Learning to Live on Less!

debtfreewannabe321

White_Iris wrote: »

All change again this morning! While checking the balances I noticed an offer from card 2 (which wasn't there a few days ago when I applied for card 3 :mad:), offering 0% balance transfers. So I've cleared card 1 and paid a bit off cards 2 and 3. Once the balance on card 1 is showing as zero and I'm certain there are no more dribs and drabs of interest to pay off I'll get DH to close the account.

So the new balances are as follows:
Card 1 - £0
Card 2 - £2065.60 (0% - £1650 until July 2016, £400 until Aug 2015) Will round this down to £2050 asap as my OCD tendancies make me twitchy if they aren't nice round numbers :rotfl:
Card 3 - £1730 (0% until Aug 2015)

Oh how annoying that the offer wasn't showing originally! I also get twitchy with unrounded numbers :rotfl: I round down every night from my main account to the emergency funds (the only one that's allowed to be an uneven number ) and when the other accounts get interest I also transfer the few pennies from there straight to the emergency :rotfl: there's quite a few of us on here that do it, so we're in good company

Tink_04

Hi just wanted to pop in and say hello, I've been reading your diary on and off for a while and it's nice to see your progress! I'm another one who needs even numbers and it's easier to deal with! I also wanted to say thanks as when I first started reading I was inspired to sell some stuff and I've made nearly £300! I haven't got time for the survey sites tho. Our situations are sort of similar (which is probably why your diary relates to me) I'm a mum of 2 DD4 & Ds9m who is in a too small house that we are desperate to sell to move to our forever home but realistically looking at selling ours and renting until we can afford it so I'm de cluttering, selling what I can and creating some space.

Good luck

Muser1

Hi iris :hello:

Just spent a VERY lazy Sunday reading all of your diary. You remind me a lot of myself so I have really enjoyed it.

Will subscribe. X

White_Iris

Tink_04 wrote: »

Hi just wanted to pop in and say hello, I've been reading your diary on and off for a while and it's nice to see your progress! I'm another one who needs even numbers and it's easier to deal with! I also wanted to say thanks as when I first started reading I was inspired to sell some stuff and I've made nearly £300! I haven't got time for the survey sites tho. Our situations are sort of similar (which is probably why your diary relates to me) I'm a mum of 2 DD4 & Ds9m who is in a too small house that we are desperate to sell to move to our forever home but realistically looking at selling ours and renting until we can afford it so I'm de cluttering, selling what I can and creating some space.

Good luck

Muser1 wrote: »

Hi iris :hello:

Just spent a VERY lazy Sunday reading all of your diary. You remind me a lot of myself so I have really enjoyed it.

Will subscribe. X

Hi Tink_04 and Muser1 :hello:, thanks for reading and feel free to drop by and comment any time you like!

White_Iris

I've sorted out the last batch of eBay stuff, mostly clothes which now need to be ironed :eek: and photographed, which I'm aiming to list next week once the fee structure changes and I can start the listings at a slightly higher price for free. I also need to unearth the last cot-bed from under DS's bed and get that put together and photographed, to make some room and hopefully bring in some cash. Once this lot has sold I don't think I'll be doing much eBaying anymore - we don't have anything else of value or that we want to get rid of and the children tend to wear their clothes out before they grow out of them.

I'm just waiting for the May clubcard vouchers to be calculated and then I can send away for the theme park vouchers for the twins birthday. I don't think I'll have enough for all of us but it should cover me and DH. I might ask my mum if she will order some as well (she often passes her clubcard vouchers on to us anyway) to cover the rest of the cost.

Despite DH driving and me sticking to cola and one glass of red, we spent way more than we expected on our evening out at the weekend (and we also went out for breakfast on Saturday and had a day out on bank holiday Monday), so we actually ended up spending all of the £80 we had earmarked for paying for the birthday present. I need to find it before the beginning of June as it came out of money I've been saving to pay for a dental crown, it could come out of our savings next month but I'd rather try and find it some other way (eBay hopefully).

White_Iris

I've been looking for a birthday present for my mum and I've found a set of books I think she'd enjoy on eBay, for only £20 (massive discount over buying them individually). I've just earned £3 from a Pinecone survey, so it'll only cost me £17. Her birthday isn't until next month and as funds are a bit tight, what with the children's birthdays this month, I'd normally wait and buy it at the beginning of June instead. However, she is coming to visit at the end of the month and if I can get it bought and wrapped by then, she can take it back home with her saving me the postage costs (which I'm guessing will be quite hefty for a set of 10 books). I should be able to earn the money back through eBay, so I'm going to borrow it from my dental savings and pay it back once I've made some sales. :money:

As well as mums birthday, next month is a busy (and costly) one - I've also got MIL and DHs birthdays and fathers day. I've told DH that he is responsible for picking and paying for MILs present and his dads fathers day gift, so that just leaves me DH (birthday and Fathers day) and my dads Fathers day present. Thankfully June is the end of our run of birthdays - from January to June we have at least two birthdays or special events like Mothers/Fathers Day, every month and it really gets costly. I've planned ahead as much as possible this year and started buying in the Christmas sales but it's still a relief when it's over. Normally July and August give us a bit of spending respite but we have a wedding to attend in July, so we're only really getting August off before it's time to start thinking about Christmas! :eek:

White_Iris

Mums birthday present ordered, so should be able to avoid costly postage prices. Got a letter from our sewerage company telling me our bill is going down by a whole £1, presumably this means our water bill will also reduce since sewerage base the bill on readings from water. We shall see.

It's time to start looking for a job I think, ideally it'll be in a school in some capacity so the jobs should start appearing now, as people hand their notice in for the end of the school year. So far, no luck though. It may still be a bit early but in my area there is very little being advertised and the jobs that are coming up are full time and I only want about 16 hours, to fit in with childcare and sharing the car with DH.

Cold and grey here at the moment but I've still pegged out some washing (ever the optimist!) and I dried a huge load indoors yesterday, hung all over the house, to avoid using the tumble drier. I did cave in and put the heating on for an hour though as it was blinking cold! I'm going to have a scout through the cupboards later and see if I can put together a meal plan for next week based on what we have already. I will need to buy some fresh things but I'm aiming for less than £30, so i can keep some money aside for DHs birthday next month.

lemanie

Hello White Iris

I've just been reading through your thread (not all ) but I've read enough for your life to chime with mine.

I had what I thought was a LBM when I first joined MSE but we carried on struggling with our finances and debt so that at some point last year it must have topped £25K.

Since then I've had a shift in attitude and this time I am really determined to get rid of our debt and be MUCH better stewards of the income we are given. So far, so good but in the past when it has been going well I've had a tendency to take my eye off the ball and oops there we are with more credit card debt or a bigger overdraft.

So I've been reading debt free diaries and dfw boards for inspiration/motivation. Something that I think is going to make a big difference is https://www.youneedabudget.com/. I got a free copy because I study with the OU and I'm loving it. My DH gets down and demotivated about our finances and for years would have nothing to do with them but I made him take responsibility last year and he will help me now when I need him to. We've paid over £5K off this year already, I'm amazed.

I also read http://www.careforthefamily.org.uk/Shop/money_life_resources/the_money_secret and http://www.themoneyrevolution.net/book.htm which both had a big impact on me.

I hope you won't mind me popping by to see how you are going on and offering the odd encouraging word because you are doing so well in difficult financial circumstances, keep it up.

White_Iris

White_Iris wrote: »

Cold and grey here at the moment but I've still pegged out some washing (ever the optimist!) and I dried a huge load indoors yesterday, hung all over the house, to avoid using the tumble drier.

Well apparently karma thought I was getting a bit too smug and virtuous about pegging out the washing and my line snapped, dumping it all on a very muddy flower bed. :mad:

lemanie wrote: »

I hope you won't mind me popping by to see how you are going on and offering the odd encouraging word because you are doing so well in difficult financial circumstances, keep it up.

Hi lemanie, thanks for saying hello and for all the reading suggestions. It'll be lovely to hear from you again so feel free to pop in!

White_Iris

Hmmm, some less than frugal spending and a pampered chef party at the weekend has left me seriously low on funds. I've just done the grocery shopping and we are now fairly well stocked up but next week will be tough as I've only got £6 in cash and £10.50 of clubcard vouchers. Should be manageable but I see a lot of veggie meals in our future.

The house sale is stalling a bit, our buyers haven't sent back the preliminary paperwork and search fees to their solicitor but hopefully they're just disorganised rather than having second thoughts. One good note is that we had our independent market value survey done and based on that figure we can calculate what we owe our third party lender. They still need to confirm (why does everything take sooo long!?) but I have worked out we'll make about £800 more than we expected. Trying not to get too excited about finally having some money in the bank as we're still a long way off exchange of contracts.