Putting My Life Into Order

catandy

I've just spoken to accept the contract - its actually 9 months on one contract ie till the end of this year then after that if I decide to continue and they are happy to keep me on I move up a pay grade - more money, more security and more experience meaning when I do move on I can up my asking rates. I've accepted with open arms and start my induction on the project/ product tomorrow. I have dabbled in the industry and product before so its not a complete unknown entity and I cant wait to get started!! potentially there is 3 years work in total from it.

I also cant wait to get some proper months income behind me - yes I've sat here and done the number crunching lol what a surprise uh?

timetable for repayments

april - pay off full software development
may - pay off family loan
jun - pay off aqua credit card in full
july - pay off capital one cards in full (both of them)
aug - minimal payments to get settlement monies together
sep - same as august
oct - pay off barclaycard in full
nov - minimum payments to get money together again
dec - pay off vanquis in full

meaning by Jan of next year I will have just my bank loan (up to date), overdraft (barely coming down) and mbna to clear - a total of about 10k which is a whole heap better than the 17k plus that it is at the moment.

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all of that depends on nothing that is earnt from the business, nothing that I do extra (surveys, mystery shopping, ebay etc), selling no software licenses from our business or anything else on top of what i earn. Ex may start paying me some 'board and lodgings' before he moves on, S1 will if he finds a job, and I may be in a position to get some money paid back from the company later in the year (looks like its going to be but everything is always a maybe with me till it happens) - natural pessimist i guess but maybe that will change if the pressure eases a bit. i sure hope so!

Mara_uk7

What lovely news, It must feel great to know your future is secure and that there will be a regular income. Before you knuckle down the debt repayment, I give you permission to have a small celebration of your good fortune. I suggest a bottle of irn Bru and a Kit-kat :beer:

catandy

sounds like a good combination so I may have to give it a try

so today is start of training then weekend off then into the office to be sorted out on my logins for the computer systems and so on. weekend was going to be S1 @ his sports training (me sitting in the car outside for 3 hours) and then both sons dropped off/ collected to a fancy dress party saturday night that they cant get there on public transport - however snow here is at least a foot and half deep today and nothing is moving on the roads at the moment and I refuse to freeze in the car tomorrow - so unless theres an almighty thaw today/ tonight its a quiet weekend for all of us.

got to go and pay some rent at some time at the PO apart from that all the bills are pad for the month ...

catandy

well today has been some promotion on the software that our company has developed cos its too cold to go out and do anything else. I'm also going to be pushed for time for the next couple of weeks till I fall into a routine with the new job so I need to do as much as I can whilst I have some free time.

my sons found a way to get to their party and back on their own steam - so they can be resourceful when they need to be

nothing exciting planned for tomorrow - just keeping warm i think

catandy

first day of new contract gone fine - lots of reading and studying and research - real work starts in earnest tomorrow and I'm actually looking forward to it

the company using our software has their first multi-shift planned for this evening ie the first time they have tried to use all of the software and we're all ready for them made $20/ £13 so far today and they dont even go live till 9pm tonight so fingers crossed for us making £100 and not having to lift a finger.

done a local shop for the next 2 days meals - hopefully by then the roads will have freed up a bit and i get get to Ald* to do a restock of the cupboards. menu planning is a bit hit and miss till I can get some food in as we currently have nothing that goes with nothing and some really funny meal combinations coming up

S1 and S2 got stranded coming back from their party on Sunday due to public transport being at a standstill and rather than them fone me and get me to go out in the horrible weather/ moan at them for going in the first place they decided to walk home - all 10 miles of it - took them just short of 3 hours and they were frozen solid by the time they got in!

catandy

ok last nights shift on the software fizzled out to nothing and we made a grand total of £22.90 in 4 hours of the system being live which is the worst session ever - we usually do 3x that amount of business....

oh well im sure the next one will be better,,,,

catandy

first full day working on my new project so got to make a go of it... all set to go so just got to get my head down and put the effort in.

letters for claiming ppi are going out today - just 3 companies so I shall just wait and see. I'm also thinking about trying to claim back bank charges - as there have been copious amounts of charges over the last few years need to look into this further

for now its to work for me!

catandy

ok first full day at the new contract doing all of the role went well - hit target so thats good and not as complicated or difficult as I had imagined so all good there as well. hope today goes as smoothly and then its the long weekend off for me and some extra reading round the subject to bring me up to speed some more. Also got to fit in a visit to see my mom its been 4 weeks or so since i saw her which means petrol expense but cant put it off any longer.

last nights shift for the business went a whole lot better - 2 hours live and we made £52 so better than an average shift, all we need to do is get the system being used by more people and more often and it will work. just struggling finding people who are seious about using it unfortunately and to really kick it into action I think its going to take some proper advertisign which again costs ££ which I'm loathe to build into the equation yet-a-while. things are really tight with the business paying for the last part of the software and paying off the loan to my mum for bailing me out earlier this year - just a shame they come with just a month between them. there is the money there to pay both off (just) but it means theres no float or wriggle room built in again.

CC companies are starting to want to do a review with me so I can up my payments to them - I'm not able to pay off the arrears on any of them completely and if I do then interest becomes payable again anyway. I've upped my original payment I was making to all of them so they are going to have to take what I can afford for now, I did think about contacting Stepchange again for them to redo my figures on everything and put a formal DMP in place with them but I've decided not to. I can do everything that they would do now that I've got my head round how it all works so I plan to do this on my own, if that means I can pay some of the companies off with settlement figures faster than others then to me thats a good outcome, I know stepchange distribute the money available to creditors on an equal footing but I want to clear at least the smallest CC completely so I've got some extra money to throw at the bigger balances.

catandy

well long weekend off my day job so instead my attention has turned to promoting the software and business I run with my ex. Lots of ads put out for free this morning so far, plus another sale on our smallest software so thats good. plan for the rest of the day - well more of the same, get letters posted that need to go and general tidy up. tonight im watching DS1 in a wrestling match, DS2 is away at his girlfriends for the weekend and ex has a quiet night in planned.

thrill a minute in our house uh?

catandy

no i actually ended up becoming moms taxi for the weekend - DS1 had 3 wrestling matches over 3 days and what he got paid for doing his thing in the ring I spent in petrol ferrying him to and fro... not taking anything off him yet for ferrying him around, when he finishes college he becomes an adult so thats when he starts to contribute. Actually he's earning the same in about 6 hours work over weekend evenings as DS2 does slogging his guts out on an apprenticeship 5 full days a week - think the gloss of 'being an adult' has well and truly worn off for DS2.

ex and I had a heated exchange about my use of his car - even though I pay for the running expenses. so another soon to be spend added to my growing list is my own car/ insurance in my name etc - I need to become independant of him anyway for when he moves out which is now first week of July (not that I'm counting the time down).

Got a token for money back for Tesco that I'm going to use this week plus I'm going to raid the penny jar again and cash it up at the machine at the supermarket so I'm not paying with 'real money' this week. Food, feeding the electric meter and paying off last years balance of council tax are the only spends planned for this week. Ive also got to contact my landlord sometime this week - ive cleared the rent arrears but now they want me to clear the suspended eviction fees as well so thats another 200£ odd to find as well .... oh well it will have to be spread over so many weeks or months as long as they are getting their money they dont hassle me.

PPI claim forms have been sent off, as has the review of my situation that Aqua card wanted to do, they promised that if I make x amount of payment per month they will freeze interest for 12 months which will give me a chance to clear it - currently they are adding 41%pa which is seriously not helping the situation

apart from that its just head down with the new job this week and get some proper leads put in and some good solid calls made so my review at the end of the month is a positive one. quite looking forward to tomorrow actually - how sad is that?