One step beyond!!!

Olderbutnotwiser

You must have snow now!
Got to love a snow day

natsplatnat

Nothing - NADA - NOWT!!!

natsplatnat

Good morning!

I thought I would share with you all my exicting news for 2013....

This year, the 5 payday months are March, May, August and November!!!

;O)

natsplatnat

Oooh, just been asked to house-sit for a week in March!! Happy Days!

Olderbutnotwiser

natsplatnat wrote: »

Good morning!

I thought I would share with you all my exicting news for 2013....

This year, the 5 payday months are March, May, August and November!!!

;O)

COWBAG!
I'd like one anytime soon...

natsplatnat

Well, here I am again!

Usual Friday things to report. Money has moved where it should and today sees the begining of withdrawing extra cash to pay for food for the week. OH and I have noticed that the largest expenditure on the credit card each month is food - we are really bad at buying what we fancy when we fancy it, quite often at the expense of other food we have already bought going off (and I don't just mean out of date!!). So, I have suggested that each Friday we each put £30 into a jar/wallet/pot and use this £60 (and this ONLY) to buy food! I would hope to be able to either reduce this amount as we settle into it, or another thought is to keep the amount the same and use any spare for 'food treats' such as a takeaway etc. We will see... as with most of my plans, it is a work in progress! lol

This will leave only petrol/diesel purchases and present purchases on the card. I would expect fuel to be about £45-£50 a week between us. Will be interesting to see what else OH manages to buy during the month... this month there has been a new surround sound system!! :eek:

Right, I must crack on at work - playing catch up after being off on Wednesday because I was feeling like total pants!

Off out for dinner tonight with my parents - Burns night supper!

Have a great weekend all! :beer:

natsplatnat

Good morning All!

Well the sun is shining here today - although I did have some fab ice patterns on my car this morning!

Well, yesterday we did our first "budgetted for" shop. Weekly budget £60.... spend yesterday £48.99. OH looked less than impressed when I said "we have £11.01 left for the week". After a little thought, he asked if we had to include wine in our weekly budget. "Yes!" was the reply he got - one it will make us think more about how we spend our money if we have to include a bottle or two or wine a week, and secondly we will drink less if there is no money left in the budget to buy the wine!! Admittedly this does seem a little harsh and I may well review this is March, but it is a steep learning curve from now until the end of February. I have even stuck an envelope to the fridge door to put all the shopping receipts in.... Just so I can do a quick recky at the end of Feb and see what we buy the most, what the most expensive thing is and then see if I am buying them at the right place! (according to OH, this is a little a*al!! lol)

Oh, and I have to have the food budget money... as OH has admitted he is a food shopping nightmare!! But he will have to learn!! lol

I also carried out an inventory of the 'dried food drawer' yesterday! How much rice, risotto rice, pasta and sauce mixes does one family really need? Well, we can plough our way through what we have before we buy any more!!

And finally..... This morning I transfered some spare money to my old OD. Now this was no longer my plan and I was treating my old OD as a debt. But, this week there are no DD's or SO's coming out my normal account, so I thought I would benefit from reducing the interest on my old OD account; the money has already been programmed to be back in my normal account on Friday!

Right, as I am sure I have bored you all enough already this morning - I am signing off and going to do some work!!!

Laters! x

Olderbutnotwiser

Hi Honey,
You are so :money:are you going to have a spreadsheet of your dried supplies?
I think you are mean re wine, it's one of your 5 a day after all!
I thought you paid off all your debts with loan from OH, how do you still have an OD?
Confused of Kent :think:

natsplatnat

Blimey - its a bit miserable out there today!! Good job I will be office-bound until home time!

Ah, the old OD!! Well, to be honest I really cannot remember - I don't think I counted it as a debt when OH kindly helped me out. I think I planned to clear it myself. In reality what happened was if the CC bill was a bit bigger than envisaged, then I borrowed a bit out of it to help pay the bill, then spent the next month paying it down again.... which meant that I had even less money available when the next CC bill landed on the mat - Jeez, it is sooo easy now to see how debt spirals!!

Anyway - the new plan (just in case anyone missed it) is to treat it as a debt and I am paying it down at £20 a week (plus the odd temporary chunk every now and then to reduce interest). This Friday (when the chunk goes back to my normal OD), the balance on my old OD will be ..... -£487.53 There! You all know now!!

But, I have a plan!!! And plans are the doorway to success!! :T

Laters!!

ps, still got £11.01 of food budget left.... need some bits this evening though!

natsplatnat

Grrr - post vanished!!!

Essentially it was about .....

• food budgetting
• the fact that I still need to do a freezer inventory,
• that we have £5.46 of this weeks budget left,
• that 'weekly budget' could easily mean 6 or indeed 8 days depending on what we are up to!
• that our home wine consumption has definitely dropped
• that we have eaten well and I have some 'useable space' in my freezer already
• that I need to plan loads of vegetables in next weeks meals, especially brocolli as I appear to have loads
• that tonight we are having homemade chicken and veg soup with those 'finish off in the oven' baguettes!

And that's it really! Nothing exciting.

Oh, I have received my payslip and tweaked my spreadsheet for tomorrow... just means that tomorrow I just need to check that my spreadsheet matches my account balance and move some extra pennies over to my 'savings account'.

'Til tomororw !!! x