Paying the car tax via EBay, and other shenanigans.

mfmaybe

brizzledfw wrote: »

sending you hugs too...

maybe relist the house in the spring?

I think we are going to change agents. Our current one doesn't use Ri8htm0ve, only our local SPC (not sure if that's an England thing but here each city has its own one so ASPC, ESPC, GSPC) . A lot of house hunting gets done through those sites but as we are out in the country I suspect people are missing us a bit. Can't decide whether to drop price first though.

Having a good day though, with DS. He's napping right now but we made pancakes earlier. He was VERY helpful [STRIKE]at eating them[/STRIKE] :rotfl:. Not been up to much else, getting on top of a few chores and just taking it slow. Bliss.

mfmaybe

Gah two pages back I mentioned trying to get my mobile bill transferred to our joint account. Seriously I can't believe how much of my time it's taken, for the c45p a month cashback I am going to earn. I've spent another half hour on chat with them tonight trying to resolve yet another muck up :mad:

And the problem of finding new accommodation for the horses took a backwards step today after my back up plan fell through. Really in need of fate intervening in one of our many issues right now.

<reminds self that health, happiness and toddler cuddles are all that matter>

brizzledfw

Darn it. Hope Plan C comes off for you..

Enjoy the time off. I have most of next week off - can't wait

mfmaybe

brizzledfw wrote: »

Darn it. Hope Plan C comes off for you..

Enjoy the time off. I have most of next week off - can't wait

Thanks Brizzle. Plans A-D have failed but plan E has potential. If nothing else we know selling up is the right thing, 100%.

Mostly money stuff has been ok except our gas delivery today was horrendous. Truly truly horrifying. 864litres in 6 weeks, at a cost of £345. I don't even have the energy for a shocked smiley.

mfmaybe

Celebrating small victories. Yesterday the self service till seemed to give me more money back than I put in. And today I paid for a decadent bag of propercorn using only small change. Oh and siphoned off a final £4 into next months credit card fund. Otherwise I was going to have £6.66 left on payday. That felt ominous :rotfl:

brizzledfw

Glad you're concentrating on the small stuff We are down to a £59 balance in the main account for about 24hrs, and I have been flicking back and forth between accounts and YNAB to check that nothing is going to trip us up, after losing a 0% deal on a card because OH used it for work and bust the mega thousands limit by about £20...you can never be too careful about the pennies that's for sure.

mfmaybe

Ah Brizzle that's so annoying :mad:. I presume you've tried calling the bank and pleading?

Yes the small stuff is important - apparently my bank now charge you an arranged overdraft fee so I maybe need to not keep the banks quite so tight (usually move money into different accounts and switch back to current account as needed) or make a point of checking every single morning/

So it's nearly payday and have been analysing where I overspent. Basically my budget had me very nearly keeping all spends within the bank (ie all credit card monthly spends also saved for) but in reality I haven't managed that. I'm a whopping £616 over. Here's why (overspend amount only):

Car tax £237. Ended up having to pay two this month. However I do actually have £70 of it saved right now and by the time the bill needs to be paid off my card I will actually have another £120 to set against it.

Tax bill. Was £97 short on what I'd saved up. See posts above, am going to have to up the savings on this one.

Fuel £48 over. Needed to put fuel in all 3 vehicles this month. One is the horsey chores one and doesn't need every month.

Food shopping £64 over. This is only my share. Our food shopping is horrific.

Card payments £131. These are the monthly cards that were a bit higher than I'd budgeted. Trying to get these fully saved up for.

Vet £52. Just vaccinations etc and a bit that was emergency treatment. Had most of it saved for but it was higher than that.

Going out. £30. Knew this was never going to be do-able within budget.

Total big overspends £670. I've managed to underspend on about £130 across various categories. But the long and the short is I'm around £900 short in the Card account over the next 2 pay days. I knew about the £350-ish from next payday but the rest is new money I have to find.I made an £8.50 fleabay sale last night so that's a start :rotfl:

Just tweaking budgets just now. Fuel might be an issue right now but hoping there are other offsetting things, if some of my potential major expenses work out to be not so bad. We can always hope.

Also need to get food shopping under control - was over £90 again last week. And the gas bill - aaaahhh. Must adjust thermostat and be better about just lighting stove as we have tons of firewood.

DH isn't working just now so I guess its inevitable certain bills go up such as heating. But he also said "this time with no income has been good for me, as I'm really thinking about what I'm spending now. Once I start working again we should keep being careful and save as much as we can towards mortgage/moving etc". Which is great but I thought a) yes I've been doing this for years now, sweetheart, keep up :rotfl: b)£90/week food bills doesn't seem exactly careful and c) errr, I will remind you of that when you decide to use your first paycheck for a new smartphone or something

mfmaybe

Our electricity use was a good bit lower this month, but the other day I noticed that our electricity meter was whirring round at great speed despite there being no heavy loads on it. I've just done a check using the stopwatch on my phone, and tested timings for it to go round by 10% . With nothing on other than the radio, fridge and the normal stuff plugged in, it took 17.36 secs. I turned on the lounge lights (downlighters) and it accelerated to 10.9 seconds, similarly with the hall lights. When I turned on all the downstairs lights it took 5.34 seconds. Not exactly scientific but just shows what a difference just the lights make. So I'm sitting here today working (kinda ) in the dark with no heating on :rotfl:

brizzledfw

Love the scientific approach!! I traditionally just worry about the heavier loads, kettles etc. We don't have a TD and we use an eco kettle which helps.

I could plead a special case but planning to pay it off in full next month or failing that April, so decided to take it on the chin. It's making me even more determined to pay off the CCs we owe on after my tax difficulties.

Spendy month hey? There is always something which is why I do so badly on NSDs and LSDs... as I have written before, our base costs are high...not sure how to really flatten them...my usual reaction is to try and earn more and be more thoughtful on the discretionary stuff but it's definitely not easy

mfmaybe

We're the same, with an old expensive house, hard to heat; and of course the horses. You can't just stop feeding them, that tends to be frowned upon

And talking of. Plan E was a bust. I really am struggling now. I think I can probably get through March with a very temporary arrangement, and perhaps once we are in to April it will be easier to find grazing. But we REALLY need to get the house sold so we can make permanent changes. It's so frustrating. We are going to drop our asking price next week and see if that gets us going again.

Otherwise, a NSD today so that's good. Oh and payday tomorrow, so that's even better