Paying the car tax via EBay, and other shenanigans.

mfmaybe

I've been reading your diary Brizzle and I can see we are the same in many ways! I've got a long way to go to get through it though :eek::rotfl:

Your comment about YNAB has led to me musing on what a budget actually is. Because I work in finance, I budget what I expect to spend, not what money I have coming in. This is because in my opinion it reflects reality - so kind of liking doing an SOA. I don't know how YNAB works if you have more to pay in a month than the income? Now of course the clever next step after this is to then notice if you are spending more than you earn, and take steps to adjust your spends accordingly. But a lot of my expenses are fixed, or semi-fixed, so I am in the middle of doing some analysis on that. The other thing is that I do track very carefully what I spend, but I don't often give a cold hard look at the overspend categories. The reason for this is because most of my money doesn't go on "shopping"; but it won't do me any harm to pay it more attention. So another tab has been added to my spreadsheet.

Anyway one piece of good news is that I have a £5 Amazin voucher for doing a survey - now sitting in my account.

The broadband has transferred over. Currently getting a whopping 7Mb which is faster than it was by more than double, but rather short of the 39Mb guaranteed minimum. It says up to 10 days to settle though, so let's give it that. Also need to remember to follow up on gift card etc. Similarly the energy supply has transferred and that cashback should be due in about February. Old broadband supplier still seems to be taking our next DD which is annoying, but then hopefully we can get a refund soon enough. The electricity shows as in credit but I don't think that's accurate. I think we will have a bit to pay on that. At £55/mth DD we are really spending a lot on electricity considering we've got LPG and the woodburner on top of that. Yikes. Lights off.....

mfmaybe

In attempt to make every penny count, I've just spent my lunch hour price checking a bunch of CDs and books. At the most I'd make £10. I will probably sell them as they are ones I will never read/listen to again; but I can't say it was the most lucrative use of my time....

mfmaybe

So here's a scary stat. Looks like 70% of my salary goes on "fixed" items. Mortgage and all house bills, nursery, bills for my rental property, pension etc. It's not all horrific, as some of those payments are investments, and normally the % would be lower as my income would be higher. There's also a mortgage overpayment in there.

Another 17% goes into savings for annual bills. What I must remember about that, is to utilise it when needed. At the moment I am tending to think of it all as long term savings.

What's left then needs to cover food, fuel, horse bills (farrier, hay etc), paying off the monthly credit card (which in theory is those items just listed, so it's really a rolling replacement) and any other unexpected purchases.

Yikes.

mfmaybe

Lots of posts today. It's allowed on your own diary though, yes?

Thoughts.

Will set up a new bank account for the rental property once it's earning again. I will treat it as my own for tax etc, but once in a while transfer the profit across to DS. Will keep a buffer in there though. Will also try to earn something from the new account

Have decided I will pay off 0% card with savings next month. No point paying a 3% BT fee. But will add the DD to my savings transfer and aim to (using other dfw tricks) have reinstated the full amount in 10 months. Let's say Christmas '17. So £1500 of regular payments, plus an extra £1k to find.

Aim to lose £100 a month from costs. Thoughts are so far:

One less cleaning session
Lower electricity used
Lower gas (use stove when wfh, shorter showers etc)
Cut one charity/membership?

It's hard though. There's so little padding in the budget and I already put things off whenever I can.

mfmaybe

Grr. Slipped into OD at some point and I've been charged a £6 fee. Never had that before.

brizzledfw

Didn't want to read and run..but must get up and start the day. Will post again later...you're spot on re the budget. I think it's the nub of it. It's not just the tracking...it's whether you are spending more than you earn and what you can do about it...YNAB can allow you to carry forward overspends on categories am sure it's a great reminder to cut back the following month..or shuffle other monies about from other categories to make it all still in the black.

Will pop back. I am also a professional, more on the words side than numbers think multi million contracts..so my embarrassment at my pickle is fairly high :rotfl:

mfmaybe

So frustrating, just lost a post. Mainly it was to tell Brizzle I was making progress with her brilliant diary :T

I was also in the process of listing some positives. Have some cash in my wallet, plus some from DH for work expenses I lent him in a hurry; so that has gone into my hay fund for next month. Also farrier shouldn't need done next month so some of spends will be less.

Have done spreadsheets so fair idea where I am, but I do need to check things against goals. I think Christmas spending has been kept under control.

Back later - cat is trying its best to take over the laptop. I give up fighting :rotfl:

mfmaybe

Nice weekend here. Stuff done for Christmas, and DS later had a Christmas party today in our village. He enjoyed himself and pretty much ate them out of house and home :rotfl:

Couple of days work and then off the rest of the week. :T Have a nice lunch with OH planned and a birthday tea later in the week. Also hoping to get a bit of baking and things done and I guess at some point I need to wrap those presents.

Blasted Hell0 Fr3sh triggered again this week. The meals look ok though and managed to keep food shopping a bit more reasonable. Lunch boxed up for tomorrow. Have sent off one of the boxes of CDs and books; the other is being collected tomorrow. Really need to think about some Fleabay stuff but I'm not sure the week before Christmas is best for non-present stuff.

We've had a home report downloaded this week after a very few quiet weeks, hoping that turns into a viewing soon.

Have a plan to clear out the larder and put all the out of date (or nearly) stuff into one box on the counter, and meal plan around it But I think that is a post-Christmas plan. Also made a practical Christmas decision. Was going to ask DH for my Elemis moisturiser for Christmas. Instead, have decided to purchase the electric loppers I've been thinking about for ages and go for a Steam Cream instead. The loppers are because we've lots of branches that are too long for the stove, too thin to chop with the log cutter, and too fiddly for the chainsaw. Should buy us a good few burning sessions for the woodburner. And I can do it myself (chainsaw is too heavy).

OK better get back to the handmade Christmas present I've been promising DH for 3 years now

mfmaybe

At work and don't have access to my spreadsheets. So I did a back of an envelope calculation and this month looks horrific. Monthly CC is huge so that will take up 26% of salary. Gulp. House account and nursery is 45%. Other DDs 23%. Other credit cards 7%. The beady eyed amongst you will notice this is now over 100%. I normally put over 20% into annual bills savings but I can't do that. Food etc will go on the monthly card but budget for lunch etc is basically zero. Yikes.

in_need_of_direction

But you wouldn't soonEr bE without the nursery costs