The "time to be a grown up" diary!

debtfreeoneday

Sounds like a lovely weekend.. don't blame you re the snow.. whilst I kind of want it this weekend, I hate travelling in it!

Well done you on your first month of payments and so close to being under £13k - keep on going!

betsycat

Thank you nice to see some progress, think that's around 3-4% paid off already...

Are you able to hole up in the warm this weekend if you have snow? It's nice to have when you haven't got to go anywhere... We haven't had proper snow since we've been in London, but we went to Canada last May and had some 'proper' snow up in Banff, was lovely! Hope you do get some so you can have snowball fights and hot chocolate to warm your hands up

debtfreeoneday

We live in the middle of the country side, so able to hole up - I just need my Mr T delivery to arrive first as we run on fairly low groceries and would therefore starve in 48 hours..:rotfl:

betsycat

Yikes, hope you made it through! :rotfl:
Did you get much snow in the end?

Loan payment just came out and I did a bit of YNAB jiggling so I could pay a bit extra off my Lloyds card, managed to get 32.13 together so my debt is now under £13k, hooray! :beer: Lovely way to start a week. Still got £45ish to come in from OH once we know how much the British Gas bill is, too.

betsycat

Got a little bit spendy over the weekend... mostly planned things, and all bargains, but feel I need to put the purse in a drawer for a few days!

Went to the sewing shop on Saturday to get my quilt material and wadding and did indeed get it for 30% off... also bought 2 metres of aida for cross stitch (I didn't know you could buy it on the roll!) as I've got lots of cross stitched-based presents planned this year... also a 1,000m roll of white cotton and 500m of blue cotton for £4... £26 in total with the discount. Not too bad, although the 3m of navy material for the quilt backing and edging isn't quite wide enough so will need to grab another couple of metres.

I then had problems with my sewing machine bunching up the bobbin thread underneath again, which is why I had it fixed before... thought it might be the cheap thread so popped into town to buy a roll of Gutermann thread, still nothing... then realised I've been threading the bobbin wrong all this time. *facepalm* did it properly and hey presto, it worked. It probably didn't need all the new parts they gave it a few weeks ago when I spent £60 getting it repaired! :mad:

Anyway... while I was in town, I spent £12 on Gutermann thread (:eek:) and popped to Superdrug as I need a new mascara and didn't want to shell out £16 on my usual Benef1t Bad Gal. Found a Rimmel one to try (£6.99), and it's okay, nothing special. Also bought some skincare bits and dry shampoo while I was in there as there was money off our usual stuff. So another £18 there.

Finally, I went to visit a friend quite last minute who's upset as her 6 year relationship has just broken up, and was there until quite late. I didn't want to walk to the station as her area is a bit dodgy so got a taxi home. Had a £10 Uber credit so it was much cheaper than it should have been but still £11 and could have been avoided.

Sitting on my hands, purse is staying at home, no more spending. It's my own fault for leaving £72 unbudgeted in YNAB, in my head that means "money to spend, hurrah!"

On the plus side, I have £25 left in this week's budget which runs until Saturday. I need to buy some milk tonight but other than that have no planned expenses, so fingers crossed I can just put the rest of that in my emergency fund or off one of the credit cards.

At least the naughty little spending gremlin on my shoulder has been placated for the time being, and all on things I needed... bar the expensive thread. But I'm sure it'll be better for my machine in the long run!

But some good news... I popped to Sainsburys yesterday (which I'd forgotten actually, another £3 there! Maybe not good news after all) and managed to get some yellow sticker bananas which is much better as I don't like them green anyway!

HarrysMummy

Just caught up with your diary. Well done on the balance transfers. Thats a great saving on interest!

The sewing supplies sound like a fab bargain as well. Can I ask what wadding you use for quilts? I've never made a quilt before, lots of clothes and other bits but never a quilt and I'd really like to make one for little dude with his baby clothes. Hope you don't mind me asking!!

betsycat

Not at all HarrysMummy! I'm by no means an expert (still working on making my patchwork squares line up neatly... it's all in the cutting!) but have made a couple of quilts as gifts. I've always used the fluffy polyester wadding you can get by the roll in sewing shops, but I think I'm going to start using the cotton batting that's more like a thick felt (like below)



The quilts I've made tend to be quite puffy and I'd prefer them to be flatter! A quilt made with little dude's clothes sounds really lovely – and because it's small it'll be easier for you to get everything at the right size. Let me know when you're working on it, would love to see!

Here's the one I'm working on at the mo:



Nautical theme, wedding present for our friends down in Brighton!

debtfreeoneday

You are a talented lady! Good news on the payments and being under £13k! Well done!

betsycat

Thank you df1d! Nice to see chunks like that... also means I've hit the lovely 5% mark

betsycat

A very quick one just to share a teeny bit of good news: I'd forgotten that with my loan, they work out the interest at the beginning and apply it to the account. So the 9574.06 figure includes all interest on the 5 year term, and will definitely reduce itself when I pay off early after 2 years! So I guess a payment or two before the end I'll request a settlement figure and see how much comes off. Exciting!