Living for the Present...after all who doesn't love a gift!

debtfreewannabe321

thanks shinner i can remember my eldest starting school and this year he goes into yr10 :eek: where does time fly he was such a little sweetheart back then too, now he's a horrible moody teenager who hates me! :rotfl:

debtfreewannabe321

Ok i'm working on a meal plan for September. DH is away for 2 weeks of it and I have 3 extra kids for 16 days of it :eek: . I'm trying to make it healthy but fun as meal times are such a struggle these days! I don't buy processed foods anymore (well not for every day meals anyway) but the kids keep asking for them. I'm not the best cook in the world either, mainly due to lack of motivation than anything else :cool: cooking is no hobby of mine that's for sure!

I'm also putting together a 'cleaning' rota. I used to have one that i'd adapted from fly lady and it worked great until my laptop died along with all my spreadsheets :rotfl: so I am going to make a new one for next week (perhaps the week after when the kids finally go back ) I am going to try and make it as painless as possible but also meaning I get a clean and tidy house from it (ha wish me luck on that one, dh makes more mess than the kids sometimes!!!!)

I've factored in £100 of pocket money to my budget for September this is the first time in well over a year that i've taken any extra for myself. If I need something or want something I usually have to play around with other budgets to allow for it. This will mean I can buy little treats every now and then and I can go out with friends so long as I stick to budget Very excited about this one

I will play around with my SOA a bit more before payday and may post on here afterwards.

I forgot to tell you all that DH had a call from sky about cancelling our account....well we've been with v1rgin for over a month now and we both hate it the internet is slow, the remote is really difficult to get to grips with and we wish we'd never moved! Even if we did get a good deal :rotfl:....anyway i digress....the sky man said we could have 6 months free sky as we still have our old box :j we just have to cancel it 5 months in otherwise we will end up paying them as well as v1rgin and also (this is the most exciting part) we have all the kids channels & all the movie channels! It will take us all the way through autumn and into January too :j Whilst we are still paying for v1rgin and not using it seems wasteful i have a better service with sky now and for free so cancels out the wastage ? :rotfl::j

ETA: DH found his wedding ring!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I think I forgot to tell you all??? I was not in the best mood with him at the time so didn't really care but yippee to not having flushed £60 down the drain on it

kerri_dfw

So glad he found the ring I need to meal plan for September first time for everything I guess. I also need to start doing the weekly fly lady on here now the house is starting to take shape x

shinner

Is meal planning easy ? I think i maybe should have a try freezer full and 4 birthdays in first 13 days of September.

debtfreewannabe321

Have done some calculations based on what i've paid to SC and what they've paid out, what's been written off and what they have left. This is what i've worked out (obviously it might not be completely accurate to the very penny/pound not far off though)

BUT from what I can gather:
I paid them £5,000
They have paid out so far £1991 from that money.
So they still have £3009 left of it (remember one of the debts was written off because the tax man actually owes us now :cool:) so £600 or thereabouts was 'extra' and held by SC in case Creditors wanted a little extra. They then had this £600 to dip into to pay them that if the creditors say 'we'll settle for x amount more'.

Our total debt to date is now £4128.

£2425.83 out of the £3009 left that they hold has been allocated to f&f that we are still waiting to hear from. If they all say no they will spread that £2425 + the £600 (which equals the £3009 figure) over all of the creditors so we will then owe £4128-£3009= £1119. I have aside the £1000 as previously stated for paying the creditors off (we knew they wouldn't all accept, we must be psychic :cool:) and we currently pay £116 each month towards the debt (I reduced it as much as they would let me whilst we hit them with f&fs) SO as far as I can see worst case scenario is that once we've heard back from them all we will pretty much be debt-free straight off :eek: as our next payment goes out next month on the 10th.


How exciting is this? Tres exciting!! I WILL be debt free by christmas!!!!!!!!!!!

debtfreewannabe321

shinner wrote: »

Is meal planning easy ? I think i maybe should have a try freezer full and 4 birthdays in first 13 days of September.

It's tedious and I find it super boring. BUT I also get an odd pleasure from sticking to a budget and knowing that I have enough meals to get me through the month even if we are broke! I buy the meat, milk, butter, tins & all cupboard stuff in bulk at the beginning of the month and as i've got a meal plan I know what we're having from one night to the next. Just recently without one i've had mild panics as it gets to 5pm and I think OMG what are we going to eat?! :rotfl: As i'm childminding in September I can't afford the time/stress/mental capacity to do this :rotfl: so will do it!

Check out the Old Style board on here and there are some fab tips on there! If you have freezer/cupboard space I would definitely try it! Even if you only have room for one weeks worth, meal plan for that week (I include lunches, snacks & breakfasts) and you'll find it easy to up it to fortnightly/monthly if you so wish! I will post mine once finalised (if ever........:cool:):rotfl:

debtfreewannabe321

oh dear I don't know what i've done to the post with the debt figures in it's gone skew-if lol everything has gone the wrong size had a play with changing it and made it worse so gave up!!

shinner

Fantastic news on the Debt front . I will have a look through freezer and do an audit lol.

debtfreewannabe321

I'm half way through my meal plan now.......so boring lol! Only 15 more dinners to do :rotfl: we'll have to compare afterwards :rotfl:

please-let-me-be-lucky

Amazing news re being debt free :j You will have to change your name soon :cool:Xx