Fighting to be Frugal

wegle

Ooooooo. I'm so going to try that soon. Sounds lush. Sorry no tips on how to stop it softening though. Congrats on the NSD too!!! Xx

HOK3Y

Hello Silly! :wave:

The fudge sounds delicious but I know if I make it and stick it in the fridge, there will be none left for me because I am married to a sugar monster with no shame when it comes to eating other peoples sweet treats! And seeing as he needs to lose a few pounds rather than add them, I'm putting your recipe to one side until Christmas! Thank you for sharing! X

Sounds like bargain central at the bakery counter - lucky duck! Not sure I could have walked past those myself and it's not always necessary to go without a treat here and there.

All the best on your DF journey. Xx

Silly_Spender

@wegle: Thank you!

@HOK3Y: Hiya welcome to the diary I must say whenever I've made it before it always gets snapped up quickly by my other half but I'm going to be rationing him as we're trying to eat healthier! Regarding the bakery bargains, there's only a little bit of bloomer bread left, I guess we overdid pudding last night

Piquant_2

If you use your card without thinking about it too much, you'll really have to leave it at home. This gives you plenty of time to consider whether you actually need to buy whatever it is you think you need!

I'm quite an old timer at this, and using my card was always my weakness, it was never quite real money to me. I agree that we all need treats but it is easy to tell yourself that you deserve it/ have earned it and so on. So many times I've scraped through the month because I've treated myself once too often.

To stop the fudge softening you could try leaving the dish on top of an ice pack, that might work, plus keeping it in a cool bag as long as possible.

Silly_Spender

@Piquant: A lot of that rings true with me! After a day at work I'll sometimes think "oh a little bag of white chocolate buttons wouldn't hurt" or I'll just go and have a look at what's on the special buys in Aldi. I'll mostly get things I certainly don't need.

Regarding the fudge, I did a test batch yesterday using the recipe I gave but used pink food colouring. Didn't work out as I guess the chocolatey mixture was too dark for it to go even dark pink, but never mind.

I could use ice packs and cool bags and stuff but I don't want it to sell at the bake sale, not be eaten until a few hours later and then people not like that it's gone a bit melty.

Going to look up new recipes I think that use sugar and not condensed milk. Will be tricky finding one that doesn't require use of a sugar thermometer but we'll see

Have checked my banking for today and all bills aside, I still have £120 to play with! If I can get as many NSDs as possible between now and next pay day (next Friday) I should be able to throw a nice bit at both the Argos card and the Overdraft fund! I can't foresee any expenses really. Going to the cinema with my best friend on Sunday but as I have a Cineworld Unlimited card, this won't be costing me anything! And I usually take a bottle of water or something with me and a bag of nuts rather than spend the fortunes they charge for sweets and drinks.

Should have a NSD today too as don't need anything! Got some lean steak mince in the fridge defrosting so I can make a bolognese tonight. Fella should be pleased, he loves bolognese

So today's treat, will be £20 out of my current account, and into the Overdraft fund and boy does it feel good to put money into there.

wegle

Great plan of action there and it's amazing how fulfilling it feels to start chucking money at the debts, makes me think why didn't I do it sooner!!

I'm sure you'll fly to next payday and be racking up those NSDs. And a free cinema trip is a brill bonus!

I'm sure you're fella will be well chuffed with a lovely dinner. Mine doesn't like any of the food I cook because I'm a veggie. He always complains there's no meat!! Haha!

HOK3Y

Oh you are on track and doing really well so just keep your resilience strong and your mood positive. You have lots of people rooting for you!

Have you tried googling the fudge problem for a solution? Might find exactly what you need that way.

Silly_Spender

@wegle: Thanks for the encouragement! I did try to be veggie once and I lasted about 4-5 months.... I do sometimes use vegetarian mince though and I enjoy eating Quorn from time to time

Just phoned Student Loans Company as I had a repayment agreement with them to pay back £60 per month for a year, which ended last month. Now the statement I get each year is for my loan, and stands at around £2500. I thought the repayments were being knocked off this, but it turns out I was wrong.

The repayments were for an overpayment of grants that were given to me in error (that's another story) and actually stand at £1590.

This is good and bad.

It does mean that I am a further £1600 in debt that I originally thought. The £2500 loan however, doesn't have to have anything paid back to it until I'm earning over a threshold, which I'm currently not.

The good thing this means is that £2500 I guess is "secured" debt, and I'll be able to clear the "unsecured" debt much much quicker!

The guy on the phone seemed very friendly but they were trying to push me to make a full balance payment, which obviously I can't do right now, and rather than set me up another repayment plan for £60 per month for a year, did it for 6 months instead.

I'm quite happy to have the argument that I simply can't afford to pay them back in full every 6 months, as after I've paid the overdraft and Argos card off, will be throwing money at them left right and center where I can.

So on one hand I'm quite pleased, on the other hand... I'm technically more in debt that I'd thought.

I think I'm going to go and eat some of the fudge now and try to keep calm.

wegle

Regards the student loan that will only kick in once you are earning a certain amount. I have the same. My student loan is £10,000. I started paying it off once I earned over £16,000.

For me, I don't count this as a loan, it has no affect on my credit rating. I see it as Student Tax. It comes directly out of my salary and is based on my earnings, the interest is minimal. It is not in my best interest to struggle to pay it off as I'm unlikely to be earning more than I am now for the rest of my life and the payments I will make through my salary up to the time I retire will not equal the balance so the remainder will be written off.

That said yours is for a relatively small amount so maybe once you do hit the threshold it might be worth just getting shot when you can, but either way it's not something to panic about.

The extra £1600 is a bummer but again it's not a huge amount and they can want a full settlement as much as they like, but if you haven't got it you can't give it to them, it's in their best interests to set up a regular manageable payment plan with you. Is this interest free? If so you're £60 arrangement will have it paid off in 2 years. There's a lot of creditors out there that would bite people's hands out for an arrangement that good!

Silly_Spender

@HOK3Y: Thanks for the encouragement! The support on this site is amazing I will google the fudge problem yeah I've looked before but I've only found other recipes which use boiling sugar and this scares me a bit

@Wegle: That's relieving if the threshold is £16k. I'm only contracted to part time at Asda but I generally do between 35-45 hours per week including overtime. This bring in around £1k at most every 4 weeks so my salary is around £13k maximum.

Have thought about it a little bit and yeah I'm not going to stress about it, just going to keep chipping away at the Argos card and Overdraft as they're my priority. The outstanding £1600 on the grant is interest free so not as high priority.

I will put this into my signature as well though as I'm going to be paying back £60 per month so seeing this as an increasing 'paid back percentage' will be encouraging