A new debt free journey

lcc86

£6 spent this morning on hay and sawdust, also spent £1 on some blusher as it was cheap!

Weather looks great today, I have plenty of chores to do but hope to get out and enjoy some sun before the return to work tomorrow. Got my usual Tuesday evening shift lined up this week. Hoping to have my course details finalised this week, including whether I can get any financial or practical support.

lcc86

£4 spent on Groceries yesterday and £2 spent on veg for pigs. No spends planned until the weekend, I'm off to hobbycraft for the first time to see what I can pick up to help with my thrifty Christmas plans...

Fallen off the exercise wagon a bit, I've only done a short yoga sesh since Thursday, I have a long day at work (8am-11pm) so no point aiming for exercise today, but mudt definitely go for s run tomorrow morning!!

lcc86

Kept to my word today and managed to go for that run :T bed was so tempting though!! I'm thinking of signing up to another 10k race around Xmas time to keep me motivated with running as there's always the temptation with me to just be lazy hehe. But I'll see how the first 10k in September goes first.

My credit card standing order went through this morning so I calculated what's left in my account and I've mislaid £16 somewhere along the line. Luckily I don't think I'll spend all of my £50 fuel budget so I should be able to cover it from that as I've used less than half a tank in 2 weeks, but just reminds me that I can still make errors from time to time. Won't beat myself up too much though lol.

lcc86

I've located that £16 I thought I'd lost yesterday, I remember I transferred it into another account so I put it back and all is well again!

lcc86

Today has been a positive day. I've been told to apply for funding for my course that I want to do at work and make a business case as to why they should fund it for me, and if that is declined, I can go down the route of a salary sacrifice loan which saves me money as it's tax deductible. So everything is looking really positive on that front :T I also had a good volunteering session this evening too, very positive.

I also found a website that does short break style horse riding holidays for about £250-£300. This is something I'd like to aim towards perhaps for next year as a treat, it's not prohibitively expensive and it would definitely be something I enjoy :cool:

I've had a couple of spends today on a t shirt I wanted (from my unallocated £10 a week budget) and I paid £10 deposit for my pigs to go to boarding over Xmas as my OH and I plan to spend it with my parents. I also started buying a few Xmas presents online as well (very early I know!! ). Although today has been spendy, all the spends were planned and paid for so I have no guilt for once! :rotfl:

No real plans for this weekend. Going to do lots of cleaning, some running and also plan to go to hobby craft for some more Xmas ideas. Work has seemed to drag this week, although it's been enjoyable, just seems to have been longer than usual.

Orange_Ena

lcc86 wrote: »

Today has been a positive day. I've been told to apply for funding for my course that I want to do at work and make a business case as to why they should fund it for me, and if that is declined, I can go down the route of a salary sacrifice loan which saves me money as it's tax deductible. So everything is looking really positive on that front :T I also had a good volunteering session this evening too, very positive.

I also found a website that does short break style horse riding holidays for about £250-£300. This is something I'd like to aim towards perhaps for next year as a treat, it's not prohibitively expensive and it would definitely be something I enjoy :cool:

I've had a couple of spends today on a t shirt I wanted (from my unallocated £10 a week budget) and I paid £10 deposit for my pigs to go to boarding over Xmas as my OH and I plan to spend it with my parents. I also started buying a few Xmas presents online as well (very early I know!! ). Although today has been spendy, all the spends were planned and paid for so I have no guilt for once! :rotfl:

No real plans for this weekend. Going to do lots of cleaning, some running and also plan to go to hobby craft for some more Xmas ideas. Work has seemed to drag this week, although it's been enjoyable, just seems to have been longer than usual.

Well done on finding that missing £16

Glad you've had a positive day. I love it when that happens! All sounds good with your course, must be a relief to know that you can do it either way

Have you ever heard of Pinterest? So so many ideas for Christmas. As well as loads of other stuff. It's blimming addictive though so I apologise if you're stuck looking on it for 12 hours!

lcc86

Thanks Orange Ena, I do look on Pinterest sometimes although I'm not registered with an account, it's given me loads of good ideas for various things over the last few months!

I'm a little confused about my car insurance, I paid for it last Saturday, received confirmation that it had all gone through, transferred £250 to my credit card to cover it, but they still haven't taken payment and there's nothing pending. I emailed them yesterday and they said I have to call, which I've not had time to do yet, but I also received my policy documents yesterday so it must've gone through?! Very confusing. I'll keep an eye on it. On the plus side, because I transferred the money to my credit card, it's put my in credit until such time as they do take payment, so I'm saving myself a couple of pounds on interest I suppose while they sort it out lol.

lcc86

Happy weekend everyone :j:beer:

I've been a little naughty and provisionally booked that horse riding holiday I mentioned yesterday. No payment sent yet, just requested my dates and when they get back to me I'll send the deposit. I figured the earlier I book it the longer I have to save the rest and the less stressful it is.

I also joined club ll0yds today. I checked the t's and c's and because my salary is high enough I don't have to pay a monthly fee. I only really joined to earn a little more interest on my balance as it was free. It probably won't make too much difference but why not? You can pick one of four benefits, I chose some free cinema tickets. I don't usually go to the cinema because I find it so ridiculously expensive, so at least now I can go a few times for free in the next 12 months. If they change the terms and start charging I'll cancel, so must keep an eye on that.

Other good news is I made my first loan overpayment today :T for the grand total of..... £8 :rotfl: I had some spare money and as my credit card balance is still showing in credit, I can't overpay on there, so I thought I'd send it to the loan instead. I'm sure it will make about 1p of difference a month or something ridiculous but it's all a step in the right direction and hopefully the first of many additional payments

lcc86

Went for my parkrun this morning and managed a little better than the first time so I'm happy with that. I've also done another top up shop, £10 spent. I also had to buy a couple of housey bits at £2, and I filled my tank and spent £26. That's my entire fuel budget gone for the month but I should be able to manage. My food budget is getting a bit marginal if I'm honest. I seem to be having difficulty with the food budget in recent months so I definitely need to work on this. I wonder whether I need to give Lidl a try for my main shop, I've been there once looking for specific things but perhaps I need to give it another go next month for my main shop.

I decided not to go to hobbycraft in the end, I was able to find what I wanted on Amazon so I just ordered it online, free postage too.

lcc86

With yesterday's post in mind I went through my meal plan for next month (yes I'm sad and already have it planned) and decided to get as much as possible from Lidl. I worked out how much it would cost at Tesco so if I can get most or all of what I need for less, I'll stick with it. There are a few things I will stick to other supermarkets for, like the odd branded item or specialist food (I'm lactose and gluten free due to IBS, I'm sure that's partly why my food bill is higher than it should be :mad:), but I'm going to give it a really good go.

Yesterday I also started thinking about a horse share (talk about running before you can walk!). Looking into it, it would be a good way for me to horse ride loads more for less money. But I need to get much more experience behind me before I even think about doing it (at least a year I reckon) and of course I need to be in a better financial position. It's another goal to aim for and another reason to be debt free, just to be able to enjoy life and not live from payday to payday.

It's times like this, when you realise that the burden of debt is stopping you from doing all the things you want to do, that this journey can seem really long, and possibly never-ending! just got to keep on plugging away knowing that each month is a step closer to being debt free, regardless of how long it takes. I know I'm a very impatient person which probably doesn't help at all in situations like this :rotfl: but I guess it can be a learning experience for me too!