Breaking an old habbit!

millionaire_in_training

Your ex sounds like he is not worth you thinking about him so much. That was a terrible thing to do. Very rude.

I'm glad you are enjoying job so far. I feel your pain on the boredom front. I am in class training for 4.5 weeks and I am ready to run away after 2.

weeclick

Hey MIT - yup thought it was rude myself, but in fairness realised I never gave him my mobile number so he had no way of letting me know :mad: actually hang on come to think about it, he could of messaged me on facebook, both of our mobiles support the facebook app - so not falling for it. Its ok though its him that loses out, he had a free lift to and from work for whenever he needed it, saving £20 a week, we never asked for a penny!! :mad:

On that front, he will never get me chasing again, joined a website tonight and had a private message already, not bad with only 10 mins of joining - Im not looking for anything but do need to put myself into more social situations and quite frankly cant see that happening with anyone at work!!

Training is so stressful because theres just so much to do, Im glad its the weekend tomorrow theres only so much internet technical modules your brain can intake in any 24 hour period and each day the point at when my brain switches off seems to get earlier and earlier. Can you believe we were only back from lunch 10 minutes when we started complaining we needed another break just to breath and clear our melting heads!!

Would so love to stretch the budget for a bottle of vodka so I could make my new favourite drink all weekend - vodka and cranberry slush puppy :T:beer:

Wish me luck for tomorrow - dont know how I will survive another day lol :rotfl: MIT dont know how you manage 4.5 weeks!!!

millionaire_in_training

I can believe it yes. My training has been a mix of online learning and facilitated learning. The facilitated is okay but really consists of trainer reading from a power point presentation but the online learning makes me want to jump out the window, It's as if a signal reaches my brain and says 'sleep'. It's awful. I went for a 40 minute walk at lunch today just to clear the fog. So still feeling your pain.

weeclick

Have had a pretty rubbish morning. Firstly my body clock has now decided that 9am is a lie in!! In fairness its an extra 2 hours than what I get in the week, but would have loved to have not opened my eyes until at least 10am!! Anyway got a nasty email from an old wedding client who is threatening legal action because they havent had their album yet - i cant make an album without them approving the draft copy which was sent last week to the same email address :mad: Now having to waste tomorrow coming up with a legally acceptable reply to them - have been advised to send the letter to their address the old fashioned way so I have prove it was sent / they received it.

Anyway - not going to dwell on it - realised my lovely wee thread has become very negative from me lately so Im working to change that - I started this year, and this thread on the great promises that 2011 had in store and Im determined to get my mind refocused on that :T

Very productive morning - Our house, alone a rental is a new build, the builders handed the key to me and our contract was signed with the landlord a week before the house was even ready! Very exciting to have the opportunity to be the first person to live in this house, its rare to have a new build on the rental market for this area!! Thats all great but when we moved in 2.5 years ago we never imagined we would have the trouble we do - our shower in the ensuite didnt work for the first 3 months, we spoke to the builders several times and they didnt tak notice until the archway (which leads to the car port for 4 houses) almost collapsed because our shower water had got trapped and was forcing the plaster to come away!! Follow that on with our fire, dishwasher, fridge, freezer, washing machine and now our gas heating not working you can imagine the stress!!

So having realised we spent close to £100 in the last month or so on gas I decided to make today my "fixing day" and bled all our radiators - got absolutely soaked in the process but now our house is lovely and toasty - infact I want to turn the heating off its that warm but cant cos we have clothes drying!! Can't believe its taken all these years to finally fix the heating after the builders failing to fix it when we moved in! Oh well done now!

Then went and cleaned out the fridge and freezer - cant believe I filled a whole bag worth of rotten food - need to sort this out as a matter of priority - counted roughly £10 worth of food! Have also devised a PROPER meal plan for this week and have wrote it all out based on what food we have in the fridge and freezer - this will definately make it easier knowing what meat to defrost the night before etc.

This coming week I have set a food budget of £10, and every week from now on will be £10 for the foreseeable future. The idea being that £10 will more than cover basics of milk, bread, eggs and toilet roll. No other food (unless an extra needed for part of a meal) will be bought until the freezer is empty and the fridge! Think this will take about 2 weeks to achieve. After that a strict budget of £40 for every fortnightly shop!

£5.00 a week for the odd drink or snack in work per week and whatever is left over by the end of the week will go into my own personal piggy bank (My SP, savings bank account and pound box is all shared with my HM so have nothing for just me)

Me and my HM have also agreed to another rule I made up today - we have to work for our nights out. By this I mean, for every hour of exercise (walking to and from places, gym, swimming or cycling) we earn £5 for going out. So if at the end of the week Ive been to the gym twice and worked out for 1.5 hours a time, I will give myself £15 to go out at the weekend. The whole point being I now have more motivation to go to the gym during the week and more likely to spend less when theres a limit on what I can spend, and therefore what I can do!

Hopefully these changes will make a huge difference over the next few weeks :beer:

millionaire_in_training

Good plans. I'm always making plans too. SOme I keep, some I dont but hey that's life. I always meal plan though as I would never be organised if I didn't and my life is so hectic I need to be organised with some things. I dont think I have lost much weight htis week and tbh if I dont I will be a tad upsat as I really feel as if I have made an effort. If I havent then I will need to up the stakes a bit next week and cut down a bit more

weeclick

Went to the gym this afternoon and thought I was going to die! Amazing how your body gets used to being lazy again after only having a week off! Have found a great app for your iphone/ipod which Ie really found good - its called my fitness pal. If you dont have an ipod or iphone check out their website www.myfitnesspal.com its free to use! The main part being a calorie counter, I add everything I eat to it as I am eating so I can keep track of my diet throughout the day - I only started on Thursday and realised that the reason I have struggled with my weight is because I dont eat enough!! Under 1200 calories and your body goes into starvation mode and so stores your fat - didnt realise I wasnt eating even 1200 calories - it certainly felt like I was!!

I actually find I am able now to eat more and still lose weight! Perfect example is today, Ive added all my food to the list, including tonights dinner as its already been preplanned and pre weighed - and realised I still need to eat another 148 carbs, 10 protein and 18 fat - so I was able to eat 2 mini chocolate crossiants as a snack!!

The way the app\website works is it counts your calories per week based on the assumption that you do no physical exercise. So if I stick to the calorie allowance they set me then I will lose 2lb per week from doing nothing other than measuring my calories!! So when I go to the gym then any calories burnt is extra!! So as I started out wanting to hopefully burn 3lbs a week I know that along with my calorie count I need to burn an xtra 3500 calories in a week with exercise - which for me is just under 3 gym trips a week! (easily achieved!)

HM came with me to gym today after downloading the app herself - she has about 9 stone to lose but struggles with the machines, so I have said I will help her out under my weight loss routine and hopefully that will help her too - at least now Im accountable to someone else to make this work!

Looking forward to work tomorrow, have weirdly enjoyed it so far (apart from e learning of course) but will be happy when Tuesday is over as thats our final test, if we dont pass by 80% then we get fired on the spot aparently!!

Have set our budget (in cash) on the mantlepeice today so we can physically see whats available to us - Im so positive that we wil achieve this week, and if we can do it for one week it will become easier to keep doing it for one, two or three more weeks after that!

Might also be having my brother stay here for a few weeks - but thats not 100% yet, will only know later tonight, so will need to factor in another mouth to feed - which might effect our budget but Im hoping we can be more creative with food so we can make everything stretch!

weeclick

Well its been a few days since I lasted posted and thought I would pop my head in tonight.

Had a rotten week with still vomitting - actually had to come home from work early yesterday and spoke to doctor over phone who wants me in the clinic tomorrow for a series of tests to be done!!

Sickness has also stopped the gym again this week. Its weird, Im only sick either in the morning first thing or last thing at night, I have such bad stomach pains in the day and just no energy at all. Hopefully the doctor will put me on anti sickness tablets or find something to help me. I mentioned the whole weight loss incase that was a factor to the sudden sickness, but shes confident its not so I can at least stick to my diet plan and start the gym again if I can get rid of the sick feeling!! :T Will try and go on Saturday afternoon.

Money has been a bit hit and miss this week really. I have stuck to my "work allowance" but failed miserably on the food budget tonight - Had only spent £3 all week but then decided to get a pizza takeaway meal deal for the 3 of us as I didnt eat enough in work, was starving coming home and couldnt stand the thought of coming home to have to cook for 30 mins on an empty stomach - will I ever learn?

On the plus side, my HM got her final pay from her temp job, which should have been paid 3 weeks ago and only realised yesterday that it hadn't - they short changed her by 40 hours - so £200!! A quick, sharp spoken phonecall saw the money in the bank by yesterday afternoon so was able to pay for the car insurance, and my website for the business (which officially closes at the beginning of May after my last wedding contract ) :T We had £40 over which we didnt account for as we thought the money had been in our account and spent already which is why I could afford the pizza tonight - as naughty as it was!

Also found out yesterday when officially signing off from benefits that Im actually entitled to 3 weeks money, not 1 as I had expected as they stopped my benefit on 29th December so if I can fill out a form and send it back in I will get around £140 next week. Then I have the joy of my first wage next Friday and should get around £400 (depending on what tax is taken off me!) This is my first job where the pay in fortnightly so thats good :T Will finally be able to put more money away and make a dent in the £3500 needed for the holiday!

Havent weighed in yet because my scales need new batteries but dont expect to have lost anything with the way my health has been over the last 2 weeks anyway - will definately get back on track next week, if I dont will you please give me a kick in the right area lol.

Brother is officially staying here for a while, which actually hasnt changed anything other than I have given up my bed for him and bunk in with HM - he doesnt stay for dinner everynight (other than tonight but then we were all able to share the large pizza) and even if he does stay for dinner theres plenty in the freezer to keep us all going!

Going to sit this weekend and work out some mini challenges for myself for the following week and definately make a start on my plan of "earn your fun money" at the gym.

Fingers crossed all goes ok at the doctors tomorrow and I can get myself back on track!!

millionaire_in_training

I will be here with bovver boots at the ready on Monday then

weeclick

Had a pretty rubbish weekend money wise.

Havent been able to fill out my benefit form yet because the office kept messing my friend around saying she could collect it then when she went in they said no it had to be posted, then I phoned up and said yes she could collect it and they would have it waiting for her. :mad: So that needs to be filled out today and hopefully get the money owed to me by the end of the week.

My HM left her temp job a few weeks ago as I had suggested to her, she couldnt keep working there when she was picked on for everything (including the system crashing which couldnt possibly have been her fault) not to mention the horrible comments about her appearance. Job centre are for some reason really busy at the minute so her sign on appointment is only this week - she will get back paid but its a long time without any money coming in.

Thankfully I get paid on Friday but in the meantime we have £10 between us and that won't even cover travel cost for me to get to work, so HM will be applying for a crisis loan this week to see us through. Cant wait for the month when we both sit down, look back and laugh this all off and have enough money in the bank that we dont have to worry about bills not being paid, overdrafts or anything else for that matter!!

Paypal have £350 of my money but they wont let me transfer it to my account because theres a limitation - when I phoned them on Friday they said if I can send through proof of postage they will know Im a genuine ebay seller :mad: 4 weeks this has gone on for now - would happily get rid of paypal if there was a better alternative out there.

Was meant to go to the gym today but because of money we've decided to stay in and declutter some more. I put my favourite electric guitar up for sale last week, got an offer for £100 less than what I was asking - text the guy back asking to meet in the middle but he didnt text back again so patiently waiting for someone to take an interest. Have lots of other smaller stuff that could make a few pound, but my ebay is also limited because I listed 100 things over the free weekend and so they want me to have a business account which I refuse, so at the minute its gumtree or nothing for selling. Will get to the point I will just sell a load of dvds and games at cash converters, its just cluttering up the dining room otherwise!

After the week I have had, and the week I am about to have (going live on the phones in work on Monday and I still dont have a clue what Im doing!!) then I really need a pick me up - just need to keep focused!!

millionaire_in_training

Think of the positives in your life. You have a nice new job with new people, new challenges etc. You will get back pay from jobcentre, your HM will get back pay from jobcentre, you can prove to paypal that you sold things so you will get your money. You are young. You are getting fitter. I have a book by Jack Black ( not the actor) and I went to see him speak one time and he literally changed my life. Whenever I feel demotivated I will go and have a wee read of a chapter in that book and it sets me on track again. He is a motivational speaker who basically just talks common sense. The only person who can change your life is you!! No big surprise there lol But hearing someone simplify it down to just that is like a light bulb moment as it is so true. We can blame everything and everyone we want to but when it comes down to it the only person in charge of your destiny is you. Sure we get curve balls thrown in front of us but we just have to take a deep breath and toss them to the side and deal with whatever is thrown at us.A positive attitude to life really helps. Ok lecture over lol. Chin up and not down