Paying the car tax via EBay, and other shenanigans.

mfmaybe

StressedSteph wrote: »

Morning mfmaybe,

Happy Fresh New Year :T

I can remember the excitement of finding out I was pregnant. Its such an amazing time. I feel excited for you .

I am not sure if you have any children already??. if not, preparing all the items you need for a new baby can spiral out of control extremely easily.

You don't actually need all that much, but it is very easy to convince yourself that you need all the major gadgets.

I nearly bankrupted us with all the paraphernalia I bought .

Enjoy it all, even the piles, heartburn and swollen ankles , it a magical time and I really miss it. (broody.com) xxx

Aww thanks Steph. No this will be our first, and it's taken 4 years so feels very precious and scary. Actually I'm so superstitious about it I don't think I'll buy anything until the very last minute. I'm probably going to be quite underprepared rather than over-shopped

cazmanian_minx wrote: »

Happy new year and congratulations!

Thank you! And to you, the HNY bit anyway

debtfreeoneday wrote: »

Congratulations - what wonderful news.

I can understand your hesitation, although I enjoyed being pregnant, I worried all the way through after five cycles! Try and enjoy it though..

With twins, I bought a lot of stuff second hand.. and reusuable nappies saved me a fortune for the first year! Happy New Year!

Thank you . I think there are some reusable nappies in the pile from family and I'm quite keen to try this. Yes the IVF certainly makes it feel very fragile. I'm trying to enjoy whilst at the same time not counting my chickens. A tricky balancing act

mfmaybe

Busy couple of days and a bit spendy. Bought paint for our bedroom, wood for shelves (built now), food shopping which was only about £30, guttering and a rain butt for my field shelter, and drawer dividers. Had a wardrobe sort the other day and managed to clear a drawer in our chest of drawers. Mr maybe will now have the luxury of being able to put his socks and underwear in a drawer rather than under the bed. It's only taken about 10 years . Neither of us are admitting it, but we are stealthily clearing the overspill from the spare room back into our room. Can't think what we would need that room for

January bill looking healthier, with another £10 to go from quidco and a £27 cheque to bank. Got a couple of small things on fleabay.

Start of list for Sunday:
Make soup
Clothes to charity or recycling
Sort car insurance
Advertise flat for rent
Put away Christmas decs
Fleabay 2 more things including ski jacket
Sort lunch for Monday
Phone consultant (not ominous don't worry)
Hay delivery

In money terms, have decided that I need to get back to properly setting aside money for all my annual bills. This will slow down the debt repayment but if I'm not saving for those bills it continues to be too stressful. Also if I get a new 0% then I would be better saving as much as I can whilst I'm earning so I can still afford the bills when I'm not. Haven't done my 2015 budget yet (due to my pay date, I count it from January pay to January pay, which is the 18th). I have a full year spend diary which can help me fill in the gaps in last years budget.

Tomorrow I am hoping to get a chance to reflect on what I think went well last year so I can continue to work on it :cool:

in_need_of_direction

Focus on doing whatever will reduce stress levels.

mfmaybe

I'm going to try, INOD

Got some of the stuff on the list done. Put the quidco payment into the January account. Creeping up the way. No bids on my fleabay stuff yet and didn't list the others. But soup made and lunch all ready for tomorrow so hopefully a low/no spend day. Getting up is going to be tough though.

A few critical things on that list that really need done though. Glad I've written them down here at least, it's a start!

mfmaybe

[STRIKE]Make soup[/STRIKE] DONE
Clothes to charity or recycling
[STRIKE]Sort car insurance[/STRIKE] DONE
Advertise flat for rent
[STRIKE]Put away Christmas decs[/STRIKE] DONE
Fleabay 2 more things including ski jacket
[STRIKE]Sort lunch for Monday[/STRIKE] DONE
[STRIKE]Phone consultant (not ominous don't worry)[/STRIKE] DONE
[STRIKE]Hay delivery[/STRIKE] DONE

So that's the updated list. Haven't advertised my flat yet but will do it in the next week. Probably need to email current tenant soon though.

January bill creeping up and if things go to plan I might have another £200 to go against it before payday. This leaves me only £200 out of next payday which is good. Not ideal but better than it was! Might even be able to make a dent in the 0% card next month, which will need tarted not long into February. So far I'm looking at the Santander 0% 15 months but need to decide if I'd be better going for the very long Barclaycard one, and putting as much as I can aside for maternity leave instead. I get 12 weeks full pay then onto SMP. That will be a very big drop in salary and there is no way I can survive on it. Our fixed outgoings are very much higher than that.

It looks like we might manage to get our home insurance for less this year. Not confirmed but if so that means we can get a bit more put into our house account savings which would be great.

One option for Mat leave is to take off our overpayments on the mortgage but I'm not keen to do that. Hence the long 0% card might be the best option.

Meanwhile I'm just hoping for a very big bonus. Hahaha!

Still haven't done my 2015 budget. Was planned for today but technical issue with email means it's unlikely.

Right off out in the dark to feed my ponies, then fire on.

StressedSteph

Hope all is going well, just checking in to say hi.


From your last post it sounds like you have lots of plans. Hope you haven't had any/much snow.


Take care and check in and let us know how you are getting on when you have time.


Lv ss

mfmaybe

StressedSteph wrote: »

Hope all is going well, just checking in to say hi.


From your last post it sounds like you have lots of plans. Hope you haven't had any/much snow.


Take care and check in and let us know how you are getting on when you have time.


Lv ss

Aww thanks Steph. Doing well here. Had my 12 week scan last week and all was well. :T Am now 13 weeks which is amazing. Still no purchases made though Luckily I'm not yet at the needing maternity wear but I'm sure it's not far off. Judging by the rate I'm eating biscuits anyway.....

So haven't really been doing much finance-y stuff but not really spending much either. So just spent a bit of time having a look. I am really keen to try to get into the position asap where I set aside the full amount I've spent on my monthly credit card. Although I always pay it off in full, it can fluctuate and it causes a bit of a loss of clarity. I also want to start putting money aside for the annual bills. Long story short, that would leave me £800 short this month and £700 next! Yikes. However, £200 of the annual bills that I will be setting aside this/next month goes towards the £700. I've also decided to not set aside about £250 of my annual bills this month only (as some are recently paid and some are guesses). I will then have to try to put a lot less on the card during the month and perhaps only set aside 50% this month, 75% the next etc.

I will play it by ear and see how it goes. I have learned that I am eligible for a bonus, but don't yet know how much, and it will be June before most gets paid. I'd like to put that in my mat leave fund though, not a debt fund.

The good news is that our joint account is in much better shape than a year ago. Gas up to date and now on monthly payments which seem to be ok for winter. Saved up for nearly all of our house insurance. Overpaying mortgage by £300 each month.

My own account is no longer in OD. My family debt is massively reduced. The 0% card isn't wonderful but it's going the right way. I have a far greater handle on the future position and no longer live in a deferred payment fashion.

I was about to write something about 2015 but I won't. But I will say I dealt with some huge curve-balls last year that I hope won't repeat.

Anyway I'm sure I've forgotten heaps. Family debt payment made so have now paid off 60%. Will go and update sig. Oh, and have managed to squirrel away enough for the big bill so that's done and dusted, and is part of my annual payment regime now

mfmaybe

So I've set aside my first £360 towards all the annual bills (car tax, vehicle maintenance, field rent, insurances etc). Less than I hope to do each month, but it's part of the plan to get ahead on all my expenses. So far I've not spent anything on the CC so haven't set any of that aside, but food shopping tomorrow will be the first. Annoyingly my farrier bill is £25 more than normal as my horse has had to have heart bar shoes which hopefully will solve a crack problem (of the hoof variety - that sounds a bit dodgy otherwise, she isn't a junkie :rotfl:).

Note to self also is that I haven't taken lunch with me any day this week. So I need to make sure there are always standby frozen options (leftover pasta and sauce for example). I left the OH to do the food shopping last week as I spent most of the weekend decorating, and he doesn't factor in lunches in the food shop. So have definitely wasted more money this week than I would have liked. Better do the shopping myself this weekend

Have decided not to attend a social event this weekend that was on the cards. It's a very long drive away so would be very expensive on fuel. Feel a little bit bad but the less I put on the cards the easier the "catching up" will be.

OH suggested the other night that we both put £500 a month away towards my maternity leave. I haven't even remotely got that spare right now :eek: But we are going to think long and hard about how to manage that (all being well). My 0% card runs out soon and clearly isn't paid off; I think my best plan is to tart onto a 24 month card so I can save up instead of paying it off, and just try to ensure I have the minimum payments set aside. Having gone to all this cost and effort to get pregnant I'd hate to have to go back to work too early because of finances. We will see how it goes. It may depend on how big, or indeed small, my bonus is. Sadly I'm expecting more towards the tiny end of the spectrum!

mfmaybe

Did the planned food shop today and it came in under budget, £55 instead of £60. This was remarkable as I totally messed up buying dishwasher tablets. Chose the best offer, then picked up the completely wrong pack. Grrrr. Anyway menus planned for the week. Got soup to make to help with the lunch plan.

Trf some money for a night out (can't avoid it) and also set aside my half of the food bill to go towards the credit card when it needs paid. Current projections show a £30 "surplus" by next payday. I am going to try to stretch that out to at least £100 more. That will all get set against items put on my credit card - equivalent to one fill of fuel, and two weekly food shops. In an ideal world I won't put anything else on the cards this month but I will also have to buy horse feed and probably also book a hotel for my brother's wedding, and still haven't ordered any maternity clothes. I'm not going to have enough spare cash to also set that aside, but it all helps towards moving away from the monthly CC payment being so crippling.

I am hoping that I can now start using any extra income such as survey income or fleabay sales to go against the credit card (and/or go into the maternity fund). Will need to apply for a new 0% soon but hopefully it won't be a problem. The last application for finance I made was a year ago and payments are all up to date.

So all in all, bank account looks alarmingly tiny for a week after payday, but I've set a lot of money aside. Still also due to receive rental income and OH owes me £275 (all accounted for in the projections) so not quite as alarming as it looks!

Tomorrow should be a NSD hopefully.

Hope everyone is having a good weekend.

StressedSteph

Hi mfmaybe

I must say that you sound completely under control with these finances. I thought I had it all organised until I read the last weeks worth of your diary :eek:. Its amazing that you are able to put away £360 pm towards annual bills :T.

I would love to do that. i hate all the misc monthly direct debits like insurances etc. Would be so nice to just pay them in full.

Can't believe you are 13 weeks already, time is flying by. :j

This month has been a pretty out of control month financially for me. I think I held off on paying some little bills during December so that we could afford a nice Christmas, but then it put alot of extra pressure on January. Catching up now, but it is beyond tight:eek:

Hope you had a good weekend xxx