Double Trouble but twice as nice

moo2moo

Can OH get involved with another church vaguely locally? Most of the vicars here cover two or even three churches as its the only way to keep some of them open. No matter how ugly your church it can't be any worse than a registry office can it? People only need a couple of interior shots, the rest can be taken elsewhere. Our vicar is raking it in since he put up a poster informing the locals that a church wedding could be obtained for a twentieth of what the local posh venue is charging. May help to put a price list outside. Cheesy yes but people have wacky assumptions.

Surely your church contributes something towards your living expenses?

hypno06

You sound very focused on it all at the mo, DT, which is a good thing - sometimes it is the crappiest of situations that bring out the best in us. I know that in the past when I have just "known we are skint", the focus hasn't been more than half hearted, but when the poo hit the fan at various points in my journey, it really did spur me on to do things properly, and as a result positive changes really were made.

Keep going, you're doing fine - you still have options open to you (eg selling the villa, upping the mystery shopping again etc) so have things to fall back on if the everyday MSE stuff doesn't produce enough of a difference.

x

chevalier

sorry to hear that things financially are so tough this start of the year.

i don't think i have anything else to add in terms of money making, other than I guess your OH getting some form of paid employment. Even if it is just doing surveys etc himself. I would imagine he would be popular because men don't do surveys as much as women, so they need more men to make the surveys balanced....

then of course there is the competitions board for things to sell on ebay or things to treat yourself with whilst you are so tight financially

good luck
chev

Double_Trouble

Thanks for all the support it is much appreciated.

I thought I was in real trouble this morning as it took 40 minutes for the laptop to start and load windows I manage to delete a few things to see if it would help and then accidentally shut it down and when it restarted it was fine so that was a very big relief as once OS goes back to uni tomorrow I don't have access to any other computer and there is definitely no replacement laptop fund :eek:

I am not sure whether to admit this as I might get admitted somewhere else :rotfl::rotfl::rotfl: but I am actually enjoying this budgeting business but I can see I am going to be very obsessive about it OH did the shopping today for the weekend and he definitely scored 10/10 thankfully now he has his new bifocals he can read the prices properly as before he was always having to swap glasses and it was hopeless and he made some exceedingly good choices and only spent £33.70 which is a miracle:D

So tonight is the end of the first week of the year I know that is cheating because we didn't start budgeting on the 1st but I have tracked back and put all the spending in the spreadsheet and we are under budget so that is a good start but I don't expect it will be that easy every week. Still one down and 51 to go

DTxx

hypno06

Obsessive is good. We like obsessive :T

mooomin

Come and join us on the Frugal Living Challenge if you like.

I'm in constant awe of the ladies on there and pick up loads of tips on moneysaving from them. They're a lovely non-judgemental lot too, even though our combined mobile bills for the years are more than some people's food budget

mooomin

hypno06 wrote: »

Obsessive is good. We like obsessive :T

Says the woman logging on to MSE from Switzerland :rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

gilligansyle

hypno06 wrote: »

Obsessive is good. We like obsessive :T

Obsessive is sometimes necessary

flying_fresian wrote: »

Says the woman logging on to MSE from Switzerland :rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

.....as the woman logging on to her bank from Switzerland found out

Double_Trouble

I thought I had better rescue my diary from the doldrums - I have been reading just not posting and spending too much time on frontierville and playing bingo to get vouchers which is very slow progress:o but as I have no designated present budget it has to come from Mr. T vouchers, other vouchers I can acquire or the tightly pressed general budget.

Thanks to a winter fuel payment Mom received, a £20 win today on the 200 club at church I will be just under budget this week which I am very pleased about as it included the trip to Cardiff and bringing back 2 cars and the consequent petrol costs but if it had not been for those 2 unexpected payments I would either have been over budget or else I would have had to delay my weekend shopping until Saturday and take 4 kids with me :eek: not a pleasant prospect.

I have heard from the census job that they haven't decided yet so that is still a possibility. I have had a fostering panel cancelled this week and I can't make the rearranged date so that is a loss of income which is a b****r :mad:

We have started to break the reduction in income news this week to people outside the immediate family who need to know such as the charity trustees as I will not be able to go to Uganda this year and probably not next so we need to have a meeting and decide what to do about that but at least they know. Also broke the news at church that I will have to reduce my giving. I hate telling people but needs must we didn't tell anyone about our previous reduction and just absorbed it but this one is not absorbable without making drastic changes which affect other people too. It was quite a relief to tell really rather than try and hide it.

The other good news is that the car passed its MOT and the insurance was less than I thought it would be so the car budget is looking good so far and saturday starts a new week so I will have a fresh pot of money to spend

Onwards and onwards

DTxx

macgirl

Good news about the win, MOT and coming in under budget. Telling people you have to reduce your charitable contributions I'm sure will sound normal and understandable in this present climate.
Grrrrr to the fostering income loss and yay to you sounding more positive :T