Diary of a spendy cow

mooomin

Morning all

Money stuff:

Current account: £190
Savings account: £1178.11 (withdrew some money for train tickets to London for a trip I'm making in February with some friends)
Food account: £186.38
Christmas account: £186.37 (that's an odd coincidence!)
Purse: £50 (weekly spend budget for next week as I'm off to London for three days for work)

I've been offered an extension to my contract at work but only for four days a week instead of five and only until the end of March :eek: By my rough calculations that would reduce my income by £400 per month :eek: :eek: but I would still be earning more than if I was temping full time based on my last temp job, or if I was on Jobseekers. I currently have an excess of around £500 per month, so in theory it would be do-able and there is a chance that when the projects I'm working on get closer to implementation that I could go back to five days again.

The only major downside is that I've been planning on a holiday in February to visit my brother but for two weeks due to how long it takes to get to him. I would only have five working days of holiday due to being reduced hours and contracted for three months so I would have to forego the holiday

I could make reductions in my budget - I would reduced my Christmas fund to £50 per month instead of £100 and would also reduce the grocery budget by £50 to try and make things a bit more comfortable for us.

What do you think, internet?

Ali-OK

Good morning Moomin,

Good news on the contract extension but like you say, makes things a little tricky in other areas - especially the holiday.

Would it be possible to push the holiday back to the proposed end of extension in March and hope the contract goes back to 5 days by then enabling you to have more holiday days?

Or stick with Feb and make the holiday 9 days and include both weekends, so only 5 working days off? That might be a bit too tiring (and short) with the travel, but heck you're doing London in a day!

Those are my thoughts but then I'm not the most creative of people for ideas

PS. Quidco - go to their site and click on Christmas Reward Game!

mooomin

I can't push the holiday back too far as he lives in the Middle East and so the temperatures will then be too hot for me!! Doing it in nine days over weekends might be an option...I'll get in touch with him and see. Thanks for the ideas

tomtombeanie

i think the weekends added on to a week idea sounds good; could you afford to tag on another day or two unpaid at all to extend it? your budget is looking good, working less will make it tight but you always rise to the challenge

beanielou

Yes, good idea to even just tag on a couple of extra days unpaid if you can.

Lurker1972

OMG, that was totally nomtastic!

mooomin

Glad you enjoyed it Lurker!!

Money things:

I've been in London for a few days with work and the accounts currently sit like this:

Current account: £170
Food: £173.23
Christmas: £137.37

I also have about £23 sitting in my purse.

My credit card has a decent balance on it, but I have a couple of bits and pieces to return before I figure out how badly I've overspent! I'll take any overspend from my savings account.

I've only managed 40 adpoints this week with being away but hope to max out the ones available to me later today. I got an email from Sainsbugs offering me £15 off a £60 shop so I need to look at Mysupermarket and figure out if I can get enough bargains to make it worthwhile. I wish they had my cat's food on offer :rotfl:

mooomin

One more Christmas present down.

I had bought Mr Mooo a posh DAB radio alarm clock, and mentioned it to him but he actually just wanted a wee one for the kitchen. So, I'll be getting £68 refunded and the new radio only cost £11 after my Te$co Boost vouchers were taken off :money:

He'll end up getting a few more bits and bobs, but I'm happy enough with what I've paid

Ali-OK

Frittata was a great success and DS has asked for it again :j He does have food fads - I can see it going on the menu weekly just like the chilli :rotfl: Thanks for the idea and recipe.

Have been eyeing up a couple of remaining chicken breasts in the freezer ready for Jambalaya to hit the meal plan.

How did you get on with the quick and healthy gammon LO quest?

mooomin

Ali-OK wrote: »

How did you get on with the quick and healthy gammon LO quest?

Not brilliantly, so we're having fritatta again for dinner tonight :rotfl: There is still an ungodly amount of gammon left, even after making soup yesterday. I'm going to have a gammon sandwich for lunch to help with it I think. It's neverending!

Not a lot else to report really. Went to see the Lion King musical last night. I was slightly underwhelmed but the puppets (?) were really impressive. We went for dinner first and thanks to the magic of Pizza Express vouchers I spent £4.75 on the whole evening - and the 75p was for a packet of fruit pastilles.

I'm up to 54 Nectar points but have exhausted all the videos. It really dries up once you've been using it for a few weeks.

I'll have an unexpected spend this week as our front door has gone insane with the rain we've had and swelled to the point where it's really hard to open or close it. We have a joiner coming to mend it today or tomorrow hopefully. That being said, it's six days till payday and there's still money in my bank account so hopefully I won't have to dip in to my savings too far.