Mini meltdown and light bulb moment

AleMrsT

Had a chat with OH last night, was much over due and I did feel better for it this morning, he asked today if I want him to book cinema tickets for us for tomorrow night, we haven't been for a while and we used to go quite often, I may even suggest we head to a lovely bar across the road afterwards for a (soft) drink Looking forward to spending some time together away from the sofa where we can both relax and actually talk. He's also been very MSE about it as there is an offer on for two tickets for £10, so the whole evening should cost us no more than around £12 each, even if we do go for a drink.
Feeling a little happier, but I admitted to OH that I think I'm struggling emotionally at the moment, I've realised I feel like I'm living under a bit of a cloud, with no excitement and nothing to really look forward to. He said I may need to talk to someone else, not him, about everything to try and sort my head out and separate my 'heart' emotions from my 'head' emotions. I think he's right.
On the MSE front, I still have £150 in my bank account, and pay day is not until next Friday! :j I have NO bills to come out until then (apart from my vodafone bill for around £20 which is already budgeted for) we have LOADS of food in the house, we'll just need milk, bread and fruit juice. I think I'm going to leave the money in my account to cover the two days sickness absence that will be deducted from my wages instead of putting it all to savings or debts :mad:
I'm looking forward to 25th when I can see the debt repayments have been made by Stepchange, I want to see my reduced balances so that I can properly update my signature.
I did email them to ask if there are any implications in me making extra payments as and when I can afford it, but I haven't heard back from them about it.

In other news, our landlord has been asked to move out of the house that they currently live in as the owner wants to sell, so they COULD end up needing to move back in here, although its unlikely as they moved out due to not having enough space.
Luckily there is a house available through my work that they've seen so hopefully they will be able to move in to that, but in a way, I wouldn't mind moving at all, apart from the extra expense, we really have NO storage cupboards in this house and it annoys me so much! Literally not one space where you can put the hoover or the ironing board, so the spare bedroom is actually a storage cupboard with a bed in! Crazy.
Anyway, that's all from me tonight, need to parcel up the ebay sale to get sent off tomorrow. (Very MSE as they go through the post room at OH's work so we don't actually pay postage :rotfl::T)

AleMrsT

So, I've updated my signature again, but still can't update my debt repayments as although its 25th its not showing on Stepchange yet:mad:

It is our wedding anniversary in May, and as I have more spare cash than I expected to have, we have decided that we can afford to go away somewhere as long as we only spend around £300.

I have found a lovely little apartment in St Ives, which has parking and is quite central, so we have booked it for 5 days away, it is £322.60, which is slightly over budget, but is fairly 'cheap' compared to the other cottages I was looking at, some were £700+ for the week, due to it being bank holiday weekend I assume. We could have gone for a whole week, but it was an extra £70 and I pointed out to OH that St Ives is around 5 hours away from us, this would mean we'd have no time between finishing work, holiday, going back to work, plus its an extra two days that we have to find money to feed ourselves, so we decided to stick to 5 nights, have a day at home either side, and stick to the budget better!!

Subsequently, I have opened another savings account with my current account provider, it took two seconds online, and sits nicely underneath my current account online banking so I can see the balances on both. I'm still keeping the car insurance savings one open with the PO, I'm just going to run the two accounts, it means that if I have spare change/cash, I can pay it in to my NEW savings account in branch, as the PO account is only accessible online.
We'll see how it goes. I think OH is going to help me with the car savings, as he usually pays for the tax anyway, so it will save him paying out a lump sum in June.

All in all, after our chat the other night, things seem a lot more positive, and he seems to be 'getting' the money saving a lot more.
So much so, that we didnt go to the cinema in the end, we stayed in and caught up on Arrow and Flash at home instead, plus he's working an early shift today so he'd have been exhausted if we'd gone out last night. The voucher he had was a pay on the door voucher, not an advance booking ticket, so we haven't lost anything.

HOWEVER, I've had a spendy couple of days :mad: Not happy with myself at all!!! Because the money is in my account, I can't help myself, (another reason I've opened a secondary savings account so I can syphon off the surplus so it is not 'visible' when I check my balance).

I got the bus to and from work on Friday as OH on a strange shift at work £5 necessary spend
I also bought lunch (naughty) so spent £3.50 on a jacket potato, this was because OH was at work until 8pm and I wasnt sure if he would be eating at work or we'd be eating at home, so I didnt want to cook at home and him not eat, or have a small homemade sandwich at work and wait until he gets home and be starving by 8pm so end up ordering takeaway! As it turns out, he hadnt eaten at work, so I just had chilli out of the freezer that was leftovers, and OH had pasta.
Total spend £8.50 :eek: I borrowed £1 off a colleague though for bus fare.

I got the bus in to work yesterday so £2.50 necessary spend, then made the mistake of nipping in to town on my lunch break, I didnt need to, I'd taken OH's left over pasta in for my lunch.
My colleague wanted crisps and a chocolate bar (the pregnant one who lent me a £1 the day before) so I offered to get her those with the money I owed her, so got those from 8oots, inevitably it was more than £1!! £1.35 to be exact, so 35p more than planned.
THEN I discovered a voucher on the back on my bus ticket, £1.99 for a big mac and fries at McD's, so I caved and went in! I then got a small drink too (89p). As there was a queue I called work to let them know I was in the Q at McD's, pregnant colleague then wanted happy meal instead, so got that £2.39!!!!
She didn't have any change when I got back to the office, so she owes me £2.74.

OH picked me up from work, and we called in to see my grandma as she's not been well, and she lives near T£sco. A HUGE mega store. Ugh.
I never really want pizza, but she'd got one in the fridge and it looked delicious, so we 'called in' to T£sco on our way home to 'get a pizza'. I like thin crust, OH likes deep pan, so we always have to get two!
They are now made fresh, but they didnt have any ham and pineapple thin crust, so we ordered it and the lady asked if we needed to get anything else as she has a few more orders to make up (we didnt, but wandered round anyway!) To be fair, we didnt have a basket as we literally only wanted pizza, but ended up getting bread too (we do need bread), and my favourite hot chocolate sachets were 4 for £1, so I got those too. We then waited at the pizza station to avoid more unplanned spend!!

In total we spent £7.19. :mad:

Has anyone noticed that the best before dates on the bread at Tesco are really short?! The latest we could find was 29th Jan! Was on offer at 89p though and at least it just goes in the freezer

Will be a NSD today as OH is at work until 3 and I am going to get the cleaning done, then we're going to visit my sister, and spend this evening catching up with Supernatural now we can stream it again.

Happy Sunday everyone

EDIT: JUST CHECKED STEPCHANGE AGAIN AND IT HAS UPDATED MY TOTALS!! Going to update signature again, although Stepchange start figure shows as my LBM figure, so it is out slightly. Will work on the figure on my signature as that is the CORRECT amount.

AleMrsT

I am going to speak to StepChange to increase my monthly DD payment to £72, which is 1% of my total debt left to pay (not from LBM figure), so I can track it easier. 1% each month, means debt free in 100 months. YIKES. :eek::eek::eek: Its going to be a LOOOONG journey. :beer:

EDIT: I've also discovered you can update the 'estimated balance' amount on the debt totals for each one, so I've updated that to reflect the true balances now the first payment has gone out, so my DMP balance matches my signature. The balances have only gone down ever so slightly, less than 1%, but if I can change the payment as above, it will be so amazing to see them decreasing every month. I finally feel like I can relax.

October_Starter

Don't worry about the length of the journey. It seems daunting at first but you need to focus on each little step. Remember you are doing something about it and not getting into a worse postion.

Keep going and you will get there. In the meantime, we are all here to keep cheering you on!

October xx

AleMrsT

Thanks October. I don't think I'd mind being on here with everyone for 100 months as everyone is so nice to each other.

misstara

Ditto what October Starter said the 100 months will go in quickly and over time you can hopefully up the monthly direct debit to get it paid off quicker.

Getmeoutofdebt

I found that focussing on the overall journey made me more stressed about it and that the trick was to focus on smaller goals. I changed my goals quite a bit too to have a bit of variety in what I was doing. If you focus on the smaller things the bigger goal sorts itself out in a way and like the others said the time just flies! I can't believe I only have 1 month to go until I'm paid and have completed a 3 year plan. It feels like I've been doing it about 6 months! It will fly by for you too!
Good luck
Gmood x

AleMrsT

misstara wrote: »

Ditto what October Starter said the 100 months will go in quickly and over time you can hopefully up the monthly direct debit to get it paid off quicker.

Thats my plan, once I've saved up enough for the car insurance, I can add the £30 per month to the DMP payment, but I don't want to get too carried away as I'll still need to put some money aside for other annual things, although not sure what yet and don't want to overestimate myself!!

Getmeoutofdebt wrote: »

I found that focussing on the overall journey made me more stressed about it and that the trick was to focus on smaller goals. I changed my goals quite a bit too to have a bit of variety in what I was doing. If you focus on the smaller things the bigger goal sorts itself out in a way and like the others said the time just flies! I can't believe I only have 1 month to go until I'm paid and have completed a 3 year plan. It feels like I've been doing it about 6 months! It will fly by for you too!
Good luck
Gmood x

Thanks GMOOD, Its dragged so much since December, I've just wanted to see the totals go down on the online DMP tracker!! I said to OH yesterday that if I have to spend the next 8 years paying off debts, thats ok, because at least I'll have spare funds to plan and actually LIVE, instead of just paying bills and living payday to payday hoping the cards wont decline.


On another note, our holiday booking has been cancelled :mad::mad::mad::mad:
OH forwarded me an email from the holiday company saying that the owner won't honour a booking because it spans the changeover day (Saturday), we've booked to go Thursday to Tuesday, to cover our anniversary. I was not happy, why do they advertise that they do 'short breaks' and let you select any day as a start day if they then won't honour the booking? So now we have to find alternative accommodation for around the same price (as that's all we've budgeted for) in the same area, because I've set my heart on going to St Ives!

Going to try calling Aspect Holidays to see if they can find another cottage that we can book that also has parking and wifi (OH's deal breaker!!)

On an MSE note, no NSD again!!! Eek. Bought lunch (and dinner) from 8oots (must stop going there, it is far too expensive but its sooo close to work!) I got a meal deal, and the £1 sandwiches and a 'boost' chocolate bar reduced to 30p! I also got a leave in damage repair treatment for my hair, it was £7.99 :eek:, but that is a lot cheaper than a visit to the hairdressers for a professional conditioning treatment.

I've seen a lot of posts on the 'frugal facebook' page, (on FB haha), people are raving about going 'no 'poo', as in no shampoo. They swear by apple cider vinegar and bicarbonate of soda, and I'm keen to actually try it. It's all natural stuff so it can't do any harm, and is probably better than the chemicals in traditional shampoo. I mentioned it to a colleague today and she said 'I'm sitting at the other desk if you do that, you'll stink of either unwashed hair, vinegar, or both!' (she was joking, but she has a point!!)
Has anyone else gone this radically MSE/frugal?! Might ask my mum, she is/was a hairdresser afterall!

OH on a late shift tonight, so I'm going to have a lovely long bath and read my book. I got a gorgeous candle for my birthday, so I'm going to light that too.

AleMrsT

:j A really helpful lady at the holiday company has just managed to sort out an alternative property for us. Slightly more money, (because it's got a second bedroom) but it is a modern apartment, on the seafront with wifi and parking. :T its reserved for us, I just have to call on Friday and pay the deposit (when I know how much my wages will be to see how much I can pay off)

October_Starter

Yay! :j

It's my motivational quote day and thought this one was a good one for you



October xx