Keeping up appearances.......

HappyNow

brizzledfw wrote: »

Yep..we are officially getting the band back together:D:T:T

FlacosFloozie wrote: »

The Fab Feb reunion tour :rotfl:?

OMG we're gonna be RICH!!! :rotfl::rotfl:

Honey_Bear

So glad to hear that your birthday ended well, Happy. *Healing vibes* for the Happy Horse's hips and *low vet bills vibes* although we both know that's never happened yet, so we're hoping for a bit of a miracle there.

Fab Feb it will be. Hurrah!

smallholdingsister

Oh dear poor old horsey.
Your heart must have been in your mouth.

Happy New Year, Happy.

I love your positivity and your house sounds like a real home.

brizzledfw

HappyNow wrote: »

OMG we're gonna be RICH!!! :rotfl::rotfl:

Well thatd be cool... we could hit Vegas

However think FF may be being a little ambitious about my singing abilities...cant speak for the rest of 'em..but maybe I will stick to drums

Good to see you posting again and fingers crossed for the vets bill.

joeyjimbles

Hello all, will look forward to the DVD of the Feb tour - it will be something to look forward to.
Sorry not to have been posting much but Christmas and school holidays took over and I rather lost the online bug with all things so I've just been pottering along. I start the year with a hole in my ceiling - nothing to do with floods, just an old house which decided it was time for some TLC. It was a bit dramatic when it fell but no-one and nothing was hurt apart from the ceiling itself so that was fortunate, but now I'm looking for a plasterer at a time when half the city is doing the same.
Other than that there are no major changes - still got little amounts that I need to cover each month, and two minus amounts that I wish to reduce. I aim to have one of them gone this year and the other significantly reduced, so I'd better get on with it. Good luck to all x

HappyNow

Whoopsie, thirteen days since I last posted. Partly due to real life giving me yet another battering and partly due to me hiding from financial reality!! Anyway, the worst is over now so onwards.

I will focus on the good stuff:

• Although the debts have gone up this month for the first time in three years, it's only by £400, which is pretty amazing considering the disasters.
• The poorly horse is doing really well AND we are not getting billed for the vet! She is technically a loan horse who we took on as a companion for our other horse seven years ago via a non-horsy charity. They don't keep in contact and are no longer local, but when I thought she would be PTS I phoned them out of courtesy. They then contacted the vet and asked for the bill to be sent to them AND ongoing bills for what will be life-long painkillers. Such a lovely gesture and it has made a real difference to us.
• I have had some excellent balance transfers offered from existing credit cards. I am now down to just three, though all with huuuge balances. Half my debt is at 0% for 21 months with just a 1.5% upfront charge and the other half is at 4.9% for life of balance.
• Despite the financial disasters, I have kept cheery and accepted the inevitability of it. It's just been life-events, not recklessness. My new realistic timeframe is to be debt-free by April 19 rather than Feb 19. An extra two months is nothing on the scale of things, but I will try to claw it back.
• We did consider cancelling the holiday we have booked, but decided against it. Firstly, we would lose the deposit and secondly we enjoyed last year's holiday so much that we both agree it's worth every penny. And it was a bargain.

Dolphin1

HappyNow wrote: »

Whoopsie, thirteen days since I last posted. Partly due to real life giving me yet another battering and partly due to me hiding from financial reality!! Anyway, the worst is over now so onwards.

I will focus on the good stuff:

• Although the debts have gone up this month for the first time in three years, it's only by £400, which is pretty amazing considering the disasters.
  
  That doesn't sound too bad considering everything you have had to cope with.
  
  
• The poorly horse is doing really well AND we are not getting billed for the vet! She is technically a loan horse who we took on as a companion for our other horse seven years ago via a non-horsy charity. They don't keep in contact and are no longer local, but when I thought she would be PTS I phoned them out of courtesy. They then contacted the vet and asked for the bill to be sent to them AND ongoing bills for what will be life-long painkillers. Such a lovely gesture and it has made a real difference to us.
  
  Lovely to hear that the poorly horse is doing better and fantastic that it's not going to cost you a penny :j.
  
  
• I have had some excellent balance transfers offered from existing credit cards. I am now down to just three, though all with huuuge balances. Half my debt is at 0% for 21 months with just a 1.5% upfront charge and the other half is at 4.9% for life of balance.
  
  Very MSE :money:!
  
  
• Despite the financial disasters, I have kept cheery and accepted the inevitability of it. It's just been life-events, not recklessness. My new realistic timeframe is to be debt-free by April 19 rather than Feb 19. An extra two months is nothing on the scale of things, but I will try to claw it back.
  
  That's still only 3 years from now (give or take a couple of months), yay :j.
  
  
• We did consider cancelling the holiday we have booked, but decided against it. Firstly, we would lose the deposit and secondly we enjoyed last year's holiday so much that we both agree it's worth every penny. And it was a bargain.
  
  Don't you dare cancel the holiday, you and Mr HappyNow need something nice to look forward to.
  

Lovely to hear from you Mrs HappyNow and it all sounds pretty positive to me. You continue to focus on the good stuff .

FlacosFloozie

Hi Happy,

Really pleased to hear about the horse and yay for the charity! That must be a weight off your mind.
Brilliant news about the balance transfers as well. Its so much better when what you pay is shrinking the debt rather than the interest. I ended up keeping 2ccs open as they both regularly offered balance transfers so I was able to swap between them and keep costs low. Things went much quicker once I reached that point.
You must keep the holiday. I know it gets said all the time but the DFW journey is a marathon not a sprint and you need things to look forward to and enjoy along the way. Once I realised that and build some treat allowance into our budgets we could stick to them, before that I'd try to go uber frugal and fail miserably after a couple of months and run up more debt treating myself because I felt deprived. The odd night out or holiday really helps keep things in perspective.

Honey_Bear

Honey_Bear wrote: »

So glad to hear that your birthday ended well, Happy. *Healing vibes* for the Happy Horse's hips and *low vet bills vibes* although we both know that's never happened yet, so we're hoping for a bit of a miracle there.

HappyNow wrote: »

I phoned them out of courtesy. They then contacted the vet and asked for the bill to be sent to them AND ongoing bills for what will be life-long painkillers. Such a lovely gesture and it has made a real difference to us.

What I love about that is that a courteous gesture on your part resulted in the miracle. :A:A:A

Speaking of which ...

HappyNow wrote: »

Whoopsie, thirteen days since I last posted.

How close does that sound to the start of a confession!

Partly due to real life giving me yet another battering and partly due to me hiding from financial reality!! Anyway, the worst is over now so onwards.

I hope that overall you've not been going through too much and that all the postives outweigh the negatives overall.

I will focus on the good stuff:

• Although the debts have gone up this month for the first time in three years, it's only by £400, which is pretty amazing considering the disasters.

*ouch* In the grand scheme of things it's a drop in the ocean, isn't it? I hope that it's a one off and things look up a bit over the next few weeks.

• The poorly horse is doing really well AND we are not getting billed for the vet! She is technically a loan horse who we took on as a companion for our other horse seven years ago via a non-horsy charity. They don't keep in contact and are no longer local, but when I thought she would be PTS I phoned them out of courtesy. They then contacted the vet and asked for the bill to be sent to them AND ongoing bills for what will be life-long painkillers. Such a lovely gesture and it has made a real difference to us.
• I have had some excellent balance transfers offered from existing credit cards. I am now down to just three, though all with huuuge balances. Half my debt is at 0% for 21 months with just a 1.5% upfront charge and the other half is at 4.9% for life of balance.

Excellent stoozing. *respect*

• Despite the financial disasters, I have kept cheery and accepted the inevitability of it. It's just been life-events, not recklessness. My new realistic timeframe is to be debt-free by April 19 rather than Feb 19. An extra two months is nothing on the scale of things, but I will try to claw it back.

A bit of a bummer but by the time you get to February '19 I bet things have changed again by things that are out of your control. As your financial management system seems to be tighter than a duck's !!!!! I imagine that clawing it back ( can ducks say *ouch*?) will mean Mr Happy won't have access to bacon sarnies for a week or three. Mr Happy -> :cool:

• We did consider cancelling the holiday we have booked, but decided against it. Firstly, we would lose the deposit and secondly we enjoyed last year's holiday so much that we both agree it's worth every penny. And it was a bargain.

I'm with Flacos and Dolphin. We all need things to look forward to, and you've earned it.

brizzledfw

Agreed. You've earned it.

Well done for such a positive post :T :T