Stopping the Slippery Slope I'm on

snailmail

Back after a wonderful weekend. My friend's wedding was magical; even if it did rain the whole day! it was such a gorgeous wedding, and my friend and her new husband looked so happy. my reading was ok even though I was so nervous!

And I barely spent £15 the whole weekend (not including the hotel room) my friend's MIL made food for everyone after the rehersal, and she even cooked us breakfast and let us descend on her house in a mad panic of children, dresses, makeup and nerves lol

the only drinks i had to pay for at the actual wedding was soft drinks as wine and ale were free. i took £60 with me and came back with most of it. I used the left over spends for a driving lesson and some facecream and rabbit toys for a friend's a rabbit that i'm looking after. i felt guilty he was stuck in his hutch! only cheapies from wilkos, but it made me feel better that he had something new to play with!

i also bought chocolate while in wilkos--it's why i don't tend to go out on my lunch break at work anymore because i cannot resist chocolate and can end up spending £10 on non essentials so easily! facecream really was a neseccity as i've run out of the Lush cream I usually use and as I haven't been on a big shop i've not been past a Lush shop...and I'd be kind of scared to go in one even if i had as I cannot resist anything in that shop! i want to try all the new stuff!

we also had a night out with everyone at work on monday and even that was cheap as the boss insisted on buying a round and there were too many of us to go round in full, but i will definitely make sure I am first to buy a round next time or at least buy the people who bought me drinks. work peeps are pretty good about things like that. a few of us also ate; but weatherspoons is cheapy cheapy so event then i didn't spend lot!

so that £60 for the wedding actually went a long way! i still have around £8/10 left of it in my wallet! i shall be taking out the coins and adding them to my shrapnell jar:)

just checked my bank account to see exactly what date my dd was going out for the new cc, as the person on the phone wasn't sure. he thought it would be the 27th but nothing has gone out yet so i'm worried that he's lied to me and it's something i need to set up with my bank and not something the cc can set up.

maybe it'll start this month and not last month as that's when i set it up? i have no idea. i will ring them tomorrow as i couldn't get into internet bannking for my halifax cc grrr! i transfered £12 over to it now just in case as I don't want to be stuck with charges. i can afford the £12, and i'd rather have peace of mind before i head on to bed that i've paid soemthing off on it; even if it's not nessisary yet.

wish i knew when the direct debit is meant to come out"!

just finished reading Insurgent by Veronica Roth. Sequel to Divergent. OMG soooo good. I am now in mourning because the 3rd book won't be out until next year! nothing i read from now until then will be as good!

next i shall be reading darker shades of grey. not looking forward to it, but our bookclub wanted to read it. even though we're a dark romance bookclub who usually read teen stuff!

it looks like the worst written tosh i've ever seen. but i suppose i'll have a lot to say about it at book club at the end of the month!

chevalier

Hey well done on taking your head out of the sand. Nice one. You should be very pleased with yourself for doing that, and saving for the wedding AND a holiday.

Good luck with the last push
chev

snailmail

chevalier wrote: »

Hey well done on taking your head out of the sand. Nice one. You should be very pleased with yourself for doing that, and saving for the wedding AND a holiday.

Good luck with the last push
chev

thank you! it's surprising how much you can save and chip away at debt once you stop spending to make yourself feel better (then feeling guilty about it!) and actually get your head out of the sand!

now i have just spent the money i earned using slicethepie and treated my lone sea monkey to some egg friends, cupid powder and a tank cleaning tool!

it feels so much better to buy this with my own money and not my overdraft! even so, I checked my bank balance, weighed up to see if i could afford it, and decided I could, and that my poor lone monkey really needed one of those tank cleaning things for a good clean out before i went on holiday anyway!

(this is me justifying the spend to myself even thoguh I can actually afford it!)

i now need to start packing for holiday and make sure i can find my rain gear...I doubt it will be a dry holiday lol!

snailmail

I might be getting extra hours at work! Fingers crossed. A collegue is taking a sabatical in 3 months which leaves some extra hours to play with and my manager asked if i wanted to go full time if our regional manager allows it. i work 30 hours per week right now and get workign tax credits. I said yes. I don't know if it'll work out more money or not. But as I'm only a bit above minimum wage I think I can still get some working tax credit if i do more than 30 hours. of course working tax credit might not be around for long now anyway!

I'll speak to the tax people once I know for sure I'll get the hours. If I do get the hours it won't be forever, just 3 months, but that's a good run up to christmas and I do love my job. It's a shame it doesn't pay more, but I see my friends in jobs they hate and I'm thankful that I do something interesting and different every day.

I spent practically a whole day painting vampires for an event we're having. That's a pretty good way to spend the day at work!

i need to check my bank account tonght and transfer money back from my savings into my current account so i can withdraw it as spends for holiday. i'm having a strict daily budget so i'm going to attempt using only cash. if i go over one day i'll have less the next day. i'm hoping to come back home with money to be honest!

i wish i'd thought about using a prepaid card, but i think i've left it to late to do that as i'm going on friday. oh well! this will be a good test for me.

definitely did not have a no spend day today.. i needed some new socks and underwear for holiday as everything i have is falling apart or in holes. i spent under £20 though!...unfortunately the other £15 i spent went on a glee boxset to take on holidays with us for when we're worn out from trecking round castles all day;) gotta love glee!

i was still more restrained than i would have been though! i could do with a black cardy for holiday to cut down on what i'll be taking, but if i can't find one at a decent price it's not a disaster not to have one. i can make a purple striped boy's cardigan go with any outfit!

i had a moment of weakness where i went into tk maxx to look at the toys as they sometimes have my little pony stuff for cheap...and they did! i was so close to buying the cheerilee school house set (so cute) but put it back. i have no room for a playset, even if it is cheap! and that's a very unnessicary spend! especially as i know i've got a gift voucher for tk max somewhere!

so no extra ponies for my herd today! i am proud of myself lol! usually i would have bought it without a second thought. even if i already had the pony because it's a different 'set'

yes i am odd. i collect my little pony and monster high dolls and books. soooo many books!

snailmail

Just transfered my holiday spending money back over to my current account so i can take it out and divvy it up into days tomorrow. i have managed to save much more than i thought for holiday; but I am not going to withdraw it all out. Some is staying in the saving account, i've added a bit more to the current account and if i do go over my allocated spending per day (i can't see it happening, but you never know!) then i have a little in my account to dip into.

I am soooo tempted to pay off my HSBC cc with the savings I have left over, because that would clear one of my debts in full. Logically I know it's best to snowball and throw that extra money at my Virgin CC when I'm back from hols. Which is what I will do; but still, sooo tempting!

It's my my friend's son's birthday next month and he'll be 5...where has the time gone?! He is now obsessively into starwars lego. no other toy is as good. and his mom has had the ewok attack set reserved at my work for months for him but keeps forgetting to give me the money, and as i've not been spending on my card I haven't bought it for her to give me the money back after.

but i was with them this week and i told her I'd get it for his birthday...it's more than i know I should spend, especially because I just have to get him an awesome lego starwars book to go with it, but he's just so amazing and always grateful for what you get him, and he is the only child i know that has the good sense not to be born around christmas! he deserves extra for that! his brother was born in january on my sister's birthday lol! But I already have his Christmas present sorted, which hasn't cost anything as it was a freebie from work that i know he'll like. I'll probably get him something else too, but it'll help balance out things.

of course getting fun lego stuff is not just an excuse for me to go around and 'play' definitely not!

snailmail

back from my glorious holiday and what a fab holiday it was! so beautiful, and such fantastic weather! who would think i'd need suntan lotion in Scotland! we stayed on a working farm, watched calves play, had chickens waiting for us at our patio doors and toured so many castles and beautiful places that i think i'm still dizzy from the spiral staircases!

I did go over my budget, but only a little, and mainly because when I budgeted i didn't expect food out to be so expensive or for us to go in rounds for coffees out, which did mean one day you might spend an extra £10 on drinks but then you might have 2/3 days of not buying a drink at all. so it had its pluses and minuses. what my friends didn't tell me was they'd saved an extra 'pot' for coffee money so didn't have to eat into their spends for it. i think that's a great idea and will do that the next time i'm away. i wish they'd mentioned they were doing it this time and i would have started one too! but it's the first time i've really budgeted for a holiday since i had spending money as a kid, so i think i did well anyway:)

plus there was this beautiful jewellery/crystal shop that me and my friend just fell in love with. we both saved money from other days to go back and spend there!

I also bought a vintage bust (they kind you display necklaces on) that will be great for displaying my steampunk jewellery on. I put this on my debit card, as it was more of a 'working hobby' expense. It still wasn't hugely expensive, but it did make me feel a little guilty\! though the guilt has gone a little as i've had emails through etsy about some of my jewellery even though I had my vacation sign on:) it's worth it to take great photos.

also went to another small town that had some beautiful tiny craft shops. i swear i couldn't stop drooling! the craft books were also half price so i ended up buying 3 books, an arrangement of stamps and a set to make a scrapbook.

but i didn't go too overboard and only spent £40 which is pretty good considering 2 of the books were originally £17 each:)

but apart from that i did really well sticking to my budget. a lot of the time we took sandwhiches so some days we didn't spend anything. a good holiday all round!

i payed off another £203.74 on the credit card today and also transfered £70 into my IF savings account to divvy up between my pots.

i have to take the ferret to the vets tonight/tomorrow morning. she's ok in herself, but her lady bits look a bit swollen to put it nicely! not sore or anything, but not 'right' i don't want to go into too much detail, but it'll put my mind at rest to take her even if there is nothing wrong.


my batteries feel recharged after my holiday now, i feel really positive about getting my debts sorted quickly and can't wait to start seeing them really go down now i don't have any major events to save for!

snailmail

definitely not a no spend few days! took the ferret to the vets and she has vaginitus which totally threw my vet as he thought i wanted to breed from her...he was shocked when i said she'd been spayed! (and maybe even by him lol!) girl ferrets can get complications if they're not spayed and they're not bred from...they kind of go into heat and don't come out of it until they're mated, it can lead to all kinds of infections and nastiness. which is why it's always best to get them spayed like i did, yet she still manages to get something that's rare in spayed ferrets! so she's on antibiotics for 5 days and has to go back after for a checkup. she seems fine in herself, but she's really worrying me.

i've had 3 ferrets have heart/stomach problems where their bellies bloat, all on loads of medication so i tend to get really freaked out when i see something isn't right.

my kitchen is now a ferret drugs ring again! at least i don't have to crush tables and divide them up into tiny lines this time, just slip her some nasty tasting liquid in her favourite drink!

poor thing, i will have to treat her to some chicken complan as i know she loves that!

went to see coldplay tonight, was amazing! fireworks, confettie, chris martin and he sung the scientist which is my favourite song by them as it reminds me of the first ferret i ever had.

i'm also in the process of making a custom jewellery piece for someone so i'm excited about starting that. how is it you have no interest for months, then put a holiday sign up and get inundated? i'll have to try that one more often me thinks!

snailmail

i had a letter from HSBC a few days ago. A good letter! When I put in my claim for PPI with virgin I also sent off one for guardcard with HSBC as I felt like they 'scared' me into having it when i first went off to uni and when i was deleting and getting rid of all unwanted direct debits i missed his one because it comes off the credit card. no wonder why this card never seemed to go down!

I know it's not PPI but I was unsure how to go about complaning about it, so I just sent one of the PPI forms off for it. They have been looking into it for a while now, and they explained that although it wasn't PPI as a gesture of good will they would refund me £220!

So I have just sent off a form so they will pay me directly into my bank account and then that's an extra £200 to pay off the credit card!

fantastic!

snailmail

my hsbc cc has disappeared off my online bank account...i'm pretty sure instead of putting the £220 in my bank account hsbc used the money to pay off my hsbc cc of £179 which now i think about is obvous that they'd do this, but i'm a bit disappointed as i was snowballing the debt and was going to use it to pay off the last of my virgin cc debt.

but i told myself not to be disappointed as i have just paid off one debt! and next month the virgin debt will be gone too!

i could theoretically pay the virgin one off now, but my ferret has had two trips to the vets and two lots of baytril and if this second lot doesn't do the trick she'll have to have a little operation to lance it and see if there's anything inside so i don't want to leave myself short as i haven't built up my emergancy vet fund yet.

so hsbc have paid off and cancelled my hsbc cc i'm presuming as when i checked my bank account online the details for my hsbc cc weren't there at all. not even to say i had a 00 balance or for a way for me to check the statement online. so i'm presuming they used my payback as money to pay it off.

i'm not bothered by it anymore as it was going to go back to paying debt, and it doesn't really matter what debt it is. i just want to know what's happening to the £40-odd difference as it's not in my current account! i've mailed them to ask if they will be putting the difference into my bank account. i hope they will be.

had a lovely jubilee weekend even though i worked it. got all the kids who came into the shop to colour and craft pictures that i've put into a scrapbook that i will send to the queen (and i will!) also made crowns and flags, but got glue in my hair.

having jewellery issues right now. i'm pondering if unmixed resin can go off because it doesn't seem to be setting properly even though i used the right amounts.

think i might have to get some new stuff. which means another expense...at least i have a bit of savings for things like this now!

snailmail

so HSBC didn't pay off my cc using the money they gave me. there must have been some blip on the system because when i checked my bank today the cc was back in all it's debt filled glory! was a bit of a disappointment, but it does mean i used that money to pay off the last bit of my virgin cc like i wanted and come payday the hsbc cc is gone, and then all i have left is just under one grand on a 0% cc. Which I will then start over paying until it's gone. no just leaving it to stagnate until the 0% is up! definitely not!

poor ferret is gonna have to have an operation because the antibiotics haven't worked. but for the first time since my other ferrets i have money put aside and even paying off the cc, i had enough in my isa to transfer over just in case the bill comes to more than the £150 i had in my current account.

of course if like the last one she has to have specialist care and stay in a vet miles away i'll be up the creek without a paddle, but for now I'm ok. fingers crossed it's not someting too serious and she'll be ok tomorrow.