"Simply not solvent!

hypno06

Although you don't feel that the CC is coming down very quickly, remember that the loan is coming down every month, with nothing else being spent on it, so the amount you would need to balance transfer is less each month, meaning that you need to have less available on the credit card to transfer it to!

So, before you know it, you will be able to do this. Honest!

Verbatim

I've just read your diary thro', well half yesterday to be honest, and am hooked! I'll be following your progress from now on. You really seem to have gained first a real insight into your finances and then a good grip on them! I'm so impressed that you've done so much as well as being SE, having 3 kids and an OH who seems to sabotage your efforts at worst or be in a different world from the rest of us at best.

(I'm sure he has many good points and it's always hard to give a fair picture when we're furious about some trait of our OH that's annoyed us yet again, lol)!

Seaxwyn

Thanks Verbatim!

It's true my OH has many good points and I love and admire him greatly, but this diary is for writing about money stuff and in that department, he's rubbish.

An up and down day today:

Up: I completed a job that's been stressing me out for a long time. I don't know why, it was really interesting and all that, but somehow it got caught up with all my anxiety and it has been a burden since Febuary. Today it is finished and that is such a relief. I haven't added up the days spent on it yet but reckon I'll be invoicing about £3,000 - this is the second tranche of payment so all the angst has been well worth it.

Uppish: I now have two quick and easy jobs to do which I can invoice for next week too.

Downish: I haven't got quite enough work booked for the next few months to sustain my earnings so I need to look out for some more.

Rock bottom: Nothing to do with moneysaving but this has really upset me.

We had a family of great tits nesting in our garden. For weeks now the parents have been busily flying back and forth all day feeding the young brood and you could hear the babies inside the nestbox squealing for their food. Whenever I felt down about money or being cr*p at work or anything I'd go and watch them and it always cheered me up.

Yesterday the parents brought the chicks out for their first flying lessons and it was lovely to see them zooming about the garden and crash landing in the nettles by the compost heap. Today I came back from a day in town and dashed out to look at them. OH broke it to me that he had found three tiny headless corpses lined up on a paving slab.

I am so heartbroken, after all the parents' hard work, that this has happened. I want to kill the cat, or even better the owners (luckily for them I don't know whose cat it was). We had tried really hard to make the garden cat-proof but it's just impossible. Any cat owners reading this, please please put a bell on your cat's collar.

Sorry that's totally off topic but I can't stop thinking about it!

hypno06

Hey there, isn't it crap when something that costs nothing, and makes us smile is taken away for no real reason?

Sorry that it put a downer on your day, everything else is going well though. Hold onto the good stuff and remember the funny stuff that you saw with the birds that made you smile. That will stay with you all year, and next year you will have a new family there to make you smile!

chevalier

Hi Sea
Yes have collars on my cats for just this reason. All it means though is they hunt mice/voles etc instead.
On a more up note I FINISHED MY ESSAY WOOHOO! How good it is is another matter.......!
chev

hypno06

Hi Sea, I hope you have a good day today x

Seaxwyn

Well done Chevalier!!! Good on you! I bet that's a big relief. I hope you can have a really chilled weekend without that pressure hanging over you.

I feel a bit the same having finished a big job I was working on. I went to bed early last night for the first time in ages!

Still feeling sad about the birds. I don't want to go into the garden to hear the silent nest box. I know that wild birds get predated and most don't reach adulthood anyway, but I guess I empathised with those great tit parents who had worked so hard to raise their babies.

Luckily I'm not a great tit and my kids are statistically likely to live long and healthy lives. And I've got two interesting jobs to do today so I'm feeling luck and grateful for my interesting freelance career.

Seaxwyn

I paid £98 off my Abbey CC today. Added to the huge overpayment of £5.67 I made earlier this month, I have now paid £103.67 more than the minimum payment! Yay! I'm snowballing at last!

I also transferred £460 from that card to the low LOB M&S one. Both my low LOB deals expire this month so my BTing days are over and I just have to get on and pay the debt.

OH has been paid for some work and I hope he can pay something onto the Abbey CC but we need to discuss this. We've got an expensive few weeks coming up with a gas bill and various family occasions requiring expenditure of one kind or another.

taxi73

Hi..well done on your overpayments and finishing that job...and I'm sorry to hear about the birds..it's such a shame!!

hypno06

good news on the credit card overpayments - you have achieved more than me this month!

Hopefully OH will allow you to overpay some more. He may even get a taste for snowballing, himself!