Scuba's Spending and Life in the South Diary

scubaangel

Payment on to the credit card made and has made no difference to the payments remaining, but I've another £10 to move when it arrives in my bank account thanks to surveying my afternoon away.

scubaangel

Got the pennies from my paypal account, but my normal bank account is looking horribly depleted so haven't moved it on to the credit card yet - the other half is away for a couple of weeks now so I'm not sure if I'll be spending more or less than usual as although he wont be eating everything he also wont be here for me to talk him in to paying when we go to the shops.

scubaangel

So far the absence of a stinky male has meant spending less than usual, although I did have a little 'splurge' on clothes in Primark the other day - was walking through the shopping centre as they moved a rail of t-shirts marked up at £1 each in to the door way, so found myself a couple of new summer t's, boring old socks as my nice thick sport socks are starting to feel quite thin and a pair of jeans as I finally binned one pair which holes near the inside seam and a pair of combats I managed to tear after I caught a belt loop on a door handle.
I also invested in a pair of walking shoes from lidl as my current hiking boots are far too warm to wear in summer but are also my preferred footwear. In total I've spent £38 on clothes - and now have a whole £20 left in the bank to cover the rest of this months expenses. But if I need to I'll take the clothes money out of my other bank account so I have a bit more cash left to play with.

I've also got a fair bit of ms work booked, which I need to cost up in terms of travel expenses (mainly the train) and purchase costs so I can take that money out of the float account.

Things I still need to get pretty much include some kind of potato to go with my planned dinners this week, feeling quite lazy so I think it'll be a bag of frozen oven chips (the smelly one dislikes chips so we don't tend to have them in the freezer). Luckily work had a fair few short dated items which I now have residing in my freezer, more sausages, some chicken and mushroom pies and a couple of bottles of diet coke - coke being something I consider a complete luxury these days, as I'm trying to cut down on the sugar and rubbish in my diet.

I can also quite proudly report that I have walked to work on all 4 of my shifts this week - and even walked in to work on my day off for a coffee as my hangover demanded it and I knew the fresh air would help (plus going to work for coffee is very ms....), just need to walk tomorrow and thats 5/5 shifts walking.

scubaangel

Still doing well in the walking to work stakes - only been in the car once in the last 10 days, and that was Friday when we were dressed up for Red Nose day....I didn't fancy walking home in my costume!

Slow progress however has been made on the credit card front, the cashback has been paid and a small additional payment has been sent finally getting the repayment time below 38 months....barely. So it's time to start looking up a new card for a balance transfer - preferably one which is Visa to pay for any Olympics tickets I'm lucky enough to get allocated.

scubaangel

A nice productive day off, headed in to the bright lights of the city to do a couple of mystery shops, and while I was there finally got around to changing my address with my main bank, and applied for their credit card as its a Visa rather than a Mastercard, plus I can finally do the balance transfer from the current credit card, if I have the maths right just doing the transfer will knock 5 months off the length of time I'll be paying it off and thats just paying my set amount a month, given most months I can pay off extra with any luck it'll be near cleared by the end of the interest free period.

scubaangel

Urgh the last week or so has been horrendous. But tis in the past now so onwards etc.

The list of things I need to do is still growing but mainly in terms of my ms diary filling up, and with waiting for confirmation of my shifts at work during the site close down which is due later this month. Definitely feeling that I need a change of scenery from work so am hoping that its going to be a case of a change being as good as a rest!

Just checked for what I should be expecting tax wise from this month and it appears I'll have a rather lovely extra £100ish each month, I should really make the effort to find out exactly how much I earned last year and check if I need to be applying for a rebate on my payee stuff - three different full time jobs plus one part time/casual job means that it's not as simple as it should be, complicated by the fact that one employer (the one I was with for 4 whole weeks) never gave me any payslips much less sent me a p45 when I left.

Naturally any extra money will be put straight to the credit card as even paying off part of it a month will get it cleared that much faster so I can start saving.

scubaangel

Finally had a confirmation email from the bank about the credit card I applied for, at the moment I have 36 months of payments to go, and have managed to knock a few pennies off after doing some mystery shops. Downloaded some paper work about joining my work sharesave scheme, I know I should be paying off my debts first but I figure its worth using some of the extra money from finally getting off the emergency tax code and buying shares, comes out of my salary pretax and according to a financial advisor who works with my Dad the company is pretty 'safe' as these things go at the moment.

scubaangel

Must remember not to try to encourage people with jobs different to mine to drink on a 'school' night.....home from a couple of quiet ones after work - and am now apparently the reason for two of them failing a fitness test tomorrow morning (hey I didn't force them to drink three bottles of wine with me!) am fairly tempted to go in to work tomorrow and stand at the end point of the run part of the test ready to hand out sports drinks and coffee but am more likely to still be asleep when they start and finish, lol.

In other less interesting news I'll be out mystery shopping most of to tomorrow, which will be fun as the morning's jobs need me to take a friend, so am treating a work mate who's off sick to a morning out of her house.

New credit card arrived at my old address which I was very unimpressed about, but is activated so I just need the code to activate the online management facility so I can do the balance transfer.

scubaangel

Another late one in scuba world, finished writing up a mystery shop I did earlier and have finally got around to bagging up the piles of small change which were taking over my living room floor (the money tin was full so I tipped it all out) think it's about £30 but will finish it off and try to get it in to the bank tomorrow or Friday morning and it ought to be landing on my credit card by the middle of next week any that doesnt go in to nice neat money bags will get dropped in to my 'Sealed Pot Challenge' bottle ready for opening at the end of the year.

scubaangel

Still not got around to paying the change in to the bank so will take it with me to work tomorrow and hope I get away early enough to pay it in on my way home - along with some birthday cheques from my family.

Spent most of today doing very little but managed to get four mystery shops done and written up and a trip to the petshop for a new filter and an aquarium set up kit so at some point soon I can get the nanotank up and running. In the mean time the petboy is talking about getting pet rats or degu's. So our flat is probably going to turn in to a petting zoo within a few weeks!