Squeaky spreadsheet diary

Tiglath

I'm okay thanks - the aches have gone, I managed to get a couple of hours sleep and survived the day (in which I didn't spend anything). I'm not in work till 11am tomorrow so I'll take myself straight into the back bedroom all alone and sleep through; DH and the cats can have the big bed. They take up so much space he looks like a pretzel when he's asleep - it wouldn't occur to him to just turf them off. I'm rather pleased by yesterday because it means I can go back to growing fruit and veg next year now I know I can cope with some fairly hard gardening. I haven't done any for 2 years with my 2 neck ops, so there'll be some major reclaiming to do from the bindweed, brambles and comfrey.

I'm glad I said No to the Marco Pierre White team meal - they've had to pay for the meal upfront, and they'll lose all the money if they don't show up for any reason. Doesn't sound like my kind of place.

Next payday month (from 19th December) I've decided to do extra payments to Mint and Amex so I'm in a position thereafter to pay the bills as soon as I get the statements. I don't like having a bill sitting there waiting for the next payday, and I'll still clear my overdraft with my May salary. I should be 75% there for my POAMAYC 2013 target by the end of June.

DH and I have agreed that Farmfoods meat is rubbish and false economy, so once we've used it up, we're going to scope out Costco, Lidl and the big supermarkets again. Costco meat is fantastic but I'm not sure it's the cheapest. Our local butchers aren't anything special unless you want something a bit off the wall like goat meat. Or chicken feet - who would buy a bundle of chicken feet and what could you possibly do with them? Deep-fry them and just crunch them down? You might as well eat your own toenails.

Tilly_MFW_in_6_YRS

Hi Tiglath, you made me laugh out loud re chicken feet - thanks

I buy a lot of meat from Costc@ but only when the offers are on. I definitely find it is not so full of water and goes further as a result.

Tilly

Mortgage_Reduction_Novice

Tiglath wrote: »

You might as well eat your own toenails.

_pale_

Get yourself to Costc0 - by far decent meat at a fair price... just remember some freezer bags too for splitting into manageable/sensible sized portions.

Tiglath

Up until recently we got all our meat at Costco (and the placky portion freezer bags) but I found they were more expensive per kg than the big supermarkets on virtually all meat. The only meat they were cheaper on was pork belly slices and decent bacon. They also don't seem to do chicken leg portions in ours. Mind you, there wasn't a huge difference in price except on steak, and there's the convenience aspect of buying a month's worth in one go for the sake of a few quid. I'd rather eat better quality and less of it, and I'm interspersing with veggie meals now so cost will be less of an issue. I'll price up the big supermarkets the day of our next Costco visit.

Tiglath

I've treated myself to a ticket to Walking With Dinosaurs in early January. I can afford it after I've said No to all Christmas socialising, and it's a once-in-a-lifetime thing. I'm off for 2 weeks from 31st December, and it's my New Year treat.

Tiglath

Off for an NSD - will have the remains of pate on toast for breakfast, taking leftover shepherds pie for a late lunch, and DH will also have some this evening after having a tooth removed. I'll have toast or cheese & crackers if hungry tonight. I may have miscalculated the credit card interest on my spreadsheet on all 4 cards in their favour, so need to play with it tonight and make sure all my cell references are correct.

The Walking Dead mid-season finale tonight - boo

Tiglath

I've revamped the spreadsheet with the credit card interest, and am cautiously bringing my DFD forward to July 2014. If I've calculated it properly, I may come to close to paying off £16k by the end of next December. Some of it will depend on whether Mint pile on extra interest for me inadvertently extending my direct debit and giving myself a 'month off' from paying, but I intend to do double payments to 2 of the cards in January and try to catch up that way. It'll have to be a work in progress.

Tiglath

Got the Mint statement - all reinstated online & next DD 3rd Jan, but it was an expensive way of trying (and failing because of timing) to get ahead of myself. For the 'privilege' of rearranging the DD and having it accidentally pushed out by 3 weeks instead of making it 12 days earlier than usual, it's cost me an extra £110 in interest on the outstanding balance. Still, by making a double payment to it in January, things will go back to being ahead that month.

Now all my DDs and manual payments come out in the first 2 weeks after payday, as planned. I'm making a double Amex payment in January too. So it's worked out, even if I'm slightly grumpy about the extra interest, and I did clear Simple Be completely, with Next to be paid off completely in 10 days.

Once the debts are paid off in 2014, I'm going to arrange all the household bills except groceries to come out of our joint current account (unused with debit cards unactivated) instead of my personal current account, which is what we've been doing for 14 years. I'm rather excited about this because the joint current account will be plug and play; we'll start it off with a couple of months' money while the DD transfers go through in case of administrative hiccups and they take from the wrong account, and then both just transfer a set amount every month.

I sat up till 4am projecting all my financial stuff out till the end of 2016, and researching cruises to the Arctic circle to see the aurora borealis. It'll be our first holiday in a decade or so, and we'll have to work it around DH's teacher holidays. It'll be the first time in over 20 years that I haven't worked over Christmas; I usually offer so the parents in the office can be with their kids. Reckon we'll be in a position to do that from savings in 2015, and still have a 3 months emergency fund built up. Definitely thinking longterm here - I like having a roadmap. So feeling very positive this morning

Just opened the post (with trepidation in case they were telling me they were removing my overdraft). I've been overpaying the Natwest card by 30% per month (overpaying everything for a while now), and they've written to say they're increasing the limit by 50%. I haven't used it in ages (the card is tucked away safely and I've stayed within budget and paid cash for everything,) but at least it's there for an emergency like the boiler breaking while I'm paying off debt. It obviously doesn't take long for news on overpaying the minimum on everything and actually paying stuff off completely to trickle through to the system, which is interesting to know.

The Natwest card will be cleared completely in June but I'm planning on keeping it as my sole active credit card, putting a small amount on each month like the monthly Costco shop and settling it on payment date, just to keep the revolving side of my credit score active. I know I'm disciplined enough to do that, what with the major mental changes over the past few months. So that's made me even happier By the time our Natwest fixed rate mortgage comes to an end in June, my NW overdraft and NW card will both be paid off, so they might offer us a good deal on another fixed rate, although we'll shop around.

All in all, a brilliant morning

specialkaye

Hi Tiglath, a lurker here.

Just saying hello and the you're doing amazingly well.

I would love to go and see the northern lights but its on a long list of places i want to go.

Will go back to lurking now

rising_from_the_ashes

Tiglath wrote: »

The Walking Dead mid-season finale tonight - boo

Do you know if they're repeating it?

I've got episodes 2 to 7 recorded (and 8 set to do so) but I missed the 1st one:eek: I keep looking to see if it's on again but no luck so far - and don't want to start at episode 2

It's the one / well 2 things I hate about S*ky channels as you never know when something's starting .... and as for these mid-season breaks !!!!!! are they all about - I usually end up missing these restarting too!:(:o