Getting back on track for 2013 and beyond

kerri_dfw

Thanks Mumsiemum, I'm a right terror for doing it! Although I am trying to change my ways. My biggest concern is that I earn enough to clear my debts within a few months if I'm sensible, but I still have this "I want it now" mentality and I have no idea how to snap out of that one!

Right weekend spends:
£38 on really nice scented candles for xmas (not a necessary spend but they'll smell nice oops!)
£10 cheese for christmas, last of the xmas shop
£3 rennie and bread
£10 given to OH to buy a beer in the pub
£4 sweets & chocolate
£20 petrol
£19 two books, one a present for OH and one for me
£3 tomato & lentil soup
£6 pub entry fee for 2 people

Saturday we went out to meet friends with their new baby and the OH bought me a drink & burger, whilst in town we bought some cheese for xmas and some candles for decorations about the house. We went out Saturday evening to a food festival where I bought some soup but decided not to drink anything as I was driving and had brought a cider with me to have at the party (low alcohol fruity ones ) OH borrowed a tenner from me so he could have a beer. We went to the shop on the way to the party and I bought myself some sweets and chocolate as I was feeling a bit grouchy! We were at the party until about 12:30 when we told the host we were leaving, what happened then was really weird. The birthday boy turned off the music, had a massive winge that he wasn't having a very good time, my OH gestured that our little group of 5 should probably leave and the blokes girlfriend chirps up saying "yes I think that's best, I'm just standing up for my man"....urm what?!?! we all left rather confused and I think that's just ended the friendship with my friend and that guy. Really weird!! I've never been kicked out of a party before, especially not when I'm leaving already.
Anyway, we then went to a pub in town with £3 entry fee, I paid for my OH as well as myself. Stayed there for a few hours then went back to our flat as it was closest. Stayed up all night before I slunk off to bed about 7am after buying a loaf of bread for breakfast and some rennie for our friend who had heartburn. When I woke up we went to our local where I let the OH buy me cocacolas and we listened to a band. All in all not a massively expensive weekend, but it was a fun one. I'm glad I already had my drinks bought and didn't need to really buy any as it could have been really expensive. We do need to replace a bottle of gin before our party this coming weekend, but as it's on offer in Mr S at the moment that's better than having drunk the same in the pub and a fun time was had by all.

oh! and the OH has said I can get two kittens the only thing is the ones I want would come with pedigree papers allowing me to breed them for at least one litter. This improves the temperament of the queen, and would aid in getting some money spent back. I don't agree with overbreeding animals, but all the cats my parents have had that have had kittens have been a lot friendlier. I don't want a moggy because they're not as friendly as pure breeds. So pay off debt, save for cats, buy cats, buy house.

kerri_dfw

I spent the entire day recovering from the weekend yesterday, it was almost a NSD though however I ended up trotting out the house at around 9:30pm for a sugar fix and spent about £5 on sweets!!!
I'm going our for xmas meal with lunch today so hoping that won't cost anything, I'm driving to the pub so I can't drink, although today will only be a LSD as I have to pay £4 for gymnastics this evening, but I'm looking forward to that

kerri_dfw

Ok, so the OH and I are sitting down and working out feasible budgets for living together with a budget and paying off debt, and saving for a house. We have set upper limits for each, and it might seem excessive in some areas, and I really don't think we will spend £500 each a year on clothes, but it'll be nice to have the buffer....anyway, here it is:
Expense Times a Year Cost Monthly Cost Gymnastics 104 £8.00 £69.33 Boulders 52 £18.00 £78.00 WICC 52 £9.00 £39.00 Contact Lenses 1 £120.00 £10.00 Dentist 2 £35.00 £5.83 Birthdays 12 £50.00 £50.00 Christmas 10 £50.00 £41.67 Regular Saver 12 £250.00 £250.00 Car Insurance 1 £900.00 £75.00 Car Tax 1 £200.00 £16.67 House Insurance 1 £480.00 £40.00 Mobile Phone 12 £75.00 £75.00 Broadband 12 £25.00 £25.00 Gym Membership 12 £40.00 £40.00 Grocery 52 £50.00 £216.67 Rent 12 £900.00 £900.00 Council Tax 12 £200.00 £200.00 Petrol 52 £20.00 £86.67 Electricity 12 £60.00 £60.00 Train 26 £25.00 £54.17 Overdraft 12 £50.00 £50.00 Pub 52 £10.00 £43.33 Posh Chocs 12 £25.00 £25.00 Gigs 12 £50.00 £50.00 Clothes 1 £1,000.00 £83.33 Credit Card 12 £100.00 £100.00 Climbing Kit 12 £40.00 £40.00 PC parts 12 £20.00 £20.00
We can't think of anything else at the moment and it's currently more than the £2370 we take home, but it's something to aim for and as soon as the OD and CC are gone there will be more money available to be spread across the pots. We're going to try it from this month onwards and I'm going to pop off now and setup a G000gle spreadsheet that we can both use

kerri_dfw

We went to see the lovely Daniel Craigs torso last night, aka Skyfall. My other half is on Orange so we had BOGOF tickets and as he's a student we got an additional discount we took sweets with us from the SM, but the treat was a scoop of icecream mmm, we haven't had a date in ages so after purchasing our tickets we went to the SM and bought a pizza, & dough balls, took them home and ate them at a candlelit dinner table. It cost £14 for sweets & pizza, instead of the £40 the restaurant would have charged us. The film was most excellent!

Today I've got a DD for my CC going out, so that's another £100 coming off that I've also had a payment from my sister for a loan from ages ago so that's another £50 off the OD. I thought all payments for the year had been done, so this was a nice little surprise.
Today is going to be present wrapping and sweet making day, I have lots of sweets to make for the party on Saturday. I'm going to save myself £12 by not going to the gig I was going to go to on Friday, and instead I'm going to have one last climb for £4.50 plus a drink of coca-cola in the pub with our friend after. This will at least mean we're bright eyed and bushy tailed for the party Saturday. I can't believe how close Christmas is now, I have to try to remember where I've squirreled away all the presents for my OH that I've been hiding away all year long.

I had an email through for some free cash on a bingo site this morning, so I put it onto a scratchcard and played at 10p a go. I came away withdrawing £1.60 so that's going to go into the savings pot when it's withdrawn.

kerri_dfw

Well I am feeling rather nervous about 2013, I've got my debt busting hat on and have got everything budgeted right down to the teeth! well to the dentist for two. There will be no more frivolous spends and the drinking etc for tonight is coming out of our £8 for gymnastics that isn't on tomorrow and £10 from the pub money for Friday, but I have a feeling that we won't spend very much as a) we're going to see free fireworks b) we can take our own booze with us as we're going to a friends house & the fireworks are outside c) the OH is staying sober and I don't drink much so no taxi journeys as he can drive

Anyway, in January I'm going to be overpaying my CC by £1 every day and also going to be swagbucking everyday. I've hit the target two days on the trot so far, even if I have to watch every sbtv video that there is to reach the really hard targets, it shall be done! I've just cashed out my points for an amazonia voucher, but I shall count that towards my make money target for January. We're going to be fleabaying like little mad monkeys as well, my other half is completely fed up with the amount of boxes full of carp we have lying around.
The OH hasn't done it yet, but he needs to go and withdraw the money for this week please mister! My sister wants me to go visit the weekend after next, so I need to find a way to have made either the petrol money or the train fare for that, about £60 and she's reminded me that I promised I'd buy her some trainers for her birthday. I think I promised about £25 towards them, so if I can make that somehow I'll be happy. I do have a refund due back for a xmas tree, so that might cancel it out

The other half is also really nervous about us pooling our money together. I think I'm being cheeky in getting in there before he starts earning a proper wage, as if we do it whilst I'm the main bread winner then he can't quarrel about paying all his money into the joint account when he starts earning We've agreed when he starts earning that after paying into all our pots, whatever is left he will pay half towards his debt and half towards saving for a house. His debt is 0% and with a DCA so this should be fine.

Right then 2013, you're going to be scary but bring it on

kerri_dfw

Right the OH and I are really cracking the whip this year, I'm quite amazed as we're 6 days in and any additional non-budgeted purchases have all been bought with vouchers! This includes the ink and paper for the printer, which apparently wasn't needed afterall D'OH! That's the last time I buy before checking myself!

So New Years Day we had a bit of a spendy day, decided to go to a certain chicken fast food place on the way over to our friends house as neither of us wanted to cook. OH had the chips from my meal and his friend bought him a milkshake, I had a rather tangy tower burger that was yummy no more fast food this month! (naughty!) We then went to the pub for some coca-colas, I can't remember now whether the OH drank or not but I don't think we spent very much that evening, and all we did spend was money leftover from the £40 we set aside for the two of us for NYE. After being very kind and dropping our friend all the way back up the valleys (30 min round trip), because he didn't realise there were no trains, we decided to have my NYE so polished off quite a bit of the leftover booze in the form of cocktails Around midnight one of our friends came over and 4 of us stayed up all night having a lovely time.

Since New Year I've not been feeling 100% and my wheat intolerance is playing havoc with my stomach, I think this is because I've been lazing around so not getting hungry then when I do eat it's things I shouldn't so this irritates my tum We've vowed to eat more healthily in 2013, hence no more fast food.

I was really worried about sitting down with the OH and writing down a budget in a spreadsheet. I've put all my money less the bills that come out of my account into our joint account and literally everything is budgeted for. I don't have any money of my own, but then why would I need any as everything I want is budgeted for, but it's still a weird feeling. It took the OH a few days to work it out to a way that suits him, but when his student loan came in this weekend he upped his normal £370 a month to a nice £500 a month. Although this means that his phone bill, climbing, gymnastics are all paid for it also means we stop the "can I borrow this amount I'll pay it back when the loan comes in" which I've been really hating and should stop the borrow from Peter to pay Paul mentality.

We did our first shop today and the farmers market came to £8.40 for a large amount of veg: carrots, parsnips, 2 large spuds, medium bag of small spuds suitable for roasties, red onions, white onions, beetroot. Then OH went to buy eggs: £3.40 and butter £1 for 100g :eek::eek::eek: I know it's organic, but I said to him in the car "Mr A are doing 500g of butter for £2!" he has agreed we won't get it from there again. I'm really pleased with the veg though, it tastes soooo much nicer.

Our Mr S shop was over budget and I'm really cross that we had to get br4nston beans as I missed the l1dl offer the other week. I'm going to keep my beady eyes peeled for it from now on though as paying £2.55 for beans is very :eek::eek::eek: We did stock up on OH's coffee whilst it's 2 for £6, he only likes the stuff you use a cafetiere with, posh g1t! I did get my facts wrong as well, I thought that the frozen pastry was cheaper than the fridge stuff, but turns out it was the other way round d'oh! Oh and we've both learned that going to the supermarket with only half a list and leaving the meal plan on the fridge isn't the best of ideas....we shall do better next time yessum

I've managed to convince the OH that we're going to have packed lunches instead of him spending £5 everytime he goes to uni. So in order to encourage him this evening I have poured out some of the large pot of yoghurt into a pot, put some crisps & pretzels & olives into containers, set out an apple on the side for him and he is cooking himself some veggie pasties. We're going to have a pasty each for tea, and he'll take one with him tomorrow :T:T Although how many questions can one man ask whilst cooking a pasty...I can't even cook so don't ask me!?!

So far this year I have cashed out £5 from SB and £5 from uksurv3y. I've also had refunds to my cc from am4zon and been given refunds in the form of am4zon vouchers, hence the ink and printer paper purchase, ooh and I bought OH his protein shake which he seems to need every 3 months so that's gone into the budget.

I'm feeling really positive at the moment as everything is currently under budget, or it feels like it is anyway I should probably do some kind of maths to work it out... We have some money put away now as well for things like dentist and car tax I have worked out I need to put in £1370 next month to cover our monthly expenses, then if I put in half of what I have leftover and pay the cc off with the other half we'll start having an emergency pot as well as being debt free. This is it, this is the year for debt freedom honest honest!

Right, off to do some more surveys whilst the night is still young, although all I really want to do is sleep but I have first day back at work tomorrow so the survey time will be eaten up by actual doing stuff :eek::eek::eek:

CC: £51.36/£2206.97 2.33%
OD: £0 / £400 0%
Grocery: £51.27/£217
Petrol: £20/£87
NSD: 4/31
Find £ £42.46/£25
Make £ £78.53/£155

[Deleted User]

Wow very organised!!!

Happy new year to you my darling

Dxxx

kerri_dfw

Happy new year to you too Dolly Nice to read you xx

kerri_dfw

Result, today I have cashed out another AGV for £5 which can go towards the dry goods we get from the Rainforest OH's protein shake has turned up (free with vouchers), and we're awaiting the spelt flour at the moment. Oh and today is a super specially good day, I won some football tickets for my friend and have made his day Stoke vs Spurs AND AND AND I get to go and see Les Mis for FREEE. I didn't manage to get the tickets when they came out as the website crashed and I was gutted. But it turns out one of my male friends managed to get them and the female friend of ours that was going to go can't make it, so she volunteered me. I am soooo excited we're going to be sat there singing away all happy oh and he's gay so it's going to be extra queeny hurray! \o/

I've just spoken to the OH and as we always do our main food shop in Mr S we've decided to purchase a Mr S top-up card that means we save 5% on our shopping. I get this as one of the benefits of my work which I think is quite good. So I've just ordered one with £120 on for £114 I worked out we can spend up to £30 a week in Mr S and we can use any pennies leftover from the farmers market if we need to. Hopefully it should arrive before the weekend so the OH can use it for shopping, although whether I trust him to do the food shop without me I don't know. He has a habit of purchasing more than we need! Eep! If we write a list then he always says "the list is a guideline we can go off it", but we can hope that he improves with time as it would be nice to be paying under £50 a week as currently that's about £1.78 a meal (lunch, dinner). I think if I tell him this he will look at me funny. I might just not tell him about food shopping and go on my own this week and let him do the Farmers Market on his own.

I've also booked myself a train ticket to go and visit my parents this coming weekend, I've got to get the train really early in the morning to get there for 11am and I'll get back to Cardiff for about 9pm the following day. However, it will save me £25-£30 in petrol and I won't have my sister asking me to ferry her around everywhere, result!

I'm getting really confused with my credit card, it was saying at the beginning of the month that I had £116 to pay this month minimum, now it's gone down to £95. I have a DD setup and can't work out whether it's going to take the £116 or the £95. If it take the £95 then I'll be a bit miffed because I was trying to overpay this month

Hmmm and now looking at the bank balances and the budget, due to paying for train fare this morning, I think I don't have enough in my personal account now. Eep! This is not good, must try to find a way of making some money as I don't want to take it from the joint account.
CC: £51.36/£2206.97 2.33%
OD: £0 / £400 0%
Grocery: £51.27/£217
Petrol: £20/£87
NSD: 6/31
Find £ £42.46/£25
Make £ £83.53/£155

kerri_dfw

Well Les Mis was amazing! We had 3 rounds of "will we get in, won't we get in" and then were finally allowed in. We were even put on the naughty list as we were told we should have had the newspaper, pfft we don't pay for these free things! hahaha. The film was beautiful, we were in tears, we laughed, we cried in the happy and the bad parts My gay friend was soooo funny, he's never seen Les Mis and was making rather loud exclamations when he thought someone was about to have something bad happen haha!

I've just had a mail from my electricity supplier to say they are going to increase our DD. Thankfully we've got the buffer to cope with the increase from £60 to £116 and I'm getting a meter reading from the maintenance company tomorrow so I shall update them and find out if we're on track or not. I'm really hoping we're not over, but with my working from home and OH being here half the week too I have a feeling it might be a bit higher, we do like to be warm and the OH likes to wear shorts. He seems to think it is his right to sit in shorts in the winter, whilst I give him a funny look. If the electricity bill is really high then he can start washing up by hand instead of using the dishwasher and the dishwasher can be for special occasions only. With two of us it is really lazy using the dishwasher all the time! I don't want to end up washing up all the time though.

Today is a planned spend day coming out of the budget is £8 for climbing for the two of us. My friend isn't coming with us AGAIN! She's cancelled so many times now that I might stop asking her, she knows we go on a Wednesday and I'm not her mother. But thankfully the OH is now coming climbing so I can still go, however I really hope I don't end up sat around bored again like I did last time because they were just hanging around for ages which is really, really boring! I'm going to make us a fruit smoothie before we go so we'll have some energy and take some sliced apple with us as a snack. Might even throw in some crisps and I think I'll have some xmas cake as we still have some leftover mmmm xmas cake, I haven't even opened that yet!

Oh the meal plan is going very well, we've not had one day where we've not known what we're having for dinner, even if we have swapped them around from time to time. However, I do seem to be doing all the cooking which I'm not very impressed with. I did not meal plan to do all of the ruddy cooking thank you very much mister!

I was speaking to the OH today and was saying that maybe we should have our weekly money and we allocate it ourselves however we want, so instead of micro-managing it into £8/w gymnastics, £18/w climbing, etc we just have one set amount each week that we can spend. I might suggest this to him in a minute and see what he says. This would mean that I could skip gymnastics and pay £4 to my debt if I want, or skip the pub on a Friday and pay £10 towards my debt. It might be a bit more freeing if you see what I mean, and might make him feel more in control, as he keeps asking if he needs to be paying more into the pot...

Right, off to make some lemon rice, I have to try to remember how to make it now. One cup rice to two cups water I think....errr...last time it was VERY wrong!!! But tasted lush apparently. Going to steam some peas & sweetcorn to mix in with it and some carrots om nom nom domestic goddess here I come x

CC: £51.36/£2206.97 2.33%
OD: £0 / £400 0%
Grocery: £51.27/£217
Petrol: £20/£87
NSD: 7/31
Find £ £42.46/£25
Make £ £83.53/£155