The 'I wanna thermostat' savings diary

Ice_baby

Hmph, went to sleep after coming back from work so nothing much done. Ate cheap unhealthy dinner, why is it so much cheaper to eat unhealthily?

Signed up for another bank account. The theory is if I move the money I intend to spend over there and just look at that, it will discourage from thinking I have lots of money that needs to spent. If I run a small balance and a small savings account I can fool myself into ignoring the money saved for bills & stuff. It might work. I never managed to save a lot before because I always end up spending it. I'm not too bad at paying off debt but saving has never really worked out. Might try multiple savings account.

Also sorted through desk at work, found £5.86 so thats gone to savings.

Ice_baby

Signed up to Quidco, which failed miserably as a money-saving ploy because I then had to buy something to see how it worked. Oops. Still sorted out my nieces and nephews birthday presents and christmas. Which means I should be able to post everything 2nd class, so it's sort of money-saving.
Went through my change tin. Have £2s worth of pennies to bank, a heap more coins to keep the change pot going, a £2 and £1 for my saving pot (holiday next year) and £3.50 (50ps and 20ps) for cash emergencies like bus fares.
Also found a load of foregin coins which I will send to coins4cash and see what happens, as far as I can tell I will be lucky to make the postage back, but at least they will no longer be cluttering up the place.
Found actual US dollar notes and travellers cheque saved for potential further holiday in the US that seems unlikely to ever happen. So I took them into my bank, £32.54 straight to savings.
And received £15 back from a friend, also to savings.
Must try and do ebaying at some point. I have gathered stuff I don't want and it is now stashed in my hall cupboard taking up space.
Mother's day tomorrow. Card & present ready. I made the present, I don't think I actually saved any money but I'm pretty sure Mum'll like it, which is the crucial part. Card came from my card box but it cost £2.29 originally. Cards are really quite shockingly expensive if you think how many you do over the course of a year.

Ice_baby

Transfered my zapper and musicmagpie money to savings £88.72 in total. Apparently I have moderately unusual music tastes so I got more than the standard 30p a CD which was nice.
So that's £256.58 or 3%. I have to say percentage is a very encouraging figure. £8,000 seems almost unmanageable but 2% last post and 3% this post, it actually feels like I'm getting somewhere.
Put the only 2 things in my ebay heap that actually have any value onto ebay yesterday as it was a free listing weekend (found out thanks to this forum, cheers) I have a grand total of 1 watcher so far, so we'll see. I really want to sell them so they're not hanging around my house anymore and I'm hoping for a little bit of money too. After them everything is 99p all the way.
My supermaket shop came to £20.11 and I got a voucher for 16p so techicncally I was in under my £20 budget. I'll have to go back for some more veg though.
Payday tomorrow whoop! I have my new savings accounts (I have what feels like hundreds) all set up and ready to go. Just need to transfer the money there. I should have a new current account set up soon too. Hopefully I can save more under this new system. My bills account is already used up and techincally in the negative because my electricity bill arrived the other day. Have ordered a utility cupboard key under the helpful guidance of another forum member so I can check the bill. They've been uniformly rubbish at estimating so far, so hopefully it will go down (of course this will be the one time they were over generous.) Then I'm changing to ebico, apparently I should save about £100 which would be nice if it works out.
Slow and steady wins the race, eventually

Ice_baby

It was bonus month this month and lovely, lovely work paid me £300, which has gone straight to savings along with a repaid £30. Work does annoy me sometimes but it's pretty good all in all.

(Tip to all those bean counting managers, the plebs at the bottom of the heap are MAKING UP those statistics you so love to fret over. In fact there's three layers to our works making up, first I invent somethings that seem reasonable and pass them up to my boss, who reworks them into something he likes and passes it on to our superior boss, who adjusts them again before passing them on to the bean counters - but hey, I just got a bonus, which proves the figures I make up look good (and in between inventing stats to keep the management off our backs, I actually do some work), so I'm happy, and the bean counters have pretty little heaps of statistics, so they're happy - win/win).

Also there's the possibilty of overtime soon (made up stats have finally collided with reality and Houston, we have a problem) which will be good if it comes off. I'd feel bad but my immeadiate boss has been perfectly aware of the oncoming problems for weeks and after a certain point you have to stop caring or you'll go completely spare. All I can actually control is my own in-tray, and that's clean as a whistle. I'm just glad I work in very non-crucial admin that even the customers don't expect to work efficently.

So yes rant about job over with. It's a good job in lots of ways (most promiently in that I actually have a job) and I really shouldn't complain, I just wish it made more sense sometimes. It's very 1984, whereby they say voluntary and mean compulsory (seriously, if it's compulsory just say so, you're not fooling anybody with this voluntary shtick when it's part of our performance review.) Gosh, the gilt seems to have worn off my bonus awfully fast.

I really am grateful for both the job & the bonus. It pays for my beautiful flat and my sweet kittens and I will get central heating so I'll even be warm. Work makes all this possible so I should appriceate it more. :thinks postive thoughts:

And hey, up to 7%. Now we're cooking by gas (or will be as soon as I get gas).