Dr Dolittle needs to do more!

Abcynthia

Hi guys
I have been coming on to Money Saving Expert for a few years now and have been 70 pounds off from being debt free at one point! At that time we had just bought our first house and instead of being patient and waiting to make improvements I powered ahead and paid for them on credit. Now we have quite a reasonable debt. It is time to get our bums in gear and get this sorted!

I am a stay at home mum and my partner is a police officer - He has only been in the police for a year. Here was my first mistake! When we heard he had passed all the required assessments to get into the police we were looking forward to a large pay difference from his previous job. He never actually got a position until a year and a half later. In the mean time we had been spending on credit thinking we'd pay it back in no time once he actually started the the police.

Our second police related shock was the police pension. I knew it existed, but in my naive mind I thought it would be something along the lines of £60 max a month - so boy did I get a shock when we found out in was £170 off his wages every month!

So yes it has in the main been down to our stupidity and naivety!

I won't be posting an SOA as I have honestly whittled and whittled so everything is down to bare minimum I can get it. However, we will be keeping sky. Why? you ask - because we genuinely do watch it. We rarely go out as a couple so we like to record shows or films for us to sit and watch together in an evening. I don't have Movies or sports. We also have our phone and broadband through them and we have a good deal

BUT HEY WAIT HOLD ON A MINUTE! - Why the Dr Dolittle title?!

Well this is where I admit our household is a little crazy As well as my little girl we have 10 cats (Aslan, Azure, Tiko, Shai, Mai, Tabi, Diego, Sophie, Tori and Sienna), 2 dogs (Jovi and Aeva) and 1 skunk (Peaches). I have been called Dr Dolittle on many occasions as you can imagine. I am always looking for bargains when it comes to the animals and I am a member of the zooplus savers. This meant I paid £19 and for the next 3 years I get 5% off automatically. If I have a voucher code I can use this on top (I know of a 5% one that can be used over and over thus giving me 10% off ). I have made my £19 in savings already!

One thing I have found with us - If we allow ourselves nothing and I mean no treats etc we do awfully and spend more! I have now put a bit of money down on our budget that we are allowed to treat ourselves with! It's not a lot but it makes us feel better.

My goal is to have all our debt paid off in 4 years at the longest. I will be doing this by overpaying, trying to spend less each month and ebaying! I kick myself as I was a member of shop and scan and last year it paid for christmas, however I got kicked off a couple of weeks ago down to me not scanning often enough. I am really gutted about that as I was on food 2 go as well so was able to make 20 pounds worth of vouchers a month which was really helpful. Life goes on though and I will learn from my mistakes. I am a member of a couple of survey sites and one of them has been very good to me

Anyway I shall leave it at that for just now - Thank you for reading my ramble!

Wordsmith

Sounds like you've got a lot of the money-saving sussed, Abcynthia. Good luck with what comes from this point on!

Abcynthia

Wordsmith wrote: »

Sounds like you've got a lot of the money-saving sussed, Abcynthia. Good luck with what comes from this point on!

Thank you Wordsmith. I am ready to work hard - keeping the OH reined in is the biggest challenge

Hovel_lady

Hello and welcome to your shiny new diary!
Good luck with the debt busting

Abcynthia

Hovel_lady wrote: »

Hello and welcome to your shiny new diary!
Good luck with the debt busting

Thank you Hovel lady


Today I haven't had a big debt busting day. My mother is down visiting for a couple of nights to help decorate our little girls bedroom. I have only had to pay for the paint though! My mum kindly paid for a new carpet for her - very much appreciated and I know my little girl will love her room when it is finished.

I also had to buy my partner new shoe laces and socks :mad: This is because he is back up at the police college for 3 weeks. Last time he was there for 10 :eek: He gets to come home on a Friday night and goes back up early Sunday evening. I hate it, but this will be the last time he has to be up there for a long time. One plus is his meals are all given to him so it saves us some grocery money

Oh and my daughter is now completely out of nappies! :j No more expense on them either.

I will post our totals at some point. I really need to sit down and look at the exact amounts Not looking forward to it, but I know it will really help me if I can watch them go down on here.

One of the dogs broke the washing line the other day :mad: He was hanging off one of my sofa throws - He is a bit crazy! Thankfully super mother to the rescue managed to fix it so I don't have to go and buy a new one.

As my OH is away and me and my little girl get very bored and miss him a lot I thought I might give her a wee treat. The circus is in town at the moment and they do one evening of cheap entry for 6.99. I have been budgeting a little bit of money to take her out so this would come out of that. She loved it the last time we went to the circus

Going to sign off for now as I am so tired after all the decorating!

Abcynthia

Well I decided not to go to the circus and save the money. In stead we went to the local forest and took a picnic and 1 of the dogs. A cheap day out and my little girl enjoyed it all the same

The washing line is broken again (in a different place as well), but just before my mum left she bought me a new one. She is officially a star!

I have looked at my totals and here is what I want cleared. I have a long term loan from my mum that was put towards our house deposit. I pay this pay at a fixed monthly payment though so it is being paid off and I won't add it to the list! It is all credit cards that are causing me the grief They are shared between myself and my partner

CC1 - 2780
CC2 - 4500
CC3 - 2200
CC4 - 2800

TOTAL 12280
:eek: eep Half of my OH's yearly salary. Scary
I want to work on CC3 first - it is the lowest balance but the highest interest. We can't do any card shifting at the moment down to a couple of late payment markers.

I have set myself my own wee challenges -

1. I want to make an extra 100 pounds a month through outside means such as selling or surveys (If I can get tesco vouchers then I will take 10 pounds from my grocery budget and use the voucher instead if that makes sense!) to pay towards the offending cards. If I make more than £100 then it will be a good surprise. I will be overpaying as well from our monthly income. Probably only £50 until my partner gets his pay rise and we actually find out how much it will be in September.

2. I want all of these cards gone in 4 years (MAXIMUM!) so that is just over £3000 a year. Cripes - sounds like a lot.....BUT I WILL DO IT! Must have a positive attitude and all that

3. Start saving! I know you aren't supposed to save while you have debt - but we have no savings left and I keep asking myself what if my boiler broke down and was completely caput?!?

4. Get organised and write more lists to empty my head more often. I sit late at night thinking I have so much to do tomorrow....every day! I should use this time to write a list and get it out of my head before bed time!

5. Start writing these stories I have floating around in my head. This is going to make me sound beyond crazy, but I have dreams that are really vivid and random. I have had a few now and each are completely different, but are the perfect setting for a story. They never actually involve me - I'm inside someone else in them. I have always enjoyed writing and did well with it so this would be a good hobby for me. My only real hobby at the moment is the animals!

That is a good starting point for my challenges I think

I have to get Tiko (cat - seal bi colour ragdoll) to the vets in the next 5 days for his booster injection. Then the next one to go is Diego (cat - ragdoll x maine coon) in September. I also have Aslan (cat) to be neutered in the next 2 months. He is a Maine Coon so has had a little bit longer to grow as they are a breed that matures slowly. He really suits his name now by the size of him :rotfl: He is a red tabby All things that will be budgeted for

Almost the end of my OH's first week out of 3 away at the police college. The last time it was 10 weeks so it isn't so bad, but I will glad to get him home!

Anyway must get myself to bed! (and feed the skunk her dinner!)
Night and thanks for reading

Abcynthia

OK so had some good happenings and some bad. I will start with the bad so I can end on a high note

I crashed the car a couple of weeks back on the way up to the OH's passing out parade at the police college. It was very scary with me nearly ending up going down a big drop. The car spun a few times and thankfully it spun away from the drop and I ended up on the opposite side of the road facing the opposite way from which I had originally been going. I was well wedged into a hill _pale_ I managed to get hold of my mother - I was half an hour away from her house (over an hour away from home) and she was on her way to get me when 4 men rescued me. They got my car out of the wedge and I discovered it didn't have a scratch on it. Thankfully neither me or my little girl (or my dogs!) were hurt and I could just continue on to my mums.

However we are going to have to fork out to have the car put in the garage to be checked out as my OH and his father suspect there might be something wrong with the anti roll bar and that is why the car stepped out and went into a spin.

Next bad thing - I had been in our shed looking for my outdoor cat in the dark and flicked the switch for the light, which didn't come on. Unbeknowns to me I had knocked the switch for our second freezer and turned it off. I didn't find out until four days later so that was about £40-£50 of food gone to waste. I was not impressed with myself at all :mad: This means I've had to increase our food budget by a little so we have some food in there. I will definitely be looking out for some reduced foods to go in there!

Lastly one of my OH's credit cards had gone slightly over limit So not only do we have a charge, but they phoned about 20 times in one day to tell him and had even tried his work number, which he was not impressed about. I rectified it ASAP.

OK so good news!

We have finished paying off a loan which mum took out on our behalf 2 and half years ago so we now have 100 pounds back to us every month so that will be thrown straight at the cards!

We have sold OH's old computer to his sister so we got £120 pounds for that

I got a mystery shop assignment for a Historic Scotland site. I probably won't make any money from it as I want to take the OH and our daughter, but it will cover the cost for the whole day including lunch meaning we will have had a free day out It even has an adventure playground!

I got a £45 pound refund for some contact lenses I hadn't used - This was the exact amount I still owed the vets from the Maine Coon I rescued and all her operations etc so I came out even

I have started one of my aims and have been doing some writing. I have 2 chapters completed. I am so perfectionist with it that it has taken me a while just to complete those.

Final bit of good news - My OH is now due a pay rise next month due to completing this part of his probation including the college. I have no exact amounts so don't want to count my chickens before they hatch. To be honest anything is a plus!

Well must go and get on - Our bedroom is in desperate need of some organising!

Wordsmith

Morning, Abcynthia. What an eventful couple of weeks you've had! Thank goodness none of you were hurt in the accident. Did you get to your OH's passing out parade?

But there are some great good news items in your post - so, all moving in the right direction.

Abcynthia

Wordsmith wrote: »

Morning, Abcynthia. What an eventful couple of weeks you've had! Thank goodness none of you were hurt in the accident. Did you get to your OH's passing out parade?

But there are some great good news items in your post - so, all moving in the right direction.

Yes I did I was travelling up the night before and staying at my mother's so I didn't have to drive the 2 hour journey early hours of the morning. He did us very proud That is college finished for him now so he doesn't have to be away from home any more.

I don't know how we managed not to be hurt AND come out with no car damage - There was a lamp post about 15cm from the boot and a tree about half a metre away from the side of the car where I ended up! Very scary stuff. My first thought when I saw the drop was I'm going to die and then where the car spun away from it and I saw the tree I thought oh no this is going to cost so much!

Abcynthia

Have to be honest. Feeling down in the dumps at the moment. Trying to feel positive, but it isn't easy. I've been looking at my spreadsheet that I made up with our budget over and over and I just keep making myself feel sick.

Once the majority of things are paid we have £100 left. Sounds like a lot, but that is before we've taken our little girl out anywhere or bought her any clothes if she needs them or paid out car tax (which is 200 pounds!) I have whittled everything down to the bone. Means I can't really pay any extra off to the cards. I had obviously missed a couple of things out as the £100 we no longer pay to my mother has just been absorbed.

To make things even more rubbishy feeling - I've looked at the figures of my OH's pay rise and done all the tax checking and benefits checker etc...and here is a laugh. He gets a pay rise of almost £2500, but they take so much off us in tax credits for that, that we will be £2 (yes two pounds) better off a month

I am just kicking myself at the moment because we pay out £367 in debt repayments a month Think what we could do with that. I can't believe how stupid we have been.

I have applied for and taken the tests for the new ChaCha text answer service. It is not brilliant pay, but if I work my bum off on it I could get around £200 a month and I can use this to put towards the debt. I am just waiting to hear back if I am in or not so crossed fingers. I also have such a load of stuff to sell on ebay and no camera. However my birthday is at the start of October so will be asking nicely to get one from my family.

I also think I am going to move energy providers when my current deal runs out in September/October (through quidco of course) to npower as I can save £50 a year and I actually have £200 worth of credit built up with E.D.F so that would go nicely towards a debt!

I am going to sulk off now. Hopefully I can be more positive in my next post

bast

I really dont know what to say... Life sucks sometimes...:( But from one cat lover to another, and boy do i love my two cats...Life is so hard but you, like me have made a commitment to pay the debts off, so it will suck for a while, but think how amazing your life is gonna be when everything is paid off... You have taken that first step...:T Ps... The best fun we ever had with the kids was for free they loved picnic in the parks.... pictures on a saturday morning... mazes... loved losing them:)... We had a tent picnic party in the bedroom, built around four chairs, rather squashed but they loved it... Swimming as a family, Making a meal together, and chatting for ages... Baking and I cant bake, but there were some interesting results:) Plasticine making, the best prize for the best model... everyone won ..... sorry I have gone on lol:o