Paying the car tax via EBay, and other shenanigans.

mfmaybe

Quick coffee catch up. Food shopping needs seriously looked into. DH just spent £100. On top of that we have HelloFresh (I'm sure that's not very MSE, we don't do it all the time by any means but some weeks it works for us). So we've spent £140 for next weeks shopping. No booze, cleaning stuff, anything really. Out of this there is about £10 of meat I'm going to batch cook for freezer for DS. And a shirt for £7. It does include stuff for lunches for both of us. But if you take into account we are having steaks tonight that were already in the freezer, and another 3 meals via Hello Fresh, we apparently spent around £80 on 3 nights dinners plus lunches. :eek:

Other spends aren't too bad but yikes that is certainly scary.

mfmaybe

Hmm so I have bust my credit card goal for next month already. As well as the food I put on it and fuel that went in the car today, I had to pay for a rather pricey service on my watch. It wasn't working and it's one of my favourite items I own, but am a bit miffed at how expensive it was.

Never mind though. It's done and will be arriving here tomorrow. I've not had it for 3 months plus I couldn't wear it when I broke my wrist, so I am looking forward to having it on again .

I will however have to increase efforts on the credit card account. I do have an item listed on fleabay that should take me up to my £100 goal. But I may have to find other things to sell. It's finding the time though. What with f/t work, DS, trying to sell the house, the horses, etc, life is busy. However I am working from home tomorrow and if I find some time I might have a hunt about.

Edit - just updated my signature. Big milestones are over 50% of the card now paid off, and down below £3k :T

in_need_of_direction

I feel your pain re the watch but, like you, I have a favourite watch and I feel bereft if it's not on my wrist.

mfmaybe

Well the watch is back on, and very lovely it is too :j. You'd think they'd have put it back an hour before they sent it out though

mfmaybe

[STRIKE]GOAL 1 - Credit card for this month below £350. DONE[/STRIKE]
GOAL 2 - Earn at least £100 non salary to pay some of it. £28.03
GOAL 3 - Look at higher paying savings accounts. Started£
GOAL 4 - Only spend £20 on Kid stuff - clothes, equipment etc. £0
GOAL 5 - Spend a maximum of £10/week in the office (Food, coffee). Use cash. Think it was ok. 3 coffees and one lunch. £8.25. Starting again tomorrow.
[STRIKE]GOAL 6 - Set up reward account for cashback Done[/STRIKE]
GOAL 7 - make next month's card balance below £300. Food and fuel only. This will be 26/10-25/11. £460 already due to watch service.

mfmaybe

Well I've sold an item on fleabay. A bit less than I was hoping for, but it's £40 towards the card target.

I'm worrying about money right now and not sure if it's necessary or not. This month I've not put anything (net) into my savings. I guess in theory that's OK as I had to pay two separate vehicle related costs. The total was nearly £900 and they were technically saved for but I was hoping to fund some of it out of my normal account. However due to the favour I mentioned up thread I'm significantly short on regular cash. And there is a bunch of other stuff coming up. We've had no time to chop firewood so probably going to have to buy some in. Our food shopping seems ridiculous. Between house selling and maybe buying, there will be bills to pay. I have a small crack in my car windscreen. Etc etc. I think I'm going to add up everything we could technically cut from our spends (probably not much, but worth checking) to see what things would look like if we really needed to tighten the belts. The worry is that DH is being made redundant at the end of the year and I'm barely covering my own expenses right now, which includes only half the mortgage :eek:

in_need_of_direction

deep breaths hon and write it all down with pen and paper. then you'll know exactly what you're dealing with

mfmaybe

in_need_of_direction wrote: »

deep breaths hon and write it all down with pen and paper. then you'll know exactly what you're dealing with

Thanks for the calm, INOD. There are many jigsaw pieces at the moment and I need to keep thinking about the big picture. I'm sure stuff will fall into place.

I'd do an updated goals list but on iPad and struggle with the highlighting required to format it! Another day I didn't buy lunch though. This has been good for a couple of weeks now. However worried I'm getting bored of my homemade pot noodle so I need more ideas.

mfmaybe

Note to self. I've just applied for the latest Sharesave scheme with my employer. It's a max of £50 month. I can take the cash out at any time and whilst savings interest rates are so low, I'm not losing much in that sense. And may stand to gain if I'm still there in 5 years time and the share price goes up. It's also reminded me I have around £1800 in the current one, which could be fairly quick cash if I ever needed it.

For me it's about the discipline of saving.

mfmaybe

The above post made me think about other little secret stashes I have.

1poll is at £24.
Boots points about £60
Nectar points £100
Amazon vouchers - £50 maybe? Need to find them
Sw@g - not much, about 600 points.
Clubcard vouchers TBC
Cashback rewards - about £7
TCB - hardly anything. About a pound
Quidco - as TCB.
Paypal - £38. To move to credit card account.
M&S - think I might have about £200 in vouchers!
Gap - DS has about £70 on a gift card. For his own clothes only.