Paying the car tax via EBay, and other shenanigans.

mfmaybe

According to MrM he reckons he only spent about £30 on food the week before, so our average continues to be ok. Phew.

Right, payday tomorrow. Have managed to siphon another £70 into the credit card account, which makes that £97 towards what I put on it this month. So time to evaluate a little.

Set aside less than I wanted - but more than I previously have! The monthly CC bill was higher than usual due to Christmas, so that impacted things. Food shopping was way under budget, lunch spends were tiny, but going out was over by a lot. However, had 2 separate nights out which is quite unusual for me. Not really an equivalent planned this month.

Put a bit on my monthly card I didn't need to really - yarn and maternity clothes. I've not started with the yarn or worn the clothes yet, but I guess they were going to need bought eventually.

Plan for this month is to set aside the full amount in budget for annual bills, and as much as I possibly can for the monthly card, whilst spending as little as I can! And maybe actually listing the odd thing on fleabay :rotfl:

mfmaybe

Payday!

Paid the monthly card. Paid the family debt. Trf an ambitious £675 into annual bills but utilised £200 of it. Trf money into house account. Set aside my equivalent horse insurance premium. Tried to pay the last £40 on my old 0% card but I need to change the debit card details. Tesco security makes it difficult to do on a new computer so will do it this evening on usual laptop.

mfmaybe

Right paid the small balance remaining on the old 0% card and updated signature. Not 100% sure yet if the new card's DD will come off this month. If not, will use that as extra money to set aside for my monthly card.

Current projections show me with a whopping £15 to put against the monthly card this month . However, I am going to aim for £200. I think I can do about half from squeezing the budget and might have to make the other half up somehow. But I've put it in writing now!

If don't have to pay cc = £20 (paid £40 and £60 was in budget)
Don't spend on gardener = £30
Underspend on lunch/going out = £50

There are other little bits and pieces I could maybe get away with, but then a couple of other bills where I might end up paying more than expected so will leave those out for now (legal and farrier, for my own benefit )

Should find out in a week or so what, if any, bonus and payrise I will be due. However this would all be becoming maternity funding.

mfmaybe

Well made a minor mistake on payday. Instead of paying the family member, I accidentally picked the wrong payee on my online banking, and instead paid a credit card that I haven't had for 8 years . Idiot!! Anyway, amazingly I still had the log on details and although the account is "closed" I could see that the amount was sitting as a CR balance. I was worried it would be lost in their suspense accounts for ever more - and it was £250! So I called up, and despite them being a bit confused ..."so why did you decide to make a payment to this card?".... they have refunded it, and it's back within 24 hours. Kudos to V1rgin, although their phone voice recognition thing drove me batty.

At home today but won't be a NSD. Need to pay for hay, plus do the food shopping, and put fuel in the car. Going to trf both the food and fuel equivalent straight out of current account to set against the future CC payment.

Close to another £5 on Sw@g and 1p*ll had a flurry of activity. I find the latter a bit easier but can probably make the Sw@g targets more regularly. Not going to get sucked into other sites (although I do e-rew@rds for Avios too). I think it's enough extra-curricular just to eek out the odd payment here or there. Between that and cashback, should be able to chip away at the debts.

debtfreeoneday

LOL at the wrong payment.. glad it's on the way back to you..

mfmaybe

Had a great weekend, family came to stay with my two wee nephews. They were on great form, so much fun. Lay in bed yesterday morning listening to them chat with each other in the next room - so cute

However, food shopping ended up pennies under £100 :eek:. Sis gave me £20 for some medicines etc that she'd added to the trolley so net £80 including feeding extra people for the weekend. And when we entertain the meals are always a bit posher. I don't grudge the pennies at all, but just need to have a very frugal week next week. I've put the £20 cash aside for my next hay bale, and will instead move an extra £20 into the credit card account.

Also put fuel in the car and paid for some hay but both in budget.

Spent several hours yesterday stripping gloss paint off a door, in a room that I decorated about 5 years ago. Thought it was about time I got it finished :cool: Dread to think what it did to the electricity bill, but on the other hand it was a cold day and the heating was off!

Wild day today. Snow blowing in. Brrr. Working at home so trying to just layer up and resist putting the heating on for a bit longer.

mfmaybe

Just did some finance updating. Moved fuel and food money plus other bits and bobs into another account to go towards the credit card (monthly one). Total of £146 towards my £200 target. Right now suggests I'll be that much overdrawn but reckon I should have enough savings elsewhere to cover it. One of the "unknown" items that I mentioned a few posts ago was budgeted at £100 but came in at £120. Not too bad. That's factored in to my implied overspend. One other item might be £25 more.

Immediate short term aim is don't put anything on card until after Wednesday (statement cut off). Shouldn't need to though with a full tank and full cupboards. Also need to list a jacket on fleabay. Take lunch to work tomorrow. And tell farrier not to put shoes on my horse tomorrow. Which will in fact take my potential £25 overspend to some kind of underspend instead.

Oh and today need to make cereal bars. And pay my tax bill, very slightly late . It's not big though and most is already set aside.

mfmaybe

So haven't added anything to the card, did take the shoes off my horse, and took lunch in on Tuesday. Didn't on Wednesday though, haven't made my cereal bars, and haven't put anything on fleabay Otherwise, bank account looking like I'd expect.

Already feeling a little better having some money set aside. Should get my payrise and bonus information tomorrow as well, which will allow me to update projections. Won't be much I'm sure but every little helps! Plan would be to set aside any payrise into either savings or debt.

Edit - have another £5 Sw@g card coming my way too.

mfmaybe

Guilted by my earlier post, I have listed said item on Bay of Flea, made the cereal bars [STRIKE]and eaten two of them[/STRIKE] and cobbled together something odd with leftovers for tomorrow's lunch. That way, I should be able to use the £5 in my wallet towards tomorrow's hay bale, and not take any more cash out.

mfmaybe

Weekend, yay. Need to make a bit of a list though otherwise it will disappear with nothing done.

Found out that my bonus should cover a month or so of maternity leave, which is good news. Can't quite work out what my payrise will be after tax, but it was better than last year. Haven't added it into budget yet, because again I'm hoping it can just go into savings (or debt repayment but as it's at 0% I think I will stooze). I need to be in the place now where payrises or additional money do not plug an existing gap - so I need to pretend it doesn't exist :A

Moneywise this weekend need to do the food shopping but hoping to keep it very small as the last two weeks have been scary. And need a small spend on decorating items. Fleabay item has a couple of watchers but is on a BIN. Come on people, just buy it! Am watching something that is part of a home improvement plan, so was setting myself a mini-target to fund it with my own fleabay sales. This would be about 25%. Sadly I've no immediate ideas of next items to put on there though.

Hope everyone has a good weekend.