws.

We'll be *hopefully* reconnected at the end of the month when we move (we've not been cut off because of non bill paying or anything!)

Hope everyone's alright! I'll have a mega money saving update when I return properly!!

I miss it here!!xx

beanielou

We miss you!!

mooomin

beanielou wrote: »

We miss you!!

Yeah we do! Come back