Regrets, I've had a few

In_Debt_Bet

Thanks Wegle

I might print that little list off and keep it in my purse for when I am tempted to go spending.

I know what you mean about spreadsheet juggling, maybe one day I'll be juggling figures in savings accounts spreadsheets, just imagine if instead of nearly £15K in debt I had that in savings how good would that feel! :j

I would love to have a dog but I'd want to be sure I could comfortably afford to feed and insure it and I'd also have to pay a dog walking service to come in during the day whilst I'm at work.

My sister has a wonderful dog who I love dearly, I often take him over a doggy treat when I visit and he always comes over and tries to rifle through my handbag - he gives me a very stern look if I go empty handed sadly like yours he is getting on a bit now but he's not in any pain and seems quite content, I hope you have your dog for a long time to come.

Bet x

In_Debt_Bet

Dear Diary

It's been a reasonably quiet few days, still chipping away at the debts.

The new series of Great British Bake Off has once again reawakened my yearnings for a Kitchenaid food mixer I reached a sort of mental compromise as I found a Kenwood Chef food mixer online for £179 and making my Christmas Cake would be sooo much easier if I had one but I am determined to resist - that £179 is half of my Christmas budget - I'll have to use good old fashioned elbow grease again to make the cake this year.

I'm really pleased with how well I'm doing taking my lunch to work, I can't believe how much money I used to waste on this, I just wish I'd seen the light sooner. I am determined that this year Christmas will be paid for by cash not credit. I used to love going shopping, now it's something I try to get over and done with as quickly as possible so I can get away from any temptation.

Tuesday was a bit of a spendy day, I had to pop out to the bank and somehow also managed to spend £7.00 getting my car washed and £2.15 on a cup of coffee whilst waiting. It's sounds silly but as I was driving around the car park one of those chaps who wash the cars pointed me to an empty space and I felt sort of obliged to say yes please to the car wash.

Hope everyone is having a good week

Bet x

In_Debt_Bet

Dear Diary

Nothing very exciting to report but things are ticking along, slowly but surely. The good news is that as things stand I should be able get my overdraft below £300 this month :j - admittedly according to my calculation only 95p below but at least it's going in the right direction. Once that is cleared my priority will be paying off my Next Directory account which I think is about 29% apr.

When we moved house I paid for the bed (on interest free credit)and dining table (on my credit card!) and OH owes me about £500 as his share and he now has started giving me money towards it which will certainly help with Christmas coming.

My lose weight/get fit goal is not going very well, I need to come up with some motivational tools to remind me I'm meant to be on a diet as I seem to keep forgetting. This morning I tried on a shirt I hadn't worn for some time and had to change it as the buttons were straining and it was not a pretty sight.

Bet x

In_Debt_Bet

We have just had our electric and gas meters changed and we now have one of those energy monitoring gadgets which shows how much energy we are using. Interesting discoveries so far are that the dishwasher does not use very much energy but the vaccuum cleaner uses loads so I'll obviously need to cut down on vaccuuming in order to save money

In_Debt_Bet

It was bound to happen eventually, I feel as if I've let things slip a bit recently, giving in to temptation and then justifying it by telling myself, well you do need it/deserve a treat, go on you can pull it back next week

Here is a list of what I've spent so far this month on 'treats'

Tee Shirt bought on e-bay £7.00
Owl Tea Light holder - £6.50
Leggings for Zumba £18.00
Socks & hairband - £14.98
Black ballet pumps - £15.00

That's £61.48 that could have gone towards a bill or at least Christmas and been spent on gifts for my family not me. I'm feeling quite cross with myself, especially as last month I said that my clothing budget would be zero as I had bought a blouse - which incidentally I haven't worn yet, the socks and hairband are for my Zumba classes and came from a fairly expensive ladies sports shop which I certainly can't afford to shop in whilst trying to get myself out of debt. :mad:

Maybe I should set myself a budget each month for 'bits and pieces' so that I've got a little bit of money to spend on me. I didn't get into debt overnight and unfortunately I won't get out of it overnight either and I'm just a bit worried that eventually I'll get fed up of it all and the old me will creep back and start thinking 's*d it it's only £100 I'll stick it on my credit card". When I started I got a real kick out of each NSD that I managed and every pound I didn't spend - I just need to get that mojo back.

Onwards and upwards

Bet x

In_Debt_Bet

I feel as if I've let things slip a bit lately. I was hoping for a no spend day yesterday but ended up paying £90 for a boiler service :eek: when I made the appointment the lady I spoke to advised that they would send out an invoice after the event and I could pay then so there was no need to pay straight away, however once the work was finished the chap produced one of those card machines so he clearly was expecting payment, as a result my overdraft has gone up a bit but at least I didn't reach for the credit card. The good news is that although in boiler terms it is very old (still a lot younger than me though:() it passed the service okay and is still safe to use.

Things are not very good at home, we had a nice weekend but OH has gone into one of his moods again because I questioned his colour scheme for decorating one of the rooms and also said that I didn't like black leather sofas - apologies to anyone who has one, but I'm just not a fan of black leather or black furniture generally, I tried to reason with him but he just sees it as a personal attack on him and then goes into a sulk. Oh well I expect he'll get over it eventually.

Bet x

In_Debt_Bet

Dear Diary

I must admit I'm feeling a bit fed up at the moment, I've been struggling with neck/shoulder pain for several months now and now I think I have an infection in my wisdom tooth, you would have thought that would help with the diet but alas no I'm still managing to eat. OH suggested gargling with rum which did seem to help so I may try that again later - purely for medicinal purposes of course .

The weekend wasn't too bad money wise - £5.00 for Zumba and £43 groceries. My debt isn't going down as quickly as I would like, each time I think I've nearly got the overdraft down something happens which causes me to dip into it and I don't see that changing much before Christmas, will just need to try to keep a more careful eye on spending, I think a few bits and pieces have been missed off on the the spending diary here and there and that needs to stop.

OH and I were decorating the spare room at the weekend when he came down and announced that the door had locked itself, it turned out to be a fault in the mechanism and the lever thing that closes the door had become locked in place and wasn't moving when we lifted the handle, luckily he was able to get his tools and take the whole handle off so we could open the door, not sure what we would have done if we had been inside the room at the time, probably facing a bill for a replacement door and frame. I'm beginning to wonder if we don't have a ghost in the house, first of all there is the tv that switches itself on unless we unplug it from the mains and now a door that locks itself - good job I'm not superstitious :eek:

I must pop to shops at some point this week as my stash of halloween candy for the trick or treaters seems to have evaporated, I have a feeling OH may know something about that.

Have a good week everyone

Bet x

In_Debt_Bet

Dear Diary

I need to get my backside back into gear. I've been neglecting my spending diary - it must be at least two weeks since I last updated it, I've also fallen back into the habit of buying lunch at work - not every day but on at least 2 days a week I've been buying food instead of bringing it in. This has to stop from now - gives self a very stern look and waggles finger!

This month I've spent about £60 on treatments for my neck and shoulder, it is improving but very slowly. Someone recommend a Chiropractor to me but to be honest I know that will be more money so I haven't made any appointments yet. I am thinking about getting a TENS machine, according to the reviews on Amazon they are really good and I've seen one at around £25.

I'm also conscious that apart from buying some cards and gift wrap I still have not made any progress towards getting ready for Christmas so I need to start putting some money and thought into this.

Goals for this weekend

• Paint skirting boards and door frame in kitchen and utility room
• Give the house a good clean
• Catch up on laundry, maybe even do some ironing
• Tidy drawers in bedroom - did this a couple of weeks ago but somehow they seem to be in chaos again
• Go through food cupboards, fridge and freezer, plan some meals for next week, if possible avoid the supermarket but if I need to go make sure I spend as little money as possible.

OH is out tonight so I'm going to indulge in a nice bubble bath maybe a glass or two of wine :beer:, slapping on a facepack, painting my toenails and catching up on Strictly Come Dancing

Take care all

Bet x

In_Debt_Bet

Dear Diary

Firstly a very belated Happy New Year.

I'm sorry I have neglected you for a while and I must confess to a few slip ups on the debt busting front along the way but I think I've got my mojo back again. Every time I'm tempted to buy something I remind myself that over £400 of my salary is going on paying off my debt :eek:.

I finally had an appt for my NHS physio - although it turned out this was only an appraisal and I was advised it could be another 4 weeks until I hear about an appointment. In the meantime I'm paying privately for physio and also seeing a chiropractor which at £170 a month is eating into money that could be going towards my debt unfortunately I'm in a far amount of discomfort and really feel I need to put my health first. Other not so good news I dropped my mobile phone and the glass screen is pretty much kaput, at least the phone is still working so I'll keep it going for as long as I can while I save up for a replacement, my contract expires in October and I'm going to go onto pay as you go then.

Now for the good news I received a bonus of £1500, which has pretty much been spent as below

£400 - Barclaycard overpayment
£185 - Fix car brakes
£300 - Savings/Emergency fund
£100 - Next card overpayment
£400 - Clear overdraft :T

I've started checking bills and receipts more carefully, last week I purchased a couple of products on special offer but was charged full price, luckily I noticed and got the money back but that was £4.12 I could potentially have lost. I dread to think how many times this has happened over the years and has been missed by me. I've also cancelled caller display and the 1571 option on my BT bill, thats £3.50 a month or £42 a year saved.

I'm really pleased that I've finally started a savings fund, hopefully I can leave it to mount up for a while and won't need to break into if for anything - keeping my fingers firmly crossed as my car MOT is due at the end of March.

As expected my diet and fitness new years resolutions have been complete non-events - I just need to find my mojo for this as well as debt busting and then there will be no stopping me :rotfl:

Bet x

In_Debt_Bet

Dear Diary

Things seem to be ticking along. Good news for today is that the statement for my M&S card came through and the balance left has dropped to below £1000. I've updated current totals below, unfortunately the Barclaycard crept up as I was using it to fund physio and chiropractic treatments but I have got this in hand and have now budgetted for these, if the NHS doesn't come through soon I'll have to review them and maybe go down to fortnightly treatments.

Barclaycard £10,600
Sainsburys card £1545
Opus card £659
M&S card £980
Next directory £341

Other good news 2 no spend days so far this week as I've also started taking my lunch to work again, I've been scouring the web for ideas to give me a break from crackers and Philadelphia, as a result I've also developed something of an obsession with Pinterest

Hope everyone is having a good week, good luck to all those affected by the terrible weather.

Bet x