would love to be mortgage free!

coldcazzie

Thank Tilly

I wasn't going to post again but during today all my ebay items have ended, and total has come to about £35. Obviously there's fees to come off so it'll be less than that, but the £20 I was hoping for doesn't seem too ridiculous. I got the Lightning McQueen dressing gown a couple of days ago for a lot less than I was expecting so that's great.

The other thing is that tomorrow our first mortgage payment goes out at the higher amount! So we'll have made our first overpayment of £55.06! :j :j :j

coldcazzie

I've changed my lists around a bit, I'd forgotten about the eBay bits ending yesterday, so I've spread today's list over today and tomrrow and added extra stuff to them.

I was in bed by half 8 last night. Feel a bit better this morning, except you know that phrase "I feel like I've deep-throated a cactus"...?? Yeah. I'd laugh, except it hurts :rotfl:

coldcazzie

Still feeling awful even had to take painkillers at 2am. However, if I follow the same pattern as the kids then tomorrow should be the last day of it. Going to see the doctor at 10.50am about my eye. Between the sinus pressure, my ear popping constantly, my eye, and the fiery golf ball in my throat it feels like the right hand side of my face is going to explode.

Now I'm going to ring the bathroom showroom.

coldcazzie

This week's shopping has been completely messed up. I did it at the weekend, but that meant it was last minute lists instead of carefully constructed ones.

Tesco (last minute party shopping): £17.27
Morrisons and Asda (groceries): £43.41
Eggs: £1.76
Fruit and veg: £7.99
Chicken necks (cats): 24p

Total so far: £70.67

I also discovered last night we are in need of nappies, plus something else... (forget what), so man-wife is picking those up at Sainsbury's while he's at work today. And today I had planned to go to the local butcher to pick up some pork and chive sausages - they're the best sausages I ever tasted!

I'll edit with these things once I know them. However, considering my weekly budget is £60, plus I'd budgetted an extra £20 for party spending, actually it's not nearly as bad as I was imagining! :T

coldcazzie

Unfortunately do have to report the unplanned spending too.


AA Cover taken out at roadside: £130.31
Oil/tools/etc for bike: £64 :eek:
Glasses for me (it's only taken me 4 months to find a set of frames I like! LOL): £10
Train tickets while the bike is off the road (AGAIN!): £42.20


This month's credit card bill is going to be very :eek::eek::eek:

coldcazzie

So Squish has come back from school complaining she's cold. She's gone and put her jamas, dressing gown and slippers on and is huddled on the sofa complaining of a headache and hurting in random places. Sounds like she's coming down with this flu bug now too *sigh*

I've updated my signature this afternoon: January grocery challenge running total, new (lower) target for the February grocery challenge, January's overpayment (yey! Not £0 anymore! ), and finally I added our original mf date so I don't lose sight of where we started on our mf journey.

Tomorrow I will update it again: I made the decision at the beginning of the year to do a monthly "stock take" of where we are financially. It won't be as easy with the mortgage as apparently it's "the wrong kind of mortgage" to show on our online banking... :undecided :think: anyway, tomorrow is the 1st so I'll see where our savings are and update

Sepa74

oh Caz, what a run of bad colds! I hope you feel better soon and squish doesn't suffer too much with it.

coldcazzie

Thankyou Sepa. She was in bed by 6.30! :eek: have arranged for a neighbour to take Lumpy to school, bagged and tagged last 3 eBay items for man-wife to post tomorrow and will shuffle our meals around so I don't have to get sausages until next week. (shame, I was really looking forward to having sausages!) Can't believe how badly this bug has knocked us! It's completely wiped us all out!

Meanwhile I think gouging my eye out with a spoon might be less painful than leaving it as it is...

coldcazzie

Just felt the urge to share this!

Lumpy: "mummy, Jaden wasn't at school yesterday, but I don't know why."
Me: "well, maybe he's poorly."
Lumpy: "or maybe he has the fleas like Squish?"
Squish-pot: "flu, not fleas."

:rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: out of the mouths of babes eh?!

coldcazzie

Meter readings
Gas usage: 6.69 units/day
Electricity usage: 13.5 units/day

Then I compared them to the same period last year (17th Jan - 1st Feb), and last year gas was 10.73 and electric was 16.53. So I guess we're doing better than last year. Still could be a better though!

Current Account
Due to being ill I've not checked my online banking for several days. According to the spreadsheet everything should've been fine. That'll teach me to be so trusting. Logged in and we're £295.42 overdrawn :eek: cue mass panic, lots of swearing and checking everything meticulously.
Turns out at some point during the spreadsheet creation I've missed the minus key and hit the plus key by accident. So instead of taking away this month's utility payments, I added them instead. Needless to say I'm now kicking myself. Illness is not an excuse for not checking where money stuff is during bill paying time. I transferred the £400 back in that I'd transferred out. Consider my lesson well and truely learned. No buffer = not an option. No way. No how. Stupid woman.

Savings
£4395.62 total in ISA, Rainy Day eSaver and Regular Saver. Have updated signature to reflect.

Credit Card
Looks like it's going to be under £900 for this month. Will make extra efforts to keep grocery spending to a minimum, perhaps I can keep it under £850. The extra £200+ spent on AA cover, bike bits and train fares is what has led to this.

Ebay
Total profit from sales now comes to: £58.68. This would have been enough to buy what I originally planned to buy for the man-wife, with about a fiver spare. Which means I acheived my target which was to raise enough money to pay for Lumpy and man-wife's birthday presents without having to dip into our budget. :T
Only problem is now I'm having a wobble. Can I justify an ornamental gift when:
1. he's been niggling for an electric razor for the last year (this was my second option: share the cost of a really good quality razor with my parents, his dad and his best friend).
2. he's now asking my permission to buy *a replacement bike engine* which would solve the ongoing bike issues since the black ice incident and put him back on the road. (Bear in mind, he has a 35 mile commute which is impossible via train: he's currently in a different office in another city, but can't stay there as he's borrowing someone else's desk while they work on a project.)
I don't think I can. A new engine is such an impersonal present.

How I'm feeling
Deflated. And sabotaged. I'm trying SO hard to try to make our money work for us and be sensible with purchasing and I just feel like the universe keeps moving the goal posts. Time to indulge in some hot chocolate.

To do

• [strike]Ring alarm company. The DD has failed. Again. Cue irrate phonecall. 4 months in a row is not acceptable.[/strike] apparently the bank "never received" the mandate, so we're doing another one. Have paid Jan's by card.
• [strike]Ring mortgage company. Not had our annual mortgage statement yet. Pretty sure by now we should've had it.[/strike] apparently they're being slow this year, I've to wait another month and ring again if I've still not got it.
• [strike]Ring T-mobile. I'm in one of *those* moods.[/strike] they said "if it's unlimited we don't track your usage" which means I still have no idea how much data I use on a monthly basis. Which is dead helpful, honest guv...!
• [strike]Take more painkillers as my neck is really achey, plus fretting has given me a headache.[/strike]