Amatheya's £4,000 in 2011 Diary

Amatheya81

Question - Should I create a new debt diary for 2012? After all this one was only supposed to be £4k in 2011.

Also is £6k a challenging enought goal? By the end of the year I think I will have paid off about £5,150 if my predictions are correct so maybe I should give myself more of a challeng?

Amatheya81

Seriously I'm starting to think I'm jinxed!

I was really happy when I looked over my finances at the end of last week and realised that I was actually on track this month after all. Great I though. But then my phone bill came in and I realised I'd spent a lot more time trying to fix family issues than I'd thought. My bill was £75 Eeek! That's ok, I thought. The bill sucks but I can absorb that somewhere, then last night while I was eating my dinner a firework hit my living room window shattering it! Another £100 down the drain.

I don't mean to be melodromatic but why is it always me?

Amatheya81

Nearly at the £5k payed mark now. I will hopefully hit it before the end of the year despite all the rubbish that's going on at the moment and Christmas comming up but I'm going to have to get eBaying!

Targets for the month
- eBay stuff every Sunday
- Re-vamp website
- Do Christmas shopping without breaking the bank

Short, sweet and simple... oh and have no more expensive bad luck, that would be nice

Amatheya81

So, it's pay day tomorrow. I've done just about all my Christmas shopping (Ouch!) I've sold nearly all of my friends stuff which has earned me about £70 and I've earned another £10 voucher fir Amazon which will hopefully turn into another art book. I've also has my knee signed off as fit for low impact exercise so I can start going to the gym again.
The first of the december will mark my loan going under £5k (although the Christmas shopping probably means that I havent paid off any debt this month) and I'm hoping that it will also mark the last Christmas that I spend in debt as if I can pay off a extra £700 next year I should pay it off by December 2012.

I'm still conssidering my goals for next year, not just financial but personal too. I love New Year resolutions as they really spur me on to get stuff done. This year I'm now nearly certain that I will choose to do the following.

1) Pay off my loan - As mentioned before I can achieve this if I can get my hands on an extra £750 to pay towards it. To achieve that I'm going to re-double my efforts at selling eBay stuff. My own and my friends. I'm also going to try to cut the fat off my expenses again as I think they've crept up while I wasn't looking. If need be I'll start thinking about drastic measures such as selling furniture etc... After all who really needs a coffee table lol.
2) I need to get my weight back on track. I've decided that next year I will invest in Weight Watchers again. I did weight watchers 2 years ago and lost 2 stone. If I can repeat that then I will be down to my ideal weight. It is more expence which conflicts with goal 1 but it will be worth it if I can get into all my cloathes again!
3) End the year with a full portfolio. I've been muching about with are for far too long now without giving myself enough of a kick up the bum. Buy the end of 2012 I want to have a professional looking portfolio of at least 30 items. I've now found my favourite medium and style so I can focus a bit more on getting this done. I also want to start selling some home made prints of my work to get some revenue going through my books. In Jan I shall re-write my business plan and by the middle of next year I will start sending examples of my work to art directors.

So that's 3 resolutions covering money, health and work. All the major areas of my life. I will be making a new diary in Jan which I'll keep updated with my progress on all 3 and I will still be aiming to pay off a minimum of £6k of debt in 2012. Fingers crossed that 2012 will be slightly less eventfull than 2011 with no nasty expensive surprises!

As for the rest of 2011. I'm just about ready to write it off as Christmas is turning out to be a lot more expensive that I expected but never mind. The Christmas tree goes up next week and that always makes me happy