PigginSkint's DFW Diary

PigginSkint

I have had to take the day off work again because I am in so much pain. I have been feeling really rubbish all weekend - feeling wiped out and yesterday I was really dizzy. This morning I woke up in horrendous pain. The sooner I have this surgery the better.:(

Bobarella

Sorry to hear it.

PigginSkint

Off work again - ouch !:(:(:(:(

The money situation is quite poor again - I only have £239 available balance and it is only the 6th of the month. :eek: Luckily most of the big bills have already been paid so we should just about make it through the month. OH won't be able to pay much into my account this week but should be able to pay 2 weeks worth next week. Have just about got enough to last till then.

I am getting really fed up now. There is loads waiting for me to do at work and loads more to be done here - we currently suffer from CHAOS i.e. Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome! At least my house is not as bad as my Dad's :eek: or (apparently, because I have never been inside) OH's Dad:eek::eek::eek:

PigginSkint

I have now got the date of my surgery - 12th August. The letter came the other day. The name of the surgeon on the letter is not the same as the consultant I have been seeing. I have to say I find this a little disconcerting. I know my consultant has been having medical problems of her own (as her secretary informed me) so has had to make some decisions about how much she can do. I am sure it will be fine, but is it OK to admit that this news has unsettled me more than anything else so far? :undecided_pale_

My pre-op is on 27th June and I have not lost nearly as much weight as I should have done by now Hope that is not going to cause me any problems. _pale_

The good news is that I do get to go on holiday before I go under the knife! Woohoo!:j I have now booked it online. We go camping so it doesn't cost us very much (especially now we have our own car and no longer have to hire one to go on holiday). I had a very pleasant surprise when I came to book it yesterday on the Camping and Caravanning Club website - they currently have a deal to save 30% when booking a grass pitch over the summer. I am glad to say my booking fitted the criteria for the offer, so I have saved £80 on my booking (£186 instead of £266) :j:money:

The only problem is I only have 5 weeks left at work with an awful lot to get done in that time (bearing in mind I could be off for anything up to 3 months following my surgery). :eek: As a result I have spent this morning doing some work - not something I make a habit of on a Sunday morning (or in my own time, full stop!) but sometimes needs must. On the plus side of course, it means my stress levels should be somewhat reduced this week.

While reclining on the sofa watching the tennis this afternoon (Come on Andy!!!!) I have been doing something I have not done for a loonnnng time. I have been doing the credit card shuffle! :money: I really needed to reduce the interest I am paying on some of my debt and I can't get any new cards. So in summary I have done the following:

• I have transferred the balance from my Loathsome LTSB card to my Barclaycard. The Barclaycard in question has no balance and the deal is that rare thing, a Life of Balance Transfer Deal at 6.9%. The balance I shifted was still on 0% APR deal but I wanted to shift it because of the next item on the list
• I have now have money transfer promotional rate (0% APR) on the loathsome LTSB card which I want to use to pay off my OD plus a small amount on top to pay off something else (won't bore you with the details at the moment)
• I have transferred the balance from the Vile Virgin card (the balance on this was on a 0% deal which has now expired) to the aforementioned Barclaycard on the 6.9% life of balance deal
• Once the balance has shifted from the Vile Virgin card I will then transfer the balance from the OTHER Barclaycard which has a large balance on it at a non-promotional rate, to the Vile Virgin card which also has a promotional balance transfer rate

Did you follow all of that??!!:money:

Anyway, that's all for now. Bye all!!

PigginSkint

A very quick update:

I had a total hysterectomy in August, because of endometriosis, and and have been off work recovering ever since. I had my occupational health appointment today and will be going back to work next week.

Needless to say my moneysaving efforts have taken a bit of a back seat just lately but recently OH and I had a Serious Talk About Money and came up with a bit of an action plan. My main action I can't actually do at the moment, as I am still off work, but probably after Christmas I shall start thinking about changing jobs. This is because where I work has moved to a new building so my commute is quite a bit longer - before we moved I could do it do the journey door to door in approx 1 hour - 1 hour 15 minutes, which I could just about cope with, now it is at least 1 hour 30, and usually nearer 2 hours, each way, every day:eek::eek::eek:! The other part of this is that it now costs me a lot more money just to travel to work and back every day! So the plan is to try to find a job nearer to home (even if it just cutting the commute back to the 1 hour ballpark figure, rather than 2 hours) and/or get a better paid job. I will try to find something working for the same employer (I work in HE) or the same sector but a different employer (there are some viable options here).

Other items on my action plan are doing some price comparisons for my gas, electric and home insurance and to do the credit card shuffle (not done any of these yet)

OH has finally read my meters for me - something I couldn't do myself as it requires some major furniture moving. I have estimate readings for something close to 2 years because, even though my meters have been read in that time, they somehow haven't been communicated to SSE. I am just waiting for my bill which should show a small debit on the gas and a large credit on the electric, so I am keeping my fingers crossed for a nice tidy sum as a refund :money:

Some of OH's actions are to earn more money, to pay more more money and more regularly into my bank account (I pay all the bills) and not to use the credit card (which is my account) without telling me! We both agreed that the credit card should only be used very sparingly!

Phew! That turned into a bit of essay! I think that will do for now - bye all!:hello:

PigginSkint

Oh dear - I have seriously taken my eye off the ball just lately! I am feeling very ashamed of myself. I have just spent some of the morning repairing some of the damage - I have had a DD returned due to insufficient funds in my account! Oops! I did realise yesterday that I had a bit of an issue as I was £98 over my OD limit.:o I transferred some money from other accounts (not that there was much) and impressed on OH the urgency of him paying some money into my account (alas not very much as he had payments go out of his account) but it wasn't enough. I have had do a money transfer from a credit card which is something I really didn't want to do. Luckily the balance on that card was nil and there was a lower APR deal on it. I have transferred more than I probably need but anything that is not needed I will put into one of my online savings accounts in case such an eventuality arises again.

The last few months have been rather expensive. 2 trips to Plymouth - one in February and we have just come back from another - to see DS who is at Uni there (he needed some moral support in February and was not able to come home from Easter). There was also a trip to East Anglia in March for my niece's christening. And OH and I have also just been to Brighton as he ran the marathon and I did the 10K on the 9th April. All of these trips required accommodation and travel expenses and there were additional costs such as eating out on top of that.

I am very proud of my achievement in completing the 10K but I have told OH in no uncertain terms that the next big run needs to be closer to home!! (I will deal with the old 10K in a separate post - this post is a whinge about money!!)

OH really needs to earn more money and we really need to spend less - that is the bottom line!!

We had all sort of plans for the summer but I have told OH that we must curtail them. We will go on a camping holiday as planned but it will probably be shorter that we originally intended. There were 2 festivals that we thought we might like to go to, but I have said that we really can't do that. I suppose we could cancel the holiday completely but that would make me really miserable and I would probably blame OH. So long as we don't spend too much while we are actually away, a camping holiday is quite cheap!!

I have got to get a handle on my finances. I must dust off my spreadsheets and notebooks and just get a grip again!!

I am mad at myself for letting things get this bad.:mad:

PigginSkint

Hi All

As mentioned in my previous post, I did the Brighton 10K on 9th April. I signed up for this in October as I was recovering from the hysterectomy I had in August (total abdominal hysterectomy plus ovaries, tubes and cervix - everything out, in other words!). I was going for a daily walk to aid my recovery - both physical and mental. At the time I was really struggling with my head. I have had episodes of depression in the past but apparently it is quite normal after a hysterectomy to go through this - it is rather like grieving in actual fact. I was also in what is known as surgical menopause, which probably hasn't helped. It is weird, but some days I was absolutely fine, and other days I just wanted to crawl into a corner and hide from the world.

So anyway, OH was signing up for the Brighton marathon (his 3rd marathon) and I don't know how the discussion came about, but we started wondering whether there might be a 5K on the same day that I might have a go at. There wasn't a 5K but there was a 10K. After much deliberation I decided to enter! At the time I was building up my walking distance and it seemed like a natural progression to try to run as well.

I had to wait until after Christmas for my insides to be sufficiently healed before I could start training. I bought some cheap (but good!) running gear and a good book called 'Beginner's Luck' by George Anderson (who also has a facebook page and website), which I read and got inspired to give it a go! The training weeks are named after cats, which suits me!

I started training just after New Year's Day and then, not long after, I got a really nasty chest infection virus. I was off work for 3 weeks and then it was another 2 weeks after that before I was sufficiently recovered to start training again. Basically the training (certainly the earlier weeks) consist of interval training - i.e. you run for so many minutes, then walk for so many minutes, and repeat. The week before the race I was up to Cougar week session 2 which was run 5 mins then walk 2 mins, done 5 times. I basically repeated these intervals until I got up to 10K. This is what I basically replicated for the race itself. The only difference was that on the day I actually managed to run the first 1K without stopping, something I have never done before.

I did it and I wasn't last!:j :jThere weren't many behind me but I wasn't last. Originally the time I was given was 1 hour 46 minutes, but I have since been informed that my official time was 1 hour 43 minutes.

I decided that Brighton was for me but that the next one would be for charity, so I have signed up to do a Race for Life for Cancer Research UK on 21st May - 5K this time. I have also just signed up for another 5K in my home town on 17th June which was free entry! :money:

As for my health, well my physical health is definitely improving in lots of ways. I have lost weight, my asthma is better, my sciatica is better, my plantar fasciitis is better, I feel fitter and I am definitely more toned than I was - still a long way to go though.

My mental health is also much better - running really helps, there are no two ways about it! It is all the endorphins, serotonin and everything else I suppose. It also seems to help to just think about the running, concentrate on my breathing, the rhythm of my running, where I am running to, the music I am listening to (on the occasions when take my ipod with me, which isn't always) and just not think about all the problems in my life. I have become something I never thought I would be - a running bore!!:D

Interestingly, there was a programme on telly last night about a group of people with mental health problems training for the London marathon, as a way of dealing with their mental health problems. I definitely could relate!

When I have felt really bad, I have just wanted a way of running away from the feelings and thoughts in my head, and now I do it literally and I feel so much better for doing it. I don't think I can put it better than that.

I find I am coping much better with the things that would previously have affected me really badly. A case in point is my previous post about the dire state of my finances at the moment. I find I am coping much better with this than I would normally have done!

So onwards and upwards! (thank goodness!)

Thanks for listening:)

Eager_Elephant

Well done on the 10K - anyone who runs is amazing in my eyes!!

Could you go back to basics with the finances? So create a financial statement and see if you can cut anything back there and then. Make sure you include money to set aside for visiting DS, running costs (hotel, travel) and then hopefully each time this crops up you will have the money.

Back in August you said that DH was going to give you more money towards bills and more regularly - has he been doing this?

I use YNAB but also have a spreadsheet which I tick off as I go along - could you use something similar?

PigginSkint

Thanks Eager Elephant

OH has been giving me more money towards the bills - when he has it! Unfortunately the nature of his work means that what he earns each week is variable. He is an actor so prefers to do other work that is flexible so that he can be available for auditions and acting work as it arises. He does have a regular stint once a week teaching drama. He has a zero hours contract at a local big sporting and events venue - most of the time it does bring in a decent amount of work. What really didn't help the old financial situation was that he went a good month with no work - he finished for Christmas on 22nd December and then there was no work until about the end of January. That is probably the main reason we are in a bit of a mess at the moment. It turns out that there should have been work available but there was some quite poor management. This has now been replaced so hopefully the situation will now improve. The other issue has been that we have had a few weekends away and most of the work for OH falls on a weekend!

I will be doing a new SOA soon (I might do it today actually) just to see where we are at the moment.

I have got a few things still on my to-do list money wise. Yesterday I made an appointment with my energy supplier to have a Smart Meter fitted, so that should help us manage the gas and leccy bills and usage a bit better. Once I have had that done I shall probably look at doing a price comparison to see if I can get it cheaper - I wanted to wait until after I had the smart meter fitted for free before doing it!

Bobarella

Well done on your fantastic achievement! Hope it's the start of a long and enjoyable hobby.