Staying Positive & Focused !!!

mamato3

So ended up using the rest of my vouchers to get my ds the new swap force plus a pack of 3 guys costing me just £28 so my £45 vouchers ended up giving me £140 for £40 cash I paid. I wish everywhere worked like this!! I've decided to do homemade gifts for teachers 5 in total and hoping to spend no more than £15 in total! We will see, there's some terrific ideas on the crafting forum with some great ideas. DD also has 10 "hug in a mug" gifts to make for her friends again we're hoping for no more than £10 spent on this, we already have the hot chocolate just marshmallows, eclairs & mugs to source now, me thinks poundland will be getting a visit at the weekend!

This will be a really tight month, especially with trying to get xmas bits and pieces, hopefully we can keep the cost down.

mamato3

£22 added onto the gift total, this includes dds 'hug in a mug' she only had 7 to buy for so the total was slightly smaller, also includes jars for ds's teachers gifts and gift bags that we're going to fill with treats for ds's nursery teachers I think there's 5 in his class at the minute! So all in all that wasn't too bad. Just a few more bags of sweets to get for them. Unfortunately cc was added to for a few more bits so will pay off the extra at end of month and it will just remain at 3K! Darn!

A finance payment of £33 finishes this month hooray! One less DD coming out. 21 payments of the rotten loan left grrrrr But I guess at least its still going down, if not slower than I'd hoped.

Hope everyone else's Christmas shopping is going well!

mamato3

Am I the only one feeling a little bah humbug about Christmas? I just feel there's sooo much pressure on to buy presents for this person and that person, teachers, neighbours, kids friends it really is just an endless list! And sadly probably a needless list! Sigh.... anyhows I have pretty much all of Santa presents in, oh and I are not buying each other this year, so just both set of parents and 6 niece/nephew gifts to sort out! Sigh, sigh, sigh....

Had a little read back at my entries at the start of the year cc debt wass £2400 it's now sitting at £3000! But at least loan is going down and we finished two finance terms this year so thats a plus. I know there's soo much more I can do better so I guess that will be the aim for next year.

Onwards and upwards and perhaps next year I'll be posting that we've cleared all our cc debt!

mamato3

Helloo MSErs, Happy 2014! CC has gone up due to xmas purchases and also we've added another finance payment on whichis £70 until September! GGRRRR! Well it's done now so we just have to deal with our decisions and move on!

We've decided no holiday this year we might get a weeks staycation but that will depend on the money situation. I think this is the year of making a few tough decisions.

I've started surveys again and hopefully will keep on with these and put them towards 2014 xmas! Will update signature in a bit with new figures and other bits I want to keep track off and will have to do an up to date soa also.

Hope everyone else is having a good start to 2014!

mamato3

Total Debt at end of Feb will be £6325!! Whoppee! :T Even though this amount is still alot to me, I feel as if there's light at the end of the tunnel and by end of March it should be under £6k which will be amazing!

It's going down slowly and thankfully, from December, nothing has been added no pesky cc has been used! Although, I will have to start thinking of maybe doing a 0% to another card pretty soon.

I also had a lot of wys vouchers for various grocery stores, I don't think I've done a shop this month without money off coupons which has been great. I just have to watch a bit closer now that I've used them all!

I also managed to get myself a kindle with a £10 voucher from surverys and also a 10pc off code coming to a grand total of £43! I'm pleased with that I've wanted one for ages and will be great for our staycation this year!

We've booked a lovely beach house on the coast for a week so just to start saving for that it's not to Aug so I've a little bit of time to get that sorted.

I've just got a bit fed up with ebay tbh, it's so time consuming it just drains the energy out of me! Surveys I'm trying to do just get the amazon vouchers.

Not much else to report it seems that slow and steady wins the race!

Hope all you MSEr's are doing well.

mamato3

Can't believe it's over a month since I last wrote - how time flys!

Have just sorted out a balance transfer to 0% for 29 months we're being charge £10 in fees a months so might as well do the transfer now and incur the fee before the 0% on our current card runs out and the interest gets even higher. Unfortunately it'll mean the debt will go up a little bit with the transfer fee to the new card but it's a necessary evil.

I also have to start saving £340 for the rest of our stay in August hopefully will try and get some of this put away from March's pay but the pesky car needs fixed and goodness only knows how much that's going cost.

Also reduced sky by £12per month and hoping electric bill goes down by £20-£30 next month now that we've caught up.

Will work out a new total when the cc comes through and I get registered online for that.

Hope everyone's well out in MSE world

mamato3

Helloo Diary! Gosh it's been a while hasn't it? Where has the time gone? Can't believe summer is over and the kids are back to school, hopefully this will mean more of a routine and less money being spent. Although, I'm sure there will be a few notes home this week for a few £££s for this and that.


Pesky car needed fixed for MOT at the start of the month so onto the cc that went along with school shoes etc etc... needless to say it has gone up significantly! I have worked out total debt by the end of September will be finally under £5900 it's been a looonng time since its been under 6K. This consists only of cc and loan, the loan has 1 year left on it to run! The last finance payment finishes this month which was for 2013 xmas gifts!


Unfortunately it will be an expensive end to the last few months of the year with Christmas and weddings/birthdays etc I'm hoping to get cc down to £3.5K but we'll see. I need to get my MSE head back on and knuckle down a bit, I've once again, started a spending diary, this always scares the life out of me when I see exactly how much we spend every day and where it goes - I'm hoping it will scare me into not spending. On a positive note I will be working a few more hours come October this will last about 9 months so I'm hoping this will make Christmas easier and enable us to still make some head way with the cc. Going to spend a bit of time reading some diaries and trying to get some MSE motivation.

mamato3

Okay so it's been a realllyy loonnggg time since my last post, really can't believe it's been almost a year! I do believe I need a pretty hard slap on the wrist for that! I would love to say all my debt has magically disappeared during this period but of course it hasn't. Mainly due to cars (and anything else that could break) dying and having to be replaced. The loan was due to be paid off in September but unfortunately said car died and we had to increase the loan to get another one.... sigh... no point complaining too much we need two cars. I will have to do an up to date signature and let you lovely people know where I'm standing at the minute.

The moral of this story is I need to get frugal again I need to get back into the habit of watching the pennies before things get out of hand.

August is always expensive getting the kids sorted with back to school bits and pieces so I'm not holding out much hope of paying much extra of anything. Anyways going to go and add up numbers and do my sig.

mamato3

First things first is the Very account I have £348.82 owing on it and £55 has to be paid by start of September to avoid interest being incurred. This works out at £2.30 to be paid each day - doesn't sound like much when you look at it this way. Today I've made my first payment of £2.30 :j this will have it paid by August 28th. I can then move on to working out how much I have to pay per day before the next interest free payment is up. Fingers crossed I would love this account to be cleared by xmas I can then up my cc direct debit to £100 and not the £80 it is at the minute.

It's great to be back and reading everyone's diaries hopefully it will give me the motivation needed to get back in the MSE saddle.

I also have a few ebay things I can list so must get that done this afternoon.

Otherwise I hope everyone has a very MSE day :cool2:

mamato3

Payment made - £2.30 of the Very total - £344.22. Tomorrow I will pay a weeks worth of it. At least it's going down.