Here I go...

elfy1807

Ok.
A few days since my last post.
Here's a bit of an update.

Wednesday I went into the city with my mum.
I ended up spending £32.45 =(
But... in my defense - £14.99 was on new work shoes, which were desperately needed as my old ones were literally talking.
£8.50 was for my mum's birthday present on this tuesday coming, and £8.96 on my mum's mother's day present.

Yesterday was a NSD - kinda.
I went to Zumba (£5.80) out of my £10 "pleasure" allowance and my grandma gave me £10 "petrol" money.
My grandad has dementia and she is his carer and because of this, they are both housebound.
So me and my mum do her daily/weekly shopping for her, and she'll give us the odd tenner here and there as a thank you.
We used to make a fuss about it, but she'd just insist, so we've given up trying to refuse it.

And today is payday.
I recieved £505.
I've taken out £225, leaving £280 in the bank.
£218.81 for my car finance, £17.50 for my phone bill and £42.99 for my car insurance.
The £225 is going towards - £80 for board to my mum, £120 for petrol for the next 4 weeks - I fill up every other weekend, with a £60 allowance. I either fill up to the top or to £60, whichever comes first. Usually I only have to put in £45-£50 a fortnight to top up and the remaining from the £60 goe into my savings.
£20 goes towards my £10 weekly "pleasure" allowance. Which I'm sure you've realised doesn't work. I still had £20 left in my purse from last month, and normally I would put that away, but it's a tight month this month and I'm letting myself bring it over into this month. A bit cheating, but I've not been with it brilliantly recently, so I'm allowing myself this to get myself back into it. But I'm not planning on spending anything other than my £5.80 Zumba money each week.
The last £5 - I put £1.69 into my savings account to bring that up to a nice round £250 - 25% towards my £1000 emergency fund. Yay!! =D
The £3.31 from that went into my savings pot.

I've just counted it all up - I have £66 in £2 (I save these), £25 in £1, £37.30 in silver (5p, 10p, 20p & 50p) and £1.90 in copper (1p & 2p) making a grand total of £130.20. Woo!

The plans for this is to get it built up to a nice amount and pay it off my debt to my mum.
She won't be getting my £2 coins, so currently it's £64.20. I think I might aim for £100 before giving it to her - that would be just over 3% of my debt to her. Although I'll be working in %, I don't really fancy giving her oddments, so I'll be rounding to the nearest £5/£10.
I'd like to at least get under the £3000 owed to her by the end of this year.
Not a huge amount, but it's a start.

Anyway... enough ramble.
You know where I'm up to now.

Thanks to anyone that takes the time to read this, especially those who comment.

Let's get Debt Free!!!! =D

liltdiddylilt

Hiya....

Maintaining the weight sounds hard. I know I have a serious sweet tooth and zero willpower but my size 10 clothes are telling me to get a grip. Need to get on a diet but I resent the money to a weight loss group frankly! I prefer thr gym, but I live on my own with a 2 year old apart from 2 nights a week so no free time. I used to spend 3 hours a night in the gym, 6 nights a week. Not hat I lost more than a few pounds over the year.

Sooooo... what is with the £2 coins? Theyre doing no one any good just sat piling up in your room. By all means save tem, but with a purpose in mind rather than a superstition... or are you a magpie and love shiny things? I would save til I got to £100 then put it in the bank!! Real satisfaction in that

Hope you are ok. Is it this weekend you start new shifts? good luck!

elfy1807

I don't know what it is about the £2 coins.
Just always had a thing about saving them.
I have them currently in an old Canderel jar, and decided today that when it's filled, I'll do something with them.
Not sure what yet though.
I've only got 33 atm because I spent most of them in the last year.

I won't mention that I'm a bit of a numismatist and have a folder sitting with nearly £100 worth of coins because I like to collect coins and have a coin of pretty much every design of 50p, £1 and £2 coin from the UK. I don't have a Kew Gardens 50p though, and now everyone knows they're "rare", I have less chance of coming across it in my change. Ah well... they'll all forget soon and I'll soon get my mitts on one to complete my collection.

Maintaining weight is definitely harder than losing. My motivation is a lot less than it used to be, especially since I quit the gym. But I'm slowly getting back onto it and I lost half a pound this week, which I'm really pleased about as I had chinese takeaway at the weekend, discovered a slab of fruit cake (one of my favourites mmmm) in the cupboard and had 6 pancakes on pancake day.
As for a sweet tooth? I was given a whole mouthful. I love sweet stuff - cake and biscuits are my downfall. Chocolate can go do one though. Gave it up as a new year's resolution about 7 years ago, haven't eaten it since. Smell makes me gag now.

And I'm very well thanks. How are you?
Yes... new shifts start tomorrow. Thanks for the luck
Working 1130-530 tomorrow, and 12-4 on Sunday.
Extra dollar here I come
Shouldn't be too taxing - working tills all day tomorrow, and that's the busy period of the day so I shouldn't be too bored and then sunday will be doing my regular job on the arts & crafts department filling shelves, merchandising stock, pricing it, serving customers etc.

I thought I was being cool having everything planned for until next payday - mum's birthday, mother's day, the money I'm putting in a friend's wedding card in a couple of weekends. Thought, great, nothing else to splash out for, I've got it all covered.
Completely forgot I'm going to Nottingham on the 18th to see Russell Howard live. Ah well... I'm sure I can have an enjoyable day with my boyfriend without spending too much money

elfy1807

Morning.
Hope everyone is well.

Quick update from the weekend.
Worked on Saturday from 1130-530... was supposed to be working tills, but ended up on customer services as they've upped my till codes (meaning I can do refunds etc). I used to be on customer services when I first started, but due to disagreements with a colleague on there, I asked to move departments.
So 6 hours there (although technically only 5 and a half hours due to half an hour lunch, but I get on well with the person in charge of wages ;D haha)

After work I took the boy shopping so he could get his food for the week - since I've started full time budgeting, he's decided to get in on it cuz he wants to buy a new house within the next year or so, so he's set himself a £15 limit for food for work. I challenged him to getting it under a tenner - he tried, but didn't quite make it - cost £10.13. Near enough bless him.

I filled my car up as it was the "other" weekend on my "fill up every other weekend" and cost me £47. I have a £60 budget per fortnight for petrol, but doesn't usually cost me that much, but always like the have the backup.
The £13 (as well as anything from next fill up) will go into my savings at the end of the month (normally I'd do this straight after filling up, but I've got to drive to nottingham next week, so keeping it for now).

My friend then text me asking if I was out. Normally I say no as I'm at the boy's house and he lives about 8 miles away from where I live, and where my friends would be going out. But I thought I'd say yes for a change. So we went out. It cost the boy £6.40 for his two ciders - but I'm not gonna begrudge him them - we very rarely go out, and cost me not a single penny (other than the petrol I used to get to my home town and then back to the boy's) as I just don't drink very often - not even soft drinks, which I'm aware is quite unhealthy, but I just don't drink unless I'm really thirsty as it really bloats me and I end up jiggling with water in my stomach - you can actually hear it jiggling =/ Haha.

So a nice NSD for me on Saturday.
Then yesterday I was at work 12-4.
Hated being in there when it was so sunny outside and all I wanted to do was go to the seaside.
But the boy didn't want to go, so I minor sulked about it a bit.
Probably best though, cuz it would've cost petrol to get there, then I'd've wanted chips or donuts or ice cream (or all of them), screwing my diet and spending diet right up.
Ended up having a 2 hour nap instead (oops) and it was dark by the time we woke up anyway.

Another NSD for me yesterday because I had the intelligence to take food with me to his house instead of buying something from the supermarket (which was shut by the time I finished work anyway).
We watched an episode of Game of Thrones - I've not seen any (he's seen a few), so we've decided to catch up on that as a freebie activity.

I was feeling a bit down last night when I got home because I just feel like I've nothing to show.
My friends are all buying houses, having babies, getting married. Now I'm absolutely not ready for any of that right now, but everything about me is old news. Even my new car - which is just costing me £220 a month instead.
The only thing "exciting" that's happened to me recently is getting 6 extra hours at work - but to do that I now work 6 days a week.
But I suppose I can't spend anything whilst I'm stuck at work - just have to refrain from taking my purse with me so I don't buy the whole store.

I'm just about to get ready to go to work - start at 11, but first I have to pop to the bank as a nice big fat cheque from the HMRC has arrived with my name on it.
£315.95.
Get in.
That's going straight into my savings account, shooting that up to £565.95 and over 56% of the way to my £1000 emergency savings goal.
Boo yeah.

Think that's all for today.
Need to start thinking about how to boost my income. Due to my irregular working shifts (ranging from 830am to 815pm 6 days a week - 930-515 sundays) it's hard to get a second job that will accommodate around these hours.
I'll find something - but not leaflet distribution. I did this a couple of years ago - so not worth the hassle. I walked about 25 miles for nothing because I decided not to bother doing it again and they only paid for the first after completion of the second. Rip off.

elfy1807

Oops.

£12.80 spent and about 6lbs put on.
Went out for a meal with momma for her birthday tomorrow as I'll be at body combat class tomorrow night from 7-8.
I won't want to eat beforehand and the cafe/restaurant shuts at 8, so won't have time to eat after, so we had dinner out tonight instead.
I paid because it's not right to make someone buy a meal for their own birthday.
It's not like it happens all the time.

I've got change stashed in the house, and I'll have £4.20 left from my £10 "pleasure" allowance this week, so really it's only cost me £8.60 - I got my £3 pocket money on saturday - so £5.60. Yes... I'm trying to justify it to myself.
But tough.
It's my mum.
I know it's her birthday, but it's one of those little treats for her that was suggested by lilt.
4 courses each for 2 people for less than £15... can't go wrong.
Just gonna rejuggle the finances as it came out of the money I was going to put in a friend's wedding card.
But I'll do that tomorrow as my sister thought my mum's birthday was friday and hasn't got round to buying her a present.
So I'm gonna go buy that with the money in my purse, get that back off her in time to pay for body combat tomorrow and then juggle the dollar to get the right money in the right places.

elfy1807

Well, interesting couple of days.

Firstly - sister paid up front money for mum's birthday present yesterday, so didn't have to pay it myself first and then get the money back from her.
I did however end up buying something extra for mum - she'd been waiting for a brown felt pack to come into my work, and it came in yesterday, so I bought her it. Cost £1.49. Means me and my sister both ended up spending £10 on mum for her birthday. Sounds a bit tight, but I'm on restrictions.
So that came out of my £10 "pleasure" allowance this week.
As did yesterday's £5.80 Zumba fee.

So I have £2.71 left from my allowance to last me today and tomorrow.
Today shouldn't be a spend day as I've nowhere to go. And tomorrow it lunch at grandma's followed by work - so another non spend day.

Still haven't located the £20 for my friend's wedding card that I spent on dinner the other night. But I've got until a week on saturday to figure that one out. Also need to be tight on dollar as I'll need some for parking and maybe a bit of lunch on tuesday in nottingham - might even look at taking my own lunch. Although there's a spoons there, and they have cheap meals. We'll see how it goes.

Today - decided to look at mum's finances.
We spoke about it over dinner on monday, and I didn't want to bother her with it on her birthday yesterday, so I was eager to get it started today.

We wrote down all her incomings and outgoings, and she actually gets more money than what goes out, so that's a good start. Not a massive amount, but at least we're not on a downward spiral.
We made a few changes - we cancelled our lovefilm subscription - only £4.99 a month - but it's £4.99 that's not used often enough and could go elsewhere.
Her house insurance is due on the 23rd of march, and she was planning on renewing it with the company she's currently with for £192.96. I asked her if she'd looked around and said no.
So a quick word to the meerkats and came up with quotes for half the price she was going to pay - including the same company for £60 less!!!!
So I phoned them up and told them how I wasn't impressed they were planning on charging £60 extra and that he renewal quote was with a 43%/8 years NCD. Ludicrous!
We were aware that there were lower quotes, but the current company don't price match. We decided to continue with them on the online quote because they already had our previous details and we could compare the renewal to the online quote to make sure we didn't miss anything/change anything too dramatically.
Renewal quote - £192.96
Online quote - £132.50.

The renewal quote had accidental damage for buildings and contents - to add this onto the online quote took it up by 49p. No brainer - might as well add it on.
The renewal quote had no excess, whereas the online quote had £100 excess on both buildings and contents - we decided to keep that, because we haven't made a claim in 8 years and been at least £60 extra. That's £420 extra we've been paying and not needed to claim - which would easily cover the excesses if anything were to happen.
Also, the renewal had accidental damage and legal protection on it for £14.99 and £17.99 respectively. They online quote had these included free for using an online quote. Another no brainer.
And a final one - the online quote had an extra £11000 worth of contents included than the renewal.

Mum was just gonna go ahead an pay the £193.
I'm so glad I looked online and saved her £60.

A final move we made today was to contact Anglian Water about a water meter.
They'd been out before, but the man wasn't prepared to turn off the stop !!!! as it's quite old and stiff and didn't want to break it, so left and hasn't been in contact since. So we've contacted them again.
We could save at least £20 a month on water meter, if not nearly £40.

And we've vowed not to use the landline at any time other than weekends as it charges due to out package. We've all got mobiles with minutes on, so we're going to start using them to keep the landline & broadband to £21.90 instead of the £32 it's been per month recently.

I'm sure there are plenty of better landline/broadband deals out there, but it's a little too complicated for me and I don't think we're doing too bad on that at the moment.

So yeah... I'm getting there with mum.


In my life - I'm working on extra income.
A few weeks ago I applied for a dotcom picker position with tesco at a nearby town.
Didn't think much more of it until yesterday I got a phone call inviting me to an interview at 3pm today.
The job hours are 0600-0945 on saturday and sunday mornings, which fits round my main job perfectly.
I went to the interview today and it seemed to go ok.
There's 4 positions and 14 people interviewed. So I've got a 2 in 7 chance of getting a job.
Fingers crossed.
It's a good hourly rate (above minimum wage) and helps counteract the fact that I'd probably pay tax on the income for it being a second job so that it'd work out about the same as my 6 extra hours at my main job money wise, which isn't too bad.
Then, if I can get into the company, I might have the chance to get extra hours there and boost my income a bit more.
But it's all just speculative at the moment. We'll see how it goes.
They'll be looking for people starting the weekend of 22/23 march, so should hear pretty soon whether I've been successful.

Right... sorry for the reeeeeeeally long post.
Just feeling quite positive about the moves I've made today with and without mum.

Hope you're all well

elfy1807

So, it's been a long time since I posted.

In the 2 weeks+ a fair few things have happened.

Firstly, I found an extra £20 to put into my friends' wedding card - I sold a bunch of old beanie babies to a work colleague. One less box of junk in my room, £20 better off - yeah, I may have used it, but I'm still better off because I didn't have to find it from my personal money.

2 - Anglian water and the meter. They had booked to come the Tuesday before last (18th march - the same day I went to see Russell Howard in Nottingham - managed to limit my spends to parking, a round of drinks and a couple of subway cookies) between 8 and 1. My mum stayed in for them - at 9am, she received a phone call from the meter man asking if we lived in peterborough, because he'd been sent to the same address, but in IPSWICH!!! Mum was not impressed and neither was I. He told her he'd contact the company and let them know what's going on. So mum stages in til 1pm to see if they were going to reallocate someone. At quarter to 1, she hadnt heard anything so contacted them about it. Apparently they had no record of the appointment whatsoever. They then said they'd contact us with another appointment. They didn't. So Wednesday morning we phoned them again and asked what was going on. They said they'd phone us back with details. I asked them to contact me on my mobile as we were going out. Luckily we were at home when they got in contact because they phoned the HOUSE PHONE!!! Mum can't do Mondays or Thursdays during the day and explained this twice to the bloke on the phone. Then he came back with Monday 31st march to which mum said she had already explained she couldn't do Mondays, to which the bloke on the phone started getting rude and shirty with her. Eventually we got an appointment booked for Tuesday 1st April - 2 weeks after they were supposed to come! So frustrating. Let's see what happens. In other water relates news - we've had a dripping kitchen tap for as long as I can remember. It drives me insane. You have to switch it on in just the right way to stop it dripping. We finally bought and fitted a new one. Saw one one the b&q website for £40. When we got over there, spotted one for just £20. It scanned at £25, but I'd triple checked the barcode cuz I couldn't believe it was so cheap, and when I showed the cashier, she let us have it for advertised price. Get in. Although we had to buy a new pipe fitting for £7, but we still saved £13 and all those drips.

3 - I've been busy increasing my income. I now have £770 in my emergency find after selling my old car to another work colleague for £200 for his daughter. I probably could've got a bit more for it, but I wanted to get rid of it as it's been sat on the drive for 2 months now. So I'm really close to hitting my emergency find goal of £1000. 77% there!!

And finally - 4 - I didn't hear anything back from tesco so assumed I'd been unsuccessful and thought no more about it. And apparently I had, however one of the 4 people who had been successful had apparently got we dream job elsewhere, and I appeared to be reserve number 1. I got a phone call on Thursday asking if I could attend a (paid) induction day on Friday. Errr... Yes. So I did that yesterday and this morning I went over to a nearby store to get some training (dotcom doesn't launch at the store I'll be working at until Thursday coming). I did 6-10 there and absolutely loved it. I'm currently on my lunch break from my main job (working 1130-815 today), then back at tesco tomorrow 6-10 again, then 1115-515 tomorrow at my main job. So I'm soon going to be receiving more wages. I'm aware that there's tax for a second job, but the above average wage counteracts that and still makes it appealing. Just hope I love it again tomorrow. Apparently I've picked it up really quickly. It really appeals to my OCD side haha.

Hope everyone's well and congratulations if you made it through this haha

elfy1807

Hiya.

Small update today.

Got a wage slip through the post on Saturday about my youth club job.
Opened it and found that they'd finally backdated me and were going to pay me £598 - £112 of that to the tax man and £38 to the pension scheme that I didn't opt into but am finding it difficult to opt out of -.-
Anyway... today was payday - and in my bank a beautiful sum of £448 to go in on top of what I already had in there, pushing me over the £1000 limit.
WOOHOO!!!!
So I transferred £989 into my savings account because I already had £11 in it.
The account it owned by my mum and it's a book account. So although I can access it, I can't access it easily - I have to get mum to go and get it for me.
Suitable enough for an emergency account because I won't be able to spend it willy nilly. And if an emergency arises at the weekend and we can't get to the bank, I'll just use a regular account, go into an unplanned overdraft for a day or two until I can rectify it with the savings. Anything that is that much of an emergency can justify an unplanned overdraft charge.

I had about £230 leftover from all that - so I gave mum £200 towards my debt. I wasn't expecting to receive that much money, so I thought I might as well give it away - I'm not gonna miss it because I didn't know I was gonna get it anyway. So that's the ball rolling with paying mum back. The final £30 - I bought my momma 2 bunches of flowers from Aldi - £5 per bunch with 30% off each (as they were mother's day bunches - don't worry, I didn't forget mother's day - her presents were bought ages ago) - so two bunches for £7. She does a lot for me and although she's not a huge flowers fan, she does like having them in the house now and then, so I thought I'd get some bright coloured ones for the living room.

Next goal is a house deposit.
I've been with my boyfriend about 15 months now, and we've started talking about the future and maybe living together one day.
So I'm going to start putting together a £5000 (to start with - may increase depending on how well I do at saving) deposit.
Looking at maybe 2016 being the year, so £5000 in 21 months is the goal.
An average of £238 a month to save - my tesco job should earn me just over that each month, so if I don't touch it, the deposit should easily be mine

That's all for now.
Just really pleased I've managed my emergency fund so quickly - wasn't expecting to hit it until the end of the year =D