Double Trouble but twice as nice

Souk08

Hi lovely lady, glad to hear you're on the case! And I'm with Hypno in that there's nothing finer than a spreadsheet. Work are buying me an Excel for Dummies book this month. I got more excited about that than is decent as not only will it mean I can do stuff with my figures at work, I will also be able to footer with stuff on my laptop too. Yippee!!!!!

Sorry to hear about the fostering and XXX

Karmacat

Double_Trouble wrote: »

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.
I can understand going onto frontiersville ... you can forget about all the really carp stuff for a bit.

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.
Nope! Thats excellent - I *think* I have a really weird £20 coming to me out of the blue like that - I checked with one of my water boards about duplicate accounts and payments, and they didn't respond in their own target time, but the first thing I realised was when a letter turned up giving me £20 for the privilege!

I have heard from the census job that they haven't decided yet so that is still a possibility.
I had the same email - I hope it just means that they've got an admin snafu, not that they're absolutely inundated - I suspect they're absolutely inundated tho

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.
That just had to be done, I think - you've lost so much income, its bound to make a difference eventually to what you can do.

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
Thats good.

Onwards and onwards

DTxx

DT, I used the gluten free cookery book you sent me! I made pancakes tonight - buckwheat and soya flour, I have a big non stick pan that I can set aside for pancakes only, and 4oz of flour as per the recipe will make just two pancakes (a lot less fuss!) and on the big ring it cooks nice and quickly. Brill! Thank you :kisses3:

Double_Trouble

Karmacat wrote: »

DT, I used the gluten free cookery book you sent me! I made pancakes tonight - buckwheat and soya flour, I have a big non stick pan that I can set aside for pancakes only, and 4oz of flour as per the recipe will make just two pancakes (a lot less fuss!) and on the big ring it cooks nice and quickly. Brill! Thank you :kisses3:

:j:j:j:j:j:j

DTxx

boredofbeingathome

Lots of positives there DT xx

taxi73

glad you've got it off your chest regarding the charitable stuff..it can't be helped in this climate.
well done on the extra bits that came in

gilligansyle

Probably the hardest thing with the charity bit was actually the telling, I'm sure they understood, and at the moment you just can't do it. Depending on what happens, things may change, but you will get there.

I do sort of still have my halo though, I haven't gone back to FV or the cafe one, or any of the gifting games, but occasionally do one of the marble maze ones, as they are really relaxing. But then again, I did get a Nintendo DSi for Christmas, and so that wastes a bit of time.

Double_Trouble

gilligansyle wrote: »

I do sort of still have my halo though, I haven't gone back to FV or the cafe one, or any of the gifting games, but occasionally do one of the marble maze ones, as they are really relaxing. But then again, I did get a Nintendo DSi for Christmas, and so that wastes a bit of time.

My halo is definitely round my ankles :rotfl::rotfl:I am still addicted to frontierville but at least it is only one game whereas before I was playing lots of them still takes a long time though and I am trying to catch up for the months I have missed oh well have to pander to my competitive nature sometimes

Weather has been dire here today so I was indoors with 4 kids one of which is not very well OH was at Autosport International staying with friends last night which was my Christmas present to him but he has been very good and bought me the receipts for spends which amounted to £27.40 which included petrol so he has been very restrained and now he is making me a capuccino so all is well with the world and it is the start of a new week so I have a lovely new untouched budget to play with.

Fell out with Sky yesterday got so cross with them that in the end I said just cancel everything so I now have a month to sort out TV viewing for the family. We have one TV which was Mom's which has freeview built in which she doesn't use any more so we will use that in replacement for our old TV and then we will have to get a box for the one the kids watch. I think I have to sort aerials out too as we have always had sky and have no aerial any experts out there please feel free to advise the reduction in channels does not worry me I think the kids might be a bit cross although strangely at the moment they have reverted to CBeebies which they have not watched for a couple of years at least so lets hope they continue to want to watch that because from what I can see the children's channels are a bit lmited. Once I have paid out the upfront costs though it will help the budget too

Hopefully a fairy inexpensive week ths week so the budget should be fine it makes me wonder what we used to spend the money on before the little things mount up and also having OH fully committed to reporting his spending is making him much more aware of what he is spending too - it is not all rosy though because we have a shortfall to catch up with which I have not spoken about I have worked the budget out on a full year's income divided by 52 but in fact we will not be paid until end April and I do not have four months income left from the pay we had at the end of October due to paying too much off debts based on present circumstances and we always spend more in Nov and Dec and then claw it back Jan to April and if not from the April pay. Obviously this year I am not going to have the luxury of using the April pay to catch up as it all needed for the budget so I am keeping this figure separate and setting against it any underspends in the budget and any unexpected income. Realistically it is unlikely to be cleared by the end April so will be carried forward until it is gone which is the first aim so that I have the full budget available and then any underspends will be used to build an emergency fund which will be placed in our offset mortgage so that it will be in fact set against debt if it is not needed. Obviously if I had known the true situation I would not have allowed this short fall to accrue but that's life.

Things are going OK I keep thinking I must have missed something vital as it seems too easy at the moment (famous last words:eek:) but of course cancelling holidays, trip to Uganda and all luxuries does mount up the trick is still being able to retain a decent quality of life despite the things we have given up because we don't know how long this is going to take but without a miracle this is going to be a long haul budget and there is no guarantee we won't have to tighten even more next year - I think my major worries are my car as it has done 158K and although fine at the moment wont last forever and interest rates going up on the mortgage which they have to eventually so I need to be really strict now to try and build up some reserves and plan for the worst.

DTxx

taxi73

you are doing so great with the budgets and I'm sure you'll iron out any little creases in there.

you do need an aerial with freeview but did you know that when you're sky is switched off that all the boxes still work as you get the freeview channels through them so don't need an aerial.We have no aerial and are watching freeview through our sky box.

gilligansyle

taxi73 wrote: »

you are doing so great with the budgets and I'm sure you'll iron out any little creases in there.

you do need an aerial with freeview but did you know that when you're sky is switched off that all the boxes still work as you get the freeview channels through them so don't need an aerial.We have no aerial and are watching freeview through our sky box.

Good tip, you can still get the basic channels.

You may find that the cost of having an aerial installed just isn't worth it, especially as you'll probably need a booster, most people do. Did your mum never use the freeview on her telly?

You are getting OH well trained, so at least he is now conscious of his spends.

Double_Trouble

gilligansyle wrote: »

Good tip, you can still get the basic channels.

You may find that the cost of having an aerial installed just isn't worth it, especially as you'll probably need a booster, most people do. Did your mum never use the freeview on her telly?

You are getting OH well trained, so at least he is now conscious of his spends.

Thank you so much Taxi for the tip about the boxes I will give it a go does anyone know where I can find out which free channels I will get through the sky box.

No Gill she never used the freeview I hadnt realised it was in the TV until we bought it and she can't cope with changes so it was easier just to let her carry on using sky as she couldn't grasp how to get the freeview channels but then she stopped using the TV altogether which was when we tried to cancel her multi room and when all the problems started as sky said hers was the main box although it was the last one we had :mad: and because she hadn't used it we couldn't find the new white card and they were supposed to send another one but didn't and then they said they wouldn't cancel it but just stop charging us for it and didn't and when I rang to sort it out they wanted to send another card out and charge me £10 and that was when I told them to stuff it.

Another day should be a low spend day today unless our foster child wants to go to the cinema jury is out at the moment as he hasn't got up yet - not gone to church today as my little boy is still poorly with a very nasty cough and sore throat so OH is going to get him something to suck so we had a bad night again:(

Still raining sorry I have to say I prefer the snow - I am a kid at heart

DTxx