Mrs Spendalot WILL spend less .... the diary

mrsspendalot

Forgot to add to my diary (although I did post it a few days ago on another thread) that with some repaid cheques and ebay proceeds we have now also paid off LX Direct (£207.54)

mrsspendalot

The driving licence arrived this morning :j :j :j :j :j :j

Just waiting for the start date now

mrsspendalot

Hurray!!! We have a start date!!!

8th May :beer:



Got some paperwork through from them this morning with all the details in. His pay will go up in stages from £5.35 training to £5.45 after training for 3 months, then £6.50 after 3 months (he currently gets £5.95). This will be fun to work out for tax credits!!! Also found out that we get FREE bus travel as a perk

Financially we are doing well. managed 3 NSD's in a row this week so far :T although we have an expensive weekend coming up as my daughter's ballet fees are due :eek:

dizzy_lizzie

I'm really pleased for you. At least you can relax a bit now things are actually happening.

mrsspendalot

Well I have been neglecting my diary as I have had nothing to report but have a few updates now:

* I have finally got my Quidco cashback from Lloyds TSB £120 showing in my earnings :beer:
* I have had £10 from Pigsback for Boots
* I have had £40 for Debenhams from my Nectar card
* Hubby has started his new job

BUT:

my car failed its MOT yesterday :mad:

Anyway, mechanic (who is a trusted friend) says it is not worth repairing because of the amount of stuff it needs doing to it and the labour costs involved. So we are getting rid which will affect our SOA as we will have, temporarily at least, no car expenses :T This also frees up the money we had saved for the MOT (£250) :j

Have to update tax credits with his change of job - does anyone know what details they will need? Is it just the name of the company or do they need the PAYE code?

I will then post an updated SoA as things are going to change quite a bit now

mrsspendalot

OK the car is going ... so some money saved there. Paid some bills today and holiday pay came through in final wages from last job

Have phoned the tax credits to update them, so have to wait and see what the new payments will be .... I have no idea as we have an overpayment from last year and until they process our annual return I have no idea how much we owe.

mrsspendalot

Nice surprise this morning - extra £175.70 in account from tax credits - must have updated our change of circumstances. So it has gone straight off the barclaycard which means there is only £100 left to clear on that now and then another debt bites the dust :j

mrsspendalot

Thought I should ressurect my diary now as I have been slipping waaay too much recently!!!!

OK, well we have been slipping quite a lot in the last month. We haven't got in any more debt as a result, but we could have paid off more if we hadnt spent as much as we have. We had a holiday booked in July which was paid for us (pre-LBM :rolleyes: ), but we had the spending money to find. We took £1000 but only spent £900, so that was good.

So we came back off holiday and cleared a credit card no probs. Then I had my sons birthday which we budgetted for and stuck to the budget. But August has been an expensive month! We bought some stuff for the garden so the kids could play out there (foam mats for the ground from ELC, brolly and cushions for the furniture, sand for the sand pit). It has also cost money with them being off school to amuse them. We bought a car (£450) and a new buggy (£110). School uniforms for two have also cost about £150 - £60 being school shoes!

On the plus side, we made £115 on ebay and have some more items listed now, and have now just made some money through SS's genius deal :T .

What is worrying me is how easy it has been to get through that amount of money without really thinking about it. I don't want to get in the habit of spending like that again. The one thing we have kept bang under control is food shopping which never goes over £40 a week.

Anyway, Xmas is going to creep up before we know it and there are loads of family birthdays in November and December so we need to get organised now and save money aside.

Debtwise we are doing really well. When we started on here we had 4 credit cards and 2 store cards as well as catalogue and other old debts. We now only have 1 credit card left to clear :T plus the catalogue and old debts

So ..... I think I may have to pop up an updated SoA to see what I can do now to keep us on the straight and narrow. I would dearly love to clear the last credit card in September, but not sure if it will be possible. October it will definitely be possible as I get £250 student grant from OU - and that is about half the amount owing.

Thanks for reading

mrsspendalot

Well the past couple of days have been very profitable on the free money front:

*£30 cashback validated from gala bingo for £10 deposit
*£30 cashback to track from mecca bingo for £10 deposit
*£14.50 to track for love film free trial
*£9 tracking for scarlet mag trial for £1 spend
*£5 tracking from computeach
*£50 tracking from virgin casino (me)
*£50 tracking from virgin casino (hubby)
*£60 to track from dial-a-phone for mobile contract (plus free nintendo ds, and £185 cashback )
*£39.50 to track from legal and general for life insurance to replace current policy
*£8.50 from MBNA for credit card application (was declined, but only did it for cash)
*40p for signing up to catalink

plus some small amounts yet to track for newsletter sign-ups and daily clickthrus

have also made another £25.34 on ebay and have some more items to go on, plus hubby is working tonight for double pay (bank holiday) so we will have some extra cash to come from that too.