September - a new start

Kittikins

Hello, and welcome to my probably dull, unstructured ramblings!!

Having been an avid lurker/occasional poster on lots of DF diaries, and having debt of my own, a whacking big mortgage and lots of things I want/need to start saving for, I've decided to bite the bullet and start a diary to try and keep me on the straight and narrow.......

I did have a diary on the Mortgage Free Wannabee last year but I realised that I needed a cushion first rather than paying down the mortgage, and then I had to buy a newer car as mine died. That really made me realise that my priorities had to change.

So - me in a nutshell: single mum of DD aged 5. We live near the south coast and are best friends Due to careful planning I've managed to keep her going to activities and have some nice holidays this year but have nothing in the pot for the future plans!! She desperately wants to go and see a certain mouse in America, and if I "have" to do it, I'm going to make sure we have enough cash to do it properly, i.e. see lots of


I am the queen of procrastination but have been inspired by the good and the great on here, eg. Hypno and MemoryGirl and a cast of thousands, to gird my loins and be even better at shedding debt, creating savings and having a good life in the meantime!!

My situation:
DEBT
£3,750 to my parents. I'm paying this back at £250/month, 10 months a year.
£148,000 mortgage. Interest only which scares me!

SAVINGS
£453.11 in an ISA
money put aside each month for car tax/insurance/service/MOT etc and house insurance

As this is getting long I'm going to carry on with some more ideas gleaned in a new post.

Kittikins

£3,750 debt to my parents - I want to clear this in a year rather than a year and a half and then possibly use the £250/month to put into savings. The plan is to save up the extra and then pay it all in one go as soon as I have it rather than doing it in dribs and drabs.

I pay £250/month for 10 months a year, so have to find another £1,250 by 1st September 2011. This equates to
£3.43 a day
£24.04 a week
£104.16 a month

MemoryGirl's diary had a suggestion of drawing a "money tree" with branches and leaves to represent payments, colouring in the leaves when money is paid.

I've drawn a tree with one side for debt and the other for the mortgage, but may change this to savings...as I should really try and get the recommended 3-6 months worth of monthly bills saved up before tackling the mortgage!

The debt side has 12 branches, with 52 leaves, with each leaf representing £24, i.e. a week's overpayment requirement.

I have some money to come in from various sources which will help me start colouring leaves in soon:

£32 DD's school shoes (we're off to buy some soon but I'll be getting them free as our local shop does a loyalty card scheme, yay! Going to put the equivalent into the savings pot)
£16 mileage claim at work
£5 Halif&x reward current account payment
£5 Halif&x reward credit card payment (have to spend £300/month on my card and have the current account to make this work)
£4.47 sold a book on Amaxon
£3 sold a book on GMet
£1.25 TV licence DD was cheaper this month so have transferred the money into savings
£20 have applied for the electricity switching off thing from this week's email. When it comes, I'll transfer the money it would have cost into savings, as it's something I've been toying with buying for months and months

I am also going to transfer £3.20 each day this month out of my current account into the pot to make up a month's worth of leaves (£96 = 4 leaves) to see how I go with that. However, I do have probably 2 types of dance shoes, Rainbows subs and dance fees to pay this month, so am going to have to be strict with myself!!

Now to work out how much I'd need to pay 3 or 6 month's worth of bills (gulp).....

Kittikins

£579.22 mortgage
£105 council tax (10 months a year)
£12.12 tv licence
£21.71 water in (10 months a year)
£18.00 water out (10 months a year)
£10.83 life assurance
£5 maximum for 1899 prefix phone calls, not every month
£18 mobile (new contract for 2 years)
£18 gas
£37 electricity
£51 gym membership (expensive I know, but I do need to use it!)
£35 maximum BT for phone/internet
£18 Sky (naughty but nice....got it for the free ip0d/M&S voucher a few months back, but the novelty of recording programmes is wearing off a bit now, so may well cancel when my year is up)
£100 into savings for car maintenance
£41.67 into savings for house insurance

Heck! That's a lot, even before getting the calculator out to work it out or adding in petrol/food type budgets, how challenging!.....£1,070.55

3 months = £3,211.65
6 months = £6,423.30

So, I as 6 months is too depressing to aim for, I'm going to start with 3 months which over 2 years will be approximately £26.50 a week. Sounds a bit more manageable now! Think I'll leave it til I have the car paid off unless I can get really creative!

Kittikins

Yay, the shoes were £40 rather than £32 so that's an extra £8 to the fund. I've also remembered I have a £42 cheque in my handbag to pay into the bank as I won a prize on the school lottery

£40 DD's school shoes
£16 mileage claim at work
£5 Halif&x reward current account payment
£5 Halif&x reward credit card payment
£4.47 sold a book on Amaxon
£3 sold a book on GMet
£1.25 TV licence DD
£20 electricity switching off thing
£42 lottery cheque
£14.03 refund for something I bought for guiding

Yay, day 1 is going well I've also managed a NSD

Kittikins

Moved my £3.20 across.

Need to find a way of generating income, for some reason L!ghtspeed stopped sending me surveys, think I need to contact them to find out why and see if I can get back in their good books.

I'm also stealing MG's 'make £100 stretch as long as possible' and had a NSD yesterday and instead of buying a loaf of bread, made some scrumptious bread rolls last night, DD said they're the best ever and gave me a big hug. I think it helps that they're with white flour rather than stoneground wholemeal........kids huh!!

So, the plan is to stop buying bread as it's a major binge problem for me, and instead to make bread/rolls as
a) it's cheaper
b) they're made with ingredients I recognise, therefore healthier!
c) they're scrummy
d) they'll take time to make so I can eat fruit/cereal instead whilst they're going through the process....

Fingers crossed!!

Kittikins

Oops, broke into my stretchy £100 at lunchtime.....darn it! Popped into a charity shop to look at a book I saw in the window and then ended up with

£3.99 beautiful bridesmaid dress for DD to have as her christmas day dress from Father Christmas, along with her stocking....it's a bit big so may end up being for next year but was so gorgeous I couldn't leave it in there. They had 3 dresses in different sizes, shocking to think how much they had cost for the "big day" and how the owner had generously donated them to the charity shop rather than trying to raise some cash on eb*y (which is what I'll be considering as well!)
£2.00 Danny Champion of the World DVD - again for DD. I'm hoping that she's going to have passed her recent dance exam and as I bought her a present to celebrate the first exam, I would like to mark the occasion again We LOVE Roald Dahl in our house and Danny is currently on repeat in the car, so it'll be something we will both enjoy
£0.99 bag of apples. I'm ravenous and my packed lunch didn't quite fill the gap. I'm proud of myself for buying this and not the bag of chocolate raisins. Okay, so they both contain fruit but.....

So, how long can I make £93.02 last now?

Aspiration

Sounds like your doing well, and at least you've thought about your purchases!!!! What's your plan for increasing income further, did the surveys make you a fair bit before then??

Aspiration

Kittikins

Hi Aspiration, thanks for stopping by - have a virtual Twinks hobnob

Looking at my Quidco account, I've made over £1k in 3 years (a lot of it has disappeared into the ether.....) so I'm going to have a look around there and see if there are any "bargains" to be found. I'm probably due a switch in the gas/electricity sector, that usually pays well - it takes a while but fingers crossed, I've always been lucky and have been paid for things!

I do Pinecone and Lightspeed surveys - and LS got back to me and said they'd had a software glitch and my name had been taken off in error, so I've been reinstated on there - yippee!! I get Paypal or Amazon vouchers from LS, and always used to get up to the £5 starting limit quite quickly. It's worth a shot!

Apart from that, I don't know how I'm going to get more money, I think it's more realistically going to be a moneysaving exercise for me. I know lots of people do scratchcards/reviews but they seem to be drying up and not worth it for new starters, so I'll probably leave that.

Kittikins

Kittikins wrote: »

£40 DD's school shoes
£16 mileage claim at work
£5 Halif&x reward current account payment
£5 Halif&x reward credit card payment
£4.47 sold a book on Amaxon
£3 sold a book on GMet
£1.25 TV licence DD
£20 electricity switching off thing
£42 lottery cheque
£14.03 refund for something I bought for guiding

So, after moving my £3.20 and £5 across, I now have 2 leaves of my tree coloured in already, go me!!

I'm working from home today and the house is a pigsty. I must make the most of 'coffee breaks' to tackle it before my dad comes to pick DD up for the weekend. As I've got a stinking cold, I'm not welcome up there as my mum picks up every bug going, so I shall sleep and watch DVDs and maybe force myself to go to the gym if I'm feeling up to it....after all, that £51 a month gym membership needs to be justified somehow!!

Memory_Girl

bright shiny new diary - wooohoooo!!!!!!!!

we are all on our way together

memorygirl

Kittikins

Hi MG, thanks for stopping in oh great and inspirational one I feel really fired up and enthusiastic to keep tackling things at the moment, it WILL last!!