Enjoying the Sunshine whilst Saving for the Rainy Day

debtfreewannabe321

I seem to be leaking money at the moment after my frugal few days :eek:! I've just spent £150 on presents for ds1's birthday :eek: (5 things!!!) and £35 on a gilet for myself after last years one has decided to fall apart (suppose it's what you expect from primarni huh?!) and £225 on signing up to plu$net on an 18month contract!!! Plus net worked out as follows: £155.88 on 12 months up front line rental (to save £3 a month!) £55 on delivery & installation charges, and also the first month's bill. So the emergency fund has literally been cleaned out :eek::eek: However if my cashback goes through I should have £157.50 back from plu$net, £5.10 from J0ules (my gilet and a gift for ds1) and I also got £5.50 back from the rugby site I got ds1's spider man rugby shirt from (his main b-day pressie).

So anyway back to plu$net, my bill will be £13.99 for the first 6 months (line rental already paid), this is for their top broadband, their call package included (free calls to o8 and landlines) and after that it will be £24.99. SO for one year it will cost me £439.76 (this includes the installation & p&p too), if cashback goes through successfully it will cost me £282.26, v1rgin would have cost me £804! SO without cashback I still have saved £364, with cashback I will have saved £521 :eek: I have worked out with and without cashback as I never rely on it until it's in my bank account

I've kind of found a solution for the freeview too (sold my old sky box ) after asking about, my BIL uses a decent one which he got refurbished and costing £60. I think we will also get this one but next month now as funds are too low this month. I am expecting next month to be a little expensive as one contract comes to an end but I start paying for the new one so I will only see the benefits from November's bills I think

Anyway all that maths has fried my brain! I will be back.....

But very happy, ds1's birthday gifts all sorted and done as is the broadband & phone line :T

debtfreewannabe321

Ok just done my budget for the next two weeks.
Money in= 47.60 x2 child benefit , 418 tenancy money, 250 tax credits. £768 (thereabouts)
Money out=£60 kids clubs (including rainbows for a whole term), £200 food (hoping to spend less) £20 petrol, £5 birthday present for a party. £285.

Leftover- £483! So with this I need to top up funds, £60 into my son's savings (from the £60 I give him he's asked that I save £30 from each month for him and I used it by accident the other day for something else! ) , 300 back to emergency fund, and any extra to the ISA here's hoping it all goes to plan and I have no more surprise spends

please-let-me-be-lucky

I feel similar to you, tired all the time, weak and a bit dizzy. I hadn't realised the connection to totm until you pointed it out, but it's the same for me too this week. Think we should make a deal that we both get checked out?! Xx

debtfreewannabe321

Morning!

Well Yesterday I was super busy after my lazy weekend. I think I overdid it a little though as I feel really full of cold again today (i'll never learn!) Shopping is done until next week though, all the beds are done & I hoovered /tidied & polished throughout the house. You wouldn't believe it if you saw my house today though. !!

DD is off today she's been complaining of a tummy ache all morning but I got her dressed anyway and brought her into school for them to turn around and tell me to take her home as 4 went home sick with some tummy bug yesterday! So she's currently watching Mamma Mia on the sofa! There's a flash sale on at the £ntertainer today but every time I try to get on and put things in my basket it empties it back out again. Quite frustrating really!

I've done my banking and i'm officially broke until the next lot of money comes in. The window cleaner turned up unannounced (again) so I had to borrow £10 from an account to pay him. The change will pay for youth club later. By the time all these unaccounted for spends finish I will be broke even after my money comes in! :wall: Don't you just hate months/days/weeks like these! I've given ds1 the cheque for the school trip he was invited on but now he's dithering about whether or not he wants to go :mad:. So I have to keep the £50 at hand in case he decides on a yes he does want to go now! I also have to pay for zoo passes soon as we're going to visit Santa there in December, we could just pay for the day but it works out more cost effective for us to get passes for a whole year as we're so close. This has all come about in the last day or so too as my DH's sister is a bossy so and so :mad: she tried to get tickets to harrods for their santa and the afternoon tea, however (ThankfullY) they were sold out! So she's now decided on the zoo and we've got to get tickets now, she's really made me quite mad with her organisation, bossiness & general treating us all like kids :mad: we've also booked to go to the theatre to watch panto near her as she wanted everyone to go together. I usually stick my foot down and say NO. Because I relented on the theatre this year she's now pushing her luck about santa, trips here and there and so on and so forth! I ordered DD a calendar the other day after a mutual friend of ours posted a link to a cheap frozen one on line and then SIL messages me to say she's bought DD one for xmas, I say I've already ordered it and guess what, she tells me to give it to someone else as she's sorted it out already :mad: WTH! Thing is she will be giving her presents to DD before xmas so I know she will go ahead and give it because she just does as she pleases and I will now need to find someone to give mine to even though I only have nephews who aren't interested in it . grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. Feeling really ranty about her today and DH just ignores it all and lets me get on with telling her yes or no even though it's his sister!!! He tells me she's always been like it and I should not have relented because now she will just want more and more. Urgh!

Sorry for the rant but we're on such a tight budget anyway and now we're going to have to spend £300 upwards on just a couple of trips to please her am proper fed up about it!!

Nothing else going on here as you can tell I'm having a bad week. I could rant forever on things that have gone wrong but I won't so will leave it at that :rotfl::o

debtfreewannabe321

please-let-me-be-lucky wrote: »

I feel similar to you, tired all the time, weak and a bit dizzy. I hadn't realised the connection to totm until you pointed it out, but it's the same for me too this week. Think we should make a deal that we both get checked out?! Xx

I was going to go this morning after popping the kids into school but now dd is off so I will have to wait until next week when I think I will be feeling better again?! I think I might wait until the next time I'm due on as I am convinced it's anaemia and it's always worse around that time of the month. I've always been borderline anaemic even when I felt ok (and was having bloods checked for something else) I have a low white blood cell count (think that's right?) which means my immune system seems to get battered every time I get sick. My DH's niece has the same problem strangely enough and when we both get ill we get it worse than people with a normal blood count because their immune system can attack the bug better (I think I've remembered that right from what dr said) but that added to the anaemia that I always seem to have means I often feel weak, dizzy and sick and there isn't a whole lot I can do about it hence why I dither about going to the drs to be told they can't do much . Gosh I am on a right whinge today! I do apologise to anyone reading :D

Skint_but_Optimistic

Thats sounds nasty Dfw. make sure you do get checked out. Its easily to overlook symptoms and think they are nothing, then they can come back and haunt you. xx It sounds a little like me you have lost your discipline a bit with spending, I am refocussing at the moment. Need to create some slack for me and then I can face things feeling a little calmer.

liltdiddylilt

I wrote a lot... and then I deleted it. You sum it up yourself very quickly.
- Hubby is useless and you have to tell her yourself.
- "We're doing it to please her."

Tell her you do not under any circumstances have the money for Christmas presents AND trips. And so therefore you relented on the one trip that your family will enjoy, but unfortunately you have no budget for anything else. So unless she is paying, you're sorry but you can't afford it.

Text, email, anything she can't argue with mid-sentence.

Lots of hugs to you. Leaked money should come back to you & Plusnet are really good if anything happens with your broadband router though, get on the phone to them right away. They are quick at sending out new ones and the routers aren't the greatest quality

Hugs to you!!

Edit: 2 posts whilst I was cogitating! Ref the anaemia, do you take iron tablets? Best way to help you absorb iron is with vitamin C. Also note that iron found in meat and fish is absorbed 2-3 times more efficiently than that in plants.. Iron deficiency is a huge factor in anaemia, and causes all of the symptoms you (and Lucky) experience... Hugs again xx

debtfreewannabe321

Skint_but_Optimistic wrote: »

Thats sounds nasty Dfw. make sure you do get checked out. Its easily to overlook symptoms and think they are nothing, then they can come back and haunt you. xx It sounds a little like me you have lost your discipline a bit with spending, I am refocussing at the moment. Need to create some slack for me and then I can face things feeling a little calmer.

Thing is I have a bit of paranoia about Dr's surgeries and I always put off going to see them I [weirdly] would rather see a dentist any day of the week ! I think you are very right about me having lost my focus. Have calmed down now after this mornings rant about SIl It's very easy for her to do all these things, she has one less child, a small house (from what I hear no mortgage), 2 very good incomes and therefore a much larger sum of "available" money to waste :cool: I must remember to say NO. However it's too late for the Santa thing at the zoo so I will suck it up and let YNAB deal with that one To be honest the passes were a god send when we last had them as DH would just take the kids off on a Saturday or Sunday and let me have a lay in/catch up on jobs / do nothing so I am quite looking forward to that again. The thing I objected to most was being brow beaten in to making that decision! Like you I am going to just re-focus and get on with it (what else can I do :rotfl:)

liltdiddylilt wrote: »

I wrote a lot... and then I deleted it. You sum it up yourself very quickly.
- Hubby is useless and you have to tell her yourself.
- "We're doing it to please her."

Tell her you do not under any circumstances have the money for Christmas presents AND trips. And so therefore you relented on the one trip that your family will enjoy, but unfortunately you have no budget for anything else. So unless she is paying, you're sorry but you can't afford it.

Text, email, anything she can't argue with mid-sentence.

Lots of hugs to you. Leaked money should come back to you & Plusnet are really good if anything happens with your broadband router though, get on the phone to them right away. They are quick at sending out new ones and the routers aren't the greatest quality

Hugs to you!!

Edit: 2 posts whilst I was cogitating! Ref the anaemia, do you take iron tablets? Best way to help you absorb iron is with vitamin C. Also note that iron found in meat and fish is absorbed 2-3 times more efficiently than that in plants.. Iron deficiency is a huge factor in anaemia, and causes all of the symptoms you (and Lucky) experience... Hugs again xx

I kind of wished we had organised the santa trip first as like I said above we can re-use the passes again for the local zoo (it's a large one too so good days out) but with the trip to the panto it's costing MORE than a yearly pass for everyone and is only a few hours (plus I need to factor in petrol as it's a 170ish mile round trip). I would have said yes to santa then and no to panto However I've learnt a valuable lesson on the SIL ....one that it seems everyone else has learned along the way but me! (and I've known her 17 years you'd think I would have got the memo about her :rotfl:)
I have been taking Iron supplements for 2 months now can you believe it which is why i'm even more confused at the symptoms of anaemia when i've been trying to rectify it (and obviously failing :rotfl:) I eat well (lots of greens and I try to eat red meat for the iron) and it still defeats me!
P.s Thanks for the tip about plus net i've just received the router this afternoon but not opened it yet I don't know anyone locally on the network so am hoping it's a good coverage round here. My mum is on it also after I got her a good cashback deal last year, but she's in London so closer to the exchanges so I guess I will just have to find out .

Right gotta run, school run and youth club and dinner and then maybe a sit down later if I'm lucky. It was like ground hog here today ...washing, cleaning, hoovering, and painting furniture (just to break up the monotony )

brizzledfw

Sending you hugs DFW..and any time you want me to come round and tell that SIL of yours a few home truths I will be there :rotfl:.. I think I'd rather enjoy it!

debtfreewannabe321

Good Morning!

Well I woke up this morning at 6am to the sound of someone's alarm going off, a whole hour before mine was due to start lulling me awake with sounds of the sea. This alarm was a BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEPBEEEEEEEEEEEEPBEEEEEEEEP one, a lot like an annoying car alarm! So anyway couldn't find the culprit anywhere in my house so opened the window and sure enough it's coming from someone elses house :eek: Not the neighbours either but a house opposite!! I can not believe that they didn't wake up by it as I could hear it in my house which is probably 50m away :eek:!! DH said it had gone off a few times this last week when he was getting up early but had been switched off relatively quickly. This one went off until 6.45am so I am feeling pretty annoyed at that. Thing is I couldn't pinpoint exactly which house it was so can't really go knocking and shouting ! Anyway got up and had a migraine (possibly from alarm?!) and felt dizzy (again) and had heart palpitations (again) and they seemed much worse today than yesterday, and yesterday had been worse than the previous day etc. So I decided to cancel what I was doing this morning to go to the drs and just as I was about to cancel my friend had messaged me to apologise and could she rearrange anyway :T. I took that as a sign and dropped kids off at school and went straight there, armed (I kid you not) with a book, a flask and a jumper (in case I needed a pillow to nap on :rotfl:) Well the surgery was so quiet I thought for a minute it was closed! I asked to be added to the shortest list and she told me they were all the same so I could just choose who I would prefer. This NEVER happens :eek:. However I go to the drs so rarely because I hate going that I didn't really know any of them so I chose the one with the same last name as my mum :rotfl:. She called me in after 5 mins of reading and was super nice and actually listened!! I am in shock honestly! She reminded me of my grandad's sister too in the way she was smiling and dressed (in a lovely red sari) so I am very happy I went. She also took time to look at my period calendar i'd duly filled out every month for the last 6 months and sympathised. Amazing what a little sympathy will do . She's given me tablets to ease the heavy periods (sorry TMI ) and also gave me forms for blood tests. I think she sensed I wouldn't go straight away (to the hospital) so asked the nurse there to do the bloods immediately after her next patient and so I had tablets that i've never heard of before (even though my complaints have been the same for 20 years now) and my bloods taken and I was in and out in 40 minutes from first arriving. I think I need a lie down! :rotfl: The usual time at that surgery is anywhere from 2 hours waiting time upwards and then the drs are so bored/tired/stressed/overworked (take your pick?) that they never actually listen to what you are saying. :T So today was a good surprise!

I have picked the tablets up after renewing my pre-payment certificate in the car on the way to the pharmacy so it's all done and dusted with until the blood test results come back. And what's the betting there will be nothing wrong too.....!

So today I need to be at the HS office for a meeting at 12.30, i'm tempted to go into town first and have a little wander around looking for a few pressies for xmas, I'd like most done by December if I can help it and I have a budget pot put aside for it so I won't need to spend anything from my main budget this month. :think:

DS1 brought home a letter last night inviting him to the local college for an open day for a-level students I remember my first day at college and I can't believe he's nearly old enough to go himself! However I said no he won't be going, and went straight on Googel and found alternatives in good old Lincs where we will be living by next year and told him to have a look at schools and colleges there. I've also asked friends on FB their opinions and have got some good suggestions from there, good ol'FB! I've arranged one open day (well I filled out a form and said we would be going and pressed send?) and that is in November so I just need to do a few more and he can choose where he likes best. Although I don't specifically know where we will be moving to I know I want to be within 15 miles of the city so I have chosen that as a good starting point as I know the buses will have a good service to and from there. So I guess I ought to be putting some extra cash aside for petrol in the upcoming months huh .

Right off to update ynab with the prescription charges and see if anything is pending from my account then I will have a little mooch on here before leaving for HS. I don't really have the energy for anything else