Getting back on track for 2013 and beyond

kerri_dfw

The baby show is the last Sunday of the month, so a little way to go yet.

I think I've decided what I'm going to do re: money & debt, I'm going to pay off all my debts and put the remaining amount into a savings account. I won't be spending all of it on debt so they'll still be about £2k leftover, however with mat leave coming up I will be debt free and not have to worry about money at all. What I am going to do though is cancel the cap1 card and the VC, if we need to buy big price items then we'll just have to save them up. I shall reduce the BC down to £150 (if they'll let me). This should allow us to put the first £100 deposit for big purchases onto a credit card and then we can pay cash for the rest. It'll also allow me to spend £50 a month on the BC paying it back each month on time and therefore building my credit rating.


We were at the MIL's this weekend so OH could visit his gran who is 94 and thinks she's going to pop her clogs at any moment. OH is feeling a bit weird today and we had a huge row in the car yesterday after we left, for some reason it didn't twig to me that he was feeling emotional and I couldn't work out why he was arguing with me. When the penny dropped I felt like a right muppet I think it's because she looked fine, same as last time, when I saw her so I didn't think about the fact he might not see her again.


We stopped off at the outlet village on the way back, and I treated him to 2 day-glo yellow cycling tops and a day-glo yellow cycling jacket. Least I know he's going to be safe on his bike in the winter months and they were over half price so not to be sneezed at. We also bought baby a toy soft elephant that will be her teddy from Mummy and Daddy


Weird and wonderful experiments still going on in this house re: dental hygiene. This morning I have been oil pulling with coconut oil. You take a teaspoon - tablespoon of oil in your mouth and swish it around sucking it through your teeth for about 20 minutes. It's meant to draw out the bacteria and microbials from your teeth. I stupidly did it after drinking a glass of coke about an hour beforehand, so when I spat it out in the shower it came out a gross browny colour, but at least the coke won't have stained my teeth. I have also made up a tooth powder, although need to add some peppermint essential oil when it arrives as it tastes salty. The tooth powder has left my teeth feeling quite clean though but I shall report back on whether I start to notice any difference with my teeth. I've been without toothpaste long enough now that my teeth won't have the glycerin coating anymore, so maybe I'll start to see evidence of reminerialisation. I have noticed a white dot appearing on one of my teeth...I shall report back.


Recipe for tooth powder:
1tbs benzonite clay
1tbs bicarb soda
1/2 tbs coarse sea salt
15-20 drops peppermint essential oil

brizzledfw

Good to hear you have made a decision. Sounds a good one to me. Very MSE!

Sorry re rows with OH..facing losing someone and the impact on the wider family can be very hard and I know he's a homeboy at heart.

Have a great week x

debtfreewannabe321

Oh bless, you weren't to know that he was down about it, men rarely show their feelings. Where if it were you or me and we'd just visited out dear old gran who was about to pop her clogs we'd probably cry all the way home making it pretty see-through as to how we were feeling. I hope he's ok she's a grand old age so that's good (not that it makes it any easier..)

Good choice re the debt :T

I'm really interested in these tooth paste experiments, have also done lots of reading up on coconut oil and it's uses, but 20 mins??? Wow my kids would love it if I couldn't shout at them for 20 mins each morning but not sure we'd get anywhere lol. Do you get the glycerin coating from all toothpastes then? and why is it bad (sorry don't know much about this?) I've swapped to weleda which hasn't got fluoride as I was worried about using that but no idea if it has glycerin think i will check now later!

amber03

Hi kerri that's what I did with some money I inherited. I did this so I didn't incur any further interest payments each month on my CC. I now each month put the monthly money I did pay off my CC into a savings account and in my mind when I have saved the amount up that I inherited then I can say I am debt free( I know it's silly but you don't feel the same, paying off a debt with an inheritance as paying off a debt by hard work) if you see what I mean.x

kerri_dfw

Hi Amber, thanks for stopping by do you have your own diary? I'm not going to truly feel debt free until I have the full £4600 saved up but I agree that most important is not paying any more money in interest to these people.

OH and I are fine again this evening, had a good session at hypnobirthing He's just really tired and exhausted with work tonight. He has just had a call from his auntie to ask for his address to send the cheque!!! Exciting, we'll both be debt free.


Re: glycerin - there's some research that suggests it coats the teeth preventing remineralization, which is where the teeth repair themselves from the inside out through depositing minerals. I'm not 100% sure how it works, so I'm doing an experiment to see how my teeth improve. I think I'm going to stop the oil pulling though, I won't have 20mins each morning with a newborn to do it and I think my new tooth powder is going to work just fine, I've felt like I've had uber clean teeth all day. I have taken a photo of my teeth this morning, and will take another tomorrow, and do that for a week to see if I can see an improvement from the recipe

kerri_dfw

Well I am still waiting for my Dad to transfer the money across to me, I'm not sure why it's taking him so long but I'm awfully impatient. Maybe it'll gee him along when I go down there this weekend as I'll actually be there for him to remember. Had a little moan to OH that if this was my sister he'd have done it straight away and was told off for putting myself down. OH has offered to pay off my cards with the money he is receiving from the inheritance, I might take him up on it for VC so I don't have to pay the £100+ in interest anymore but pride is getting in my way and I really want to pay it off with my own money. I guess we'll see whose money arrives first, mine from Dad or his inheritance. It would be nice just to see it gone and know that all we're both doing is saving.

OH started having a little paddy about money when I'm on maternity pay and asking me if I'd saved any money yet. Tbh I think it's ruddy cheek, I supported him the whole way through his final year of uni normally spending £2k per month plus and he's fretting that he won't have loads of money leftover to spend I've actually worked out that it's an extra £100 per month he'll have to top up our joint account with on top of the £1000 he already puts in each month, so really it's not the disaster he thinks it is. I shall text him and let him know I think. There text sent. Next pay onwards I'm going to siphon off the extra we put into the joint account before we can touch it, which is about £360 plus the money for annual bills which is £96. That way when we need new tyres again they can come out of the pot instead of out of my purse, afterall he uses the car as well.


Yesterday I placed a bid on a peer-to-peer lending site for £40 for a biomass company to buy boilers, the interest rate is 12% so one of the higher risk loans, but it was for 1 year whereas the other was for 5 years and I don't want to lock my cash away for that long. I think I could get as excited about saving money as I could spending it, it was almost like spending money when I did this except there's a high chance of getting the money back with some extra money instead of it just being frittered. I've also got £10 invested in another site which has been loaned out at 4.8% to someone for 3 years to help with home improvements. Well that's £50 more invested than I've ever had before.

Checked on my ISA I opened ages ago, it's accrued £0.31 in interest, whoop-de-whoop. That's more than when it first went in though, so I now have £10.31 in there. Well small things and all that

ETA: Just gone under £3k decided to brave it and pay some money towards VC, it was just sat there in my current account so I thought "why not?"

Ooooh my pressure cooker/canner has arrived I can start to make nice yummy's for Christmas hampers, starting with the pickled onions and apple sauce. Although the pickled onions don't need the pressure cooker to be fair, I've just been a bit lazy with doing these as the instructions were a bit confusing.

kerri_dfw

Well OH has gone to cash in his inheritance cheque this morning, he's already planned various different ways to spend the money. Tsk! Tsk! The more he speaks to me about it the more things he's spent it on in his head which really isn't good. He wants to put £35k at least away for when we want to buy a house, I'd rather it was more £40k as that'll give us a good £100k for deposit and solicitors fees, moving fees etc when we've both saved up our £30k each. There are some things we definitely do need though:- a bed for the spare bedroom (have found petite doubles on w4rren ev4ns where we got our bed from and they're so well made), we did consider an Ik3a daybed, but after 1-2 moves we know it'll be falling apart
- a dining table & chairs/benches, I really like the farmhouse style tables and OH agrees, I've seen them for about £300 however W4rren Ev4ns also do these for half the price so I might get OH to come with me when we go to the baby show and we can pop up to Camden to take a look in the showroom
- a rug for baby's room & lounge, maybe dining room to make them a little warmer
- curtains for the living room as we currently don't have any and can't use the room in the evening as the entire neighbourhood can peer in
- a bookshelf for the living room to put all of OH's books on


OH also wants to get some bits for his bike which are less than £200 and he's now talking about getting some type of keyboard/piano. Although the piano is something I'd like to save up and buy together, the type I'd like is about £2k an upright digital piano, and this can go in our dining room.


Talking of our dining room...it's a mess, I really need to sort all my craft stuff out as it's all shoved in boxes and there's no sense to any of it. However, I'm away this coming weekend to visit my sister, so not sure when I envisage sorting it. Ho hum! Maybe tomorrow if I have some time I'll do a little bit more.


Debt wise: OH is going to lend me the money to pay off VC and Cap1, I'll then pay him back £500 a month until it's clear. He does owe me some money for hypnobirthing and for the sofa so I will only need to repay £1968.33 to him to clear those two debts. BC I'm going to clear when my Dad gets round to giving me this money, that way I can save £4k. Although when my Dad is going to transfer the money I have no idea, I don't want to nag him for him to think "why is she nagging me..." but I also would like to start earning some interest on the money.


Right, best get ready to go to the office

brizzledfw

Hope you had a good day at the office.

Plans sound exciting and all pretty practical!:T You do need to be warm and cosy especially with a little un but also no point paying rent for areas in your house you can't use IMO!:rotfl: but curtains wise they are so expensive I would get really good ones, second hand, that are heavy and lined so they act as a good thermal barrier. Bed frames..you can also get these easily second hand giving you more scope for a new mattress?

Did you make all your apple sauce? We need to make more

I agree with the £40k..prices are rising fast and you will need to keep pace.

Have a great weekend..

debtfreewannabe321

Great plans...hope you manage to get them all in place (I.e get OH on board )

When's the DF party then? ! :T

kerri_dfw

I'm debt free just got back from Bournemouth and gone online to clear all of my balances. I can't believe I've actually done it, I know I cheated with the money from my Grandad, but I've just done the little dude waving his fingers side to side dance in my bedroom. I'm so happy, I don't owe anyone but myself money for the first time in over 9 years!!! AMAZING!!!!

Off to the pub to confess to the OH what I've done and buy him a pint to celebrate. I decided I'd rather owe noone money and have £2k savings than owe my OH for 4 months