Little Lights - Cinny's 2011 Diary

Cinny91

I keep on typing this up then deleting it, I don't know what's wrong with me! But I do need to get out of my head sometimes without filling OHs with the rabble so I hope the eyes reading this don't mind.

So, on December 24th we paid off all our credit cards and OHs student overdraft. It was by fair the best present we could ever give each other. The chance to start 2011 on a clean slate, in our new home, everything inside is ours and ours alone that no one can touch. It was, and still is, pretty bloody fabulous!

We still have one debt, OHs car loan. It's 0% and the payments, although quite a chunk of wages, aren't too bad and are always easily met and paid for so aren't a bother in that sense. The kicker is we're tied to it for 3.5 years, and I'm not keen on that! I'm not 100% sure on the figure as OH manages it but I'm guessing around 4k. And as soon as we're a bit more stable moneywise we'll be saving up the amount to either pay it off in one, or mentally write it off and just have it feeding into OHs account for payments.

Bar that, we're pretty much living life as it chucks its bills at us! We've got so much we need to save for this year, mainly so we can keep our tins on wheels as well, as fun things like holidays, a new telly, a bigger bed and a fire for our living room.

So starting from here, I promise to be much better with our money. PromisePromisePromise!

25/01/11 Edit: Just adding our P.O.A at the top. With the step we're currently working at in a nice bold orange font

Step 1 - Save £500 towards OH Insurance.
Step 2 - Save £100 for July Holiday.
[STRIKE]Step 3 - Save £125 for my car tax. (Due 31st July, if come to it I'll pay for 6 months)[/STRIKE]
Step 4 - Take a break from 'bill' things. Save for Mal! :j
Step 5 - Get our emergency fund up to £500.

Birdie85

Hello Cinny Dear! :hello: I've missed seeing you around!

Well done for clearing everything (bar the loan) on Christmas Eve, that's impressive! :T

Are you still enjoying the house and, more importantly, is Percy enjoying it?!

Cinny91

Ohh, don't mention Percy! We were all ready for him, then my Sister changed her mind. Said we could have him until May then she'd be taking him to London with her. It wouldn't be very fair on Per being shifted around like, but I still go see him at my Parents. He makes such a fuss of me and follows me around like my shadow, it's so sweet!

Not got my noodle in the right place for work today. Having my dinner in the sec and then I'll knuckle down. Been doing odd jobs all morning so it doesn't look like I've done much by the state of my desk, hopefully I'll clear some space this afternoon. And unlike this morning, won't take 15minutes out to rant on Tumblr!

Birdie85

What a shame about Percy! I thought your sister was planning on heading to LA, not London? Getting confused! I could take him then no-one would be fighting over him if that would help?!

Cinny91

Haha, to be completely honest if you turned up on my Mum's doorstep and asked for him I think she'd happily hand him over! And oh lord, I won't even try to explain my Sisters life plans. Changes every 3 seconds, as much as I love her, she's more fickle than I am.

At home now, so I've popped a movie on and I'm looking at our accounts. Most of them are looking pretty healthy. Our bills account is a little low at the moment, Sky changed payment date from the 9th of the month till the 24th so we're kind of a month behind as they'll be taking another payment before OH gets paid again. If that makes any sense. So that's £60 to find before the 24th to get us the right side of that bill again!

At the moment our current account is a little all over. Money is going out from spending at the weekend (food shop and bits for the house, draft proofing ect!) and we've got some money coming in. Hopefully it'll have settled in the morning and I can figure it all out then. My head's too fuzzy today to mentally work it out!

Just waiting for OH to get home now, then we've got chilli for tea. Yumm! And I've hung all todays washing to dry on the radiators so the room smells of fresh washing. Who doesn't love that smell?

Cinny91

Not much to report on penny wise today, checked my bank this morning and everything is still a little in the air so I'm leaving it until tomorrow when it's hopefully settled and I can figure it all out!

Did order OH a cd he wanted though, found it for £4 (used Quidco for 8p cashback;)) so that'll perk him up a little when it gets here. He was planning on getting it come payday anyways, but I had the money spare and I'm a little soft for treating him!

Spent the night at my Parents. They went to pick my Sister up from London which is a silly long drive, so I went and got them tea ready and sorted the animals out. Saw everyone for a bit before I came home too. Also, my Sister's Mr subscribes to US magazine *slightly worried* so she bought me a stack of them back to read

Off to snuggle with the Mister and watch a bit of telly while I've got him. Our work days always fall bad against each other, just our luck!

Cinny91

Got paid this morning, and £33 more than normal during the month so I've put that to one side incase, and the chances are pretty high, that my Uncle overpaid me and will pay me less at the end of the month.

Remembered yesterday that we need to find £21 on top of the £60 for Sky to set us right bill wise. Beh! It's our own fault really, we didn't really think we'd be having to pay for a month in advance. Oh well, not much we can do but dig in and find the money.

Quite good news though: The £70 cheque for my iPhone has finally cleared, so that's back in the bill account. We only spent £30 on food last week, so the rest of our budget has been put in the 'sky/phone' fund. Plus I've been rounding down other accounts and we've now got £66.61 out of the £81 we need :T

Got £60 for housekeeping this week. Going to try and only spend £15 on food, £10 on bits in town and we need to put £20 on the gas meter too. So hopefully, if we stick to this, we'll have the £81 for 'extra' bills covered by next Friday. Which'll mean I can sleep a lot easier and stop fretting about it all. For this month anyways!

Cinny91

Had a pretty lovely day, only just sat down really! Spent £14.80 in town which got us top up tiddly bits for meals, things for getting the curtain sorted and tape for draft proofing the back door.

Finally kicked my bot into gear and finished painting the downstairs toilet, gave the bathroom its first coat of paint and put one of the kitchen curtain sets up. So now I'm watching the soaps while OH gets home then it's bacon sandwiches for tea. Yum!

Sorting some pennies out too, I bought the food today from the money in my purse so I'm moving all the £15 I had in my bank account into the sky/phone fund so that's all that found and accounted for. Phew! Might actually catch some decent 'zzz's tonight without the worry.

Hope the people attached to any eyes ready this have a fantastic weekend. Spending tomorrow finishing the bathroom, going for a mooch to bug OH at work (he's going to so regret moving to a shop 10 minutes walk away ) and I think my Mum is coming over to help me with the other curtain in the kitchen.

Swinstie73

Hey cinny, didn't know you had a new diary! Bacon sandwiches sound yum.

Hope you have a great weekend too *subscribes*

Cinny91

Hey Swinstie!

The bacon sandwiches turned into Kate's Special Burgers, which are totally yum still even if I do say so myself! Last night I made us roast herby beef with a chilli sauce and homemade chippies, OH scoffed it but I made the sauce a little too hot so didn't quite finish

Was catching up with my youtube subs this morning and one guy and his family I've been watching for a while posted this video. I've always found them pretty inspiring values wise, and because I'm a lady got a little wet around the eye area at their story. They deserved that moment so much. I've been listening to Dave Ramsey for a bit now, and I actually prefer him to Martin Lewis as he's got a lot more heart behind what he says, because of his own struggles I guess. Not knocking our Martin, I just like a little sass!

But anyways, not much to report from our end. I gave the bathroom its second coat yesterday as high as I could reach standing. Then fetched the ladder and did the first coat on the higher bits, but OH says he'll finish that tomorrow so I don't need to worry about falling to my death in the bath anymore. Nice!

Paid OHs car tax for the year, £125 ouch from the bank account. So the money in our car account currently stands at a glorious £5 with my MOT due pretty soon. Really don't want to call on the bank of Mum and Dad for this one, so I'm telling myself it's not an option at the moment. Will find another way, somehow!

Still, it won't do just sitting here wallowing about money, plenty we can do to make more and there's always a way to make our money go further. So I'm off to peel potatoes to have with dinner. We're having Sunday pie with lots of veg to fill us up cheaply, then we can have a small tea if we feel we need it.

Hope everyone has a lovely Sunday x

Cinny91

Yesterdays meal plan kind of failed. When my bottomless bucket of a boyfriend got home from work he decided he was hungry, and offered to make this amazing chilli and honey chicken* he makes. And, despite not being very hungry, I love it so didn't put up much of a fight and ended up scoffing a decent portion Just feel a little bad as that could have been a meal for another night. But I think in total, for both of us, it was a £3 meal so not bad.

*Just like to add that despite it being really cheap, the chicken had a nice life. It was just reduced in the butchers section as stuff that was in over Christmas

OH isn't working today, so is hopefully getting the bathroom and downstairs toilet walls finished. I got up early and did all the housework so he'd be able to just get that done then enjoy his day off. He doesn't get many so I feel kind of bad leaving him loads to do. Means I've just got the gloss to do on Thursday and we can tick painting the bathrooms off our list!

Also checked my Quidco account and £111.28 has validated over the weekend so fingers crossed it won't be too many months until it gets paid. Cod knows we need it!

I did speak to my Dad about my car's MOT. He keeps all the documents nice and neat for me back at theirs But anyways, he said it's due at the start of next month but because he paid for my Sister's first service he'd cover the cost of that for me. Which is so nice of him, and it a little weight lifted. I don't think there's much wrong with Ol'Greg so hopefully the MOT won't cost that much. And also fingers crossed we can find the money from somewhere.

We've also cut down our gas useage. It was £2.50 a day, for about 9 hours heat. Which I know doesn't sound too much, but that's £77.50 a month we just can't afford at the moment. So we've moved it down to 4 hours a day, and haven't noticed much difference as it's not so bitterly cold out anymore. Checked the meter on the way to work this morning and will check again tomorrow for the difference. Knowing our luck it'll be £3 difference We are, however, only using £30 a month on electric so that's quite good!