Chapter 2 - Pulverising the Post Office - one debt at a time

Housework*Fairy

Grocery/Petrol Fund: Was £500 – is £353.72 - (grocery spend is actually £43.02) as I spent £13.69 at Tesco last night on DS1's stuff for packed lunches next week, and my own lunches - Ryvita and Philadelphia. I can't believe how expensive bread is! Usually I just chuck a Hovis loaf in the trolley but they were £1.35! I got a packet of 12 bread rolls for 40p instead. Also got some De-caff coffee in that for £1.79. I think I'm going to stick to just buying a couple of days worth of shopping at a time and then at least I'm only buying what we need. I live so close to Morrisons and Asda that it's easy enough to do and it doesn't really put me out too much.

Had another cheap tea yesterday: Morrisons giant Yorkshire Pudding and (tinned) Irish Stew (0.34 + 0.62). This went down very well!

Cash-in-hand situation:
Money in purse £0.76
Money set aside for fire repair: £73.74
Money in change box (A) £32.82
Money in change box (B) £70.00
Money in bank: £269.82
Grand total: £446.38
Days left til payday: 26 (keep losing track!)

Reduction since yesterday £62.36

£36.98 - DS2's football boots
£24.00 - PAD to 'holding account'
£1.38 - completely random figure because I have DS1 £3 for football practice. I also found £2 in my purse yesterday which I'm certain wasn't there the day before!!!

I've made my usual weekly Saturday payment of £20 plus an extra PAD of £4 because athletics training doesn't recommence until Tuesday. If/when I can make a payment to the CC I have £31.14 to put in there.

I had a talk with DH last night because having the wildest imagination I am having nightmares about him having a major heart condition that will necessitate him having to give up work and we'll become poverty stricken. He laughed when I told him this and said "I don't think that will happen!". He said he feels fine in himself and is sure the fast heart rate is because he has had a virus. But the worst case scenario will be that we sell up (leaving equity of around £36k) and move into rented. I just worry because he came home from work yesterday lunchtime as he was exhausted and he also mentioned he'd been short of breath on exertion, hence my alarm bells ringing. It'd be just my rotten luck that now I am in the position to start tackling our credit cards as well as have enough money to live, that he becomes unfit for work. I've actually fancied moving for a while but knew we wouldn't get passed for a mortgage because of the amount we owe on credit cards so that's not the end of the world were it to happen.

Spoke to friend about her bingo wins a little bit more last night and it turns out she 'only' won about £500 of the £1400 on actual bingo, and the rest she won on 'slots' which I wouldn't dare play.

Housework*Fairy

Eager_Elephant wrote: »

Subscribing again HouseworkFairy.

You are doing so well you really inspire me :T- I want to focus on one card at a time but daren't at the moment as we have a lot of expenses coming up in the next few months and we need money for that.

Can you read your meter each week instead?
I was the same as you, got a massive shock with the elec bill and our DD was about £136 per month :eek: (This is on top of oil which is about £120 per month as well :eek:)
I started reading the meter every Sunday and inputting it and it becomes a bit of a mini challenge to reduce it from the previous week. (The website might say you can't but if you do it anyway it should create you a bill)

ooh I'd just about convinced myself that monthly readings were acceptable but I hadn't thought about weekly.

I've just looked at my online account and it says "your next meter reading can be submitted from 01.02.13" so it wont let me submit them weekly. I guess I could read them weekly for myself to see how I am doing.

I have turned into an energy saving diva. I've gone and knocked 3 hours off the timed settings, and actually set it to 'timed' today (even though we are in all day) and am going to see how long I can not have the heating switched on for. I'm also trying to encourage the kids to switch lights off, and keep doors shut.

EDIT: Just noticed my bill is now available. Over 8.5 months I have spent £486 on electricity and £841 on gas, and that included the summer months!

DOUBLE EDIT: For my info: gas reading on 04.01.13 = 6687 // Electric = 16094

fallen121

Housework*Fairy wrote: »

I can't believe how expensive bread is! Usually I just chuck a Hovis loaf in the trolley but they were £1.35!

Wholemeal Hovis was 69p in Aldi (might be 79p now?), but we've now switched to Aldi's own wholemeal "Village Bakery" which is 59p. These are full loaves, not the half size ones. We once bought Village Bakery when they'd sold out of the Hovis and now we all prefer it.

I will NEVER buy bread in a regular supermarket again. If Aldi can sell brand name bread at those kind of prices and still make a profit, then the markup at Tesco/Asda etc. is beyond enormous.

Housework*Fairy

fallen121 wrote: »

Wholemeal Hovis was 69p in Aldi (might be 79p now?), but we've now switched to Aldi's own wholemeal "Village Bakery" which is 59p. These are full loaves, not the half size ones. We once bought Village Bakery when they'd sold out of the Hovis and now we all prefer it.

I will NEVER buy bread in a regular supermarket again. If Aldi can sell brand name bread at those kind of prices and still make a profit, then the markup at Tesco/Asda etc. is beyond enormous.

Agreed! We probably only get through 1.5 loaves a week, so in future I'm going to bulk buy from somewhere cheap and freeze. Shopping each 1-2 days just makes me more aware of how much things cost.

pennywisepoundstupid

Hi housework fairy, Farmfoods have hovis bread on offer at the minute, 2 loaves for £1.60, I bought a load a put it in the freezer, told DS no more warburtons at £1.45 a loaf:eek:.

Housework*Fairy

pennywisepoundstupid wrote: »

Hi housework fairy, Farmfoods have hovis bread on offer at the minute, 2 loaves for £1.60, I bought a load a put it in the freezer, told DS no more warburtons at £1.45 a loaf:eek:.

Hi, I really do need to get into the effort of driving to Farmfoods. I think I'll go on a Friday evening when I've taken DS2 to football practice as it's nearby.

Housework*Fairy

Grocery/Petrol Fund: Was £500 – is £330.63

Went to Asda yesterday to get some washing powder and foodstuff in for two day's worth of evening meals and spent £27.09 in total (ARGH) but not all of it is coming off my grocery budget as DH asked me to get him some chocolate and a prawn salad (total cost £4) so that's £23.09 to take off my grocery total. I did take a list with me but quite a few items snuck into my trolley totalling £5.18.

I've never done a big shop at Asda before, so I was dying to check my receipt online at the price guarantee and to my great excitement (honest) I was highly delighted to be told that they weren't 10% cheaper than Morrisons on this occasion so were giving me 35p! The shine was taken off my excitement however when I had the realisation that my printer doesn't have any black ink left, so in order to print the 35p voucher, I would need to buy a black ink cartridge costing around £12 first....It's the story of my life.

Cash-in-hand situation:!
Money in purse £0.76
Money set aside for fire repair: £73.74
Money in change box (A) £32.98
Money in change box (B) £66.20
Money in bank: £265.52
Grand total: £438.44
Days left til payday: 25 (keep losing track!)

Reduction since yesterday £7.94 (excellent for a Saturday!)

24 hours after making changes to my timed settings on the central heating, I had a look to see how much we'd used, and it was only 2 units. I've worked it out from my last bill that 1 unit is roughly £1.20 so that's not too bad for a January day I guess. The heating would have been on for 5 hours per day, and boiling a pan of potatoes on the hob for 40 minutes.

I spoke to DH about how I hope to have the credit cards paid off in five years and maybe the following year we could have a really nice holiday (not paid for by credit) and then after that tackle the mortgage and he seemed on board, but he did say it was unlikely to happen as things would be bound to crop up in the next five years but we'll try our best. I guess I'm bound to get bored and go off on a spending tangent at some point although I am really motivated at the moment.

Sport is back to normal today and after not having had a game since November, both boys are back playing football, so that'll kill part of the day, then it's the usual Sunday night routine of looking for PE kits and finding lunch boxes with 2-week old uneaten sandwiches in it...

Oh, and I think later on today I am going to buy a slanket. I did put one in my basket but the total including delivery was £21 and I couldn't bring myself to spend it. But the company have e-mailed me saying if I complete my purchase they'll give me an extra 10% off the sale price which would bring the item down from £16.99 to £15.30 + delivery. It's a proper slanket too, just bright pink, and in the sale...I also cancelled having my HD brows done yesterday (£20) and I did put my Xmas money in with the household budget this month, so I could treat myself.

welshdreamer71

Morning lovely x you've been a busy bee, hope hubby is feeling a little better today.

Well done in very going and the pot for post office I'm sure everything will be fine and you can start pulverising that one, school is back Tuesday here and football club so bit of peace here well apart from working 8-4 and housework and ironing and everything else that gets plonked on us mums...

God is that how much gas costs I haven't got a clue all I know is since we had a prepay gas meter put in we have used far less as I know that's coming out of my purse at the weekend, I had to go into arrears of 250 quid to get a free meter or I'd have to pay the 250 for a meter senseless in it, but we are lucky its a fairly new home and really warm... Have you looked into free insulation and solar panels offered by everyone we had the attic relagged but not suitable for solar panels could be worth a look I'm the cold one like you but now I get dressed rather than put heating on lol...

Good luck with the football brrr!

Housework*Fairy

welshdreamer71 wrote: »

God is that how much gas costs I haven't got a clue all I know is since we had a prepay gas meter put in we have used far less as I know that's coming out of my purse at the weekend, I had to go into arrears of 250 quid to get a free meter or I'd have to pay the 250 for a meter senseless in it, but we are lucky its a fairly new home and really warm... Have you looked into free insulation and solar panels offered by everyone we had the attic relagged but not suitable for solar panels could be worth a look I'm the cold one like you but now I get dressed rather than put heating on lol...

Good luck with the football brrr!

Admittedly, I had no idea how much gas costs per unit because of the silly conversion to kilowatt hours calculation, so I just divided up the total of the gas divided by the units used, and that's what it came up with. I tended to focus more on the monthly payment rather than the number of units. We've already got loft insulation and we had cavity wall insulation done about three years ago. We're not suitable for solar panels but I think the 'benefits' of having this may have been taxed to death once the government got wind of it anyway. The long and the short of it is, that I have the CH on far too warm, for far too long. I just need to man-up and layer-up

StressedSteph

Hi HF,

I must admit we are naughty at having the heating on too warm. We have oil and it costs a fortune. But as soon as we have an oil delivery, off come the slippers and the jumpers and up goes the thermostat, and then we get shocked when it runs out in 2 months :eek:.

I find it hard with children in the house, I would quite happily sit in an extra jumper etc, but feel bad when the kids noses are cold and they don't want to play in their rooms because they are arctic.

I usually have the heating set to come on first thing in the morning and then again at dinner time. I am home all day and it does get chilly, but I try to use that as a good reason to get busy to keep warm . It will be better next week when they all go off the school and work. the heating can be turned down then