Back filling the big hole I dug with my credit card

AllThatStuffIsJustStuff

Thanks for your lovely post, Lilly. Our internet has been down all day and still not fixed so this is on my phone. I'll do a more detailed update when I can type on a proper keyboard. We've had a good lot of listings over the weekend - 81 items up atm. Like you its a wide variety of whatever was lying around and of no great use. Don't restrict yourself to things you would buy. It seems people on eBay will buy literally anything.

I look forward to reading of your sales progress

PiggyBankShaker

Yeah I've often been on the verge of binning something and though 'I'll give it a punt on eBay first' - and Lo and behold, it sells! Made a few sales today totalling £20, so again made our £18.33 target. I'll update with post postage profit after trip to Post Office tomorrow.

AllThatStuffIsJustStuff

Today we have working internet again. But again, I have been too busy to post here and now it's late and I'm too tired to remember what I wanted to say. PBS says we are doing ok on targets so that is good.

To go back to lily's post - i don't think we were entirely 'brave' over having the second child as we were still deciding whether it would be a good idea when we found out PBS was pregnant again. We made a lot of changes to how we approached things this time around and it has been a big factor in the start of the debt free mission. Although we were in debt long before DD was born, PBS depression mean that it was impossible for us to address it as just getting through day to day was all I was able to focus on and thinking about how much that was costing financially just wasn't possible. Certainly when PBS was at her lowest and most volatile I certainly never said "we can't afford that" for fear of what it would do to her.

Certainly in the past PBS would try to spend her way out of problems. The house is littered with random items that she bought to solve this or that problem. Rather than thinking about how we would sort out a problem that she didn't like, she would simply buy some new adournements to the surrounding area. The worst of these was when she was frustrated with the bathroom and from nowhere just went out and spent a couple of hundred at B&Q on random cupbourds and shelves and a toilet seat etc. We had a massive row afterwards and the stuff sat in the spare room for months with me refusing to fit it and PBS refusing to return it. Eventually the showertray broke and we replaced the bathroom wholesale. The one cupboard from that spree is on the wall and the rest was returned to fund the deposit on the bathroom. This was nearly two years ago now - though we are still paying for the bathroom - six payments left

It's take a long time for us to meet in the middle from our extreme reactions to these sorts of situations. PBS would want to just call a builder and spend whatever it took to get everything exactly right. I would want to just leave everything as it is, doing only the minimum necessary DIY repairs myself, with no regard to their resultant aesthetics. I'm very pleased that I am typing this right now at a very real embodiment of the progress we have made in this respect. Our computer now sits atop a corner desk. I made it (rather roughly but effectively - thta's very much my style) from some discarded kitchen worktop from our garage, after PBS spent several weeks deliberating on the exact size and position it should take. As a result, we are both very pleased with it. I hope it is a symbol of things to come.

PiggyBankShaker

You forgot to mention the several different paints that I intended to paint stripes on the walls with and the mosaic tiles too. AllThatStuff is right, my impatience has seen me waste so much money. Always with the mantra 'it'll be worth it'. It rarely is.

Yes we are on target, but only just. We have made 5 days worth of £18.33, but have no hope of doing that tomorrow. We have to wait until the weekend to see if our hours spent on eBay will pay off. I am posting gold to Hatton Market tomorrow though - at last! So should get some nice moolah in the bank before the weekend. Especially chuffed that I found a voucher code online for an extra 1% on your gold valuation. Every Little Helps

Right, sleep now. Night y'all

Aesop

I've been thinking this, and tonight has brought it home to me.

You two are so supportive of each other! Allthatstuff - my DH is nowhere as supportive as you are. Even when I had my PND, he called his mother told her about it and then told me to call her as she wanted to tell me about when she had PND! That was no help to me and something I most definitely did not want to do!

Anyway tonight, we had a discussion about how I should just bag up everything and take it to the charity shop or put it on freecycle. Well, discussion is a strong word, DH told me to do all this. I disagreed. He reckons I cannot sell anything and am just cluttering up the house with junk. The fact that we have no money between us means nothing.

the fact that he seems to think I work part time and earn £25K for it! (I don't!), doesn't help with all his rose coloured glasses view!

So, just want to say, I so admire you being so supportive and for both of you, to be working together the way you are to clear your debt.

My DH lives with his head in the sand.

PiggyBankShaker

Aesop wrote: »

I've been thinking this, and tonight has brought it home to me.

You two are so supportive of each other! Allthatstuff - my DH is nowhere as supportive as you are.

Anyway tonight, we had a discussion about how I should just bag up everything and take it to the charity shop or put it on freecycle. Well, discussion is a strong word, DH told me to do all this. I disagreed. He reckons I cannot sell anything and am just cluttering up the house with junk. The fact that we have no money between us means nothing.

the fact that he seems to think I work part time and earn £25K for it! (I don't!), doesn't help with all his rose coloured glasses view!

So, just want to say, I so admire you being so supportive and for both of you, to be working together the way you are to clear your debt.

My DH lives with his head in the sand.

Aesop, thanks as always for your encouragement - keep heart! It is only in the last 7 months that AllThatStuff and I have pulled together on this we spent the first 5 years of being together with one or the other or both of us with our heads firmly in the sand. I tried, and failed, to tackle the debt mountain on my own many times and when I stopped seeing it as my personal problem, but more something that was holding my whole family back did I realise that I needed AllThat Stuff's help. And yes, he has been great.

Some practical suggestions if I may? So, your OH wants to clear clutter, but doesn't have the patience required to sell things and get the extra money? How about making some labels (sticky address labels or old fashioned bits of paper you pin on...?) and spend an hour or two pricing things up in your house like a shop. It might help you focus on how much tied up collateral is in the house and also make OH see that what could be earning the CS money could be earning you money instead.

Or, you could tot you your debts and print the number out in big red letters and stick it on the fridge so there is no hiding from it. You could add, 'What will you do today that reduces this debt?' underneath.

It is sad that you feel so unsupported, especially when you help so many other people here on MSE (the £10 a day thread is amazing and invaluable) You could spend a bit of time finding all the thanks that people have written to you (and I know there are lots) and put them together on one sheet of paper that you print out and keep as a reminder of how valued your opinions and assistance are to others. If OH finds it, it might make him realise how super-duper you really are!

And lastly, if OH really won't take the blinkers off can you find a different 'debt buddy'? Even a virtual one, to offer that more one-to-one support that is so crucial? Do you have the time for an Aesop MSE Diary?

PLease let us know how you get on, and we are here for you too!

PiggyBankShaker

Aesop wrote: »

Even when I had my PND, he called his mother told her about it and then told me to call her as she wanted to tell me about when she had PND! That was no help to me and something I most definitely did not want to do!

:eek:This is horrible, I don't know about your relationship with your MiL, but if AllThatStuff did that to me he'd be packing his bags. :rotfl:

PND is a deeply personal experience, the broad symptoms may be shared by the women affected, but it really manifests itself in different way in different women.

Very often the last things a women wnats to hear is about someone elses exprience, if anything they need someone to LISTEN to THEM, not the other way around.

God, men are rubbish sometimes.

PiggyBankShaker

Ach, its me again. Okay day today. Ebay not going too badly, will sell 14 items this week with bids totalling £64 so far. Course that means that 61 items don't have sellers yet (AllThatStuff has told me off for putting frowny face - I'm not changing it :P) Some are on their 3rd or 4th relist, but I'm keeping the faith.

Did finally post some silver and gold to Hatton Market Metals, in theory should get that money tomorrow if their faster payment system works. I'm hoping to clear £150 from that so fingers crossed!

Also, AllThatStuff dug out £59 worth of Euros that we are going to give to his sister on the weekend for £55 quid.

So all told so far we have approx (when everything clears) £510* of our £1200 stove installation target - I'm quite chuffed with that. :j

*That's as of today, of course the items on ebay with bids already might have a last minute flurry

Must put thinking caps on where the next £690 is going to come from. Admittedly we have more stuff to list on ebay (don't we all:rotfl:) but it is very time consuming and we are running out of 'quick hit' items. At this rate we'll have to flog 610 99p things! :rotfl:

No it's not really that bad yet. I have two lockets that I'm hoping will get £20 and £10 respectively, but I'm waiting for free listing weekend for them. Have I said how much I HATE insertion fees! :mad:

What's to add on a persoanl note? DS continues to teeth, DD is particularly riotous, my anxiety about visiting the in-laws has began to kick in (4 days ahead of our planned visit) cold war with my own folks is heating - all over the kids, as usual.

Right that's me done for now.

[Deleted User]

Well done on the sales, know its disheartening to have to re-list but youve done the hard work of actually getting the items up there so keep re-listing, thats what I'm planning to do.

You have done wonders with the sales :T(£510 is a huge amount towards the stove fitting).

I am plodding on, reading lots of threads, getting ready for winter (been lining my curtains with fleeces tonight)- really hope not to have huge fuel bills over winter. Hope youre managing to collect some wood ready for your stove!

Anyway, back to the bedroom curtains...... :rotfl:

AllThatStuffIsJustStuff

Aesop - thanks for your comments. The fact is that as much as I may manage to sound supportive now, when PBS was suffering depression I was an !!!!. Especially in the first few months when she wasn't diagnosed, I would regularly just act like she should just get over it and pull herself together. It took a very long time before I was able to get this. And I shouldn't have as I had an ex who had suffered depression and had had other experience too. It's incredibly hard to appreciate any depression from a bystanders point of view, let alone post natal depression as to most men this is utterly unfathomable as a concept.

Anyway, the big thing for us which allowed us to work as a team was turning the way we looked. We spent far too long walking backwards in to the future obsessed at assessing the past. Now we (mostly) only walk forwards acting with the knowledge of only where we are and where we aim to be - how we got here is of no consequence. I obviously don't know much about your circumstances (though we would like to know more. As PBS says, could you write a diary? feel free to just give us some overview here in our diary space if easier), but it may just take time. For the first 4.5 years me and PBS were together she was in complete head in the sand mode. You never know what it will take to make someone open their eyes. If I were PBS I'd probably tell you you need to talk to him and tell him how you feel, but i'm pretty sure you don't need to do that. You need to find a way to get him to appreciate the situation - and tellnig him how you feel probably wop't do it like we've both said, please tell us more

Lilykins, thanks as ever for the support. I'm very impressed/disconcerted that you are already making winter preparations. I'm still looking forward to my summer - if it should ever come along...