Moving On Up In 2014

Cinny91

Hey Ruby! I think crumbles are going to be a corner stone in our diet over the next few weeks. Started hoarding jars in the hope we can get a little jam making going, such a wild life!

Returned the wallpaper yesterday, so that's £25 on it's way back to OH's account. We did have a look around for flooring but I didn't feel like the prices were that good (they did have some lovely hardwood flooring for £5 per sqm, but the boxes were 3sq so we'd have to over buy and it rocketed the price ) So I'm going to go begging over the weekend, see what the place we got the rest of our flooring from has going for cheapsies

OH's car has also been in the garage for the third time these last few weeks, which is no fun! It's cost us £300 this month in seemingly pointless repairs so we were a little apprehensive over what this bill would be. Pretty amazingly the garage called this morning to say they think they've fixed it, totally "free" of charge Just hope this really is it fixed, OH does an insane amount of travelling and the whole reason we got that car was because it was meant to be "reliable" and "for life"

Finally changed our voting address this morning, we were so good in getting everything else changed pretty much the day after we moved, this one just slipped through the net. We both thought the other had sorted it until we got a letter through the post last week. Glad it's sorted now!

Off out for tea tonight as 1) it's date night and 2) OH hasn't had to pay a massive repair bill. We're keeping it fancy as we do, classy as the two classy things that we are. £6.99 all you can eat burger bar at our local

Was worried I'd end up spending on my debit card next week and make it impossible to repay £350 this month.. until I realised I'll be taking the money out on Friday to repay my Grandparents, so I'll really have no choice! :beer:

Cinny91

Having a very productive week this week, rather alarming to be honest!

Was mulling over a potential challenge for next month and I think I've settled on it, needs a few days of tweaking and letting it "sit" with me (does that even make sense?!) before I 100% commit, because it's going to be a toughie where one little slip up will throw it down the toilet. Fun!

But this morning I opened up a new ISA, which is where I'll be stashing my house savings once the debt is over with. Will be keeping my regular saver and popping money in there each week for fun things like annual bills and boring things like Christmas

Also registered a loyalty card we picked up from the pub last night, give you an instant £2.50 discount on your next meal and every little helps!

Going to get OH to pop to Tesco (near his work) at some point to pick up some ink recycling bags.. is that still how it works?! Have 6 cartridges sat in my desk at work, so they'll come in handy for cinema vouchers

Just waiting on getting paid now! Will go to the bank in the morning, and I'm just so excited to make a big alteration to my signature!

Cinny91

Today's the day! £350 out of the bank this morning to repay my Grandparents. Debt down to £550 :beer:

OH is off work today, going to get some weird sounding cleaning fluid for his car. Asked him to pop into Tesco and see how we go about recycling ink cartridge, so we'll see if he remembers No biggie if not, I can pop in over the weekend.

Trying to keep myself doing something so I feel like I'm making progress. So I've raised a case on some cashback that never tracked. Also found 20p roadkill on my way into work, and made a little shopping list for the bits I'll need to pick up tomorrow. Really need to stick to that!

Need to pop to the garden centre after work to pick up a sack of Ryder's food. Looking back on my bank statement I last got him a bag on the 30th of July, so he's a pretty cheap pooch to keep! Attempting to get too the butchers before it closes to get him a bone for tomorrow.

Hope everyone has a nice weekend! Starting my cash-only-no-debit September early. Will update my signature with the September challenge on Monday!

ruby_eskimo

Woohoo on reducing the debt again! I'm also moving more towards paying cash for things and leaving the debit card at home. Have had a few slip ups this month but I'm doing better than I was!

Caramel147

Just read your whole diary. You're doing a fantastic job busting through that debt! I'm subscribing.

alioops78

Yay to getting to £550 debt left, you'll blitz that in no time at all.

Think I'll suggest no debit spending to DH as he's absolutely terrible for over spending and not having anything left. He balance transferred his overdraft, didn't get rid of it as he 'needed' the security blanket and is now back into it again. This might be the thing to open his eyes although he's made a killing on eb*y recently so he is trying.

Have a great weekend too whatever your plans are. Think we're going to be doing more sorting out as only 9 weeks until my due date and still no cotbed built :eek:

Cinny91

Thanks for the kind words, Caramel! Although I do pity you for having to endure my whole diary, I'm so wishy-washy it must have been a bit muddling I always feel like I jump into challenges without really giving it a great deal of thought so continually mess up :rotfl:

WHICH BRINGS ME TO *drum roll*

My Stupid September Challenge!

This month, I'm going to clear the last of my debt. All £550 of it. Which leaves me with a grand total £80 that has to cover.. well.. everything? Any food we need, any petrol I need, things for Ryder, trips out.. basically anything that's not a bill.

However, we have a freezer absolutely crammed with food (added two stickered packs of 60p turkey steaks to it last night ) and our store cupboard doesn't seem to have any holes in it. So on the food front, it really will just be a case of veggies as and when we need them Speaking of, it's turkey (would you believe!) enchiladas with salad for tea tonight. Using an Old El Paso dinner kit I snagged reduced for 49p

Went to my favourite place on Saturday.. the cash and carry :j Cheap thrills! I got 6kg of plain flour for £1, OH's favourite crisps for £1.49 a box (works out at 6p a pack over the 50p he pays from the supermarket) Also swung by Co-op to get some of their sharer bags of chocolates. They're down to £1.49 and two bags = one cinema ticket, so that's one Sunday sorted.

It's OH's payday on Friday, so we'll have a big money shuffle over the weekend. We're going out on Saturday for our tea, taking my Parents for their 30th anniversary, so I'm already looking forward to that.. despite us making 2 curries over the weekend

Hope you managed to get some things sorted over the weekend, Ali! And it's all about little steps, Ruby I had to use mine yesterday (not hurting myself too much over it as it was technically still August.. and OH paid me back!) but it's better than using it basically every day.

Cinny91

Afternoon! (just )

Last night I cashed out my Qmee, raided my paypal account and managed to buy my parents an egg cabinet, and a "have you put the chickens to bed?" sign. Guess it shows all the Qmee payments eventually add up

This morning I've signed up to a new website for product reviews, ticked off all the surveys so we'll see if anything comes of that! Reminded OH about our clubcard points (in his name) before the boost promotion ends this week, him doing it or not is another matter.

Little scary looking at my bank account atm. I have just enough, to the penny, for Ryder's insurance which comes out on Thursday then my account stands at £0 - with all the savers bar my isa standing at an equal figure! Roll on Friday is all I can say.

Wound up doing some baking yesterday afternoon, chocolate caramel pound cake and shortbread biscuits Need to refrain from baking more today as we have plenty for a few days. Tea tonight is pumpkin and amaretto pasta using a stickered pot of Glorious sauce. Need to take some dough out of the freezer for making garlic bread too. A true carb night if I ever did see it! Will add some veggies to the pasta/on the side to even it out a little :A

Need to pop to Mr A after work, or just at some point before tomorrow, to get a birthday card for my Brother/Anniversary card for my parents. But I still have £5 in my purse, so no worries there! Will just not have to get swayed by the veggies/fruit and will even stay away from the stickered items :eek:

Cinny91

Afternoon!

Managed to steer clear of the stickered items (it really is becoming a problem..) and spent £4 on some extremely pretty cards.

Pretty excited today because we're getting a *drumroll* DYSON! One of my Mum's clients gave her it yesterday, and she isn't a big Dyson fan so she's passing on the luck. I can't even lie over how excited I am, I'm telling everyone. It's only a year old, only "problem" is the attachments are missing. Which is no skin off my nose, I checked the model online and it costs over £400 :eek:

Joined a site yesterday afternoon where you get paid to blog, it's actually a pretty good site and I'm looking forward to getting stuck in. I microblog aimlessly for free so, if I can get my teeth into this it kind of makes sense.

Starting to get a little jittery over my phone, poor thing. I may or may not have dropped it in water at the start of summer, on top of that it's an iPhone so I'm surprised it even lasted that day. But recently it's steadily getting worse, the battery doesn't even last an hour sometimes. Been thinking over my options and I think the sensible choice would be to start saving for a replacement phone once I've cleared my debt (possibly a yellow iPhone 5c.. who knows) that I can pop my current SIM into to see me out of the rest of my contract (up in December) then I can sign up to a monthly rolling contract in the new year. Be a bit more difficult than simply upgrading my phone in November, but I don't want another two years of £40 payments.

Still just hanging tight for payday!

Cinny91

Morning!

I did something preeetty bad last night. Fell into my (free) overdraft, I'm a little annoyed with myself but it was a cake related emergency. Which I know sounds silly, but it was my Brother's 29th Birthday and at 7:30pm I found out no one had got him a cake! If I'd known earlier I would have just made him a cake, I had all the fixings for a nice simple Victoria sponge. But it was late, GBBO was due to start, and I found myself at Co-op buying two (admittedly reduced) cakes But my Brother was so chuffed, it was worth £3.50!

However, it was extremely un-MSE. And I blame his girlfriend for not carrying out her spouse duty of providing cake. No Swirly Martins for me for life!

But I did get the Dyson! It's an absolute dream, only problem is there's a wheel missing from the bottom which makes it impossible to use on our vinyl floor (it actually ate a small portion of the kitchen floor ) I've had a look around online and it looks like it'll cost about £5 to get the replacement parts, which is pretty sweet. However, we don't really need to repair it quite yet (we still have a henry we can use for the hard floors) so there's no rush

No major plans for this afternoon, I've been out the last two days so the house needs a clean and there's some ironing to do. Feeling a little rotten today, have a headache and sickness this morning. Decided what I needed to feel better was caramel cake and a gingerbread latte, which helped momentarily (both from my kitchen cupboard, so no £££ spent :A) Just want to crawl back into bed and sleep for 5eva. Think a to-do list is in order to keep me on track, can never say no to a good list

ETA: Had some Quidco pennies filter through to cancel out the cake, whoop!