Reeling from the Reality Check

in_need_of_direction

Enjoy your break. You've worked hard for it. Well done.

LosingMyDebt

Historybuff wrote: »

Wet weather gear all packed...can't believe the weather change just in time for our week outdoors!

16 days to go and £144, including the £20 I'm owed from friends for paying the campsite fee...£9 per day. I can survive on that.

:rotfl: Typical - same for us as we're going away just as the forecast is block rain for a week (almost!) - however we're not going to be ina tent this time, so small mercies and all that

You CAN and WILL do that - no bother! Good news about that extra money too.

Enjoy your trip!! :beer:

Historybuff

Had a great trip to the music festival and managed to dodge the rain apart from packing up yesterday. Wet tents etc...can't put them up to dry yet because of the wind! Overspent somewhat on food, unfortunately. So eleven days to payday and I have the grand total of £19.50 cash left. My challenge is to see how many NSD I can have till then. The most I have had in a row up to now is five. Bread will have to be made and we shall eat out of the freezer. Plenty of meat and frozen veg in there. The 'Jack' cookery book will be out again.
Back to reality...the decluttering and cleaning begins once more!

Historybuff

Been doing some reading around how to get mortgage repayments down and really want to see if I can work up to paying additional sums off each month. Even a small amount over the normal payment will go off the capital and start to reduce it. So here's the latest plan:
Be really frugal for as much of the time as we can stand it
Save up towards a buffer amount of £3000...at least £50 towards it each month
Pay anything at all that's left at the end of the month after that to the mortgage.
If the weather improves I really need to do another carboot sale next Sun.

Historybuff

Ha! Just had a phone call about a raffle I entered at a gig back in April. I've won a 'golden ticket' for the whole autumn season! Two free tickets to as many of the performances as I want! For the whole Autumn season! That's three months entertainment sorted out then! Could I give some as presents I wonder? That's cheered me up no end today!

gallygirl

Historybuff wrote: »

Ha! Just had a phone call about a raffle I entered at a gig back in April. I've won a 'golden ticket' for the whole autumn season! Two free tickets to as many of the performances as I want! For the whole Autumn season! That's three months entertainment sorted out then! Could I give some as presents I wonder? That's cheered me up no end today!

Great :T. A social life free of charge :j.

Though a Willie Wonka golden ticket would have been more fun

Historybuff

I'm well chuffed with the entertainment golden ticket!
First NSD down and ten to go till payday. Definitely doing a carboot on Sun as not going back out in the van till next Tues now. Had a rest yesterday and did sweet fa. Back on it now and going to get spare bedroom completely cleared today. There's some paint in the garage, so it would be good to get the walls painted back to neutral from the violent pink that they are at present. That is my mission for today.

Historybuff

Well got as far as clearing the spare bedroom as much as I could. Getting there. Going to help daughter clean and tidy this morning. Eight more NSD to payday. Don't want to wish the days away, but can't wait! I made £12 yesterday on stuff I sold, so have £32 cash that I'm trying to keep to add to the £170 in the buffer fund to take it to £200.
Been thinking about buffer fund and mortgage overpayments. I think I should build up the buffer fund to a decent amount before overpaying. Reading other threads around DMP, a lot of people pay really low amounts while it is being set up to save their buffer. In my eagerness to start debt reducing I didn't do this, but paid the actual pro rata amount from the start. In hindsight, I should have held off maybe, which would probably helped with the default situation as well. Only two out of eight have defaulted on the credit file so far, two are marked AP and the others are marked late payment or up to date. One of the overdrafts isn't even on there! I'm not really bothered as I won't ever be using credit again, but it's weird how there is no real consistency in how the different companies record things.
Now I'm six months into the repayment plans, I've got a completely changed mindset over money etc and no longer feel the need to keep up with others who are spending like billyo. I'm more aware of buying something because it's needed and not just wanted now, which has cut unnecessary spending no end. In fact, I take pride in spending nothing at all or very little!
Determined to build wealth...just got to pay this lot off first!

Historybuff

Small spend yesterday on a few groceries, £5.84. Seven days to payday. I'm going back to allocating money on YNAB next month. It hasn't worked just keeping the available money in one lump, I need to see exactly where each £1 is going, planning in advance and tracking every spend. I think that's the only way to spread the money out more evenly over the month. I've not liked at all having hardly any money for the last two weeks of this month even with the extra I earned. Next month will be pretty hard as well. It's OH significant birthday and he has decided he wants a party. It's towards the end of the month as well making it even more important to allocate money properly. In the past I would have gone out and spent a ridiculous amount of money...£500 or more, but this time I'm going to see if we can do it for £150 or less by being more savvy about it. We will have it at home, I'll do a buffet and OH will get a barrel of beer from the local brewery. We still have quite a lot of alcohol left from what I overbought last Christmas, so that can come out and a friend who has a cake business has said she will make him a cake as a gift. It will give me a massive incentive to get the house properly sorted and OH to get the garden and outside shipshape. I'll be seriously happy if the party spend comes in at under £100, but will allocate £150 to be on the safe side.
Balancing debt busting and enjoying life is a constant juggling act, but I've come to the conclusion you can't stop doing everything you want to. You just have to find a different, more cost effective way to do it!

Historybuff

Got rid of two bin bags of rubbish today when decluttering a cupboard full of stuff. Came across a load of change dumped in the bags and also £50 of Debenhams gift cards and a £10 John Lewis voucher! There was also a voucher for a manicure I had received as a gift last Christmas, but it had expired! Damn! Anyway, I spent ages trawling the pages of the Debenham's website and could only find one thing I wanted! I'll have fun looking again tomorrow, yay! The paperwork mountain is being tamed and my filing system is coming together. There will soon be no more time wasted looking for documents and I might not lose important things like gift vouchers anymore! NSD today. Going out to a gig, but OH paying, so that doesn't count. A good day.