Back filling the big hole I dug with my credit card

AllThatStuffIsJustStuff

I haven't got a lot to say as PBS has been keeping things up to date pretty well but it's been a few days so I thought I'd chip in.

Yesterday was lovely and the pie at the end that PBS made was amazing. I've never eaten Wimberries before and they were delicious. As PBS said to me, they are so tiny and labour intensive to harvest that they simply couldn't be a commercially viable product. So that was literally a pleasure from the simpler/old style life that money simply couldn't buy. Well, it probably could, but it would take a silly amount of money. The ingredients for the pie cost us about 30-40p, but it took two of us over an hour to pick the berries so you would need to charge about £15 just to cover minimum wage and overheads. But that's irrelevant. The point is it was fab and I want to go pick some more when we can.

Pennywise - thanks for the alert I'm away tomorrow and we already planned to do a car boot sale on Sunday afternoon so will have to squeeze in listings tomorrow night or sunday morning. Have three main things to list on the free listings so shouldn't take too long.

Quiet time on eBay as we were lapse on listings this time last week. Took just £1.86 today. Nothing ending on the weekend as we were away last weekend but my 18 item listathon on should bring us a good haul on Monday. I'm hoping for at least £100-150 off it and possibly more. Plus the high value extras off this weekend should raise £150 as well. The car boot sale will probably be in the tens rather than hundreds as it is mostly stuff not good enough to sell on eBay (can you imagine such a concept?). I reckon anything above £40 would be a great result.

Put all that together and I reckon we only need to scratch around for another £200-250 to meet the stove target. It's looking very doable though for the first time today when I was sorting out for the car boot, I really felt like there was actually less stuff in the house.

As well as the stove though, we still haven't finished out the back and we still need about £300 to finish that properly. I was out drilling and on the brink of getting the hole in the garage floor big enough when DS woke up and so I'm typing this while he has his feed. He's nearly finished so hopefully he'll be content to play while I crack on working. Can't really do the hardcore drilling but will press on with some digging or pipe work.

[Deleted User]

Hi both, just catching up on your diary, I feel tired reading it!!! Sounds like youre making great progress both in clearing stuff and on the stove fund- well done.
I am busy on the caring front (mum and sister) at the moment but DH is keeping an eye on the funds and I'm too busy to spend!!
Will keep reading your diary but may not get chance to post for a few days- good luck at the car boot

PiggyBankShaker

Off to a car boot today for first time in just under a year. The last one we did was when we were skint (when haven't we been skint?) but before we were MSE. Probably got fleeced on a few bits, like brass for example, but we just weren't 'up' on things like we are today. Hopefully we can spot some 'bits' worth buying and selling on and helping us towards our target. Most eBay stuff is ending tomorrow; I'm crossing my fingers for £150. Only listed a couple of bits yesterday, must do more tonight.

AllThatStuffIsJustStuff

The car boot sale is RUBBISH lol. It's times like this I'm glad me and PBS have a sense of humour. It's useless for two reasons:

1. There's hardly anyone here! Perhaps afternoon car boots aren't such a good idea after all.
2. Ebay's success is the car boots curse. All we have left is the dregs of the dregs and funnily enough, people aren't that keen...

So far we've made a profit of £5.10 lol. If we make a tenner I'll be well chuffed

The sole redeeming feature is that we are by the airport so the planes are keeping DD entertained...

PiggyBankShaker

What a total waste of time! As ATS said, we made grand total of £5.10. Probably cost more in diesel to get there than we made. At one point I told someone to just take anything for free and she didn't - literally could not give the crap away. Also I spent £4.70, so not very MSE at all! Really awful headache too

PiggyBankShaker

Just popping in for a quickie. 1st August today. Need to make £18 a day in August to get the stove money. Got a few bits and bobs ending on eBay today, which I'm hoping will raise £150. I 'reinvested' £1.50 of the rusbbish car boot sale money in a potential resell money spinner, will hopefully increase it by tenfold if not more.

Need to go to the Post Office tomorrow and any other errands too, as the car is in the garage all day on Wednsday for the MOT of Doom. Then, and only then (see ATS I am learning) will we know how much we can afford to put towards paying down the debt.

AllThatStuffIsJustStuff

Good result today after yesterday's farce. The eBay listings took just over £160 - so above estimate which is nice and half of that came from stuff at my folks house that I'd mostly forgotten I even had

PiggyBankShaker

MOT today and good news! Came in at £180, so under budget. Did some sums and paid off £210 from the CC debt, balance is now £2990. I can not remember the last time the balance had a 2 at the front. Years certainly. Will make another payment when I get 2nd job payment on the 10th.

Been busy with work the last two days and a bit stressed too. I'm going to devote 1 solid hour to cleaning and tidying tomorrow as I think the general state of the house and the yard is getting to me a bit. We took some stuff to the recycling depot and rag and bone man took our broken telly and old video today. ATS had previous unpacked and stacked some of the parquet inthe corner of the livingroom, do at least wehave a little bit more room now. The back yard it progressing a bit too, ATS has laid the pipes and tomorrow we'll buy one more, that can laid before we encase it in a wall. Hopefully we can tagteam it when DD is in school. That's all from me tonight, I'm beat. Got a cold and am feeling very grumpy. ATS being bearing the brunt as usual.

PiggyBankShaker

Feeling a bit knackered today. Been awake at 5.30 the last three mornings, must be a noise outside, someone starting their car or something, that is disturbing me and I just can't get back off properly. Also, almost lost my voice with this sore throat / cold combo, hope it clears up soon, more annoying anything else but using up energy raising my voice all the time.

Anyway, enough boring moaning. ATS stuff and I just spent a productive hour listingbooks on Amazon. One is a siged copy and I'm sure it'll sell within the week and that'll be a very welcome £20 in the bank. After our mammoth postage session this morning, eBay is looking a bit slow. ATS has updated some of the holding listing we put up on the free listing weekend and we'll have to wait until Sunday night to see if the bear fruit.

Weather not been too good today, so we haven't worked in the back yard, although I did do some much needed tidying in our bedroom. STILL have clothes to sort out and sell, ideally I want us to downsize from two wardrobes to one wardrobe, but it'll take time and I should stop being so impatient.

Just made a date with ATS to list some more books tonight. The Amazon system is really quick (anything is an improvement on ebay) and it's even quicker when ATS calls out the ISBN and I put them in.

Off for a little lie down I think, conserve some energy....

AllThatStuffIsJustStuff

Right - this is my second attempt at this post as the laptop decided to restart halfway through the first attempt to type it out.

A lot to report since my last post on Monday. On the one hand not a lot has happened but on the other we've made some progress between us that I think will make a real difference going forward.

But first, here's the update on what we've been up to.

eBay is slower than a slow thing. We're running out of stuff and the only 'decent' lot left is our camcorder but no-one seems interested. It's ending today and not even any watchers on it at the moment. Making this last £300 or so for the stove is going to be hard work - let alone getting all the extra money for the back yard and flooring.

Re the backyard, we've made some real progress in the last few days. The ground is mostly all level now and I've put down some breeze blocks for footings for the stone walls. We've reclaimed a lot of stone from the ground and also reclaimed some from up on the mountainsides. This has been very entertaining too. A couple of days ago when out on a wimberry forage we found a few good stones in an old tip. I carried both kids back to the car so PBS could put them in the pushchair. Watching PBS fight it through the puddles and over bumps was funnier than I was able to admit while she was struggling. Certainly I think we have/can get enough stone to build the wall and will only have to spend out any more money for out there when it comes to doing the floor. Actually we will need to buy some cement and a pipe tomorrow but these shouldn't be huge outlays.

As is our style, we've added another extra dimension to the backyard project. Yesterday we were at a friend's daughter's birthday party and our DD was continually playing in the plastic wendyhouse in their garden. Such a thing wouldn't be in our style so we are going to build one ourselves out of all the scavanged wood and other bits and pieces I've been hording in the garage. It's going to be amazing I'm sure. And a lot cheaper than the £80 the one they had seems to cost online. Crazy. I'm really looking forward to getting in to building it this week.

We are off away on Tuesday for the night as PBS has to travel for work and I'm going to visit my little sister who has just had a baby. I'm hoping we can do some good foraging tomorrow so we can take her one of our homemade wimberry pies.

So, back to the chat me and PBS had earlier in the week. I had been a bit concerned that PBS's anxiety levels were increasing again and - quicker than usual for us - we actually managed to have a conversation PBS said that was the case. Mostly this is just when PBS is on her own with the two kids. I am totally fine in this scenario so we've agreed the most sensible thing is for me to do most of the childcare for the foreseeable.

I should give a bit of background that I don't think we've mentioned in the diary before. Part of our ongoing financial concern is that our work that gets us about two thirds of our income is out of contract in spring next year. Although we hope to get it renewed, we need to go through a form of retendering process. I can't say much more than that for commercial reasons but there are good reasons to think we might lose half or all this income. This is one of the reasons we have been trying to come up with ways of expanding our income. I've done the projections and on our current spending - and there's no real reason to think they will change - we can get ourselves in a position to have three to four months of expenses banked for the end of the contract period. This will leave us some security to find new work/income shoudl the worst case scenario occur.

Given PBS's health situation I think it best we don't overdo it now. Hopefully by spring next year DS will be sleeping through (he will be past his first birthday after all) and the anxieties will be lower. Especially if we've managed to pay off her credit card debt.

We will still have my credit card debt (about £2900) but that is on 0% until October next year so it makes more sense to keep the cash in the bank before then anyway.