Paying the car tax via EBay, and other shenanigans.

mfmaybe

I am so very very remiss in terms of posting here!

So what's happening? Well DS is now in his funded hours at nursery, so I have 4 mornings a week free. Predictably I could fill those hours several times over. I cracked back on with the C25k and made it to target, so now I'm trying to run 3 times a week. But I might need to switch from doing that in nursery time and ask a grandparent to babysit for an hour in the afternoons instead. I really need the 4 straight hours to Get Stuff Done. There's admin for the housebuild; and research; and physically meeting people on site, and (like this week) physically doing hard labour to save money. When DS gets home he wants to go for a walk or go to the park or play Duplo with me and there's a limit to how much I can plonk him in front of Duggee to make progress with my to do list.

In money news:
1. I paid off the BtL. So no mortgage at all right now. :money::j
2. I did put something house related on the 0% card so that's new debt. Currently just paying the minimums deliberately. It's a 30 month offer but I'm going to put it in my signature as a new target. I actually want to spend more on there, with the house build, so watch this space.
3. We're a week away from finishing our first month on a single salary. There is still money in the joint account but I need to go and check the credit card.
4. There are logistics I need to work out. How do I switch my spreadsheet to now covering 2 bank accounts (mine and the joint, DH can take care of his own!) How do I make sure DH's work expense rebates end up against the card, not being happily spent by him. How do I monitor housebuild expenses against normal expenses, etc.

Anyway already only 15 minutes until I need to leave so I better spend that on my spreadsheet.

mfmaybe

Ok so current sit rep.

£360 in cash to spend out of the accounts, not including the card payment that's due. DH gets paid a little later than I used to so need to cover that before pay day (will do so temporarily from savings).

£850 in the account. Sounds like we've underspent but I've not put any money into savings. (Except we did pay for our new puppy out of this month's income :rotfl:)

Card is horrendous - £1500. Food shopping was £580 :eek:. Then there were tons of birthdays and a fair whack of fuel too. So with the leftover in the account we have £1000 to find. I've about £300 in my annual bills pot, and DH reckons about £200 of expenses. So maybe £500 left.

But then, the next one is already £1300 too. :(This includes my ludicrous £500+ car tax; the subject of my whole diary! Maybe one of these days I will actually find a way to cover this.

I've had a look at the September budget and it's ok if you ignore the credit card. Actually it's still ok, because a good chunk of the budget IS the stuff that goes on the card. I'm hoping that things will be a bit less spendy. Fuel we probably can't do heaps about but we did have a lot of birthdays in August. We had 2 meals out (very unusual for us) and had lost control of the food shopping a bit too. That's becoming less scary now that DS is at nursery a bit - I'm less inclined to use a walk to the shops as a way of occupying him!

Anyway I should probably go and occupy said child now :rotfl:

brizzlegirl

Glad you’re good...enjoy your weekend x

mfmaybe

So monthly card paid. So far, £700 "short", less whatever comes back in expenses. Payday in 2 days so will repay the savings and see where it leaves us.

I've done some switching of balances. We've a second joint current account so I'm moving my Annual Bills pot into this and will save jointly. So a single car tax pot, single insurance pot etc. I'll also put money in here to pad out for house bills. For example just transferred a little from our current account as we've not had a bill from SSE this month. I've also set aside one month's rent in here.

In September, I have £900 in the budget to go into various savings pots. Given I'm going to have to replace the Amex, and cover the next one, I can safely say this won't be happening. So it's the same old story. Be as tight as we can on the fuel, food etc to try to eek out every penny. Try to get this Amex bill back down to a much more manageable amount. Ever feel like we've heard this before

mfmaybe

Ugh.

So first some unexpected money. Sold something for a couple of hundred that I'd given up hope of getting anything for, and also a tiny dividend. Both have just been swiped into housebuilding funds.

Less good news though, tenant has given notice on the flat, so need to get my behind into gear and get that back on the market.

Current situation. Projections for the bank accounts show c£1100 "spare" after all know payments. But the monthly card that I need to pay just before the end of the month is over £1600 :eek:. Some work expenses but mostly fuel, food shopping, and the dreaded road tax. In addition, DH's road tax was due which he just paid out of the bank account. This just adds pressure to the current month. Anyway, there are some expenses due in from his work, sub £200, which I will pay straight to the card. So perhaps a shortfall of £400 if we are very strict with cash. That's less than I had to sub the prior month, which was £700. That has been repaid out of current month, so basically trying to get that shortfall figure to zero, and then get back into the habit of setting the cash aside when we spend it. THEN we can start saving into our annual bills pots as well; but meanwhile I have to do something about the food shopping. I thought it was getting better, but it seems not really. We've spent £180 in the last week. :eek: 2 online food shops, which would be ok as one just arrived today. Plus £20 to Nkd wines which we're using as a savings pot :rotfl:. But £58 on "top up" shops. In a single week. FML.

brizzlegirl

Ugh indeed. Top up shops are the work of the devil, but think we all do it. I have been topping up at Trose for gawd’s sake. Because it fits in with a busy life and I can do it whilst DD2 is at a class...but never less than £50. I use cards to get points but even so.

I have just also agreed to host the family for Xmas...best start saving into a fund (well more than I do already for food) and maybe doling out the jobs :eek:

PurpleFairy26

Hey mfmaybe hope all is well with you. Will dig out the link to your blog to see if you've updated it. Hope you're making progress. Purps.

mfmaybe

I haven't purps, but your post has reminded me to!

DH is giving me child and puppy free time tomorrow so will try to catch up with it all.

mfmaybe

Righto. An update, long overdue as always. Last month ended up £370 short of the monthly card (I'm trying to catch up with it as DH has a different pay day than I used to). This was a smidge better than the £400 I thought I'd be short. This month, it is looking like, with a fair wind (hahahaha) we might just manage to fund the full thing before payday. If that is the case, then it means next month I might start managing to set money aside into the annual bills pots again.

The more troublesome news is my flat hasn't been leased yet, so money feels tighter than ever. Thankfully I paid off the mortgage with a CI policy I had, and fortunately my horses have been moved to a friend's field at pretty much zero cost, but it's still worrying. I've already dropped the rent a fair whack. There are another 2 or 3 new enquiries today though, so fingers crossed.

I did manage to pick up a few small Christmas presents for DS at a local toy exchange, for a very low cost, so at least that's started. And we aren't hosting so no extreme food costs.

Oh and Purps, blog updated albeit I lost the whole post just before it was done, so my second attempt was much shorter and grumpier!

in_need_of_direction

Is the flat in an air bnb desirable area?