Debt free by 40 -- 19 Months and counting

mizmir

debtfreewannabe321 wrote: »

P.s I'm using the YNAB thing still but not put anything into it yet as I was getting all confused so decided to start afresh for Feb and deleted all January's stuff that i'd put in. Is it me or is it tricky to get the hang of.. I know i'm a bit of a ditz but honestly it had me totally stumped :rotfl:

I got confused to start because I tried to put everything in. Then I went back to their videos and it seems to work best if you start with the money you have in hand and budget that - rather than doing a full budget. I have a budget I had already done on a spreadsheet so I filled in the categories from there but mostly without anything in there - and I chose the priorities that the money we had left for this month had to cover (as I started mid month). When OH gets paid I will add in all the rest for February. It is a different way of thinking but it means you are working with the money that is actually coming in - but you have "pots" for all your expenditure to remind you that you need to be carrying forward for things that are coming up.

GreenNinja

Hi again!

Thanks for the tip on the Santander 123 account, will look into that one!

I have also "liked" your facebook page, you have some lovely things, will hopefully be placing an order very soon.

:T

StressedSteph

Hi Mizmir & GreenNinja


So glad lots of people seem to be finding YNAB. Think it will really help people.


Hi GreenNinja


Thanks loads for looking up my Facebo0k page. Every Like helps xxx

StressedSteph

Morning,


Had a slightly stressful morning because S#ntander blocked me out of my account because they suspected fraud, but it was just me doing late night transfers and bill payments .


Had to spend 20 minutes on the phone to three different departments to get it unblocked. Good to see they are vigilant about fraud though I suppose so I shouldn't complain.


Have balanced my online banking with my YNAB budget this morning. All seems to be ticking over quietly. I have about £450 not budgeted yet, but I have stuck it in the mortgage pot.


I have other cc's to pay, but hubby is working for someone different this week and I am scared to pay cc's in case his employer is late paying and then I can't pay the mortgage.
Would much sooner default on CC's rather than my
mortgage :eek:.


It's such a pain hubby being self-employed, you are reliant on quick payers and when its someone new you just never know if the payment will be forthcoming or not. Just another reason why I need to get a months wages buffer into our account as a priority so I don't need to panic so much.


Not much else to report really. Got to get the pigs and sheep booked into the abattoir for next week. Will cost £130 to get them slaughtered but then we will have a freezer full of meat and the extra feeds costs will stop. Win win (maybe not for the animals though )


Speak later xx

FinanciallyUnsavvy

The poor piggies and sheep!! ....happy human bellies though.. haha! I take it you live on a working farm then? That's so cool. Bet it must be hard work?

Hopefully your OH's new employer is a good payer. Must be stressful to never be 100% sure when the money is going to arrive.

Glad you got the bank sorted - quite annoying, but you're right, at least it means they're quite vigilant about fraudulent/unusual activity. I suppose it's because it's a new account they won't be used to your usual "activity patterns" so hopefully iti won't happen again!

Hope you have a good day x

debtfreewannabe321

I also get random calls from my bank about fraud. The last time it happened was because i'd taken out £100 (for my envelope system) and bought a huge shop, some clothes the kids needed and I was about to purchase something and my card was refused! Now I knew there was money in there as i'm so vigilant now with that sort of thing and lo and behold, 2 mins later I get a call saying "are you trying to buy something and where are you and how much " :eek: it's good they are hot on it but wow it's embarrassing when they do it whilst you are shopping Their excuse was that I don't really buy a lot of things at once so they thought it unusual activity lol ....

Could you send some bacon down this way, I never buy it anymore as so bl00dy expensive and fancy a bacon sarnie:rotfl::rotfl:

P.s hope your hubby is paid pronto!

StressedSteph

debtfreewannabe321 wrote: »

I also get random calls from my bank about fraud. The last time it happened was because i'd taken out £100 (for my envelope system) and bought a huge shop, some clothes the kids needed and I was about to purchase something and my card was refused! Now I knew there was money in there as i'm so vigilant now with that sort of thing and lo and behold, 2 mins later I get a call saying "are you trying to buy something and where are you and how much " :eek: it's good they are hot on it but wow it's embarrassing when they do it whilst you are shopping Their excuse was that I don't really buy a lot of things at once so they thought it unusual activity lol ....

Could you send some bacon down this way, I never buy it anymore as so bl00dy expensive and fancy a bacon sarnie:rotfl::rotfl:

P.s hope your hubby is paid pronto!

Hi DFW,


wow that would be annoying when you are out shopping and embarrassing .


I nearly didn't get my Tesco delivery this morning because they had blocked my card. Thankfully they tried again and it went through ok.


At least with my new budgeting system, I ACTUALLY had the money in the account.


Hehe I will send you a virtual bacon sarnie when they come back next week. To be honest I can't wait for them to go. They are so expensive to feed, I will be nearly £40 per week better off. I have decided not to keep any pigs or sheep this year to give me less expenses to battle the bills.


We will have two chest freezers full of meat which should see us through this year and part of next. We will probably run short before any 2015 animals are ready but I just need to cut costs at the moment.


I will probably do some meat birds later in the spring. But they are not too expensive to rear to a nice large size.


Hope you are having a good week xx

FinanciallyUnsavvy wrote: »

The poor piggies and sheep!! ....happy human bellies though.. haha! I take it you live on a working farm then? That's so cool. Bet it must be hard work?

Hopefully your OH's new employer is a good payer. Must be stressful to never be 100% sure when the money is going to arrive.

Glad you got the bank sorted - quite annoying, but you're right, at least it means they're quite vigilant about fraudulent/unusual activity. I suppose it's because it's a new account they won't be used to your usual "activity patterns" so hopefully iti won't happen again!

Hope you have a good day x

We live on a smallholding of about 6.5 acres. So we dabble in farming, with just a few of everything to fill the freezer.


Once the pigs and sheep have gone we will have enough pork and lamb for at least the whole of 2014. We have 5 turkeys in the freezer and a lot of turkey breasts. Then I will rear on some table meat birds this year for our chicken quota.


The only thing we haven't tackled yet is cows. But can't do that until our barn is altered to house them and when we are also out of debt. Its ok to do pigs and sheep on a shoestring, but vets bills for cows are HUGE and any disasters would cripple us at the moment.


I will get hubby to hand over the bill on Friday/Saturday and look at her hopefully . fingers crossed she will hand over a cheque. I love people paying direct in our account, but sometimes its just an excuse to get you away and then they are very slow actually doing it.


They live in a huge manor house and hubby is tiling their bathrooms. Hopefully they are as rich as they look and will just pay up immediately.. Fingers Crossed xx

FinanciallyUnsavvy

That's pretty amazing you'll have enough meat to see you through a whole year. The abattoir costs sound a lot but you'll save so much over the year, plus without the cost of rearing the animals - you'll be clearing those debts in no time

StressedSteph

Thanks FinanciallyUnsavvy - Can't wait to get the feed costs down. I have to laugh, I keep wanting to shorten your name but don't feel like I can type FU because it sounds rude :rotfl:


Morning All,


Balanced the bank against YNAB again this morning, good fun as quite a few direct debits have come out. although two that I didn't know were coming out so abit annoying.
I joined us to the AA breakdown on the 7th January and paid the first instalment then of £11.90, so I naturally thought the next DD would be a month from then (7th February). But no, they took it out today on the 29th...Grrrrr.


Also hubby advertising his building firm in the local free paper. Its a very popular paper round here and we get most of our work for it. But it is £23.11 per week :eek:. Yes I know, its expensive isn't it. We were paying more but I slightly reduced the size of the advert to lower the price. If we reduced it anymore it would be invisible.
Well they took their direct debit out this morning, but without me knowing they obviously had trouble taking last weeks money during the bank switch over, so it was a double £46.22. :mad:.


Will be so glad to start February, so the bank will have settled down by then and hopefully the nasty surprises will stop.
Super pleased to have over £800 sat in our account though. All accounted for and sat there to pay up coming bills, but using the YNAB budget there is no temptation to spend any because I KNOW it is all spoken for.


Another nice bit of info - I allocate £20 per week for my FUN money, this sounds a lot but I do use it to buy fabrics for my craft business as well. I ought to fund that separately but too broke at the moment.
Well don't think I am going to need to buy anything this week, so my £20 will roll over to next week . I like the idea of money rolling over, unspent.


Had abit of good news last night. A local shop that stocks some of my crafts has sold out of my draught excluders. I should be getting about £47.50 back from them at the end of the week :T.


I need to get sewing again today, I have got orders to complete, and more stock to make for the shop. Seem to have lost my mojo abit recently and need to get going again. I have a nasty habit of lacking motivation when I am home alone.
#Lazy

StressedSteph

Feeling a little frustrated that my debt levels are not going down.
I seem to only just about be able to make the minimum payments during January and February.


Really hoping that by the time I get to March I can start properly over-paying on my B#rclaycard like I had planned.


I think it probably takes time after a bank switch for your account to settle down. We definitely lost money switching over as we had some credit left on the overdraft, which we obviously lost when we moved.


On the subject of B#rclays, I still haven't had a reply from my letter yet. eeekk. Super nervous about that and wish I knew how they were going to play it. I wrote a what I feel was a nice letter, without being nasty to them and offered a payment schedule and lots of promises to definitely honour the debt and pay it off etc etc. Do hope they are kind back