PigginSkint's DFW Diary

PigginSkint

Hi All

OMG it’s Monday already! I am feeling very tired today as I did not got to bed very early last night – with one thing and another it was nearly 2am when I finally fell asleep – not good if you are planning to get up at 6:30am! Needless to say I did not manage 6:30 this morning – it was more like 7:10.

It is OH’s birthday today – he is 38. The plan for tonight is for me to cook him (and DS) a nice meal – no change there then! Then we will have a few drinks – still got wine left over from Christmas, eat homemade birthday cake (note to self – must buy icing sugar for the butter icing) and play the 007 Scene It Game. I suppose we may get a visitor or two but I am not going to hold my breath! I don’t know whether my family have remembered (I shall remind them shortly!), his mum came round briefly yesterday to deliver his cards, so may only phone today and his dad is unlikely to phone or come round (although he did send a card). I have bought him a Dr Who box set that he had on his Christmas list but didn’t get and DS has bought him a photo frame with 3 spaces for photos – he got it so that OH can put photos in of our cat that we lost at Christmas. What a thoughtful present!

Moneywise, I have not managed to update my sig yesterday – still need to fish out those 2 balances that I need. I will try and do that tonight.

OH and DS were very good yesterday and each did 1 hour’s worth of housework – I set the timer – so the house is looking a lot better today! Never mind that I did about 2 hours worth before they even started and did at least another hour later on! Kids!! I think I did a bit too much really as my foot is really hurting again today. Oh well, I suppose if the house is tidier I might feel better about taking a bit easier!

OH and DS did do my Avon for me over the weekend so all I need to do this week is place my order online – no walking involved. Then my delivery will come on Tuesday next week and then I can start doing my deliveries on Wednesday – so no walking required until then. Perhaps my foot might be feeling better by then.

Oh well, I suppose I had better do some work.

Bye all!!

PigginSkint

Hi All

Well we had a really lovely evening yesterday for OH’s birthday – in true MSE/DFW style.

When I got home OH was watching a new Dr Who DVD that he had bought with his birthday money – got me worried for a minute but then I realised it wasn’t one that I had got him!

I made a lovely dinner for us. OH and DS had steak (Sainsburys thin cut – 2 packets for £5) cooked with a fried onion and some red wine (part of a bottle that we didn’t finish at Christmas which I have been keeping for just such an eventuality), I had a veggie quarter pounder (on special offer at Sainsburys - £1 a packet of 4), then we had chips (homemade), garlic mushrooms (homemade) and peas. We had a bottle of wine (another one left over from Christmas , which had been on special offer). I also made him a birthday cake – jam and buttercream sponge, yum! – which we all had a large slice of later on. After dinner we had a game of the James Bond Scene It (which we bought the other week - £9.99 reduced from £39.99). I won, by the way!

So we had a lovely evening which did not cost us very much money at al!

PigginSkint

Hi All

Well I have finally updated my sig. My figures aren’t that great but at least everything has gone down!!

I am feeling really down today – I shouldn’t really as there have been plenty of positives from the last 24 hours but also one big fat negative.

Last night I did my Avon order which took ages because there was so much of it. Once I totted it up, including some stuff I ordered for us, it came in at over £400 worth of sales. Woohoo! :j

Also last night I fished out my offer letter for the low rate balance transfers for my Halifax card – 6.95% APR for the life of the balance and the last day I could do it was yesterday. Good timing! So I phoned them up and transferred £2000 from the Egg card. This is a higher APR then the rest of the balance on that card but it is a whole lot better than the APR on the Egg card.

The reason I am so down today is that I did some internet banking last night as there are a lot of payments that go out today and tomorrow – very depressing. I had to transfer yet more money from my other account into my current account. This leaves me with not very much in my other account which means I will have to transfer the final £1000 in my ISA to this account before the end of this month. That is the final bit of emergency money.

So yet again I had to remind OH that he needs to do something and soon about increasing his income. I threw the usual swear words at him – shelf stacking, bar work, busking, call centre. I know he will not want to do any of these things but unless he pulls his finger out quickly to find something else, he may have little choice.

A couple of things will ease the burden on my finances over the next 2 or 3 months – there will be the 2 months off paying the council tax coming soon, and also the 2 months off paying for my travel pass. Also I am not having to make any payments for my water bill at the moment – that is not much but it all helps.

Perhaps I ought to try again for a repayment holiday on my LTSB loan. Also I think I ought to go for a mortgage review to see what the options might be there – e.g. a better deal, repayment holidays etc.

I also discovered last night that I had forgotten to pay one of my credit card bills that should have been paid on pay day – the payment is due to reach them by today. I arranged it last night so it has gone out today. I hope I don’t get a late repayment charge. I was slightly late paying one over the Christmas period and luckily didn’t get charged for that so fingers crossed. If I do, I will do what I did last time and phone them up and ask them very nicely if they would mind refunding it as it was a one off and I don’t make a habit of paying bills late – it worked last time!!

There are times when I feel like kicking OH up the bum! He doesn’t realise how lucky he is – well, actually, I think he does, but he is such a b****y procrastinator! He always says he will do things and then never does or takes a very long time about it. There are certain things (which I don’t really want to go into) which keep me awake at night but there is precious little I can do about it save continue to nag him in the hope that it might have an effect one day! :mad:

Oh well, that’s my moan for the day…well, actually I have just realised there is more!

B****y trains this morning! :mad: All the trains on the line that I travel on were cancelled this morning because of a signalling failure, so I had to travel by a very roundabout route on the other line to get to work – the result being that it took me much longer to get here than normal. I hope it sorts itself out for later on as I don’t fancy going through all that palaver again to get home!

Oh and another thing! I managed to slip backwards off the step of bus today on my bad foot – ouch!!!!!

What a great day this is turning out to be!

Oh well, I have got pancakes to look forward to when I get home. We didn’t have them last night because OH decided to treat us to chippy chips and we were so full afterwards we didn’t fancy pancakes.

Hope everyone has a better day than mine has started out!

Bye all!!

PigginSkint

Hi All

Yesterday I got my Egg statement so I did what I have done for the past few months and copied and pasted it into my finances spreadsheet. Then I formatted it so that it was clear to read and looked pretty! I went through and highlighted stuff using the colour code that I have devised for it – yellow is OH’s spending and cat-related expenses (which OH had agreed to pay), tan is anything that is mine or joint (e.g. Christmas presents, holiday expenses), pink is payments that have been made (to show how much I have actually paid) and I left unhighlighted things like interest, opening and closing balances and anything I wasn’t sure of. Then I put page breaks in to separate the different statements and printed the whole lot off on the colour printer – all statements from August last year. I took this home and gave it OH to peruse so he can see exactly what he has been spending – the balance on the card is nearly all his because nearly everything that was mine (or joint) I have already paid off. I think it gave him a bit of a shock to see it all in black and white (and yellow!).

OH really needs to have his lightbulb moment and fast – I think he has got his head in the sand at the moment. I don’t want to push him too much though it is very tempting – last night when I gave him the statements I so wanted to say ‘so, what are you going to about it then?’ but I restrained myself. I think I will let him mull it over for a day or 2 and then bring it up again. I think I need to keep throwing new information at him with the hope that realisation will slowly dawn.

I had a look on the NS&I website to see if I might have won anything from the premium bonds I have got – ha! Of course I haven’t! I have decided I am going to cash them in. I found the web page where you can print off the form – I didn’t do it last night because I wasn’t actually hooked up to the printer and I couldn’t be bothered! So I will do it from work today. I think I will get the money paid into one of my ISAs so it will increase the emergency funds ever so slightly – it is only £100 but everything helps!

In other news……we discovered a £20 behind the clock on our mantel piece the other day. This is obviously somebody’s Christmas or birthday money but we don’t know whose – I don’t think it’s mine, OH doesn’t think it’s his and DS doesn’t think it is his either! So what we decided democratically was to put it towards the fund for buying the new Dr Who box set (Series 3) which is what we have been saving up £2 coins for. When I checked the £2 coin collection I discovered that, together with the £20 note, we had enough! Woohoo! So earlier in the week I ordered it (from Amazon – free super saver delivery) and I got an email yesterday to say that it is on its way. Yippee! One Dr Who fest coming up!

Oh well, I think that is all for now – better get on with some work!

Bye all!!!

PigginSkint

Hi All

Thank goodness it is Friday!!!

I have been having a very busy day today typing up exam questions so no time to do an update until now.

OH and DS between them made dinner last night and OH is making dinner tonight – wonders will never cease!

After catching up on Hypno’s thread I hotfooted it over to quidco and found the HSBC and A&L savings accounts - £20 cashback for each. So last night I signed up for them and I have received notification from both to say I have been accepted. I am going to sit OH down tonight and make him do the same.

Last night I finally went back to the thread in which I asked for help regarding my laptop memory problem. I trawled through all the advice and felt a lot more confident afterwards. So I have now ordered a memory upgrade which should be arriving in about 3-5 working days. If it works and the laptop starts to work more speedily I should be able to do things that I have not been able to do – like sell stuff on ebay – because I haven’t dared to put any more photos on there because it is so short of memory.

Yesterday I printed off the form for cashing in my premium bonds – I don’t know whether I can pay it into an ISA without having to do another form so I think I will just get the money paid into my savings account instead (the one parallel to my current account).

I am going to try to have a serious talk with OH about money over the weekend. DS will be away at his Dad’s after today until Wednesday morning so we will have some space to have some serious discussions - I think I really need to get him to draw up a real plan of action because the money situation is getting quite serious now.

I have now booked some annual leave for next week as it is half term. To cut a very long story short, having done some calculations about when I am going to use my annual leave entitlement this year, I have worked out that I can only take 2 days for each of the half terms. I know OH is working on Thursday and I don’t know (and he doesn’t know) what else might get booked in for next week, so I have booked 2 half days - Wednesday afternoon and Thursday afternoon - and 1 whole day - Friday. This means that DS will not have to spend too long on his own on any one day.

Anyway, I suppose I had better do some finishing off and then it will be time to go home.

Bye all and have a good weekend.

PigginSkint

Hi All

Well I think it is safe to say that after feeling very down about the whole money situation just lately, I am now feeling a great deal more positive

I have been mentioning to OH for a few days now that we needed to have a serious talk about money and this morning I was sat quietly doing some figures and he quite spontaneously brought the subject up. Apparently he has been doing some serious thinking for several weeks now and he is absolutely fed up about his current work situation and lack of earnings (good, I thought, because so am I!). As a long term career direction, he wants to go into teaching - this is something that he has often mentioned but he now seems very serious about pursuing this soon. He also realises the short term need for increased income and has come up with some ideas of his own - I also suggested a few.

I have also suggested that he make use of this wonderful site so we may well see him on DFW soon! I may have to break it to him gently that I have on occasion been not very nice about him!!

I have also said that later on today we will sit down and draw up a new SOA together so we can see exactly what we are dealing with. This will not come as much of a surprise to me as I deal with it day in day out but I think it may come as something of a shock to him!!!

He is currently out as he has to go and get a present and card for his youngest nephew because it is his birthday tomorrow. February is quite a heavy month for birthday's in our house - OH's, mine, OH's mother, aforementioned OH's nephew. Not to mention valentine's day (only a card these days) and our anniversary - we have now been together nearly 5 years.

Yesterday was a particularly good day chez nous as the memory upgrade for the laptop arrived and after much research on t'internet about how to install it we fitted it - I did the research and OH did the actual fitting because it involved the use of screwdrivers. Not that I couldn't have done it but I think it is a man thing - the need to use tools! Anyway, we have really noticed the difference. No longer is the laptop in danger of being chucked at the wall in frustration! Woohoo! It is noticably working much faster and I think that we may actually be able to consider doing some ebaying now as we will not be afraid of saving some photos on here. I might even get a photo on my facebook profile now!

Anyway, Poirot's on now I relax and watch that that while I work on some more figures.

Bye all!

PigginSkint

Hi All

Well I sat down with OH last night and did a new SOA – this was quite easy as I have my notebook that I use to write down everything that goes in and out – all the bills etc anyway. Then I included an estimate for my average commission earnings from Avon and an estimate for food – this one can only really be an estimate as we don’t keep spending diaries. Anyway I can be sure that the figure I guessed at is reasonably accurate. So, ladies and gentlemen (drum roll please) my currently monthly shortfall is in the region of about £250. This is actually a big improvement on what it was about 18 months ago – the shortfall then was about £500 a month. This does not take into account OH’s contribution to family finances so obviously when OH is able to make a contribution, this helps matters, but it also shows how important OH’s contribution is and that we can’t really manage without it.

The result of this is that OH now knows what he needs to do - £250 a month isn’t really too much to ask is it?!

I got him to sign up for the forums last night so no doubt he will raise his head above the parapet at some point. I know what his username is but I will leave it up to him whether he decides to identify himself on here as my OH – he also knows what my username is. I told him (gently) that I have at times been somewhat critical of him on here but explained that we often use this place and our diaries to have a rant and vent our frustrations. Who knows, it might do some good if he does choose to read the whole of this diary!

Ho hum! Suppose I had better do some work – don’t really feel like it though! Bye all!

PigginSkint

Hi All

OH went to the dentist yesterday. I am not going to go into too much detail because it would make your toes curl, but ouch! :eek: He has stitches in his gum on the lower set at the front on the one side. He has got to go back on Friday to have the same done on the other lower front side and then probably next week sometime to have the same done to the front at the top. He has quite a severe infection that has gone into the bone and this is the only way to save his teeth. Well it’s not the only way but it is less expensive than the other method they were proposing, and this is expensive enough as it is - £75 for yesterday, £75 on Friday and probably about £100 next week. Ouch in more ways than one!! :eek:

I went to Aldi yesterday because I needed to go anyway and while I was there I bought a few cans of cream soup as OH has got to be careful what he eats. I also bought some mushroom ravioli and a pack of mushrooms – I made a lovely tomato, mushroom, garlic and basil pasta sauce to go with the ravioli for dinner last night. Something nice and soft!! He also had a large gin and tonic – purely medicinal you understand! (Shhh!!!I had one as well! :whistle: :shhh: )

Now I don’t want to speak too soon but I think my foot is starting to feel better, at long last. It will 4 weeks tomorrow since my accident. I am truly fed up of having to wear trainers all the time and wearing basically the same clothes at work because nothing else looks right with trainers – 3 almost identical pairs of dark coloured cord trousers which I have been rotating, 3 jumpers, a pink top and a thick purple shirt. It will be so nice to wear something different!!

Anyway, I had better do some work – it is nearly lunchtime anyway. Woohoo! And today is my last full day this week – I am only working tomorrow morning and Thursday morning, off both afternoons and all day Friday! Double woohoo!! :j

Bye all!!

PigginSkint

Hi All

Phew what a busy morning! I am not here much longer as I am going home soon – hooray!

Managed to get all my Avon bagged up last night and books ready to go out. I will be dragging OH and DS out this afternoon to put books out and then again this evening to do deliveries. I also brought half of my work deliveries with me today – just one left of those to go. The other half I will bring in tomorrow but I have taken a list down so they all know who owes what, so hopefully they can have the money ready for when I go down again tomorrow morning. My neighbour’s deliveries I should be able to get rid of later – she got loads from people at work. So the money is starting to come in nicely already.

My bank account is not looking too bad at the moment – my OD is not as big as I thought it would be. I think I have made a mistake with my calculations somewhere along the line!! Oh well, can’t complain!

Just drinking a nice cup of tea and then some finishing off to do before I go home. I might update again later, but then again, I might not!

Bye all!!

PigginSkint

Hi All

Soooo tired this morning and not really in work mood today at all after having yesterday afternoon off. Never mind, only got to work this morning and then I am off this afternoon and all day tomorrow.

I sat OH down yesterday afternoon and got him to sign up for Quidco and he has also applied for one of the savings accounts on there. Small steps and all that!

I was going to do my Avon deliveries yesterday evening, however OH decided to get in the bath just before 6:30pm, which is when I normally go out to start doing deliveries. It was nearly 7:30pm when he got out which is far too late to start – bearing in mind doing deliveries takes at least an hour and we hadn’t yet had dinner. So I was not really best pleased! I have told him we will do it today and he absolutely must not get in the bath at 6:30pm tonight! Honestly! Why he couldn’t have had a bath earlier or waited until we got back I don’t know! Typical!! Oh well, at least we got the books out yesterday afternoon – that’s something at least!

Not much else to report really! Looking forward to going home and collapsing this afternoon, though I really must try to do some housework – the place is an absolute tip again!

Bye for now!