Learning to Live on Less!

White_Iris

debtfreewannabe321 wrote: »

Sorry to hear about all the spends ! Can you get the buckled wheel seen by someone and fixed rather than completely replaced? Ours has buckled a few times as there are pot holes all over a road right near us and we try to avoid them as much as possible but they've got us a few times! Anyway...dh took the buckled wheel to someone who sells part worn tyres and he fixed it for £40 (we'd been quoted something similar to you)

Have you started packing? I love moving (i'm a bit weird)

lucielle wrote: »

I took mine to a balcksmith and they've welded the rim and knocked it back ito shape.
L

Unfortunately we don't have anywhere around here that would repair it, so we've had to buy a new one - cost £78 in the end :mad:

Haven't started packing properly yet but I've taken everything off the walls and filled any holes we've made and I've packed up our ornaments. I'm going to start on the books and other non-essentials next week. We've taken a fair bit of garden stuff and other fiddly things or breakables over to MIL and SIL to stash in their garages until we've moved in and DH has pretty much emptied the shed (we now need to dismantle it :eek:). We're at that frustrating stage where I want to get on and pack everything but most of what's left is still in daily use.

Pinky15

Just thought I would pop by and say Hi and that I am enjoying reading your diary - you certainly sound like you have lots going on at the moment.

White_Iris

Pinky15 wrote: »

Just thought I would pop by and say Hi and that I am enjoying reading your diary - you certainly sound like you have lots going on at the moment.

Hi Pinky, thank you for reading and thank you even more for admitting you read! It's lovely to know that there are people out there enjoying my diary . I'm a lurker on lots of other diaries - I should probably say hello more often .

White_Iris

Yay, some good news at last! I've managed to get a single wardrobe for DD from Freecycle. We're moving from a place with fitted cupboards (as was our old house) so have no bedroom furniture except two chests of drawers (one of which is going to have to be ditched s it's started to fall apart with no hope of repair!). So that's saved us a few quid! Just got to hunt for one for DS now.

White_Iris

I haven't updated for a while, mostly because my laptop screen has stopped working and I'm having to use DHs mac instead. I have none of my bookmarks on it so I have to search for everything instead. :cool:

Packing is progressing - just over a week to go and I'm getting really fed up with living here now. I just want to be out. Every now and then (usually when next door are being particularly noisy and inconsiderate) I get little flashes of the stomach churning-rapid breathing-anxiety feeling but instead of hiding in the kitchen with the radio on, pretending I'm somewhere I want to be, I just go and find something to pack.

Things aren't going great on the money front. Another £300 repair bill for DHs car and mine is currently in for a once-over to see if they can figure out why it's so chuggy when you drive it and what's making the suspicious grating noise when you release the brake. My guess is that it's going to at least need some sort of service/engine clean out but probably some other stuff as well. Looking on the positive side though, unless we are incredibly unlucky, DHs car should be problem free for a while and once mine is fixed we should have two safe, reliable cars. Still £1000+ on the credit card is a bit hard to swallow. :mad:

White_Iris

New house day tomorrow! Well, we're actually moving in on Saturday but we can get the keys tomorrow and take a bit of stuff over. Still using DHs mac and still not liking it so not updating the diary very often but once we're moved and settled I can investigate repairing my laptop.

DH is marking scripts at the moment - not great timing with the move and it's making him quite stressed and grumpy but it earns him a lot of money so we just have to grin and bare it!

Not much to report money-wise - still adding up the car repair costs but I think it'll come in at about £1.5k for all the work on both cars :eek: I do need to make a claim on our pet insurance for the dogs swollen face as we've had several more visits and lots of drugs since I first mentioned it and it's now worth claiming back despite the excess. Fortunately the problem seems resolved now (although the vet never did figure out what was causing the swellings :mad:). House move should be pretty cost free, as we've already put aside the money for the van hire and we've roped in friends and family to help (although we did promise beer and BBQ afterwards).

Enjoy the sunny weather everyone, I'll be back after the move.

White_Iris

Well we've been in the new house for about a week now and it's lovely to have more space! We're mostly unpacked (although still waiting on a wardrobe which should have been delivered at the end of last week, so our bedroom looks like a charity shop with clothes hanging everywhere :mad:). The house is a little bit more tatty than I remembered - I had hoped the landlord would have done a few more minor repairs than he has done and the garden is somewhat overgrown but hey-ho, at least it keeps me busy and the kitchen at least is lovely!

At the moment I'm still trying to finalised our new budget for bills, petrol etc. as currently things are a bit more expensive here. Once we're settled and get a better idea of our usage (and get a water meter installed) things should drop down again. We've also got the final bill from the old utility account to settle, so thats a small added expense as well.

Car bills are still a worry - currently on the credit card but they need paying off ASAP and we're starting to use the credit card for day-to-day spending again which MUST stop! So far I think we've spent about £250 on stuff - things which were needed but probably not right away. :eek:

Time to get my MSE head on! :money: Budgeting, meal planning, eBay-ing need to start today!

White_Iris

DH got paid for his script marking yesterday and it's about £100 more than I was expecting. :j He has been planning to use some of the money to buy himself a new wetsuit but was undecided which to get, so we sat down and had a look at some options last night. he had a favourite picked out but I pointed out another cheaper one to him and he's decided to go with that one, saving about £50 :money: Some of it will be spent when we go on holiday next month but we currently have about £300, not earmarked for anything. I know we should use it to pay down the credit card but at the moment e're just going to hold on to it.

White_Iris

Had an eBay blitz last week and listed nearly 40 items and have sold a lot of them - think I made about £60 :T Some will go towards my eBay pot but some will be needed for general expenses. I've decided to use the eBay/survey pot for Christmas, so I'm aiming for at least £200 in there by then. Need to get back in to surveys though, I've been very slack lately

I also need to have a look at our monthly budget - there have been a lot of changes to our bills since we moved, so I need to make sure everything still adds up. I may put it up on here once I'm done, as a comparison to the first one I did - I predict things will not have improved :eek:

Off to tackle a mountain of paperwork now.

White_Iris

Just a quick post while DH is out - we're currently sharing a laptop as mine has a broken screen connection and I can't get online as often as I want to, so sorry for not posting much.

Still haven't managed to look through our budget, feeling a bit adrift when it comes to our spending and bills lately. Since moving house, some direct debits have changed, some months have been skipped (intentionally by the providers I might add!) and so the following month has been slightly more, we're still not on a water meter (have to chase that up with the water company/landlord) so that's costing a lot and generally things feel pretty chaotic.

We should soon be getting the windfall I mentioned a while ago but unfortunately it's all got to go on the credit card to pay off our recent car repair bills . Oh well, at least that'll be back to zero but the new house pot is looking a bit depleted. had to pay out for some repairs to our property and we've also had to dip in to the emergency fund a bit, so the only savings pot that's going up is the eBay one and even that's not rising by a lot.

On a positive note I am stating to do some comparison shopping (we now have most of the major supermarkets and discount shops close by) and I think once the children start nursery in September and I can get around the supermarkets on my own, I'll be able to keep control of our grocery shop and maybe even have some left over each month!