PigginSkint's DFW Diary

PigginSkint

Hi All

Not much to report really. Did my Avon order online last night – approx £150 worth of sales, which is not as good as last time but is still a respectable level of sales. I should earn approx £30 from that.

As I was busy doing my Avon, OH made dinner for us last night…without being asked! (It’s a good job I’m sitting down!:D ) He did a really good job of it too - I had veggie burgers and he had slices of garlic sausage from Aldi, served with baked potatoes and salad. Yum!

I am very tired again today but I shall probably work a little later than normal today. This will give me a justifiable excuse to leave early tomorrow! :j

Only 4 days to go until payday. Yippee!!:j

James&Shell

I know what you mean about waiting for payday this month has dragged and dragged!

Mines not till Tuesday

PigginSkint

Hi All

Just a quickie today because (a) there isn’t much to tell, and (b) I’ve got lots to do today and I want to leave early!

OH is feeling better already even though the dr told him it would take at least 2 weeks for the anti-d’s to kick in. He is sleeping much better so that helps. We have discovered some wonderful stuff from Avon – some spray mist for pillows and some balm you put on your pulse points – and we are both sleeping much better.

It’s going to be a busy weekend. We are going to a local band event tonight. It’s the first time we will have been actually. It’s only £5 a ticket so not an expensive one. We won’t spend much on beer because we can’t drink too much anyway because we are going to a wedding tomorrow and don’t want to be hungover!

I am now half way through Harry Potter and pay day is only 3 days away – yippee!

Anyway, must get on. I will try to update again later if I get time but if not, have a good weekend everyone.

PigginSkint

James&Shell wrote: »

I know what you mean about waiting for payday this month has dragged and dragged!

Mines not till Tuesday

This month has not been as bad as I thought it would be, considering all the one off payments that needed to be made - camping and caravanning club membership fee and family railcard renewal.

I know why it has been better - because of credit card shuffling this month, some of the payments that would have been made haven't been. Also my last Avon order was a biggy so that helped and also I have managed to sell a few books through Amazon for good prices this month so that has also helped.

The only thing is that my totals won't have dropped much this month but on the up side we have survived July!

Next month is going to be interesting though - the 3rd and final wedding of the summer is coming up... in Poland. At least they are not having a party over here as well. Phew! But my Dad is 70 in September so no doubt he will have a party.

I could complain about having 3 weddings to go to this year but last year it was 3 funerals and I know which one I prefer!

PigginSkint

I'm sooooo booooooorrrrrreeeeddddd!!!

Do you ever have those days at work where you just can't be bothered? Well I'm having one of those! I shall be leaving soon (in about 3/4 hour) yippppppeeeeee!!!:j

Anyway couple of things I forgot from earlier. Good and not-so-good news from Talk Talk yesterday. The good is that they reduced the cost of my call plan and my line rental so my bill this month was about £3 less than last month. The not-so-good is that I have had a thing from them about free broadband if you have their phone package. Good news you might think. However I am tied into Orange for at least another 9 months!

Got my latest delivery of organic veg yesterday. I have been trying it out to see which box suits us best - this one was a good one I think but it was a veg only one. Might try a fruit only one next or maybe a larger fruit and veg one.

PigginSkint

Hi All

Well the first bit of good news today is that it is payday. Woohoo!!:j Also I have only got 2 weeks left at work before I have got 3 weeks off. Double woohoo!! :j On the downside I have got an awful lot to get done before I go. Booooooo!!:mad:

We had a great night out on Friday and the wedding on Saturday was lovely too. Yesterday we spent reading Harry Potter (I finished the last book and OH is part way through the first one!) and watching DVDs – we had 3 out on a free trial rental and they needed to go back today. Unfortunately I discovered this morning that there is a postal strike tomorrow (typical!) and my first billing date is tomorrow. :eek: So I have sent them an email saying sorry I didn’t realise about the strike and please don’t charge me! I suppose we will just have to wait and see.

My Avon delivery is tomorrow so tonight I suppose I ought to get my books ready to go out. I won’t have as much time to do the next campaign as normal because we are going to Poland on the day that the online order is due so I need to do it a day or 2 before.

Not much else to report really other than the fact the 1st of the month is approaching so I need to update my figures. Not sure what it’s going to look like this month with all the juggling I have done. Oh, one thing a forgot, I got the statement for my Amazon card on Saturday (which is one that I have done a balance transfer to) and there doesn’t appear to be a balance transfer fee listed, so either there isn’t one or it will be on next month’s statement. I shall just have to wait until next month to be sure I suppose.

PigginSkint

Ooh I’ve just realised that yesterday was a momentous day and I had completely forgotten about it until now! Yesterday was the first anniversary of my light bulb moment. What a long way I have come! I am saving so much money on interest on credit cards and on PPI so that the actual balances are steadily falling. Yippee!:j

On that note, I have just worked out my preliminary 1st of the month figures and it is looking good. I am hanging fire until tomorrow because I am missing a statement for a credit card payment that is due (I have paid some anyway – I just paid the same as last month) so I am going to see if I can find it first. Anyway it looks like I have cracked another target and I am really close to another one. Actually I am that close I think I might just make another payment to one of my cards just so I can beat that target as well – won’t that be a morale booster. I shall have to have a little think about which one to do!

I received truly excellent news yesterday – there was a letter waiting for me when I got home telling me I have been given a payrise. Woohoo!:j Actually, from August I effectively get 3 payrises – all support staff are getting an extra 3% anyway, then I have been given an automatic increment because my salary is currently below some sort of competence threshold (I don’t really understand it but who am I to argue) and then I have been awarded another (performance related pay). Yippee!!:j Needless to say I am absolutely chuffed to bits about this. I haven’t worked it out exactly but I will be getting another approx £1000 a year before tax. I haven’t yet worked out how much I will get after tax -no doubt I shall find out when I get my next payslip. That reminds me there is an added bonus in August as we get paid early because of the bank holiday – payday is on the 24th instead of the 30th.

I have checked my bank balance this morning and I haven’t yet been charged for the dvd rental yet so I am hopeful I won’t be. I got an email from them yesterday – just a general one – saying that if I have cancelled my subscription before the end of the free trial (which I have) then I have 7 days to return any DVDs. But earlier in the email it warned that the first billing date was the 31st July, so I don’t know what will happen! I will just have to wait and see.

Let me see what else is there to report? Oh yes! I got a letter from Halifax yesterday re my credit card (this is the one we spend on if we need to) with some credit card checks and a promotion for balance transfers – 5.94% for life of balance for both. I guessed this might crop up because they sent me the same offer earlier in the year. Anyway I have a grand plan for this. We are going to change over to using the Egg card for spending, which is a lower interest rate anyway, then I shall transfer the remaining balance from the Halifax card onto the Egg card and then back again. I thought moving back to Egg might be problematic but it appears it won’t be so bad. OH has no longer got any regular payments going from the Halifax card (the last remaining one is about to be cancelled because the card has changed from visa to mastercard and the account number has changed and, praise be(!), OH has no plans to renew it!), the Egg card has a £0 balance on it, both cards are activated (mine and OHs) and we just need our PIN numbers (easy enough to do with Egg – just go to the online account). The only things I will need to change, I think, is where the Halifax card is registered as a method of payment. The one that immediately springs to mind is PayPal so definitely will need to change that.

In other news…last night I actually got my Avon books ready to go out. How ultra-organised am I?! I never usually get round to doing it until right at the last minute. OH came back from a meeting yesterday evening, saw that they were ready and offered to put them out for me today. I can’t remember the last time we managed to get the books out on the Tuesday of delivery week! They will be coming back in on Saturday so no rushing around in the evenings this week to do anything with them – I can concentrate on doing my deliveries.

Blimey I have been busy this week! I have brought all my £2 coins with me today to pay into the bank (the savings account) as this is the fund for the digital camera I bought. I’ve got £70 worth so this will cover all bar £9.99 of the cost of the camera – not bad! I think what I might do is when I have collected another £10 worth I will pay them in as well to cover the rest of the cost.

Today I have also got my student loans stuff ready to go off – copies of my Tax Credit award letter and Child Benefit award letter – to finalise my deferment application. I wonder if I will ever have to start paying them off? Even with my lovely payrise I am not even close to the income level where I would have to start. With the current figures my gross salary would have to be a good £400-£500 (probably more, because of course I would get less Tax Credit) a month more than it is and the threshold rises every year. Don’t they just write student loans off after a certain number of years? In my case I think it is now 9 years since the first loan and 8 years since the second one.

I think that’s all for now. Have a good day everyone!

PigginSkint

Hi All

Just a quick one today as I am not really awake yet - how I’m going to manage to work today, I don’t know!

Anyway, great news on the targets front today. I have smashed what was my current small target which was to reduce my total credit card debt by 10% to below £22111.89 and I have also managed to achieve what would have been the next one as well, which was to get down to below £22K. Yesterday I realised it was close so I paid £20 extra off my Halifax card and I changed my Sainsbury’s card payment that was due to go out to today so that was an extra £20 as well. So the result is that my total credit card debt currently stands at £21,995.32. The reason I paid extra to achieve this target as well was to make me feel good! :j :j :j

The new target is to reduce the total credit card debt to below £21K. The one after that will be reduce it by 15% so to get it below £20.883.45 and the one after that will be the current BIG target will be to get it below £20K – what a momentous day that will be!!

I’ve just edited my signature. Coo! How strict are they now with the length?! I have just just had to delete a lot of stuff from mine. Oh well I feel an update post coming up to show just how much I have cleared since my LBM and since my credit card debt was at its highest. I’ll do that later

PigginSkint

Warning random ramblings ahead!

As I have had to delete a lot of information from my signature, I thought this would be a good time to reflect on what progress I have made in the quest to become debt free. This is a good time to do it as I have just passed the 1st anniversary of my light bulb moment. You will see from the figures below that in the immediate post-LBM period I hadn’t quite got my act together but in February I finally got organised – I guess this was as a result of starting my diary. Lots of lovely spreadsheets were created then.

Total Credit Card Debt
1/8/06 £23,646.22 (total at LBM)
1/11/06 £24,568.77 (this was its highest point)
1/2/07 £24,507.52
1/3/07 £24,373.43
1/4/07 £24,107.41
1/5/07 £23,221.08
1/6/07 £22,745.58
1/7/07 £22,446.41
1/8/07 £21,995.32

Purely for myself really I am going to list a few of my individual credit cards. I am not going to mention any that have been involved in shuffling – only those where there have been no balances transferred on or off them and there has been no spending on them. This is so that I can see how well these balances have been falling. I shall also only mention what the balances were at LBM and what they are now, otherwise you are all going to be so bored!!

Amex
1/8/06 £1,370.00
1/8/07 £1,021.88

BA Amex
1/8/06 £2,574.34
1/8/07 £1,861.71

Capital One
1/8/06 £2,310.86
1/8/07 £1,637.87

Tesco
1/8/06 £1,135.14
1/8/07 £831.61

Intelligent Finance
1/8/06 £2,497.68
1/8/07 £2,046.99

Certainly puts it into perspective doesn’t it?! And you can see the difference between those where the minimum payment is 2% (like IF) and where it is 3% (like Capital One)!

Looking at this there are definitely things I want to achieve for the next month because they are within grasp.

1) Get Amex down to below £1000 (easily achieveable – the minimum payment should take care of that)
2) Get Tesco down to below £800 (just need to pay little bit more than the minimum payment)
3) Get IF down to below £2000 (again just need to pay a little bit more than the minimum payment)

I love these little targets because they give me something to celebrate once I achieve them!

Let’s have a quick look at the rest:

Catalogues
1/8/06 £1060.92
1/8/07 £340.89

LTSB Loan
1/8/06 £9746.76
1/8/07 £8310.69

No change to my overdraft – still £5K – but at least I am still managing to stay under my limit. Also I still don’t know what the situation is with my windows finance – that is still on my to-do list. The plans with these are to:

(1) see if LTSB will reduce my OD limit by a little bit every month (it can’t be too much at the moment because I can’t afford it!)
(2) start overpaying the windows finance to get it paid off quickly (once I have all the relevant info)

O.K. I've bored you all long enough, I'll slope off now!

*zippy*

Congratulations on getting below £22,000 :T