Boarding the Bus of Positivity (for 24 months of travels!)

Chocforever

You have had a good day there and you are making progress on Ebay. Very frustrating about that job. I guess you just have to plug away to save enough to make the move doable next time. That's brilliant that you are managing without the overdraft.

I am back up and running with my broadband . It seems so fast compared with my phone and a friends very slow connection.

I was going to get a piece of 20 year old electrical equipment taken away before I moved house. It all ended up being such a rush that I never got around to it. Then I found out that people still bought this equipment, just to use it as spares. I listed it on Ebay and someone paid me £125. Brilliant. Until the hassle with the buyer collecting it. I wished I hadn't bothered at one point. I think my definition of reasonable time and the buyer's differed somewhat. Anyway, it is all done now and it is nice to have a windfall. I know what you mean though about sensing a transaction is not going to go smoothly.

I have a few things I want to put on Ebay but I am away for a long weekend so it will have to wait until I am back.

Take care x

debtfreesomeday

Wow, £125 is a nice chunk of unexpected money!

*dfsd goes to search attic for old electrical equipment...*

Glad the broadband is up and running now too, it's always a pain to be without the phone and Internet once you get so used to using it!

Ds is in extreme teething mode at the moment and yesterday was a terrible day. He was so upset and cranky and nothing seemed to help. In the end, I just put him in the pushchair, packed him some lunch and walked (and walked!).
I stocked up on teething powders at mothercare too as they have a 3 for 2 offer which makes them much cheaper than we can get them anywhere else; I also bought a new swim seat for him as he outgrew the little one and hates armbands it seems. Today I noticed he'd chewed through all but one of his dummies, so went back to mothercare to buy some more on a 3 for 2 offer. I picked up two packs of dummies and a new zippy cup as he's also chewed through the spout of two others! This one's a hard spout so not sure how well he'll master it, but at least he can't chew through it. Hopefully.

We also picked up some groceries we needed and teething gel (can you see a theme???!).

My current eBay items are not doing great so far, but it's early days. Hopefully bids will rise on those soon.

We have SIL staying tonight so we put a chicken in the slow cooker for dinner tonight, which time we've used the slow cooker this year I think. We should make better use of it.

debtfreesomeday

Woohoo - I just sold one item locally for £20 within minutes of advertising this afternoon.

debtfreesomeday

It's payday on Monday. so I've adjusted the loan figure in my signature. Next month it will be under the 7K mark which will be nice to see.
I'll update the credit card amount once I've checked the balance. It's definitely gone down a little this month so that's a (small) positive.

The overdraft is paid off. We currently have around £50-£60 left, so any surplus by Monday will go as an extra payment off the credit card.

Hopefully the ebay sales pick up a bit over the weekend, current bids are not great at the moment.

debtfreesomeday

So, payday today and the various online 'pots' have been filled with their allocated cut. We now have £200 in the car & house maintenance fund, this will pay the car tax for another year which is due next month. After that, there are no major bills to pay until the house and car isurance is both due in Feb. As we save £100 a month, we should have a good amount in there by then, so are hoping to be able to afford to repair the paintwork of our car which was damaged by vandalism well over a year ago now. :mad:

The bank balance was still in credit when we got paid today, by a huge £7 odd! :rotfl:I'm just happy that we have paid off the overdraft though and can now concentrate on any extra chipping away at the credit card balance.

I need to phone barclaycard tonight as I can't seem to register my new BT card for online banking so am not able to check the balance or make payments. Once that is sorted I can update my signature.

Ebay items are still not doing so well. I'm only up to £15 odd so far and most of them end tonight. Still, it's better than nothing I suppose.

I will be receiving a refund of £50+ onto the old credit card, for the pushchair parts that I ordered a while ago that never arrived. I have been chasing them for a couple of weeks now and finally they have refunded. Unfortunately, I think there's only a £30 ish balance on that card now though, so the account will be in credit. I plan to close it once paid off anyway, so I shall do that and ask for the positive balance to be transferred to my bank account, then I can pay that off the balance transfer card.

Hope everyone is having a good day.

DFSD

wantabetterlife

Well done on getting to payday and not dipping into the overdraft...that is a great achievement :j:j. I know its hard for you at times but just keep hanging in there...you have come so so far, i have been following your progress from the very start and your and determination to see this through is so inspiring :T

debtfreesomeday

Thanks so much WABL, and thanks for all the support along the way, it is appreciated more than words could say. x

I managed to sort out the barclaycard online banking last night, so am now able to pay the credit card balance online again. The balance was about £10 less than I thought it was, so that's a (very) small plus!
I shall make a payment on it shortly and reduce it a little more.

Some of the garden items sold locally this morning, so that's another £25 in the pot which, when I receive it, will go as an extra payment off the credit card.

I have spent £32.44 on approved foods this morning, but have stocked up on loads of things that were on our list to buy and enough couscous to last us for another year or so! We both take couscous salads for lunches a lot, so it is a brilliant buy for us. I also bought another bag of bread roll mix with which I shall make and freeze lots of rolls. We made some at the weekend with the last bag we bought and they were lovely.
That money has now been deducted from the grocery account and transferred over to the main account.

Ebay is doing better, now up to £30+, and most ending today, not yesterday as I thought. I nee to get some more.

Next month we should be about £50 better off as it seems we have been paying too much into our childcare vouchers account, direct from our salaries (pre-tax), and we have nearly £200 in credit built up in the account to pay for DS's nursery. I have reduced my payments by £50 a month, but if we need to increase it again I can do so in 6 months. We can always top the account up with cash if needed too, but then obviously don't get the tax-free benefit of it.
We'll see how it works with that lower amount and re-asses in 6 months.

sugarcube84

dfsd hope you don't mind me asking but have you checked that the childcare vouchers work out best for you since the budget changes? I did the HRMC calculator and worked out i was £1100 a year worse off claiming vouchers from April 2012, at this point last year i was £700 better off claiming them!! Don't know how it changes that much!

debtfreesomeday

Ooh, thanks Sugarcube, I never thought to check that actually. I shall do so now, good thinking!

debtfreesomeday

Hmm, very strange how this whole system works... I just used the tax calculator again and it tells me we're now even better off using the childcare vouchers! I can't figure it out! Was worth a try though, thanks Sugarcube.