PigginSkint's DFW Diary

PigginSkint

Hi All

Only time for another quickie I’m afraid – I was busy with an exam all day yesterday and had a hospital appointment this morning so I have only been at work for about an hour. I’ve got sooooo much to do and I really don’t want to be staying too late this evening.

Managed to pay some Avon money into my bank account this morning and I think that the cheque that OH paid in for me on Friday (I think it was Friday?!) has now cleared, so that’s good!

OH is working away this week – staying in actor’s digs. I spoke to him last night and was expecting to hear him say that he had been eating out, but no! He told me he had been shopping for food, coffee etc. I was pleasantly surprised!

I’ve sold another book through Amazon Marketplace today! It is one that I only listed on Saturday so I am very pleased about that. Did I say that I also managed to sell one last week? It all helps. I think I am going to review my listings again and see if I can reduce the price of any more in an effort to shift them!

Finally got round to doing the first preliminaries for mine and OH’s divorces at the weekend – really must get those sorted this year!!! For OH I wrote the letter (in OH’s name which he then signed) asking for the form in order to search for and obtain a copy of his decree absolute – we are almost sure he is divorced because we have heard that his ex has remarried. For me I have written to ask what the fee is for obtaining an official copy of my marriage certificate so that I can do my divorce petition and send it to the court. I will also have to go up in the loft at some point to find my separation agreement because they’ll need a copy of that as well.

That’s quite a lot for a quick update isn’t it? Good job I type fast!

Anyway, loads to do so will update more tomorrow. Bye for now!

PigginSkint

Hi All!

Well my mad week continues but I have slightly more time on my hands to do an update today. I didn’t get to sit down very early yesterday evening – not until 8:15pm! I was at work until 5:15pm so with train journeys etc I didn’t get home until 6:45pm. I had to go virtually straight back out again to get my Avon books back in – that took me until about 7:30pm. Then I had to gather up DS’s stuff and take that over to his Dad’s (where he spends Tuesday and Wednesday nights every week) and then to the shop on the way home to get more potatoes because we had run out, so it was 8:15pm when I got back after doing all that. I collapsed on the sofa with my book and a beer and 5 mins later OH returned home. He scoffed the reduced pork pie that I got him from the shop which meant that he didn’t want dinner so that meant I only had to make dinner for myself! In true DFW/MSE I cooked myself an extra baked potato at the same time which I am having for lunch today with a tin of value baked beans – yum! :A I was going to have salad again but I have run out of salad cream and I am not paying the price our local Coop was charging last night for Heinz (about £1.60 I think) when Sainsburys own only costs 36p!

I crawled up to bed about 10pm last night and OH came up much later (I was asleep) because, surprise surprise, he was doing his invoice for this week’s work! I was shocked I can tell you, it normally takes him weeks and weeks to get round to doing that! Luckily he still had the template that I had done for him (adapted from one I found by searching on the internet) when he first had to do one.

I’ve just been reading through some of my previous posts. Oh, how naïve was I with my grocery challenge?! How much did I underestimate?! Actually I don’t know the exact answer to that because I have not got round to adding it up! Still, strangely enough it has focussed our minds somewhat because we now buy even fewer newpapers than before and our alcohol consumption has definitely gone down!! OH still keeps wanting takeaways though! But I suppose a couple of times a month is not excessive!;)

I’m trying to think what I have still not updated on… oh yes I remember. At the weekend I finally got round to booking our flights to Poland in the Summer – I don’t think I have mentioned this yet! This year OH and I have got to go to 3 weddings and one of those is in Poland. As it is OH’s brother we sort of have to go! Anyway we have booked the flights with Ryanair (there are a few of us going on the same flight). The total price for the 3 of us for the flights, fees and taxes, baggage (£10 each), insurance (£7.50 each) and credit card fees (I know, I know – explanation of use of credit card to follow!!) was £285 which I thought was rather good! And yes, I have used the credit card to pay for this, but the plan is to use some money from my savings account to pay this back so I don’t increase my credit card debt any more. The only other expenses will be the accommodation (but I have been told my BIL’s fiancée that where we will be staying is very cheap) which we will pay when we get there, some spending money (but I don’t suppose we will need a lot) and the fee for renewing my passport (not cheap – eek!). DS’s passport also needs renewing but the ex is sorting that out – they go abroad much more than we do and in any case, they go away before we do!

Luckily for us, the other 2 weddings this year are local and we will be getting a lift for both!

Well I think that is all for now – have a good day everyone.

PigginSkint

Hi All

I’ve just been to the post office on campus to post the book that I have sold. I didn’t notice until I came to parcel it up that it had to go to the Netherlands. This has meant that the cost of the postage was over £3! Eek! :eek: It didn’t help that it wasn’t the lightest of books. I shall receive just over £5 for this sale (the selling price was £3.16) so at least I have made a couple of quid profit. I think I shall have to review my listings again and if any of the books are particularly heavy I shall have to increase the price or alter the delivery options.

I received a letter in the post on Monday – a pre-application (I forget the correct term) for an MBNA credit card, 0% APR on balance transfers until June 2008. I am tempted to give this a go because my current 0% expires in August, the balance on that card is very large (about to drop to below £9k) and there is no way I will be able to get a big enough credit limit on any one card to transfer the whole lot. If I can move some of it, it will reduce how much I have got to move in August. I don’t know whether I will be accepted though, because it has my old name on it – mind you, my old name is registered on the credit reference files so I really don’t know!

I should have had another hospital appointment this morning but when I got home yesterday there was a letter telling me that it had been cancelled. Grrr! :mad: So this morning I stayed in bed a bit longer instead – oh the joys of flexi time!:T

I totted up my Avon orders last night and I am up to about £170ish so far already. :T I have still got some houses to do so hopefully that will go up a bit more yet.

I think that’s all for now. Not long now until the weekend – hooray!!!

PigginSkint

I’ve been feeling very down this week – a combination of OH being away, loads of work to do and PMT – so I thought I would cheer myself up by reflecting on how much progress I have made. So here is my list of financial mistakes I have made in the past which I definitely don’t intend to ever do ever again:

1)Take out a consolidation loan and then keep spending on credit cards.
2)Take out a consolidation loan – full stop!
3)Spend on store cards.
4)Transfer balances to a 0% deal and then keep spending on the same card (at a much higher interest rate).
5)Transfer balances to a 0% deal and then not transferring them off again once the 0% deal had expired.
6)Transfer balances to a low rate life of balance deal and then keep spending on the same card (ditto much higher interest rate)
7)Use a credit card to get cash from a cashpoint machine.
8)Use credit card cheques.
9)Spend on credit cards for non-essential items.
10) PPI on credit cards.

Blimey! What a long list and I’m sure I’ve missed something! But it shows what lessons I have learned on my DFW quest – what lessons have everyone else learned?

(I’m going to copy this to my DFW diary – this can be my update for today!)

PigginSkint

Hi All

Hope you all had a good weekend. I did very little again as I have been sooooo tired!

I have been giving OH shopping lists over the weekend , and again today, because I haven’t really got enough left to buy more groceries. I have just had to transfer enough money from my savings account to cover the LTSB credit card payment (£181) that will go out tomorrow. There should be enough in my current account to cover the Amex payment going out on Wednesday (£28). I have asked OH to pay the Capital One bill that needs to be done on Friday (£54) so that covers that one!

Time to work out how long it is till pay day..let’s see… pay day is the 30th this month, so that means there are 9 days to go.

OH has been giving me the adverts for ages that he wants/needs a new electric guitar. On Saturday he finally persuaded me! He has one that he has had for years (about 15 or 16 I think) which is no longer very reliable. The play that he is doing involves a lot of music so he does need a reliable electric guitar for that. So I suppose this counts as equipment for work! Anyway we found a good one (but not too good!) in the Littlewoods catalogue for £209 – a Fender (Squire) Sunburst – so I have ordered it for him. We have got it on 52 week terms, which works out at £4.02 per week (so roughly £16 per month) interest free. I have told him that from now on the paying of the Littlewoods bill will be his responsibility! This means he will also be paying for the telly as well, which I think is fair enough! The other bonus to this, as I have explained to him, is that we will earn commission on whatever payments he makes which I can then get deducted from the balance which means we will end up paying even less!

Avon seems to be going well this time – I collected 2 more orders over the weekend and they were BIG! So I think I am now up to about £250 in sales – woohoo!! :j

I had another look at ebay over the weekend as I have read a bit of my book about selling on ebay – a bit of research and finished setting up my seller account. I will continue working my way through and then I think I shall be ready to take plunge – I bet I’ve got loads I could sell!

I think that’s all for now (though I have a nagging feeling that I’ve forgotten something!).

PigginSkint

Copied from separate thread - addition to my previous list!:

'Thanks all for your responses - this is fun this!

Anyway I know I had missed something so here we go:

11) Not the APR (or at least the APR I'm paying) on my credit cards

and, to say amen to Immoral Angel:

12) Not to get in this mess again!'

PigginSkint

One thing I missed from earlier.

I bought myself some new sunglasses from Boots yesterday – they cost me the grand total of……. (drum roll) £2.50! How DFW/MSE am I?!!

The full price was £25. I had a receipt/voucher from Boots for ½ price sunglasses so that took the price down to £12.50. Then I had a £10 gift voucher from Pigsback and so used that, which took the price down to £2.50Woohoo!!!! :j

PigginSkint

Hi All

I’m not feeling too good today. I think the main problem is that I have very bad PMT at the moment (come on TOM – hurry up!). I’m tired and I have a headache lurking (part of the PMT). On top of that there are issues at work that are really stressing me out. One of my colleagues will be leaving soon and when they readvertise her job they are going to reband so that it is on the next salary grade up. The current salary grade is the same as mine, like mine it was a newly created post – I have been in post just over 2 years and my colleague has been in post just over a year. Now this is not sour grapes – not really. I understand that whoever takes over in her post will have additional responsibilities. But, and it’s a big but, I feel that if her post can be upgraded, so can mine! When my manager talked to me about the situation yesterday, it was in the terms of the possibility that I might want to apply for the other post. However, I don’t want to do that. I like the job that I do, I don’t want to move on yet, I want to continue developing what I am doing now. My job is very varied (which I like) and with changes that are happening I shall be taking on more and more responsibility. In fact I think that it is a harder job in a lot of ways than the other one. Anyway we have decided that I am to revamp my job description to accurately reflect what I am actually doing – this is something that needs doing anyway – and put a case together for rebanding my post up to the next salary scale. The problem is that the way that my manager was talking yesterday, she has already considered this long and hard so I don’t think it will happen. But I must try!

PigginSkint

Hi All

Well I’m glad to say that I am feeling less miserable today! Grrrr! Hormones!!! :mad:

Right, let’s see, what’s new today? Well on Saturday OH got his form to fill in and send off to search for and obtain a copy of his decree absolute, so he is planning to fill that in and get it in the post today – fee £25 for a 10 year search. Yesterday I got the details and form to fill in to obtain a copy of my marriage certificate (to accompany my divorce petition when I eventually get around to doing it!) - fee £11.50. I will probably get this ready tonight but I won’t post it until nearer payday! With any luck I might actually get round to sorting my divorce out this year!

OH’s new toy came yesterday which he is very pleased with! I hope he doesn’t annoy the neighbours too much by playing it too loudly!

I have given OH the Capital One bill which he is going to pay today – that’s one less thing to worry about. The Amex DD should be going out today and the only other thing I’ve got to pay is my Avon which I will do tonight when I do my order online. I’ve just got to keep an eye on my bank account for the Comic Relief cheque clearing – I paid the money that DS raised into my account and then wrote a cheque. I finally got round to posting it about a week ago so I suppose it will clear soon – it would be really good if that happened after payday as there is not enough available balance to cover it at the moment! Oh well, I will just have to transfer some money over from my other account if it does!!

Oh and I really must sort out my new passport – I’ve got the forms, but I just need to get around to filling them in. I will try and do that tonight but I do have a lot of other things to do! Then I suppose I will have to get someone to verify to say that I am who I say I am. Also I have got the forms to fill in for the European Health Card – this is a new one to me as it has been about 4 years since I last went abroad.

:eek: Eek! I have just worked out that it is only 12 weeks today that we go to Poland! OMG there is still so much to do! The other 2 weddings are sooner than that (7 and 9 weeks from Saturday)! Arggghhhh!!! :eek:

PigginSkint

Hi All – me again!

Warning! Random ramblings ahead!

I have been doing some thinking about my estimated DFD. I had put it down as August 2011 as this is the date by which (all being well!) all of my credit card debt should be paid off by – because that is all I have put into the Snowball Calculator at the moment. I suppose this is because my credit card is the priority.

Anyway I really ought to consider my other debts as well (but not counting my mortgage or my 2nd mortgage – this was the loan I took out to buy the Ex out of the house). Now currently my LTSB loan is due to finish in October 2011. On top of that is my overdraft, which I intend to start trying to whittle away once circumstances allow.

There is also the finance on my windows – not currently listed in my debts because I don’t know what my current debt is on that because they have never sent me a statement. Needless to say this is definitely on my To-Do list! If the finance runs its full course it will finish in May 2015 (I think!), but if was to start overpaying on the minimum payments that term will decrease – by how much I have no idea, again this is something I need to find out! The other job regarding this finance is to see if I can cancel the PPI on it – ditto! I think the balance to pay on this is probably in the region of about £2K so nowhere near as large as some of my other debts.

Anyway, all things considered I have decided to revise my estimated DFD – I have now put it down as December 2011 (see sig).

I am quite pleased with this really. Especially considering the dates the snowball calculator was coming out with in the immediate post LBM period when I was still paying huge amounts of interest on my credit cards - if I remember rightly the estimate was about 40 years to clear my credit card balances! So I think to get that down to just over 4 is not bad!!!