Debt Destruction December!!!

rosiecheeksblossom

Hi all
How is everyone? I'm writing first, catching up with posts next. Today has been a SFD so that makes 3 so far.... haven't want to venture out in the wet cold and windy.
Prior to today, 3 days on the trot for spends - food shop, petrol, Christmas presents and last evening went to a pub quiz which my mum had organised for her bowling club. Didn't win the quiz or the raffle, but a cheap and enjoyable night.
Hope to have a few more days SF, at home all day organising works off duty tomorrow. Sunday I have a bank shift and then Monday & Tuesday I'm on nights again :-(.
Ahh well TTFN xx

LoveaDove

Happy Friday Everyone!! :j

Cottage Retreatist - Sorry to hear about your OH's somewhat rash decision, but as you predicted, that might be the way it went, it is a shame for it to be before Christmas though. Glad you're sorted for presents etc... I really feel for you though it must be a little taunting, but as NSK has said, better things are on the horizon! Keep your chin up! Look at a contingency fund. I walked out of a job that was running me into the ground earlier in the year and went into a completely different job in a completely different sector, and despite earning less I am a million times happier! You really do not always know what's around the corner!

Stewby - Please do not feel like a fraud. You have every right to feel a little low and stressed by an unexpected event which is impacting on your current goal, especially on the lead up to Christmas. It is really inconvenient and I would be very stressed if it were me! Time to re-re-budget! A dry house is certainly more important than an extra month of debt repayment. You can do it!

NinjaSavingKat wrote: »

Most of the day was spent travelling and I am NOT a good traveller at all....

-This does not bode well for September/October! :rotfl:

Re: Lapland- For 2 nights, 3 days yes, may be. But for a day? Saaaaay Whaaaaat?!

So today I have had a Spend day. I had to buy some Christmas presents on behalf of my Nan as she is finding it hard at 87 years of age to shop for her 3 children, 13 Grandchildren and 6 Great Grandchildren. I have taken responsibility of my nephew's presents and managed to wangle £33 worth of clothes and a DVD for £19.77 thanks to un-marked sale items (1/2 price at the till), which then had a further 25% off- bargains! She will be so proud, being a Frugal bean herself!

I have also got a few more items from my own Christmas 'to buy' list and have also purchased and donated £5.84 worth of food to my Local Foodbank.

So after work and my multiple shopping trips, I came home and had a lil bit of mulled wine (yum!) However, feeling a lil bit under the weather today. Will try and get my craft on and try and get a couple of my Christmas gifts made-up before I retire to bed for an early date night with my book!

*Finally* got my free cinema tickets for 'Catching Fire' tomorrow evening- CAN'T WAIT!!

Hope you are all keeping warm this eve!

Until tomorrow- night night!

Habibiboo

:wave:
* C-R, so sorry it's just gone from bad to worse, thank goodness Christmas is sorted though. Fingers crossed that you can get by in the short term and that a something new comes along for the new year, so that your long term plans can stay on track, wishing you well!

Spend day today as started the Christmas shopping but am within budget so far (largely because I'm without inspiration for what to get)!

Hope everyone gets a good weekend :wave:

luckystarr

Hello All

It's the weekend YAY !!!:beer:

Sorry to hear that things are not going to well with cottage_retreatist and stewby ... i really hope that things start to look up for you both really soon

Didn't manage a SFD today as we had ran out of essentials :mad: ... but never mind, tomorrow will be a spendy day:mad: so fingers crossed sunday will be a SFD .. i am back to work on Monday so fingers crossed the SFD's will be rolling in.

Enjoy your weekend everyone

EyesWideOpen

Reporting 3rd SFD, phew. Started to fear I wouldn't manage more this week. I have this urge to shop, wanting all sorts of things. It's annoying and distracting! Must be the pretty shop displays and all the advertising around. I shall have to walk around changing "needs not wants, needs not wants" wherever I go for the month of December!

Really sorry to hear of your hubby's rash decision Cottage but he must have been truly hurt. Look after each other.

abundant1972

Arghhh - fell at the last hurdle and spend £2.60... and £2.40 going to various spending tins!!! Tomorrow is a planned spend day, but Sunday should see me claiming another...

Hellish day... needed chips!!! I have no excuse!!! Although when I next do a shop I will buy in some frozen ones in case I get such cravings again!

Night all

stewby

Aw C-R. I am so sorry to hear that your hubby has handed in his notice. Like others have said, obviously being told he is no longer needed has damaged his pride and really hurt him. I hope that you get it all sorted soon.
I also agree that you should keep it as a contingency fund. After all, if you don't use it then you can pay it towards your debts afterwards. It would be awful if you ended up making more debt when you could have managed if you had saved.
I wish you all the best.
Hugs.

I was working all day today. Even ended up working until 21:30... not going to bother putting in for the extra pay as I haven't been paid for the extra hours I have done for the past two months.
Hopefully this means a bumper payout at the end of December.


Being a positive soul, I have been at work from 07:00 - 21:30 so I haven't been near a shop... SPEND FREE DAY!!!!
Hooray. Yep, we are cheering for every little "win" we get.
:j

Siouxsie32

cottage_retreatist wrote: »

hey NSK - no such luck - he handed in his resignation today so we will have 2 weeks less income than it should have been.

He only found out yesterday - I did try and get him to not do anything rash but that's not in his nature!!!

In terms of Xmas - all pressies are already bought and no major plans so we're ok there. The only thing is - do I continue to put all our excess this month to debt paying or hide it as contingency?

My heart says one thing and my head says another. I also believe in things happening for a reason but just wish it hasn't happened right now

x

Oh no, how awful I agree with the others - I think you should keep the cash and go into wallet lockdown! Only spend what you have to until things start looking up...which they will! Any chance of scaling back on the presents and taking some back?

Spend day of sorts for me today. Had a trip to the Post Office to post a little gift to one of my nieces followed by a necessary spend in the Body Shop using a voucher. Then a petrol top up (£30.01 :mad: but I found a penny at the door to the petrol station so my pretty spreadsheet is still pretty with no odd numbers :j). Found a 75p Brands Match coupon lurking by the bins :money: and received money off coupons from Sainsbury's today in the post as well so I need to get my supermarket shopping trips planned!

Day 6 and my budgets are still looking healthy...
Misc: £6.50/£100
Food: £0/£100 (this will be a different story tomorrow I think - I just scraped mould off the bread before toasting it!)
SFD: 4/15
Lots of goodies to go to the local food bank next week
Lots of stuff taken to the dump/charity shop/listed on ebay as well so the declutter part of the challenge is going quite well too!

Kerfuffle

Hi everybody,

Hugs to everybody that needs or wants some (they're free ).

Well I've had a couple of spendy days so I'm not doing as well as I should be on the SFD, hoping that it will balance out through the month though.

I've been making a list of anticipated income and expenditure for December and part way into January to try to establish how much I will have available to op the mortgage. At the moment it looks like I'm going to be a little bit short of my year end target, so I'm really having to batten down the hatches to achieve my goal. So some batch cooking has been taking place, and definitely no un-neccessary spends.

I now have 4 days off work and tomorrow my daughter and I are taking DGS to see Santa Claus for the very first time, so it will be interesting to see what he thinks of 'the man in red' :santa2:. Other than that I don't have any major plans other than to stay at home and keep warm ( -27oC today :snow_grin )

Anyway, enough waffle so the scores on the doors are:-

SFD 2 /15
Food 121.92/187.50 65.02%
Petrol /75.00
Hair /56.25
"Spend Money" /18.75
Post Office 5.69/18.75 30.34%
Food Bank 5.07/ 5.00 101.4%

Budget 132.68 / 361.25 = 36.72%

Personal Challenge
Declutter 11 / 10 (5 x Christmas stockings/2 x cushion covers/1 x pr trousers/single duvet/jacket/shopping bag).

thriftylass

siouxsie, sorry but being a biologist i would advice against scraping mold of bread and then eating it as you don't know how far inside it's grown. The only foods where this is safe to do are a lump of hard cheese like cheddar and hard fruit and veg like carrots. The rest is unsafe and not worth the health risk for a few pennies saved.

Will report back in tonight after our activities.