Getting clarity on my finances

fantastiyk

Thanks Mamto3,
I think I tend to forget I've done anything when I think of what's ahead of me still to pay off. In a way, this diary and forum help remind me that I did have more debt and it has reduced and will continue to reduce. I am just impatient with it all when I have little or no spare cash to throw at the debt.
I love reading others diaries on here and feel inspired by some of them. Some people are so resilient and can manage to pull their reserves out of nowhere. I admire that.
I love reading your diary because it's gradual and its progressing and I can see how your regular payments are making a dent in your debt.
I find it a bit harder to see how my own debts are reducing. I just tell myself that I am making progress even if its a little its still going in the right direction.

fantastiyk

Haven't been on here for a week. Had nothing to report, and to be honest had added up my spending for July :eek:
Groceries: £520
Diesel: £120

and the majority of the food is gone.

This was basic dinners like bacon £2.49 for 10 slices - they usually put in 11 and that did the 6 of us. I now make half a pound of mince stretch between us, where we used to have a pound of mince between the 6 of us. I bulk it up with more veg, carrot, onion, sometimes a tin of beans or whatever was in the cupboard. I didn't buy any Sunday dinners like roast this month, I did buy 2 chickens but they were £3.99 each as opposed to the delicious ones at £10 I used to get in the butchers.

We did have a lot of visitors this month and most of them were here for dinner, so about 3 days each week we had either 2 or 3 extra people for dinner and lunch.
DD3 and I were talking about it the other day and I was saying how we'd stayed at home a lot trying to save money on diesel and snacks that we'd buy if we were out for the day but we ended up spending as much or maybe more on feeding all the people who came to visit, she pointed out that we also had been tired out cooking, doing extra dishes, we had extra tidying and cleaning to do, and we never got anywhere.
We came to a unanimous decision - this month we're going visiting :rotfl:

Have got some bits and pieces for school uniform, out of clothes budget, the expensive stuff still to be bought - am waiting on the uniform grant that comes from the education board to buy DD3s blazer.

We can't wait for the school holidays and then spend the whole 2 months getting sorted for back to school

Am hoping that August will be more frugal or a more money month would be good either. Actually that would be better!

Am off to try and get my sleepy teens out of their beds!!

mamato3

You're so right as long as the totals keep going down (even if it is slower than we'd like) we're on the right path! Your house sounds like mine the food seems to be disappearing quicker than I can buy it!

Hope you got all the sleepy heads up okay! I have one very grumpy and sleepy toddler in the mornings! I can't wait to see what he's like at 16!

fantastiyk

Decided to try and kick start my motivation to pay off something as opposed to treading water which is what I feel I've been doing for the month of July.

It was pay day today, and while most of my money has been accounted for, I squeezed and squeezed and what do you know? £5 dropped out :T

I ran over to the above challenge, which I'm a little behind on, and paid off the whole £5 bringing me to the grand total of

£65 / £460

I've been counting, and if I want to pay it all off by day 100, I need to find £6.93 for each of the 57 days left or £50 each week for the 8 weeks that are left of this challenge.


On another train of thought.....

Bless the tax credit office - they've cut my last 2 payments by £3. No letter yet explaining why. They had written to me to ask a question and I returned it the day before they gave me the first reduced payment so not sure why they did this as the form I returned couldn't have been with them when they made their decision. I had also returned the form before the deadline, so strange stuff going on.

I hope it gets sorted soon, and if the money pixies could see their way to making sure my details land on the desk of the Head Supervisor of the "Gosh we've seriously underpaid this person" Department, I would be ever so grateful

And should this beautiful person feel the need to declare: 'We need to address this error immediately by lodging £"insert large sum of money here" into her account this minute,' then I would not like to stand in their way of fulfilling their role as the Greatest Civil Servant of all time, and so would feel it my duty as a humble tax credits recipient to obligingly accept their timely show of generosity

As you can see, I'm testing out the theory that it pays to have a good sense of humour :rotfl:

fantastiyk

Up date:

Day 46 of 1 debt vs 100 days chapter 9

am now at total of:

£70/£460

which translates to owing £390 :T

It has seemed like it has taken forever to get this debt below £400

Extra payment a week:

I've squirmed £1.65 away from my purse :T

I hadn't been able to make any extra payments for ages and was beginning to regret signing up to this challenge as I wasn't actively taking part. I was too stubborn to give in though and decided that every week I'll abduct/kidnap/whatever it takes to take a payment that has to be at least over £1 and put it away in my money box. Then once a month I'll make this extra payment to my credit card debt.

When the debts are all paid off I will use it as a savings tin.

On a sadder note, I got a notice from the lovely tax credit people of what they're going to pay me over the next year - seems I am going to be £3 down each week.:(
They haven't sent me my final notice of what I was entitled to in the year ending April 2012 yet but as we're in the benefits system I reckon these figures are right.
Thankfully I've been able to reduce many of the figures I had on our SoA over the last few months since joining on here so we're looking at it as we're not really £3 down. And OH did the euromillions last friday and won £3.40 so we were up money this week.

Both DH and I are still job hunting, though things are quiet here at the moment. DH applied for another job this morning. He hasn't heard back from all but one of the jobs he's applied for so far since becoming unemployed and got to interview stage, but with 200 interviewees for 12 jobs it was a tough one. He is great at his work but hates interviews and wouldn't be the most confident in interview situations.

Our kids who have part time work have a few shifts every week so that is a bonus as it keeps them in a few pounds for entertainment, petrol etc.

That's all for now, must go make dinner!!

fantastiyk

Does anyone have any idea what would be a good price to charge for books at a car boot sale?

Have been considering going to one, if I can find one anywhere close by that does them. We have a gizillion books of all kinds, mostly fiction, kids - for girls mostly and women.
I think it would be so much hassle to list them on am@zon when someone else usually has them on for a penny. I live 5 miles from the nearest post office so it would be costing me in diesel to run in to post them (especially on days when I don't need to go to the shop) as well as the postage rates.
I have seen a car boot sale advertised with a £10 fee to sell at it. They supply the table. It would probably cost me another £10 in diesel so would want to make sure I would actually sell the things (mostly books) and more than cover my costs. That it would cost me £20 before I start, is the reason I've been putting it off. Yet I need to figure out prices in case I find one closer and cheaper. I have a few boxes cluttering up the house now but can't afford to be down money.

Any other ideas on what to do with them would be appreciated also.

Also, do any of you know where car boot sales are held in Northern Ireland?

debtfreewannabe321

can't help with boot fairs as to where they are, but when i go i often see books between 10p & £1.50 for paperbacks. Larger ones often go for more and at the end of the day a lot of sellers will price everything to sell (i.e everything on the table 10p/50p -whatever you think you can get)

On making meat go further, esp mince, i put in red lentils. Noone has noticed yet and i can make one pack go 2 meals instead of one now! Have you tried App0ved f00ds for snacks for the kids? If not i'd suggest having a look at least, and i think they have free delivery at the moment.

As for the debt coming down slowly, i sometimes feel like i take 3 steps forward, 10 back! but at the end of the day it is coming down it's not going up and one day i will wake up and *bang* it will be gone (like the dirt on the c1llet bang advert lol)

fantastiyk

Thanks DFW,
I was thinking around a pound for most books, less for the thinner ones, perhaps 50p for some of the kids ones, and 30p to 40p for the few more worn ones. So your input has helped me feel it's ok to try a few of the best ones at a bit more -maybe even squeeze the £1.50 for them :j

I read that somewhere about adding lentils to the mince, just haven't got round to trying it out yet - will try it, adding a little more each time so they don't notice

Thanks for the tip about AF, I'll check it out. I only ever buy snacks or treats that are on offer, if it's not on offer we do without.

1 debt vs 100 days: day 47
I've been able to squeeze some more money out of the budget today - £10 so now the debt reduction on this card is

£80/£460

I know this sounds weird but since I started making my posts colourful to show how much I've paid off, I'm constantly trying to find ways of managing extra money out of our budget

a) to pay off the card
and
b) to get posting on here

Sad, I know but it's working so I'm going to keep at it. :rotfl:

fantastiyk

Hi,
it's been a while since I was on here. Not much to report.

today is Day 62 of the 1 debt vs 100 days challenge

I haven't had anything to pay off it since day 54 when my total got to £87.68 / £460

This leaves me owing £372.32 plus interest

There's 38 days left of this challenge. When I started I thought it would be tight but I'd make it. Did I get my eyes opened or what?
At this rate it'll take me 5 of these challenges to do it.

This has been our tightest few months financially in all our 24 years together and every week it seems tighter.

I stopped to get diesel yesterday - its now 144.9p a litre :eek:
I haven't been looking at the price sign recently - just putting in £10 every few days when I was in the red again. Then it was on the news the other day about the prices going up again and I thought I'd better check what they were before they go up.

DDs back to school next week. I feel bad because we haven't been to the beach or on any family days out. But I have £50 to keep us going for 11 days unless money comes from somewhere I don't know of yet.

I have 2 jobs to apply for. Both are quite local so travel would be the same as I already do between going to the shop and taking DD2 to work. All I have to do now is get 1 of them Both are full time.

If I or OH get a job soon (or both would be ideal) DD3 will be able to go back to her music lessons. If we don't, we're going to have to pull the plug on it for now. She'll be heartbroken and its what she wants to do for a career so I feel bad about it. Shes extremely talented and since age 13 has been singing all the solos for school and singing in the recordings for the older pupils GCSE music exams. Her teacher is always singing her praises. She has been asked to sing at 2 weddings now, although they are both next summer so if we could get through the next year she'll maybe be able to earn the money for her lessons herself.

I haven't talked to her about it yet as have been hoping something will turn up. I'll see how these job applications go.

mamato3

Hey there! Isn't it getting just heart breaking filling up the car? At the minute we're lucky if £50 does us a week and that's with fewer runs because the kids are off!

Good luck with the job applications - there's so few jobs at the minute and so many people going for them - I hope you get one of them, I will keep my fingers crossed!

My DD plays her instrument and again, like your DD, is so talented at it that I'm trying really hard to save up the fees. I currently have £130 the total amount is £430 I'm hoping we can maybe pay in installments but we won't know until she starts so again, fingers crossed there. Could you do that with your DD's fees?

Enjoy the lovely sunny Sunday - the sun has finally found us yippee!