PigginSkint's DFW Diary

PigginSkint

I'll bet! But well done you for being so strong!

We can't do car boots unfortunately as we have no car but did a fair few when we did have one. Mind you, I never really made much money - perhaps my tat just wasn't worth much! Hope you did better.

PigginSkint

By the way, I notice you have 3 stars. Can you remember off the top of your head how many posts it takes to get 3? I'm wondering how long I've got until my next star milestone!

PigginSkint

Hi All

Well I have been to physio this morning and they were a bit concerned that I am now getting more pain in my knee since I had my new insole (which is twice the height of my previous one). If it doesn’t settle down I think she is going to refer me back to the Podiatrist.

Not much to report today really. I’ve finally paid my Avon money into my bank account (that reminds me, must check my bank balance).

I have had a truly DFW lunch today – homemade minestrone soup (yum), bread (from Aldi) and a yummy Aldi raspberry yoghurt!

My fruit and veg delivery is due tomorrow so we will have plenty of healthy stuff to eat over the next few weeks – when we are actually home of course! I won’t need another one for a while.

My next Sainsburys delivery is due towards the end of the month (after we come back from Poland and before we go camping) and I think I shall order the minimum I can get away with! It needs to be over £70 to get the cheap delivery (we normaly spend about £100) so I think I will order basic stuff to take with us camping, anything we are running short of that will keep and anything needed for the cats while we are away (my DB will be looking after them for us so it won’t cost us anything extra – God help those who have to use kennels and catteries!!).

Anyway must get on, lots to do today and I don’t want to be too late leaving.

Bye for now!

PigginSkint

Hi All

Well I got one important job done last night. I went and fished out the pole bag for the big tent out of the shed so I could have a good look to see which one is broken (I ought to mention that it is just one section of the pole, not the whole pole!). I measured it and then went on my favourite camping supplies website to find a replacement – I have ordered 2 so we have got a spare as well (only £1.75 each). I also fished out the other set of poles to measure, with the intention of ordering a spare one of those as well, unfortunately they didn’t have one of those on the website. I am sure I have got spares somewhere, though goodness knows where!

I also bought a few more bits from the website – a tent peg extractor (saves wrecking tent pegs by using others to try and prise them out!), a folding toaster (the one we used last year generated too much heat and nearly wrecked the camp stove by melting the casing on it!) and, from OH’s suggestion, a second small camp stove, identical to the other one. As we are not taking the big cooker it seemed like a good idea to have 2 small ones (oops, just thought – only one windbreak doh!) which will take up much less room than the big one. Now this may seem like an extravagance but if it means we are more likely to ‘eat in’ because it is easier that it would have been with one stove then we will save the expense of eating out so much. Anyway, total amount spent – c£35. Positively restrained compared to what I might have spent a few years ago!!!

Update on above paragraph – I have just been on the sister site of the one above to order a folding windbreak for the new cooker and a utensil set (which I had tried to find on the other site but couldn’t!). Total cost including delivery, less than £10. Very, very restrained compared to the bad old days!! I have got a shed (admittedly a small shed) full of camping gear – I really must have a sort out one of these days and work out what I could sell. I should add that I did this one through quidco so I should earn a little bit of cashback as well.

Only today and tomorrow to go and then I am on my hols – woohoo! Mind you, the first few days will be spent trying to get my house in some sort of order. OH (and DS) doesn’t know it yet but I am putting together lists of what needs doing in each room. I don’t know whether it is a man thing, but OH’s idea of tidying and cleaning a room is not the same as mine! He tidied the living room the other day and a couple of days later I went through the baskets that we put newspapers, magazines, catalogues etc in and found old copies of The Stage dating back to April! He also only seems to hoover the bit of carpet he can see rather than picking stuff up and moving furniture to hoover there as well! Anyway, I have a solution – my list of jobs is very specific, breaking things down into component parts. So instead of ‘tidy living room’ I have, for example, ‘put away anything that has been left on both coffee tables’ and ‘wipe down/polish all tables’. My list for my son’s room will be even more specific than that!! Hopefully it might get the message home. Also, if the task of tidying a whole room seems too daunting to do at once, I shall tell them to pick one task at a time off the list. I have gained some inspiration from Flylady and invested in a cheap timer so I shall set them (and myself – let’s be fair here!) 5 minute tasks, perhaps building up to, ooh I don’t know, 15 minute tasks. OH always complains that he doesn’t have time to do anything (Ha!) but I am sure even he could manage 15 minutes out of his day to do some housework! I quite often do things in spare 5 minutes – this morning I put a wash on and put some clean washing in a basket for OH to put away before I went to work and I frequently tackle the dishwasher when I am waiting for the kettle to boil or cooking the dinner.

Sorry, a bit of a rant there but I do get really fed up that I am the one that works the longest hours and I still manage to do a little bit of housework when OH claims he doesn’t have the time! :mad: I will get him trained yet!!!

PigginSkint

Hi All

Well it is my last day at work for a while – woohoo! What a start to the day I have had though – all the trains were cancelled and I had to get a replacement bus service. The bus takes longer than the train and they had to wait until it was full before leaving so it meant I was ¾ hour late getting here. Just what I need!

Got a reply from GE money yesterday and to say it has prompted a big decision would be putting it mildly. They didn’t answer all of the questions that I had put in my letter but they did answer a couple of very important ones – what my current balance is and how much it will cost me to pay the whole lot off early.

The current balance is £2,102. I will probably fill in all the correct figures in a later post, but the original balance for the finance (after the deposit had been paid and the insurance had been added on) was about £2,400 when the finance started in about April 2004. This means I have reduced the balance by about £300 in over 3 years! I find this absolutely shocking.

It will cost me an extra approx £80 to pay it off in full by early September – if I remember rightly this consists of the interest that will be payable between now and then plus the fee which is one month’s interest. I really do think that it is worth doing if this is the fee, especially considering that the balance has only dropped by £90 since November last year (when I got my Credit Expert report).

Currently I have a life of balance deal on my Halifax card for balance transfers and credit cheques – 5.9% for the life of the balance. GE money did not tell me what interest rate I am currently paying, but I can take an educated guess (I bet I could work it out actually, using the calculator they have on the Whats the cost website) – it was originally 22%APR and everytime the interest rates have gone up I have received a letter saying that I would be paying more interest and that my monthly payment had gone up. Therefore I guess I am currently paying about 25% APR.

So I have made the decision that I am going to use the LOB deal to settle this in full. This will mean of course that my credit card totals will go up but obviously my total debt won’t. I shall have to adjust my targets of course, but in truth what I am doing is just moving a debt rather than increasing it. And, of course, at 5.9% rather than 25% it will be paid off much, much quicker. I will of course have to revise my targets for this year to take account of this.

So I need to crack on and move my current balance from my Halifax card to my Egg card (which I will do as soon as I can find out what my exact current balance is – the online service for Halifax credit cards is currently down, I shall have to keep trying throughout the day) so the balance on the Halifax card is £0 then I can start transferring stuff back again to use the deal – and I will write a cheque to GE money to settle the account.

What a relief it will be to know that the £47 (or more) a month I will be paying will actually go towards reducing the debt rather than paying the interest!

I will update more on this when I get a minute. I have still got loads to do today and I want to go home at a reasonable time!!!

PigginSkint

Hi All

I don't know how often I am going to have time to update over the last few weeks but as I have actually got the computer on I thought I would do one.

On Friday after work (after another replacement bus trip) OH met me and suggested going for a drink. 2 pints of Stella on a (fairly) empty stomach meant I was quite merry when we got home and I was also very tired. We decided to have an Indian takeaway. As it turns out it was fairly good value. In between ordering it and it coming I fell asleep. I don't know about anyone else but when I have just woken up, as I had when the food arrived, I don't feel like eating very much so I only ate my popadoms and starter. This meant I still had a large amount of curry, rice and an naan bread still to eat. I ate half yesterday and will have the other half today. An Indian takeaway normally lasts us 2 days and this time it has lasted 3!

Yesterday I was still very tired and had a very bad headache for most of the day, so didn't do very much. We went into town to get the holiday money. Unfortunately I found out too late that paying for foreign currency and travellers cheques with a credit card is the same as a cash advance and means you get charged a horrendous APR. Luckily I doubt very much I shall spend it all (I always get more than I think I will need just in case) and in any case, I am about to do balance transfers off the card that used to pay for it onto my Halifax card 5.9% for life of balance. The other point is that I intend to pay off everything we have used for holidays with money from my savings account.

Today I have been getting stuck into my washing but haven't done much else housework-wise yet. But what I have done is finished doing my cleaning lists so I have what I think is a comprehensive list of exactly what needs doing. One job we have decided to do today is de-flea the cats and the house which both need doing. This means clearing all the carpets and upholstery, hoover them and then spray them. This will be one major task done.

I have now invested in a timer (I think I mentioned that earlier) so will be using this to get stuff done in short bursts. I am currently watching telly and have been leaping up and doing stuff in advert breaks. It is amazing how much can be achieved just doing that.

I think that's all to report for now! Tara!

PigginSkint

Hi All I'm back!

We got back yesterday from our camping trip. Last week we got back from Poland on Monday and went camping on Friday. We had lovely weather for both trips and have had a wonderful time - very relaxing and just what we needed. Some things are worth the expense - the car hire for the camping trip definitely was.

I have just transferred £600 from my savings account to my current account and arranged for a payment of £600 to go out tomorrow to my Egg card. This will cover the cost of the accommodation in Poland, the cost of the car hire, the balance for the cost of the pitch on the camp site and most of the spending money for Poland and the camping trip (I used my debit card for the rest). Considering this included buying food which I would have had to do anyway, I don't think that is all that bad. O.K. I would have preferred it to have gone on reducing my debts but it was definitely money well spent because it was just what we needed. Hiring a car also meant that the camping trip was a much more pleasant experience than last year - much less stressful.

Today I have done my internet banking but not much else. I have transferred part of my balance from my Egg card to my Halifax card, making use of the promotional offer I had been given (5.94% APR LOB). On Friday I sent off a cheque (again from the Halifax offer) to pay off my windows finance. It hasn't gone through yet and I hope it goes through by the end of the week - the offer finishes on 2nd September so I don't what will happen if it goes through late. I suppose if that happens I shall just have to transfer it somewhere else when I can, but as least it will be somewhere more 'portable' for want of a better way of putting it!

I think that's all for now - I think I will update more tomorrow when I am a bit more awake!

PigginSkint

Hi All

I didn't update yesterday because it would have been really really boring as I had a really lazy day!

Today though I have much more exciting news. I have just checked my Egg Money Manager (I think that is what it is called) and I noticed that my cheque to pay off my windows finance has gone through...before the deadline for the offer. Woohoo! :j :j :j This means I shall no longer be paying c22% APR for it, it is now on my Halifax card at 5.9% APR for the life of the balance. I have had to pay about £64 balance transfer fee but that is a small price to pay - I shall do my usual and pay off the fee with the money in my savings account.

Yesterday I finally sorted out the deferment on my student loans. A few weeks ago I sent off copies of my tax credit award letter and my child benefit letter as they needed proof of these. On Wednesday I got a phone call from either the Student Loans Company or Honours Student Loans (I forget which) saying my deferrment was incomplete. I explained that I had sent off the documents a few weeks ago. They gave me another number to phone to check on this, which I phoned yesterday (I didn't do it on Wednesday because I was tired and had a headache) which was Honours Student Loans(who now own my loans). However they said they couldn't advise me on the progress of my deferment and I would have to phone the Student Loans Company for that. So they gave me another number to ring. This time I explained the situation (again) and they then checked my loan accounts. It turns out that they have received my documents but they hadn't been actioned yet. Anyway they are now dealing with this and will send me a letter soon confirming this. Phew! And not a minute too soon - I got a letter from Honours Student Loans yesterday saying they hadn't received my payment. This was quite reassuring actually because it means that the direct debit agreement I originally signed is no longer valid - presumably since the Student Loans Company sold my loans to the Honours Students Loans. This is a relief because otherwise they would have just taken the direct debit payment, like what happened once before when I was late sending off my deferrment forms.

Yesterday I also ordered some more special food for PC1 (!!!!! Cat 1) and paid for it by PayPal using a credit card. Only today did I realise that I had forgotten to change the credit card on my PayPal account. Doh!:doh: This means that my payment has gone through on my Halifax card which now should only have balance transfers on it at 5.9%APR. Oops! I suppose there is nothing I can do about it now and I will just have to live with it - oh well, it is only about £20 at c20% APR so it could be worse I suppose. I have now put my Egg card details on my PayPal account so I can't make that mistake again.

It has just occurred to me that now I have moved my windows finance to a credit card I can now work out a total for my non-mortgage and non-student loan debt. This is something I haven't been able to do before, because I didn't know what it was (because I didn't know how much was outstanding on my windows finance). It will be interesting to see whether this figure will be higher or lower than my total mortgage debt because I know they will be fairly similar - I think my non mortgage (and non student loan) debt will be actually higher than my mortgage debt so that will be one target to set myself, to get it lower than my mortgage debt.

I realise that tomorrow is 1st September which would normally be the day when I would update my figures and my signature. Unfortunately, however, my finances spreadsheet is on my computer at work and I forgot to email it to myself before I finished on 10th August. This means I will have to wait until I am back at work on Monday before I can update it. Now that my windows finance is now on a credit card I will have to revise my targets of course. That reminds me, I must cancel my direct debit to GE money now - what a wonderful feeling it will be to do that!

Sorry about the random ramblings but something else has just occurred to me about GE money. In response to the letter I sent them they have sent me about 4 different letters covering the different things that I had asked them. One of these was a full statement which covers the period from when I took the finance out up to earlier this year (I can't remember the exact date off hand). This means that I will be able to work out what the balance was at my lightbulb moment so that I will able to complete my spreadsheet - ooh exciting. It also means I will be able to work out how much I have paid off in total since my lightbulb moment, though I know that in the case of GE money the answer will be 'not a lot'! Oh well, this will change now!

I think that is enough for now - sorry for boring you all with my ramblings!

Tara!

madmoney_2

PigginSkint wrote: »

By the way, I notice you have 3 stars. Can you remember off the top of your head how many posts it takes to get 3? I'm wondering how long I've got until my next star milestone!

i think its 500;)

PigginSkint

Hi All

Well it is my first day back at work after 3 weeks off, so as you can imagine I am really pleased to be here! Not!

I still haven’t managed to update my spreadsheet or my signature yet because for one thing I can’t find my little notebook that I use to work out when payments are due and where I make notes of how much I have paid, current balances etc. Also I do need to go through my bills to get the relevant info (which I will then put in my notebook when I find it). Also I have just tried to go onto Egg Money Manager to find out my current balances and it is not playing ball at the moment – the only one it is showing is the one for my Egg card, very useful! I have managed to get my LTSB details (credit card and loan) from their internet banking (which I check every day anyway) and my Littlewoods balance from their website, but nothing else so far. Tonight I shall have to have a really good tidy up in order to find my book, then I might be able to do something – I get really jittery if I haven’t got it to hand in case I miss something.

Talking about missing things, I can’t remember whether I mentioned it last week but I forgot about my Capital One payment which should have been done on the 24th. I only remembered about it on Friday so I think the payment will go out today, which is when the payment should have reached them by. :doh: Oops! I think this means I will get slapped with a late payment charge. It is so rare that this happens (being off work and going on holiday means my normal routine has gone out of the window) that I think what I shall do if I do get charged a late payment fee is give them a ring and see if they will waive it just this once, as it was a genuine oversight. It’s worth a try (it’s worked with LTSB in the past).

I think that’s all for now, but I bet I’ve forgotten something!