Tales from a country cottage

Knitting_Nora

*launches into a montage of 'independent woman' songs*

Get you! Most impressed with your achievementy attitude, m'lady - it's the most amazing feeling when you manage to get stuff like this done, so all power to your elbow!

Plus how cool is the whole wifi thing - clever you to actually study the router (I'm a terror for not doing the intelligent thing first...:o). I love, love, love the whole wifi capability - I even have my printer wifi'd and it's a huge bonus.

Afraid I have no idea about satellite stuff (though if you don't get any luck on your diary, try searching the other forum threads). I've got to do the music transfer thing as well, and I sort of get round the whole photo thing by emailing the pics to myself and saving the emailed pic to the laptop...so I await with baited breath to read how I should be doing it all! :rotfl:

Have a good'un.

Nora.x

ani*fan

So, I went and got the money back for those pictures. £15.98 back.

In the end I went to hospital by driving to work and getting a pal to run me in from there. So a few pounds spent rather than the loads for a taxi I was wondering about.

I made £200 selling a piece of equipment to work. I paid it to the debt to ex MiL. :T

I still have my hair straighteners. I've asked around and although everyone wants them, no-one can afford them right now. I'm hoping they might sell nearer Christmas.

Now I'm off to bite the bullet and post my total. I think it may be more than when I started out here but hey, if I hadn't started paying it off my situation would be so much worse now, wouldn't it? It's all a learning process.

x

ani*fan

Well, I've just posted my total and the debt is now £270 more than when I started this journey over a year ago.

However, at one point I had knocked over £2000 off it. :j

But separating from OH has cost me dearly in terms of double rents, setting up a new home and retail therapy for the truly miserable days. It has cost just over £2k, in fact.

Ouch. :eek:

Now that I have confessed that, I feel much better. :D Time to crack on with the debt busting.

ani*fan

At the end of this month I will have some extra money. I will have £200 overtime and £800 bonus for putting up with the redundancy nonsense.

As you can imagine, I have spent this total many, many times in my head. Flight to the states to visit my sister, knock it off the debt, new mobile cos I badly need one, spend it all on Christmas, you get the idea.

It's not a massive amount of money. And to put it towards one debt would make a huge difference.

I have an MOT due at the start of December. I'm wondering whether to save some of it for that?

I would love to go to a music festival next year. Maybe I should treat myself to ticket for that?

I do realise there are much worse problems than trying to figure out what to do with your extra grand in your wage. But I'm worried I'll squander it and have nothing to show. This has been happening to me a lot lately.

Debt-wise, I know I should pay the highest interest debt first. However, I need to pay ex -MiL first for the car loan, for obvious reasons of me and OH separating, and it is interest free. I don't want her getting nervous that I will disappear without giving her it back. Currently I owe her £1625. (I have paid her £650 in the last 2 months.) If I gave her the entire amount that debt would be almost gone. I could get the last £650 paid off in 2-3 months. And that would feel good.

Or I could put it to my highest interest cards and reduce my monthly payments and interest.

I don't know what to do. What is becoming obvious is that I won't be buying a flight to the states with it. Because I can't afford it. And my garage gives everyone credit for their mots and stuff anyway. Tey don't even send out the bill for about 3 months.

Anyone out there got any ideas? Some help here would be truly appreciated.

ani*fan

I've also just realised that if I pay all of the money towards a debt, then my total goes down considerably (not quite to pre-separation levels but much better than it's looking now) and I get to turn one of my embarrassed faces in my signature into a jumping bean. :j Like that.

And I don't believe in spending outrageously on Christmas so it would be silly and wasteful to spend it on that.

And about the visit to the states, my sister offered to pay for me to go out there so maybe I should take her up on the offer. She's loaded so I don't feel bad about that. She offered it as a birthday present.

And...it's a long time until next summer and festival season. I should wait to see how my finances are nearer the time for those tickets.

I see a plan evolving.

ani*fan

I can't seem to stop mulling this over. I was thinking that perhaps I should pay £100, or £50, to each of the credit cards purely as a gesture so they all know I'm trying to pay more than the minimum. However it would also mean I could respend this cash if I needed to.

Which is not good.

If I repay ex-MiL with it, then that cash is gone for good and there is no way to respend it. £1k knocked off the debt and that's that.

Think I'm finding it hard to stop messing around with my credit cards. I need to put them somewhere and not use them.

ani*fan

This weekend I'm going to stay with a couple of friends in a cottage we are renting for free. We live far apart and I don't see them very often, so to meet midway means a bit of a drive for everyone. But I'm excited to be going and staying overnight.

We plan to keep it cheap by having a night in, making our own dinner and taking wine instead of going to the pub.

I'm excited, but the petrol cost is bugging me.

I am skint right now and have £275 in expenses due that won't arrive until Friday.

If only I could sell those straighteners...maybe I need to lower my asking price.

ani*fan

Need to redo the budget too.

Income:

Wage 1600 (usually, but extra sometimes)

Outgoings:

Rent 475.00 (This will reduce to £440 after 1 year)
Council tax 74.00
Electricity 50.00
Oil 65.00
Phone/internet 22.00
Mobile 15.50
TV License N/A (paid it outright)
Car insurance N/A (paid outright)
Petrol 200.00
Food 150.00

Total 1051.50

ani*fan

I had to get a new mobile phone deal as I was racking up huge bills due to sending loads of texts. So it's an extra fiver.

And now I have the oil payments sorted out, it works out at £65 per month. That's for one tank of oil. Let's see how that works out...

The remaining £550 is used to service debt. And I can hardly look at my debt repayments right now they are so massive.

It's freaking me out :eek: though I know I need to do it.

I cannot believe, after everything I've learned, that I spent so much on the cards during my separation from OH. I'm pretty shocked at myself.

My interest free card is still maxed out. I should have been paying this off but I've just been spending on it. And the interest free period will stop in March or something.

I really need to look into interest free deals for all of the debt. Or as close to that as I can manage.

Igamogam

Hi Ani............wondered where you had gone! By thinking it through looks like you have probably answered it all youself Take up your sisters offer,maybe pay half to MIL and some to CC and keep some for MOT just incase.......remember when/if there is a huge bill for car it will be close on Christmas and although you are not planning on having a spendy one there will be some expense.If MOT turns out OK then redistribute money then?? But definately cut up those cards;)