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

debtfreesomeday

It seems to be a day for receiving gifts for me today! Since getting to work this morning I've been given a lovely necklace and bracelet set and two bottles of wine, both from colleagues for whom I have recently done some work for. It's very kind of them, but I feel like a fraud as the work was easily done and didn't take long!
I don't actually drink, so hubby will be chuffed about the two bottles of wine and (i'm not being at all ungrateful) but I don't really wear jewellery, so that may be 're-gifted' - very cheeky of me I know but it is very pretty!

debtfreesomeday

Just completed a survey for another 10 points towards and Amazon voucher - getting there slowly!

Chocforever

Wow - you have some nice work colleagues . Sounds like a good day all round.

debtfreesomeday

Not a good night with Ds last night so we're all knackered this morning. DH has the day off though and we're using some of our clubcard vouchers for lunch out, so hopefully the day will get better!

I've also paid another £50 off the credit card this morning, so the credit card is now at £2400. Yes - it's gone up by a bit these past couple of months, but is now put away again so no more spending on it.

Chocforever

I hope you had a nice lunch out on Friday and have enjoyed the weekend.

My bank account is not looking good at all. And we're not even half way through the month. This is partly to do with my unexpected trip to the Olympics. I don't regret it at all but it was an expensive day.

I am away for a week in October. It is a cottage rental and it is remarkably cheap because it is the first week of the winter season. The payment went out for that this month and I forgot that they also take a large deposit in case we wreck the place so £270 disappeared out of my bank account.

Over the last month or so, I have had it in mind that I probably paid too much PAYE last year so I should be due a repayment. So I completed my tax return today and discovered that I owed £350 so I figured I might as well get it paid .

I am in London over the August bank holiday to go to the Proms. The tickets, transport and accommodation have already been paid for so I only need to pay for food and spending money. We are just renting rooms rather than staying in a hotel so I think I need to investigate if there are any self catering facilities or even a fridge would help cut food costs.

I need to have a couple of cheap weeks before heading to London. I see a large CC bill coming in September .

debtfreesomeday

Sounds like you have an exciting, albeit costly, month coming up Chocs. I hope you manage to find ways to cut costs and have a couple of cheap weekends beforehand.
Do you still do mystery shopping? I don't recall you mentioning it for a while.

debtfreesomeday

Unfortunately our meal out wasn't great, but we had a nice weekend away to make up for it. The travelling was not so fun though the roads were pretty gridlocked and the journey took us double the time it should have - not fun with a very irritable toddler, even though his mood was totally justified after sitting in a hot car for so long.

Unfortunately we've had to add to our CC balance this weekend too. Hubby had to buy a suit as he has an appointment coming up which he needs one for. We sold his old suit on ebay as it was HUGE on him, so had £50 towards the new one, but the rest had to go on the credit card. We managed to pick up one at a factory outlet type place which fitted lovely and was half price, but still cost £200. Believe it or not, this is quite reasonable considering hubby is extremely tall and has had to have suits made for him in the past to ensure they fit.

Today I have revisited my old friend, the snowball calculator. As a newbie DFW I loved the snowball calculator and used it loads, but since paying off the credit cards (the first time ) I no longer used it. I've punched all the numbers in (including a projected overdraft of £00 again) and, according to the calculator, we can be debt free in 14 months if we stick to the plan and don't add to the debt, as opposed to the 17 months left on our loan. That would be great, as we'd have a debt free Christmas 2013 and start 2014 debt free! That's now our new target!

I sold a BIN on ebay for £11.50 at the weekend with free postage, so it should make around £8 profit on that one. It shall go towards the overdraft at the moment which is currently at around £150. I have found quite a lot more to put on ebay, but need to sort, photograph and list it all first. Fun, fun, fun.

DFSD

Chocforever

14 months doesn't sound long, does it? The end definitely is in sight

£200 for a suit sounds like a bargain to me and better to spend it on a good quality one which is reduced.

I am doing a small amount of mystery shopping but not as much as I used to. I cut back for a number of reasons including lack of transport, reducing fees making it unworthwhile for taxpayers and just the time it took up. It is a bit of a game getting work in the first place and it is not worth spending the time on this if I'm not going to do a lot of assignments.

I am conscious that I may be in more need of money in the future so I am still doing a few jobs to keep on the books of the companies I like. I am generally sticking to the nice assignments and I am happy to repeat the same scenarios because it means little effort from me.

Well done with the BIN sale. I put a few things on Ebay yesterday. One will definitely sell for £10. The rest, I'm not sure so fingers crossed I get some interest.

debtfreesomeday

Hi Chocs

I recall the little bit of MSing I did took up so much time and money in petrol that it was not really worth it. Good idea to keep on the books though and nice you can pick your assignments as I'm sure some of them are much better scenarios than others! We just kept getting fast food ones which we weren't really fussed about at all.

Good luck for ebay, it seems to be hit and miss for a good sale at the moment.

debtfreesomeday

I'm feeling much more positive after realising we could be debt free next year, it really is an exciting prospect.

Last night hubby had to pick up some supplies for work in a supermarket on the way home, so I went in too for some bananas, but managed to pick up loads of bread and vegetable products that were reduced to silly prices. Lovely bread for 30p, pitta pockets for lunches for 20p a pack, packs of 3 peppers for 70p, fresh basil for 40p (which, combined with our home grown tomatoes, we used for dinner last night on our pasta:)) and some pre-prepped green veggies & pesto butter for 70p from £1.80, which we'll use for dinner tonight. I spent £3.54 and managed to fill a big shopping bag.

I also picked loads of tomatoes from the garden last night. Unfortunately, a couple of the plants have succumbed to blight but most of them are still ok. We have loads of them now so I shall make some more pasta sauce sometime with the remaining fresh basil and put it in the freezer for later use.

Lunch is made, unfortunately I forgot to bring my cereal for breakfast and have no money on me to buy anything, so I shall be hungry by lunch time! I'm glad I padded my couscous lunch out with some of the peppers bought last night!

I wrapped the ebay parcel last night and hubby is going to post it via 2nd class mail today. It should be around £4ish. I have a growing pile of stuff to list on the spare bed and really need to start that process at the weekend, if I get the time to do so.

A refund of £25.90 to our credit card has reduced our debt slightly, so I've updated my snowball. If we can make another £216 through ebay sales or whatever, then we'll knock ANOTHER month off the debt free date making it only 13 months away! That should be easily achievable via ebay over the next year.

For now though, I guess I'd better do some actual work...

DFSD