Pollyanna

ChopinonaBudget

ZTD wrote: »

The summer (assuming it continues) will be a good time for that. No excuses about it being dark & raining...

too right!

Your clock radio is operating all the time -

it's a DAB radio that auto sets the time after it's been turned off at the wall, which I do anyway when I go away for any length of time





You're almost there though.

i hope so! I was round a friend's house tonight and got talking about my budget and my new lower gas and electric; they were flabbergasted at how low my bills are already although nobody else was prepared apparently to sometimes wash up in cold water or religiously switch stuff off

I don't think God is all that bothered about your typos. He's a touch more concerned about debauchery and hedonism and all that fun stuff.

Maybe typos are more the domain of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and his noodly appendages!

ChopinonaBudget

I'm feeling quite chuffed with myself now. Another pay!ent came through tonight (2nd half of summer school) so I managed to clear (yes, CLEAR) the Smile account and pay off £110 towards the NatWest card. I'm snowballing :j

Natwest is 6.9%. Smile was 20%, give or take. The next one will be one of the loans to my Mum which is currently at £3,340; interest on this is 5% but I haven't added on interest accrued so it really is more than this. I'll sort that out when it comes to paying it off though.

I've also added more ££££s to my tax fund (the usual 7.06%) so that now stands at £121.43

And I've been organised and booked Longleat via Tesco clubcard. Which means we now have Longleat, The Welsh Caves, and a meal at Prezzo for free this summer. And cinema tickets when I get round to clubcard boosting them too.

Brilliant

Now the rent will go out. I'll see my bank account go down by £725 tomorrow morning, but hey ho.... At least I have money in the bank to cover it this month.

ChopinonaBudget

Its the first of the month and the rent, TV licence and accountant fee has gone out, and im still £27 in credit! I'll call that a little victory :j
I'm actually more than £27 in credit as I have the funds started for tax, house, and yearly spends, and if I add those all up together I have £303
. that's a little more than a little victory :j

ChopinonaBudget

This summer school has also given me a few ideas. Its been really quite successful so we're looking at doing the same again next year but with a slightly more advanced one in additiom , so two weeks' work instead of one.
I'm also seriosuky considering chatting to a colleague with early years experience about maybe running a different type of summer school for much younger kids, doing some different stuff. Theoretically, if I can do enough of these (maybe 4) then I could earn enough over summer to warrant taking a week off and booking a little self catered cottage or something and actually getting sway for once!

ChopinonaBudget

Have done the grocery shop for the week; £38.78 plus £7 for toothbrush heads. Not bad! And that includes a bloody big container of ecover fabric softener at £3.49 (daughter's allergies means I have no choice in this brand). I got intrigued though and got my daughter to 'virtually' redo the shop on her shopping list app using brands and not out standard own brands and value lines and it came to a whopping £61.70 :eek: :eek:

I've never been a fan of brands anyway, can't see the point unless there's actually a noticeable difference.

Teaching soon, then I'm done!

ChopinonaBudget

Getting REALLY hungry waiting for my pizza hut delivery now!

Summer school is finished, and I have spoken with my colleague about doing more of these, which is great! And he's popping round at some point wit half a bottle of decanted single malt whisky as he is very kindly sharing an present from one of the summer school students :beer:

Took daughter to John Lewis to buy her Clinique sunscreen (she has some very nasty skin allergies and Clinique is unfortunately for my budget one of the brands that she can tolerate). The staff member working at the counter gotmintrigued by me asking my daughter to put the purchase in the budget app, and we got into a conversation about budgeting and debts etc (she's a student).... She's now downloading my app with thanks to me!

Right. I may pass out from hunger. If you don't hear from me again its because pizza hut didn't get here in time and my hunger turned critical and I dropped down dead :rotfl:

ChopinonaBudget

Because of my distrust of the tax credits system and the conflicting information I've been given about my slightly odd upcoming circumstances, I've opened an ISA and will be depositing tax credits into that for the next two years. Any repayments because they change their mind and I need to repay can then be done easily, but otherwise the money will be safely stored and can be used for a lump sum payment for a debt or (hopefully) go towards a deposit on a house it'll mean living very frugally for 2 years but its safer than the alternative which is to get into severe difficulty if HMRC bollock things up and demand repayments

ChopinonaBudget

!!!!!!!!. Just paid £140.40 Class 2 NI. I thought I was exempt as I pay NI through employment (yet another piece of dodgy advice from the now-ex accountant). And it's a late payment so I've been told by HMRC that I 'probably' won't get debt collectors after me. I'd like to see them try anyway. I've paid the bloody thing now.

New budget category; £2.75 per week NI.

The good news is I had £120 saved in the tax fund already that nearly covered the NI payment. Bit gutted it's been wiped out after a month, but at least it was there in the first place...


Teaching soon!

ChopinonaBudget

Teaching is done! I've calmed down from the rather nasty HMRC shock and the nastiest threatogram-style demand for money with menaces (or in this case, money or debt collectors). Its a little bit OTT...

Dinner was from the meal plan sweetcorn and cheese soup with oven chips (soup from the freezer, cooked last week in my slow cooker, and is MUCH tastier than it sounds!) I have vague plans for tomorrow ranging from the Welsh caves (tesco clubcard) to cinema (clubcard) and a bit of fun in the arcade, or swimming.

Ah, will work it out!

ChopinonaBudget

I've been working my way through a load of GCSE revision guides and chucking them at eBay for the last hour or so... (and some unused school trousers).
I have no idea whether these will actually sell or not - I suspect I'm pricing them too high, but I'm experimenting with price and will lower the price if I don;t get these prices. Book sellers are asking extortionate amounts for these books, so hey, if I don't ask, I definitely won't get!

And then we're off to the arcades for some games of pool, air hockey etc before meal planned dinner back home