*Swimstars no more splash with cash*

*swimstar*

WEll my £2 jar is coming on a treat!! :-) took £10 out to buy some veg today and got 3 £2 coins in my change! :-) think I'll use it to save for a friends bday in london - not till march but with the £2's i have already, thats my train fare all paid for! :-) have been working out a budget today and am all planned up until December with birthdays petrol random emergency funds etc all added so i know how much I actually have each month.....jsut need to try and stick to it!! ;-) have done it so far this month and get paid next friday so fingers crossed :-) there is a miniscule chance i may get a bit more than usual but not hoping too much just in case :-)

*swimstar*

Well I havent logged on for ages..... :-( but the debt busting has been keeping me busy!

Only have 4 payments left on the car which is £180 a month so in September I will fully own the car and be able to redirect £180 to horrible credit cards. One of them sent me a letter stating they'd changed the way they worked out the min payment and so mine would be increasing which made me panic as I didnt know if I'd have enough to pay for it....however I juggled things round, and pay £40 more off it a month, but the balance is actually decreasing now which is lovely to see!

Have had a few life changing thoughts too.....

A lot of my spending issues lie with being single and living at home at the grand old age of 30.

However i read a book about finding your goal and realised that if everybody thought i was a loser for the above, I should change my everybody.....it is the situation i have found myself in, through various different decisions that I have made, but if i could go back i would still make the same decisions as I would want to have the lessons I have learnt still. So if people judge me for who i am then i simply wont have them in my life....so far this has worked amazingly and feel so much happier with who i am.

It was my 30th last week and my 2 best friends showed their true colours. Id thrown them both a surprise party, made all the food, cakes, decorations, and generally spoilt them silly, whilst saying that I didnt want a surprise. We went out for a meal and they gave me an empty box with the statement "havent got round to getting you a present yet" (the present was worth £25, their pressies from the group were £120) and the other one said i havent bothered to get you a card yet......so that pretty much devastated me, not the present, or the money, but the sheer lack of thought. So i started panicking that i would be staying in forever without them as friends and i'd end up a hermit in total debt......

then i realised that actually had they been friends to me at all they wouldnt have treated me like that and they would understand that i dont have money and stop pressuring me to spend all the time.

So after a week of tears, I am now feeling much stronger, happier and confident with myself. If i stay in at the weekend - so what? I have an active life, plenty of friends and the sheer determination to get me out of the mess that I have got myself into!!

So far this week I have had 3 NSDs and last month was the first month in history that i havent had a letter from the back stating i have spent too much :-)

So onwards and upwards I can see a chink of light at the end of the tunnel!!! :-D

Flee_2

Happy birthday for last weekend. Your friends have been very mean, I hope they feel ashamed of themselves.
Don't stay at home feeling sorry for yourself, you are still young at 30 and should be having fun. As you say you have plenty of friends, an active life and sheer determination to get out of the mess, so go get them tiger! You seem a positive person who cares a lot about other people. I hope things work out for you.

ZTD

*swimstar* wrote: »

Well I havent logged on for ages..... :-( but the debt busting has been keeping me busy!

Only have 4 payments left on the car which is £180 a month so in September I will fully own the car and be able to redirect £180 to horrible credit cards. One of them sent me a letter stating they'd changed the way they worked out the min payment and so mine would be increasing which made me panic as I didnt know if I'd have enough to pay for it....however I juggled things round, and pay £40 more off it a month, but the balance is actually decreasing now which is lovely to see!

It will also make things cheaper. Martin has various articles on his site about it taking several decades to pay off a credit card while only paying the minimum payments.

Have had a few life changing thoughts too.....

A lot of my spending issues lie with being single and living at home at the grand old age of 30.

There's nothing wrong with being single, nothing wrong with living at home, and nothing wrong with being 30. Your time will come... (except being 30 - that's not gonna happen again...)

*swimstar* wrote: »

So if people judge me for who i am then i simply wont have them in my life....so far this has worked amazingly and feel so much happier with who i am.

That's exactly how it should be. A number of people together should lift each other up. Friendship is not a see-saw where in order to rise, you've got to push others down.

*swimstar* wrote: »

It was my 30th last week and my 2 best friends showed their true colours. Id thrown them both a surprise party, made all the food, cakes, decorations, and generally spoilt them silly, whilst saying that I didnt want a surprise. We went out for a meal and they gave me an empty box with the statement "havent got round to getting you a present yet" (the present was worth £25, their pressies from the group were £120) and the other one said i havent bothered to get you a card yet......so that pretty much devastated me, not the present, or the money, but the sheer lack of thought. So i started panicking that i would be staying in forever without them as friends and i'd end up a hermit in total debt......

then i realised that actually had they been friends to me at all they wouldnt have treated me like that and they would understand that i dont have money and stop pressuring me to spend all the time.

So after a week of tears, I am now feeling much stronger, happier and confident with myself. If i stay in at the weekend - so what? I have an active life, plenty of friends and the sheer determination to get me out of the mess that I have got myself into!!

Exactly. There are plenty of fish in the sea, even for friends. If friends exceed your tolerance limits, then it's time to move along. I just quietly drift away, but I'm like that.

Giving an empty box is a bit awful though.

*swimstar* wrote: »

So far this week I have had 3 NSDs and last month was the first month in history that i havent had a letter from the back stating i have spent too much :-)

:T

*swimstar* wrote: »

So onwards and upwards I can see a chink of light at the end of the tunnel!!! :-D

Just so long as it isn't going choo-choo...

*swimstar*

Thanks for the replies guys - really made me smile its nice to know theres people out there not judging and supporting you on your way - thank you

have been on a positive thinking course recently which is very mse as its free - and its about changing the way that you think about things.

So when i went to mr t on sunday and tried on loads of things just because i wanted to spend money I stood there and actually asked myself if buying these things would make me feel happier - and unsurprisingly owning another black top would make no difference to my happiness, yet having another £10 in my bank would. So out I walked with my 36p value baby wipes and nowt else! :j that was a first!!

its taken me a helluva long time to come to terms with my life being single 30 and at home but as its where my life has ended up then why worry about it?! at the end of the day its whats happened, I'm ok, so if people judge me on it then so be it, and i would then need to ask if they are the kind of people that i want in my life. I moved out, and due to my own misplaced trust and general financial ignorance ended up in a lot of debt paying off someone elses mortgage so moved home again. A sound financial decision in my opinion, it doesnt make me attached to the apron strings, or a loser, just sensible! (i never thought i would describe myself as sensible haha!!)

Another mse (ish) weekend coming up, agreed to babysit tomorrow night for my friends lickle baby :-) cant wait! and then a fancy dress party sat (am driving so will get water to drink therefore not spending anything!) and a party in town on sunday = not quite so mse as the train is £14 but i wont drink that much so max budget is £20. I debated not going as i dont want to spend £, but its with people i havent seen since uni and it would be really nice to catch up with them and see what everyones up to :-)

Monday is being spent going through paperwork and sorting out my huge pile of stuff to put on the Bay. made £50 on it last month!! wooo!!! :money:

minor trip to a shopping centre tonight as mum wants some paint and cant get there herself so i offered to take her......and i want to get some new shoes (£8 in primarni, with my £10 voucher from doing surveys :-)) to replace those which i ruined on a very drunken evening last week = they were beautiful works of art style canvas shoes and i put my toe through the end of one when i fell over - oops! damn you jaegerbomb!

so am having a test of myself to see if i can go and only spend what i have planned to spend.....we shall see!!

Hope everyone out there is having a good thursday and is looking forward to the weekend!:rotfl:

*swimstar*

well I went to said shopping centre and emerged pretty pleased with myself!!

picked lots of lovely things up, walked around with them for a bit, tried them on, went to buy them and put them back!

this is despite the fact that i've lost 2 stone recently and have one pair of trousers that fit me, so do need new clothes.

I just figured that yeah i'd be happy after the purchase, then i'd feel guilty, then i'd look at my spreadsheet, then i'd be stressing about money. So how about stopping the process in its tracks and not buying anything?

so i bought 3 pairs of shoes - with a voucher and some birthday money (that i was given with the specific instructions not to spend on groceries/debt/petrol but to spend on frivolous things!) bringing my total spend to a mahusive £1 (they were £26 and I had £25)

so all in all pretty pleased with myself.

Had 4 NSDs this week too an all time record! :-) and even though i have a plain jacket potato for lunch i am refusing point blank to go and get anything to go with it (probably via the chip shop) as I dont want to spend money :-)

hope everyone has a lovely friday!! am on the countdown till 520 when i can leave work and begin my weekend!!:rotfl:

*swimstar*

Been lurking for a bit again but still pledging to be debt free!

I had a hint as to where my attitude to money comes from - I was explaining to my parents that my car finance is paid up in September (180 a month woohoo!!) and the response from dad was " well you can go and get a new car then". I explained that its taken me 5 years to pay off a 12k ish loan to pay for the car i have, which i love and has never let me down - nothing special just a little fiesta but its beautiful and i love it - and his response was " its not proper debt for a car loan though as you need a car to survive" - true in the fact i do need a car to survive as i cant get to any of my 3 jobs without it, but saying its not proper debt??!! thats what got me into this mess!! and if buying something i need means its not proper debt - i cant begin to count the number of times I've needed a pair of shoes or a top or a new handbag!! However I said to dad that theres nothing wrong with the car Ive got, and I will not buy a car on finance again, its paid in full or i cant have it.

And my overdraft is 1600 and at the end of the payday month i am always around 1750 overdrawn.....this month it was 1322 od!!!!! :-D I paid the difference to people i owe money to bringing the total down and still have £ left to have a bit (a lot) of fun this payday month!! Such a boost and really kick started me on the debt free journey again

This month theres a lot of social stuff going on, but at the same time I'm driving to a lot of them and still doing 3 jobs, and I'll paid 2 people off, leaving me around £300 a month to throw at credit cards. I can really see a light at the end of the tunnel finally!!!

Just cannot wait till the first bank statement with a plus sign on it, and all the credit card statements saying balance is zero!

Onwards and upwards :-D:T

ZTD

*swimstar* wrote: »

" its not proper debt for a car loan though as you need a car to survive" - true in the fact i do need a car to survive as i cant get to any of my 3 jobs without it, but saying its not proper debt??!! thats what got me into this mess!! and if buying something i need means its not proper debt - i cant begin to count the number of times I've needed a pair of shoes or a top or a new handbag!!

The only debt that's not proper debt, is the debt accrued during a game of Monopoly...