Blinking in the brightness of the lightbulb moment

Cat2011

Further bad news - I realised I thought I could put aside a £647 each month into savings. And I just added the extra £240 from not paying the loan onto that, and redid the snowball, and was very happy with a June 2012 DFD. But apparently my Excel sheet already had the £240 added, so now I'm not paying my loan payment every month I now have £647, and used to only have £407. So all my calculations are wrong.

Also realised I hadn't included the savings I already had in my snowball calculation - who'd have thought I was so bad at numbers when it's part of my job?!

Redid the snowball with the right estimated monthly savings, including a lump sum payment of my current savings and got a date of September 2012

Oh well - debt free is debt free, doesn't matter which particular month it happens in.... Guess my !!!! up is just an incentive to earn as much extra as I possibly can so I can be debt free earlier!

Cat2011

Not heard anything back from the eBay buyer who had a lost parcel, so hopefully he's agreeable to waiting til Saturday and it will turn up before then! fingers crossed!

Had the money transfer added to my Natwest cc, but not had the money into my account yet... I hate waiting! Also been told Amazon paid out yesterday, £94 , but still waiting for that to hit my account too.

Think I might start up an Excel sheet for all the accounts I have, for when they need to be cancelled etc. It's getting a bit confusing. I have one account which will pay a bonus after 3 months, then I need to cancel, but not sure when that is !

Still waiting for my Clarity card to turn up, got the PIN last week! When that arrives I can ring Amex and see if they'll give me a 0% deal, if they will I can bung the money in the savings account, if not I'll cancel the card, as I realised I now have 5 credit cards!

Really need to pull my finger out with all the eBay stuff, going to clear out the spare room, and store everything in there with boxes for eBay, and boxes for car-boot sale, for things which fail on eBay. My room is getting way too full of stuff! It's still full of bags from the last 3 weekends away where I've been travelling all over the place. Must get it all sorted out as I keep tripping over stuff!

Managed to get my internet/phone sorted out too. I was paying £27 through Sky, as I'm not in their "special area", they couldn't offer me a better deal, so went to Orange for £19/month (saving £8!) which will make the House Bank Account happy, AND I get £150 cashback which will go into my savings. They also seem to have MAC codes these days, which makes changing internet, like changing mobiles - no more waiting 2 months for it to be sorted, hopefully will just take 7 days... touch wood.... lots of wood!

Really regretting joining the new gym. The swimming pool is only 15m, I thought it was 20m. Tried a swim at lunchtime, and it was empty. I'm not capable of swimming in empty pools, the thoughts of things in the water completely freaks me out! I'm fine when others are in the pool. In the evenings the pool is always in use by the Swim Academy or classes. So think I'm going to have to sign up to the leisure centre as well, so I can swim in a proper pool. That'll cost about £25/month. So instead of paying £50 at my old gym, I'm paying ~£35 for new gym + £25 for swimming pool. Grr! So much for saving some money.... Oh well, at least I got some coaching for my weight lifiting, which is what I wanted to get out of joining the new gym.

I was very good last night and made a huge batch dinner, which I froze as 5 servings as well as having some to eat, and also made some parsnip soup (which tasted amazing after I completely c*ocked it up last time!) which made another 5 servings, so that's lunches for the next 2 weeks. I popped to Tesco to buy some more veggies as I was all out, and the majority of the lights had failed in the store! Only just made it round before they announced they were closing the store - I can imagine the number of times they'd be sued by people bumping into things!

To do list this eve:

• List 5 things on eBay
• Bike/run training
• Clear bags in bedroom
• Clear spare room
• Move eBay stuff into spare room

Think that might be a bit more than 1 evening!

Kepp

Definitely get on Excel - it makes things so much easier. Although you do tend to find that you end up a spreadsheet addict!

Good luck with the list - does sound like more than one evenings worth!

Cat2011

Cat2011 wrote: »

To do list this eve:

• List 5 things on eBay DONE
• Bike/run training
• Clear bags in bedroom Emptied one bag and generally tidied. Stacked the rest up to do later. I can now walk around my room!
• Clear spare room DONE
• Move eBay stuff into spare room Will do once I've sorted the boxes already in the spare room

Got a few things on eBay quite quickly this evening. Think I am definitely going to go down the route of a few items every evening. In the past I've waited for a fee-free weekend, but it only cost 15p to put the ads up and I could put any starting price, e.g. 1.99. Whereas on fee-free weekends, I can only price at max 99p, which is what they tend to go for. Costing 15p, but earning £1 more makes sense to me

P.S. This is my first quoted message :T

Cat2011

beccie wrote: »

Definitely get on Excel - it makes things so much easier. Although you do tend to find that you end up a spreadsheet addict!

Good luck with the list - does sound like more than one evenings worth!

Will set up a proper spreadsheet at the weekend... after reading some of the posts on MSE, sounds like people have spreadsheets for all sorts - definitely going to get addictive!

Cat2011

The money transfer from my credit card hit my bank account this morning - I got all excited about completely paying off my Tesco loan, and having all my debt at 0%. I range Tesco up, and the figure they gave me to settle was about £45 more than the balance should have been. I should also have had an interest rebate, so the final payment should have been about £200 LESS than the current balance. I questioned it (thankfully!) and the man on the phone said that their system was crap, and it would have to be calculated manually which will take a couple of days due to a back log. The automatic system hadn't calculated the rebate properly.

Have to ring back Monday

8 eBay items out of 28 have watchers, don't think they're going to sell very well.... lots of car booting to do then! Can all go in a box til I have enough for a stall...

Earnt a pound on surveys last night, not been following those very well, need to get back to it. However, have an exam next week for something that I want to do, and have to get revising for it - as I basically completely forgot about it! So going to concentrate on that for the next week, back to the surveys after next Wednesday...

Cat2011

Woohoo. The buyer that complained about the parcel not turning up mutually agreed to go visit his local post office - and that's where it was! Apparently it had been sat there for 5 days, so he's now a happy bunny. AND the buyer who had not paid - who I opened a "Case" with on eBay, finally paid! So I once again have a clean sheet on eBay . 11/28 have watchers with a couple of days to go, so not too bad...

Clarity card turned up, I've cancelled my Amex, as they've not got a 0% deal that they can offer me. So will wait for a good low BT fee offer and maybe use that for some stoozing. Will be useful to use abroad too.

Just need to pay off Tesco, then can work out how much I've got left in my current account, which can be transfered into my savings account, then I can update my signature! I've been naughty and spent a bit on the M&S card (at 0%) without putting the equivalent into my savings. It's been a bit complicated when money has already been earmarked for something else, so I'm not sure how much I actually have to spend. Hopefully will be sorted out next week.

Kepp

Great news on getting the Ebay issues sorted

Cat2011

Thanks Beccie, it was a bit of a relief!

I have been badgering Tesco for days for the manual calculation, and finally got it this evening. Saved myself about £30 in interest, by paying off a year early, shame the interest is so heavily weighted at the front of the loan. It means it perhaps wasn't the most financially savvy thing to do, but mentally it's helped me a lot, and I think that's worth a lot sometimes. Have finally managed to pay it off completely! I've now redone my signature, with the balance now showing on the Natwest card. All my debt is now at 0%

I was hoping to get my debt balance under £8k, but it seems to have gone up instead! The balance on the M&S card keeps going up as I keep spending on it! I've been putting the postage for Amazon/eBay on the card, as all the money I make from those goes straight into the savings account, but I've been creeping towards putting meals out and other things on there, which should really be coming out of my entertainment budget.... Will try harder at sticking to budget.

I have a few things owed to me, about £300 for the Austrian holiday from friends, £250 bonus' for opening accounts and £150 from Quidco, which will help the savings, but guess I musn't count on those til they have actually been paid out....

I also really want to do my accounts for the last couple of months, and find out how much I'm actually spending on food and fuel, as this could mean more/less going into savings if I didn't guesstimate correctly when I drew up my budget.

Have my exam tomorrow morning, which will be interesting! Will concentrate on the budgeting after that.

Kepp

Good luck with the exam