Clippy's first attempt at MFW

clippy_girl

Hi all :wave:

I have just returned from a lovely holiday to India yesterday, my first holiday since becoming debt free in April 2014. :j:T Since April I had been using all spare money to save for my holiday, electric work and getting a new window fitted in my bedroom. Now all thats paid for I am finally ready to start a bit of overpaying from my December pay :money:

I have done a SOA and cut back all I'm prepared to as I like my sky, gym, hair, contact lenses, meals etc... I have around £150 left per month from my salary. I have a spreadsheet which lists all incomings and outgoings so I can see what I need and I move the £150 odd to savings on payday on 19th.

I also have a lodger and get £360pm rent on 26th.

I also do mystery shopping although I have gotten lazy over the summer and preferred sunbathing I am aiming to bring in £100 per month from this. I will try for more but I'm not going to eliminate all my free time in the process! I absolutely HATE surveys so not going to do those but I am going to start comping again.

So I should have a minimum of £610 per month to use.

From this I plan to save £300 for holidays (what can I say, I love them! ) and save £210 for my emergency fund (currently empty!). This will be from my salary and rent money.

I then intend to overpay all extra money so all mystery shopping payments, cashback, ebay, mileage from work etc... so should be at least £100 per month.

Once I have built up my emergency fund to £1500 I will divert that to overpaying as well :A

As of today my mortgage stands at £110,260.40 :eek:

clippy_girl

As I can't start doing anything towards saving or overpaying yet, I am going to use my diary to get organised!

I am shortly going food shopping and for a free health MOT at my gym. I am probably as unfit as I've ever been since I started going and am nearly my heaviest weight as have been lazy. I think there are incentives if you improve so figured I should go today and then hopefully next time I will get some goodies

I also need to try and ring the county court as I sued easyjet on behalf of myself and two friends and have obtained a CCJ against them. They have not yet paid and I think its overdue (complicated by the fact they applied to set aside judgement which put a hold on them paying but their case was thrown out). Need to confirm deadline for payment so I can write to them threatening bailiffs. It will be around £450 for each of us so need to decide what to do with it :think:

I then need to open 3.5 weeks of post which has built up whilst I was away (the first letter I opened was a bill from the electrician for £480 so I lost interest in opening the rest :rotfl:)

Andrewboom

Sounds like a good start. Now I have some control over my other halfs spending, I do need to look into thing like cutting the food bill and earning extra money.

I did not get on with the surveys. I have never tried mystery shopping. What would you say would be the good and bad points and how many would you be doing to earn that amount?

clippy_girl

Hi,

Mystery shopping is good in that its flexible so you can pick up stuff when you are free and leave it whilst you are busy. Its bad in that I find it boring filing in the reports! The pay used to be much better but i generally get around £8-£10 per job which takes around 30-40 minutes. Occasionally you get jobs that take longer or involve opening bank accounts and you can get much more. The key is to sign up to loads of companies as you are unlikely to get enough work from one or two. I live in a city which also helps but ultimately it will depend on how many other shoppers are in your area. You also need to pay tax but you can claim a lot as expenses so its still worth doing. Have a look on the thread on here There is lots of useful info on the first few posts.

So in money news i have just booked £100.50 of mystery shops for the next few weeks so will hit my target of £100 :T Hopefully I will get a cheque by end of December to overpay

In other news I have just withdrew £53 from Quidco :j

I need to pay £116 for friends hen do, £480 for electrician and around £250 on my cc and I am around £100 short so extra money has to go there for now

clippy_girl

Morning all

So I opened the post, there was nothing exciting in any of it

In money news I have sold two cds on ebay so just withdrew £21 from paypal.

looking forward to getting paid so i can clear the cc, put money in the holiday and emergency fund and see what is left to overpay getting a payrise of around £30 per month from jan and getting a small lumpsum of around £80 in my dec pay so that can go towards it

plans for today are to go to the gym this morning for body combat. this will be my first session for about 7 weeks :eek: then I need to bring the present box down from the loft to check what I've got before I go into the city. I have two mystery shops to do plus some parcels to collect and return for some online mystery shopping. Then out for dinner tonight but only going to have one course to keep cost and calories down! :A

MissionMoney

You sound so organised clippygirl! :T

Well done with all the mystery shopping! Sounds like a good way to boost your income.

Let's hope these diaries keep us motivated! :beer:

jodles16

India, how amazing! And big well done on becoming debt free!

Best of luck on this MFW journey!

Jodles

edinburgher

Poor electrician - he'll be on bread and water by the time you pay his bill :rotfl:

clippy_girl

edinburgher wrote: »

Poor electrician - he'll be on bread and water by the time you pay his bill :rotfl:

He has been paid! He should have not waited 6 months to send the bill! :rotfl:

So not much to report, still patiently awaiting payday on friday :T

The only exciting news I have is that easyjet finally paid up :j:beer::T We are having £350 each and the rest is in the kitty for a cheap summer holiday (not with easyjet :rotfl:). I am putting it all in the emergency fund though as once that's at £1500 I can start overpaying.

So on payday I am going to clear the CC and put £190 in the savings. with the £360 rent next week that will be £250 towards emergency fund and £300 in holiday fund :T Any left over on payday will be OP.

I have got a bnwt shockabsorber bra i need to ebay as i bought it on there but it is impossible to do up! It has two fastenings on the back and unless you are double jointed I'm not sure how you could get it done up. Trying it on was the hardest workout I've ever done! :rotfl: Going to list it after 1st jan though when everyone is on a health kick! :A

plans for this evening are to do one of the dreaded online mystery shopping reports and then settle down for a greys anatomy marathon. I am totally addicted to it and bearing in mind its only been available on sky since end of Sept and I was on holiday for 3.5 weeks i am already on season 6! Have got a bargain and got seasons 1-8 of house from someone at work for £20 (£80 on amazon) so will watch that next and then re-sell!

gallygirl

The only exciting news I have is that easyjet finally paid up :j

Gutted, I was so wanting the bailiffs to go in .

Have got a bargain and got seasons 1-8 of house from someone at work for £20 (£80 on amazon) so will watch that next and then re-sell!

I know someone who'd like to see them .

clippy_girl

Happy boxing day everyone! Hope you all had a lovely Christmas :santa2::xmassmile:rudolf::xmassign:

Currently I'm at mums sat on the sofa uploading my India pics Going to plug my laptop in the TV and watch a bot of Grey's Anatomy soon

Have popped up to the sales this morning and bought a new dress and belt for tomorrow night out and also bought two bday pressents in the boots sale :A

In mortgage news I have made my first two overpayments- £23.83 and £10 :j I earnt £123.50 this month from mystery shopping but I've only received £10 so far so can't pay the rest off yet