Scuba's Spending and Life in the South Diary

scubaangel

I really hope I can get organised and start work soon, this floating around the room I rent and trying not to get in the way of the family of the house is getting quite tiring, alongside the constant watching money exiting my bank accounts with nothing concrete expected to start coming back in....

Luckily my debt's are fairly small and fairly manageable, a £500 overdraft, and credit card with £1500 on it and a pretty low interest rate. My living expenses are somewhat on the flexible side at the moment too since I have only just moved and am getting used to meal planning for one and the associated costs of food shopping, including the creation of a complete store cupboard as I moved with literally nothing.

My known monthly costs are:

£85 p/wk for my rent, I lodge and this is average for the area, and in many ways rather cheap considering the actual house is far nicer than others I visited while looking.

£25 phone bill, this is a contract due to run until January next year.

£45 the set payment to my cc, at a push I can reduce this to the min payment but that would only gain me about £15 a month so I'd rather leave it as it is and make extra payments when I have any spare cash.

Current estimates for my car running costs are £50 a month which will cover my insurance when it's due next June and the tax which is due in March, currently I have £600 put aside so as long as I can save another £200 - £300 that pot should also cover servicing in March, it'll be a 2 year old car so many of the possible expenses are still covered by the 3 year warranty.

Everything else at the moment is a touch fluid, I can't estimate my fuel bills until I start working, but I'm going to be working 8 miles from where I live so 16 miles a day. It's evening work so I am in the process of registering with temp agencies so I can hopefully pick up some day work too. Long term I want to work in a 'day' job but I do enjoy the bar work which is my evening job so quite possibly will carry on doing it.

Food bills I plan to keep as low as possible, at the moment though my storage space is limited to a mid sized cupboard, a shelf in the fridge and a crisper drawer, the family I have moved in with are clearing me a drawer in the freezer so I can start doing some limited batch cooking. I am making the os board a new friend for tips on keeping the food costs down - I expect I'm going to be doing alot of my shopping on the way home from work around midnight to take advantage of mr t's yellow stickered items, or mr s' - but mr s' place isn't directly on my way home so I'll need to actually think about visiting his place while mr t is directly on my route. I also need to start accumulating airtight pots for keeping left overs etc in, planning to try and pick them up here and there when I see any which are good value.

I also mystery shop, so my plan initially is to try to get my overdraft paid off with my after tax profits and then use it to make extra payments to the credit card.

I do try to only use the cc for mystery shops these days and pay it off the next day paying off a little extra with each payment (the main balance was run up paying for OU courses), but while I'm not earning I'm not confident I can be disciplined enough to do that so the cc is staying at home, locked in a drawer for probably the next couple of months, while I was doing that last I reduced the balance by almost £300 in 2 months. When I am disciplined enough to do that its worth doing as its an egg and still has no monthly fees and the 1% cash back.

scubaangel

Todays spends

£11.62 meals and drinks for a mystery shop
£6.44 at Mr T
£1.25 spread
£0.47 nail clippers (mine went missing when I moved)
£2.89 muller yoghurts (bogof but the boy has the second pack and will buy the next ones)
£1.18 veg oil
£0.65 on crisp salad bag and a pack of stir fry veg as they go out of date today but should be good for lunch and dinner tomorrow.

Tomorrows plans include two mystery shops, one involves a purchase the second doesn't, and I *should* be starting work in the evening but I haven't heard from my new boss yet to confirm it - before I can start I have to pass a Security Clearance and we're waiting for it to come back.

scubaangel

Good news today, phone call this morning to say I can start work tonight so I'm slightly more relaxed about, well, pretty much everything now! Missed the time slot for one mystery shop this morning thanks to the boy being late picking me up, so had to reschedule it for the weekend, but that still fits quite well with other plans as I need to be in town anyway. So just the one shop done today, and almost written up.

Spends, guiltily more than I planned but it's things I had planned to buy anyway- £27.80

£10 flat black shoes for working in, can't find any flats in my bag and I'm going to be on my feet all evening at work.
£3 two glass storage jars - I can finally stop my pasta spilling out all over my cupboard.
£2.50 expanding suspension file, I had mystery shopping paperwork and receipts all over the place so def needed.
£9.95 on a laptop tray, mine got broken in the move and being a 3 year old lappy it over heats if I just sit in on my knee.
£2.85 two coffees, the boy bought lunch, drove and paid for the parking in town so I got the coffee's in.

scubaangel

Home from my first night at work, annoyingly we closed early so that lost me an hours pay, hopefully it'll busy up as I can't afford not to be working my full contracted hours each week! Still resisted the lure of Mr T on the way home, and as I didn't get around to eating it this evening I still have the stirfry stuff I'll probably do for lunch with a pile of chopped peppers and mushrooms as they look to be on their last legs now too. Then I'll have to brave the shops again after making some kind of sensible meal plan to get fresh stuff, will have to venture across the bridge as I'm sure I spotted an Aldi and a Lidl when the boy was driving earlier on.

scubaangel

Had a fairly pleasant day, done an easy enough mystery shop which is mostly written up, but the site's being incredibly slow on my dongle so I'll finish it off after work later, visited a dive centre for a chat about getting wet again - they seem nice enough so will probably try to get along to one of their club evenings.

Got around to cooking my slightly out of date stirfry veg too, they looked fairly wilted and very unappetising after I cooked them so I whacked a tin of spicy mixed beans on top to give them some flavour and it was edible if not a meal I'd have chosen, but I do love the tins of beans as I find I can cook them up with absolutely anything, so I'll be popping in to mr T on the way home from work to get a couple more tins with the change in my purse or if I'm sensible I'll do it tomorrow when I've made a proper meal plan for the rest of the week (taking in to account the assorted mystery shops I have booked which involve eating food at some point).

Just thinking about moving my butt off the sofa in my room to get ready for work at 6.30, but feeling too comfy to be bothered at the moment, meh evening work sucks at times!

savingholmes

hi scuba angel - just wanted to wish you good luck on your journey... Good that you have recently started work again.... What else are you looking to get into?

scubaangel

Hi sh, I have absolutely no idea what I want to do, so at the moment am using the bar work to tide me over - and there are a couple of shops linked to the bar so if they need extra staff I can get some overtime there too, and looking to temp mainly I guess I'll happily do almost anything legal and not too minging as a job so I'm hoping I can find something I enjoy or at least use it as a chance to rule out what I don't want to do.

I've established in the past that working in a supermarket is close to my idea of hell, equally sitting at a desk all day only getting to see my colleagues and talking to customers on the phone was horrendously dull, but I enjoyed the work I just couldn't cope with the lack of face to face interaction. I briefly worked at a bookies which was fun for a while but then bored me senseless - although I would go back to it if I was working for one of the chains where I felt I could progress beyond counter slave.

scubaangel

Spent the day 'lazing' in my room again, completed two mystery shops from the comfort of my sofa and got a handful more allocated, really need to find my diary in my as yet unpacked bags so I can start planning them properly, since most are close by there are a couple which mean getting the train in to the 'big' town nearby so obv don;t want to be doing those on the same day as some of the others.

scubaangel

Popped in to mr t on the way home from work last night and shamefully bought things I really really don't need - can't see the receipt just now so spends are approximate.
£1.50 on a book
£1.38 multipack of crisps
£1.60 four choc chip muffins
?? four creme caramels

scubaangel

Nice lazy day today, took the boy out for dinner and a drink thanks to mystery shopping and he's taking me to the cinema this evening which strikes me as a very fair swop. :beer: Just need to get them written up this evening before bed and I forget the details.

Used a Boots No7 voucher to get a pack of make up removing wipes for £1.75 which is the only spend I need to record for today. :j

scubaangel

Back from the cinema, watched Salt, it's ok, but not great and the ending is a lovely set up for a sequel. Not sure it was worth the £30 price tag for an evening out for two people £17 on tickets and £13 on popcorn and two drinks, ahh well the boy paid so it's all good.