The march to financial freedom

Rollercoaster_Rach

Happy weekend Ali!

RR x

Ali-OK

Friday evening and I've paid myself today :j The Weekly and months accounts are all up to date, just need to print, check all receipts against expense sheet and file away over the weekend.

Busy work day, DS went to a friends straight from school and is due home soon - will be a late night for him, but alarm clock start of 7am tomorrow due to dropping him off at his Nan's and me heading off to work for the best part of the day.

Financials:

- bank account checked
- freepostcodelottery checked
- Nectar adpoints - up to 73
- Nectar Canvass - not fitting criteria still, getting slightly bored with being thrown out half way through, must stick with it though
- Nectar card value - £33.08 tonight!
- Inbox Pounds - £10.11, half way to that first £20 cheque in just 3 weeks and lots still to do on there :j
- A NSD :j

Monthly use CC is set up for payment on 17th Feb for full amount as usual.

CC2 statement should be available on line Mon or Tues - should be able to pay £360 to that (it does take into account Zapper cheque which hasn't arrived as yet).

Talking of the post, I don't think we've had a single item through the letterbox this week - a tad worrying but not expecting anything of note and definitely not missing the junk mail!

Birthday card for hand delivery near Mum's is ready to take tomorrow which saved a stamp and I'll be getting personal use petrol over there too, as it's 1p a litre cheaper than SB here and the cheapest out of all the petrol stations. Anyone else use petrolprices.com to get a weekly email on prices local to you? It's a good little tool.

I also checked my Noodle credit report and the mortgage was bang up to date with the new amount owing :j CCs always seems to be a few months behind, but nothing in there of note so that is good.

Hope everyone is keeping warm and dry in this horrid weather again today and looking forward to a good weekend.

Ali-OK

Rollercoaster_Rach wrote: »

Happy weekend Ali!

RR x

And you Rach - will you get a chance to chill? See you're doing work stuff tomorrow and your Mum's on Sunday.

Enjoy the red stuff and choccie :beer:

beanielou

I gave nectar canvas the dump because of getting screened out.

Ali-OK

beanielou wrote: »

I gave nectar canvas the dump because of getting screened out.

Would you believe it - thrown out again on a 100 pointer! DS did better, he got a 10 pointer.

Doing quite a few on Inbox Pounds which range from 28p to 50p a time and only Toluna seems to throw me out half way through. All the others are pretty good.

Will keep trying on Canvass, but I get better results logging into the site rather than doing them from the emails.

Hopefully I'll get another P!necone one through soon.

Ali-OK

The weekend is a bit upside down because of working today and I'm behind on the usual house stuff, so tomorrow will be a day of catching up on that.

Financials:
- bank account checked
- freepostcodelottery checked
- Nectar adpoints - sat on 73, think that's my quota for this week
- Nectar Canvass - 10 points for DS doing a survey
- Nectar card - up to £33.52 - about £20 of that is made up of adpoints and Canvass
- Nectar Search - will fire that up again for the new month
- Inbox Pounds - up to £10.56

Spends today - just personal use petrol and for the first time in months, got it spot on the £30 and not odd pence Little things please little minds and all that :rotfl:

Elec and gas readings done, we used an extra couple of elec units and quite a bit more gas last week. Still using the iPad for radio and has used just 40% of it's charge.

We had batch chilli for dinner tonight and pork is out of the freezer for dinner tomorrow, along with some cheese to make another batch of dog biscuits.

Haven't ordered the bone shaped cutters as yet - there's that, plus a good deal on 3.5w LED lightbulbs - will still cost almost £50 for 6, but am thinking about getting those as will reduce watts from the 3 x 30w left out of 6 (3 blown) to 6 x 3.5w and there's £5 off each bulb at the moment reduced from £13 down to £8. Will look at whether there's any cashback available too. Won't need to change the dimmer switch either, but I don't know how bright the new bulbs will be, even with the lumens and angle information. There's still alot of guess work with energy saving bulbs IMO and I've not been impressed with their longevity to date on the ones we have had.

Much easier to know where we are cost wise with candles

I need to get my thoughts clear on goals for February, but think it'll be finishing the study clear out and painting the kitchen and utility during half term. Stuck on how to get the venetian blinds down at the moment - will probably end up phoning the local company that installed them to ask!

Hope everyone is having a good weekend. A bit blustery here but looked like a lovely sunny day from inside the office I was working from!

Ali-OK

So much for getting lots done today, after breakfast and walking the dogs in glorious sunshine, I came over all head swimming and shaky, very tired and took myself back off to bed until lunchtime. Steadily got better as the afternoon has gone on so done some housework and sat on MSE.

Financials:
- bank account checked. Mortgage capital payment going out tomorrow for £707 :j which will bring that down to £132,043.

- freepostcodelottery checked
- Nectar card up to £33.63
- Inbox pounds up to a nice £11.57.

DS wanted something from his online gaming site, so he's paid me the cash for it and I've used my monthly use CC. I'm going to hold that cash and pay it off CC2 and cover the amount from my bank account next month. I have a little table with columns for home/work/petrol etc for the monthly use CC so I note every purchase and update the budget the next month with the ongoing total to pay. I'm finding it an added useful way to up the debt payment amount.

He's also in an online competition starting on Wednesday evening - his 'team' is with a school friend and 3 others from Sweden!

I have spent £6.95 in Amazon today, with 6.3% cashback via TCB for some Hoppi candles. I'm hoping they'll help my sinus problems that I seem to get more often than not. Osteo has mentioned it before, but at £25 for someone else to do it, I can do it for £1.40! Free delivery and 10 candles should be with me later this week.

I've also swapped a load of £2 coins with DS from his pocket money stash - so have £18 in those. 1 more coin and those will be banked and paid off CC2, though no plans to spend in a shop at the moment. Can see prescriptions on the horizon though

Dishwasher has been on and unloaded, roast pork loin and trimmings was enjoyed for dinner, cheesey dog biscuits made and approved by both doglets. Haven't ordered the cutters either - I need to hold back in case I need to re-work my budget depending on whether ex's maintenance payment arrives in my account tomorrow or not.

My re-listed eBay item didn't sell today either, so I'll take that to the car boot sale with me in the Spring. I need to look in the local paper as sometimes there's an indoor one that is fairly local to us.

Our corner shop was robbed last week :eek: and we may have seen something/someone as it was around the time we were waiting for DS's transport to school. I'll pop in there tomorrow to find out more and see if we can help - cars that stopped, people we saw, etc. There was one unusual thing that stood out, but could be irrelevant.

DS is out of the bath, so I'm going to go and have one and then prep his bags for school and my stuff for work. Want to try and get 2 more billable days to bring me up to an average month income, which will be great if I can, as I'm only working 3 weeks out of the 4 and taking half term off.

One birthday card left to write for February as well that is postal, so that needs to be sent off by mid-week I think. Then I must start on the March list - there's a birthday everyday from 7th to 14th, 2 on 3rd and 2 later in the month, plus Mothers Day :eek:

Hope everyone has had a good weekend

Ali-OK

Mucho excitement as I phoned mortgage company and they confirmed receipt of my £707 capital payment this morning :j Apparently the letter will take 5-7 days to arrive, compared to 7-10 days last month. Judging by still no post, if anything arrives at all it'll be a miracle :rotfl:

But my Zapper cheque should be in there somewhere :mad: No idea why no post, haven't seen a neighbour to ask if they are experiencing the same, but think I'll end up phoning our local sorting office tomorrow. It's all very odd.

Financials:
- bank account checked and ex has paid DS's maintenance - pleased and relieved The bone cutters purchase is back on :j
- freepostcodelottery checked
- Nectar adpoints - new week and 58 points clocked up whilst dinner was cooking (and I remembered to put the veg on unlike the other week )
- Nectar search - started on the new month for that and up to 12 points. Aiming for 4 pts a day, as I also get 1p for searches on Inbox Pounds plus a bonus every 4 consecutive days, so am sharing my time out across both
-Nectar card value - up a little to £33.69
- Inbox Pounds - up at £12.00

I need to go back to writing a comprehensive To Do list as feel I'm slipping a bit with money making from decluttering, specifically getting back to the book piles in the study and see if there's anything else that can go on eBay (sure there must be).

I aim to pay £400 off CC2 this month plus the car payment at £144.27 - a total of £544.27. The £55 I paid off last week has gone into Jan which totalled £589.27.

I've calculated that if I keep some of my pay back this month and carry it forward to March, I'll be able to pay both the cars insurance and have £300 towards the £5,806 to pay on the car. Meaning I'll do a bank transfer early April for £5,500 and save a bit on the fee with the MBNA CC. That's the plan anyway, a while to go until we get there.

This month then:
- Finish study clear out, clean and re-organise
- Paint the kitchen and utility room
- Find more things to eBay
- Sort March birthday presents and cards
- Book Tank Fest tickets and accommodation for June
- Get dog bone cutters
- Use £11 for 2 cinema codes I bought last month during half term
- Decide on gas and elec company switching and start ball rolling

That should keep me going

mooomin

What online game is your son playing?

Ali-OK

World of Tanks is his game of choice

Fits right in with the Bovington and Muckleburgh tank museum trips we want to do this year. Can't say I'm overly excited, but he definitely is