Learning to Live on Less!

White_Iris

sweetpea26 wrote: »

Hi White Iris

You will be glad to see the debt go and then you can really concentrate on savings. Hope your car goes through MOT ok. We had ours last week too. All money sometimes isn't it!!

Well, I've done it - paid £1000 off last night and it does feel good. Once I've paid off the rest of the bits I've got coming in, I'll use the remaining £100 to round down the balance to the nearest hundred and then keep whatever is left out of it in the emergency pot. if I get a few quiet minutes later today, I'm going to set up a standing order to the emergency pot and start putting away £25 a month, to get that up to £500 asap.

White_Iris

Rats :mad: failed the MOT :mad:. Needs work on the exhaust and rear brakes, so it's booked in for later in the week. Unfortunately the dippy receptionist couldn't give me a quote, so I don't know the exact cost but I bet it's not cheap. Determined not to use the credit card though - we've got £150 in the car maintenance pot and £300 in the emergency savings, lets hope it's not more than that!

sweetpea26

Hi WhiteIris

Sorry to hear about the car. Hopefully it will not be too much. Keep going, these things always happen when we try so hard to sort things out.

White_Iris

Phoned the garage this morning to ask for a quote and they're going to phone me back. Once I have a rough idea I can start planning where it's going to come from.

Better news from eBay, sold lots and a few things for much more than I expected. Everyone paid straight away and I've been to the post office this morning to get it all sent off. I did mess up the postage on one item, which cost me £2 :mad: but before eBay fees I've made about £60. I am going to spend a bit (£10ish) on a new pair of winter boots but as I sold a pair of shoes for over £20 I'm ok with that. I also sold a coat which I bought last winter but is now too big for me, so I might look out for a replacement for that as well but the rest will be put towards presents for DH and saved for our trip away just before Christmas.

Just been to the supermarket and spent £25 out of this weeks £50 and hopefully that'll be all I need to spend. I haven't done a menu plan for the week yet but we have lots in, it's just a matter of combining it! I cooked a huge leg of lamb yesterday and there's loads left over, so it's lamb curry tonight and probably lamb fajitas later in the week (although I will need to go buy some tortillas unless I try making my own :eek:).

I should be getting off my bottom and doing some cleaning but I'm so comfy on the sofa, with a nice hot cup of tea (and some of DHs homemade scones..shhh, don't tell) that I think I'll stay here for a while and check the banking online.

White_Iris

Well, I got the upstairs hoovered and the bathroom cleaned - still need to dust and clean the bathroom floor though. Then tackle downstairs, get the weeks menu done and mend a blanket we keep on the sofa. Lunch first though (and maybe a bit of procrastinating on the computer!).

White_Iris

:j The credit card is now down to £1079.47. I'm itching to tidy up that nasty £9.47 (last months interest) but I'd need to dip in to the bills account and I really need to leave that untouched until the end of the month to get a clear idea of whether there is a surplus or a deficit in there. DHs credit union loan should be here soon, so hopefully it'll be down to £800 by the end of the month.

Less good news is that I had a phone call from our lettings agency, telling me that our tenants have reported a leaky radiator. Hopefully that'll be cheap and easy to fix but it made me feel a bit uneasy about spending all of our contingency fund.

Stupid garage never got back to me with a quote either and every time I tried to ring them no-one answered. I'll be back on the phone in about half an hour, when they open and they had better have a quote for me :mad:

E.T.A. Phoned them but wish I hadn't - £330 :eek: That's going to leave quite a hole in the emergency fund.:(

White_Iris

I've just tweaked the bills account and increased our car maintenance savings by 50% and set up a new SO to our emergency savings, starting in January. We can only afford £25 a month at the moment but I aim to throw as much spare cash as it as I can in the new year and get to £500 (ideally £1000) as soon as possible.

I also need to come up with a way to pay off at least £100 a month off the credit card (starting January), to get that paid off completely by the end of next year.

Once we've got there then it's time to focus on paying off our loans early and saving up for our new house. In my dream world, I'd like to be debt free and ready to sell/buy our forever house the year DH and I turn 40 - that's 2017, only 3 years :eek:.

Baby steps though...lets get through 2013 without increasing our debt load, get the savings built up and the credit card paid off first.

sweetpea26

keep going Whiteiris

You will find a way to do it. Its been a tough week for you especially with the car. Hopefull all will sort itself out soon.

Is there any way you could apply for a new credit card where you could transfer over the £1000 and have no interest to pay?

White_Iris

sweetpea26 wrote: »

keep going Whiteiris

You will find a way to do it. Its been a tough week for you especially with the car. Hopefull all will sort itself out soon.

Is there any way you could apply for a new credit card where you could transfer over the £1000 and have no interest to pay?

Thanks sweet pea, it's nice to have a bit of encouragement (albeit virtual). DH is great but he doesn't worry about things until they happen, whereas I tend to dwell on what might happen, and he can be a bit dismissive when I try to explain my worries to him. The problem with the radiator at our rental property has put me right out of sorts, I'm imagining we'll need to spend hundreds whereas it'll probably be a relatively small problem.

We probably could tart the remaining balance to a 0% card, we've done that quite often in the past but I'd need to have a think about whether the addition of a balance transfer fee would outweigh the interest we'd pay over the next few months, before the card is cleared. I'll look in to but I won't apply for anything at the moment, until we've paid off everything we can for the time being.

White_Iris

I'm feeling bit lethargic and under the weather today, so I'm not planning on doing much other than sitting and eating cake and catching up on Downton (although the floor is in desperate need of a vacuum, so I will probably drag that around until you can see floor again and not just crumbs).

My mum has very generously been saving Morrissons stamps for me, for Christmas, and has just sent me a full card to get our Christmas shopping. I need to plan out the spending carefully, as I want to buy as many day-to-day groceries as I can, as well as our Christmas day things. I'd like to get as much as I can now - things that can be frozen or non-perishables - to avoid the Christmas chaos, so I'm doing a three day meal plan (Christmas Eve through to Boxing Day) and making a list of all other snacks and drinks we might need.

I need to clear out as much freezer space as possible, to make room for our Christmas things, so I'm currently trying to come up with ways to eat tonnes of cooked apple and blackberries, frozen in the summer. There's only so much crumble we can manage! I've tried apple muffins, which are ok but not a great texture, so I'm on the lookout for new recipes.

No change on the money front - nothing coming in but nothing going out either. Car is in the garage today and hopefully that won't cost more than they quoted. Once that is repaired and the MOT completed, I need to get car tax but that's all budgeted for, so no great crisis there.

Since we had a fairly frugal weeks grocery shopping, I've managed to put £20 in the cash pot, so that's now up to £50 - I'm aiming for £100 in there by the end of the month, which I can then pay off the credit card. If I can do that then the balance should be down to about £700 by the end of the month. Next month I'm aiming to save between £60 and £100, before we go away, which I can use to pay for fuel for our journey.