pickle me's diary

pickle_me

I'm feeling grumpy again. I've been doing more sums and am rapidly coming to the conclusion that until this debt is paid off I'm going to be skint. That sounds like an obvious conclusion but in theory our budget should allow for me to have a bit of spending money each month - but as each month goes past there are more birthday presents to buy, more little things that I hadn't accounted for, and all my 'spending money' is swallowed up.

We seem to have hit a bumper time for birthdays amongst the children's friends and I have no fewer than 6 birthday presents to buy over the next six weeks or so. I'm searching out deals (Argos do some good 2 for £15 deals on toys) but even so, it adds up.

Then I thought to check my contract for work and realised that I don't get paid in August. I don't work during the school holidays so this also sounds obvious but my contract was a bit ambiguous and I thought they might have spread my salary over 12 months. But no. So I won't get paid in August and therefore won't have any money in September, when I should be celebrating my 40th birthday Not much of a celebration there.

I know I sound like a spoilt brat. The important thing as ever is that the debt is going. It's going, and we can pay our bills and we have food to eat. My daughters aren't going without. I watched a programme on BBC1 a few nights ago about four 'celebrities' going to live with some families suffering from food poverty. It was heartbreaking. Several were single mothers who went without food so their children could eat. And then even more heartbreaking, the children admitting that sometimes they lied and said that they were full and left some food so their mums would eat something How can that happen, in the UK, in 2014? I'm on the volunteer list to help out at my local food bank because this horrifies me so much.

There you go, that's helped regain a bit of perspective. I'm still feeling rather wistful at the thought of buying some new clothes - I miss shopping!! - but I'll get over it. And my best birthday present will happen a few days after my birthday when we make our final payment to CC1 and consign it to history. Our debt will be down to under £6k by then. I will bake myself a cake and sit and admire that CC's final statement (plus all the letters that follow offering us balance transfers as they desperately try to get our business back )

eco_farmer

just coming out of lurkdum to say I think your doing a wonderful job I have subscribed since the beginning of your journey and your determination and focus are a true inspiration. keep on plodding you know your freedom date and it gets closer every day.


eco

pickle_me

Eco farmer, thank you so, so much for your kind post. I can't tell you how much it's cheered me up. It's lovely to know that someone's reading this and cheering me on. Thank you

pickle_me

How is it still 11 days to payday!? I swear the months are getting longer :mad:

pickle_me

It's so boring. Grump, grump. Our budget is set, it's working pretty well - tight enough that we're making good progress hacking away at the debt, not so tight that we're horribly depriving ourselves - and apart from the odd tweak here and there, there are no adjustments (or additional savings ) to be made. Neither of us has the option of overtime and although I would happily take a second job if it was needed, it's not worth the disruption to family life. I have very little left to sell on eBay. I'm doing surveys but I swear the debt will be paid off long before I get anything out of YouGov :rotfl: (I'm doing Pinecone too, and that has paid out a few times. Two survey firms is enough for me at the moment, although I'm always tempted when I hear of other people making a fiver a week on other sites ...)

So - no further savings to be made, very little prospect of extra income; I just have to sit tight and wait it out. I keep on doing sums all the time, I like working on our post-debt budget as it keeps me feeling positive. We will be putting a minimum of £500 a month into savings once the debt is cleared. We both have ISAs that have languished empty or virtually empty for years and I'm determined to fill them up.

I just wish I could feel I was doing something more proactive than simply sticking to the budget. I suppose that's why I love my Lidl shops so much - I feel as though I'm actively saving money. What an exciting life I lead :rotfl: We should be getting an Aldi near us by the end of the year too - be still my beating heart

milocat

I am so impressed with how hard you are working towards debt busting! I've paid off maybe £70 today and I'm feeling very good about it, even though its a pittance compared to you and your ways. :')

And I'm sorry I got so far behind on your diary! I wish I still did ballet, but its a bit weird to do it when you aren't a teenager, isn't it?

pickle_me

Bless you, milocat, I think £70 is fantastic. I have a husband working full-time and my part-time wage too so it's easier for us. You are doing amazingly and don't you forget it.

I've always thought in my next life I'd like to be a ballerina - I love ballet! I had lessons as a little girl but don't remembered being particularly bothered about it. It wasn't until I was a teenager (by which point I was no longer having lessons) that I really fell in love with ballet and used to go and watch the Royal Ballet as often as I could afford.

I'd happily have lessons now as an adult but those leotards are so unforgiving

pickle_me

I was making a list in my head yesterday of positive debt-busting thoughts to keep me cheerful.

1. All the debt is on 0%. No interest so every single penny knocks another chip off the debt mountain.

2. We are paying over the minimum for all three cards, vastly more in the case of cc1. Minimum payment for cc1 is around £110 and we are paying £750 on it every month. So if we had an absolute emergency one month (eg. car or boiler breakdown) and needed to reduce our payments, we could cut back to £180 (total minimum payments for all three cards). We have virtually nothing in terms of emergency savings at the moment so this to me is our emergency fund that we could call upon if we really needed it.

3. We are currently on course to pay off all three cards two months before the last 0% deal runs out. The end dates for the 0% are I think April, June and July 2015. We should have them paid off by October 2014, April and May 2015 respectively. This also gives us a bit of breathing space in case we're hit by an emergency and have to reduce our payments one month. Another safety net.

4. We have halved our pre-LBM grocery budget and this new reduced budget is still working, 6 months on. I'm proud of this as meal-planning and associated grocery shopping falls to me; I'm not particularly good at meal-planning (or cooking ) but we seem to be managing ok and it is saving us money, which is the point! We have vastly reduced the amount of food we waste, too, which is a very good thing.

5. The credit cards have not been used once since LBM

I don't want to sound smug - I'm not. You can't be smug when you're over £10k in debt This list is to reassure myself and to remind myself that we're doing ok, it's under control and we're going to get there. Eventually

pickle_me

Considering changing my username to 'ilovelidl'.

Yes, another weekend means another trip to Lidl and my devotion to our local German supermarket remains undiminished. Finding their huge refill packs of hand soap for 99p gives me a warm glow that lasts all day

This week's grocery shop was calculated down to the last penny and was going to work out beautifully. Waitrose kindly sent me two vouchers for £10 off a £30 spend, so I was going to pick up the things I normally get from Sainsbury's at Waitrose (it pains me to admit it, but Lidl doesn't stock everything I need. If only I could wean the 3-year-old off purple fruit smoothies ...)

So weekly grocery budget of £60: I spent £38 at Lidl leaving me £22 for Waitrose; my Waitrose shopping list came to around £30 so with the £10 money off voucher would have been spot on. That even included a pair of vastly over-priced pink and sparkly magazines for the girls, who were shopping with me. All very satisfying. Until it turned out they had none of the aforementioned purple smoothies :mad: They are virtually the only source of fruit the 3-year-old will tolerate so are essential purchases. But I had to leave without them, making my total £22 - great, but no chance to use my voucher and now I still have to go to Sainsbury's for the blessed smoothies, which means I'm over budget this week ........ ah well. I console myself with the thought that I am still making every penny count and watching what we spend very closely. Our budget isn't so tight that we can't afford a little leeway here and there.

My Waitrose vouchers are valid for 2 weeks so I will be visiting the larger branch near my work to use them. I may simply fill my trolley with purple smoothies :rotfl:

I had nothing planned for this weekend, and just as well since I spent yesterday morning throwing up, and the rest of the day sleeping. Fortunately it was only a 24-hour bug ... but unfortunately my husband has it today, at both ends I think it's the same bug the 3-year-old had on Thursday, which I had booked as a day off but then spent looking after her (sigh). I'm praying that her older sister escapes it ...

satchmo1

Are the purple fruit smoothies a) something you can make yourself? or b) freezable?


Shame your voucher plan was defeated in Waitrose.


I've noticed that Waitrose send differing value vouchers: £5 to me (not a regular shopper there), £10 to you, £14 to a colleague (I've not idea what her shopping habits are), in the space of a week.