This Diary Will Keep Me Motivated!

How_Did_That_Happen?

... We did our first car boot today and came away with the grand total of 40.00 profit :j:j:j That's taking into account the pitch fee and toy dalmation puppies the girls fell in love with, but not counting petrol.
Was hoping for a bit more really but its a start, and the car was noticably less full on the way home. Had an ancient PS2 that sold for 10.00 as soon as it was taken out of the car. The kids clothes didn't sell at all but we got rid of about half the dvds at 1.00 each. Also got rid of a few bits of old crockery and glassware. Books did not sell at all so husband is taking those to the charity box at his work.
Will try another one in a few weeks time. There weren't very many buyers at this one. For a while it just seemed to be other sellers wandering around.

How_Did_That_Happen?

Have had a quite frankly horrific month with money saving. I'll update all the figures later as I'm due to be paid on Friday. Its all down to the summer holidays and not budgeting for car finances.

And....

My dislike of energy companies continues so I have just switched again! This will be the 4th switch in the 4 years we've been in this house.

Had a bill from Npower today. Happily we've payed off the debt we accrued from the direct debit not being enough. We are using less than they think we are. I spent ages :mad: working out that this equated to about 50.00 (take your meter reading, multiply by 1.00393... divide by your date of birth, add your house number and multiply by 4 :mad::mad::mad: )
Also irritated to find that when our last deal ended they put us on a really expensive tariff. We couldn't really change suppliers whilst we had debt to them. I know the onus is on me to check this and change it, but why have so many tariffs? Its just confusing any annoying. Surely they could send out a leaflet listing all their tariffs and costs - then I'd be loyal as I wouldn't have to do this online comparison business.
So I went online to find a better deal - and who came out top? Npower!! So I've gone for the second best one which was M&S as it was only 1.00 more.
Really wish I could buy solar panels and a wind turbine and then they can pay me for energy

How_Did_That_Happen?

So as I said in the last post, August has been a very bad month. We've actually managed to add to our debt rather than pay any off.

Here are the figures:

Current account: -1327.76
Husbands account: 0
Mortgage overdraft: -8487.73
Credit card: -4218.10
Kitchen loan: -4171.18

Total: -18204.77

Husband's car is being MOT'd tomorrow and at the least it will need new tyres so it could be quite costly.

Learnt a few lessons though. I've set up a monthly direct debit to cover car costs so we won't have this problem again next year.

I think I also need to sort out some sort of holiday fund even if we aren't going away. Even supposedly cheap days out can end up quite expensive.

For September we need to spend as little as possible. If we are careful we should be able to claw back a fair amount of the overdraft. I'm going to need some serious willpower over the next few weeks

How_Did_That_Happen?

Husband's car MOT was 550.00!!!

Got some serious cutting back to do this month.

How_Did_That_Happen?

Last night I extended my spreadsheet all the way until we are debt free. I've never really calculated when this will be - I've just always vaguely assumed it will be sometime next year.

Well it looks like the actual date will be October 2015. That is a lot longer than I thought, so we will have to work on ways to speed this up. It should be quicker if husband has a few good months commission-wise or if we can find any other money to put towards it.

How_Did_That_Happen?

Had a nice freebie morning today. Taken the kids to the library and then the park.

Going to do a bit of baking in a minute so we have some sweet treats available and can hopefully avoid the supermarket.

Need to get started on ebay again over the next few weeks...

How_Did_That_Happen?

Haven't posted much lately. The debt paying hasn't been going very well and we are both quite demotivated and giving in to temptation to buy whatever random stuff we want.

Just found out that husband has been underpaid by about 800.00 over the last two months, likely due to a mistake on his managers part. Not pleased at all, but I guess this means that at least we haven't already spent it.