New Year, New start.....

liltdiddylilt

Hey!! I was only thinking of you last night and wondered where you had got to! Sounds like you are doing brilliantly and I know you don't have your head in the sand about the 0%

As long as you are all happy and well... I bet your £110 is like the overflow from mine, disappears into thin air even with YNAB budgeting it to the last penny :wall: hence why I treat my savings as inescapable bills!! :rotfl: they must be paid before I eat. It is the only way I work!

I am sure dude is not missing out in the slightest! Swimming sounds fab. I will be picking Jellytot up with her bike by my side and letting her ride it to the park sure to wear her out, she will be begging for bed and means I can get some steps in while she cycles.

Big hugs lovely to hear from you!! xx

HarrysMummy

Hello

Obviously keeping to my word and posting more often....not:(

Minimum payment for cc gone out so updated and also paid an extra £10 a few minutes ago, This hasn't shown up yet so will update that once it's actually come off the total.

Not done any spending so thats good news, yay :T.

Need to pay dudes nursery fees on thursday though :eek: and it's a 5 weeks month for me so works out a bit more this month. Money is there to pay for it though so not to worry.

Have been through the house and made a fair few piles of eb*y/charity shop stuff so will get those sorted at the weekend. (working a lot this week so no time) Have a few bits to list that may well bring in more than the few pounds I've been getting so hopefully that will make a nice extra payment.

I managed to get rid of a bag of dudes old clothes on the book of face, a women posted a wanted and I jumped in quick smart, she came and collected and handed over £15, which I then spent on eb*y buying some trousers/jeans in the next size up for dude. So I broke even on that. I do try to grab eb*y bargains for him where I can as they grow so quick, so since the money was from his clothes I thought I'd send it back to clothes. He has a nice wardrobe coming along in the next size up now too so wont have to worry when he grows again. (the trousers/jeans arrived and were actually in near new condition, I think a coule of the may have even been new, so very pleased)

Erm not a lot else to report so I will go take a look at some more diaries.

liltdiddylilt

Hello

Good to see you back. Juggling work, kids and internet time isn't easy is it.

Well done on the clothes. Sounds very sensible to me. I've a friend who has had all of her childs clothes up to the age of 4 from the sales etc since before he was born. That would be commendable if he wasn't bigger than average so going into the wrong size at the wrong time of year, and she didn't keep buying extras everytime she saw a bargain. She has spent hundreds in things he has never worn. But they were a bargain so that doesn't matter right... :rotfl: I think she is selling them off eventually.

Yay to the extra payment. You're doing really well!! xx

HarrysMummy

Hey Lilt, you know I did consider buying lots of bargain clothes in numerous sizes. I was given a lot from a friend who has a 5 year old so have something in every size pretty much until then. However dude is now 19months and has just started wearing 12-18 month clothes... so most would have been wrong season if I did buy them beforehand.
I just keep an eye out on eb*y now for bargain buys and bid on them at stupid o'clock in the mornings when us random mums list things... my friends little girl is 2 weeks younger than dude and going into 18-24 clothes so I dare not even buy her things for birthday/xmas in the sales incase she shoots up again. Kids eh, why can't they be more predictable!!

a few good things to note today is a slight increase in tax credits after the renewal, this now totally covers dude nursery so a little bit of breathing space in the budget and I have secured a payrise, pro rata it doesn't make too big and impact on wage but every little helps. I only do a couple of days so can't expect a huge difference in amounts.

CC extra payment has hit so updated that. It's got £6 odd to go to get to the £1800 so I want that gone asap, will make it look better in my head even though it's only a small amount to pay the figure will look better when its 17 and not 18 at the beginning. Just have to remember there is a bit of interest added to this card! Going to look round for another 0% card and see if I can get accepted for one. I have cancelled and closed the NW card that I paid off, so thats gotta be a good impact on my credit file and have been making over payments each month on this one, so fingers crossed. Then at least I won't have any interest to add to anything!

Also looking to switch our joint account over to somebody new, so will be looking out for a nice shiney incentive to get me going. Joint savings for yearly bills is looking good and actually there's a bit more in there than should be at this time of year. A couple of big bills have gone out but I keep adding odd amounts from rounding the joint account down so it's building up quite nicely. Maybe even have extra to pay towards something at the end of the year.

I'm toying with the idea of YNAB, i got the trial and I did like it but couldn't get the app for my phone at the time. So i thought it was a bit pointless as I don't get on the pc that often. But the phone I was given does have the app so I'm thinking maybe it will be a good investment now I can add to it through the app.

Do i need to access it regularly on the pc, or can I mainly update it with the app and just configure it every now and then? Any idea, maybe Lilt has the answer? Everybody raves about it and I feel I'm missing out.

Just had a yummy graze box delivered to my work too.... baffled as had my name on it and I certainly didn't order anything!! Turns out mum has signed me up for a treat for a few weeks. Theres 2 £5 gift vouchers inside and a few refer a friend vouchers so was a nice little pick me up. And it's so yummy!! I got super carrot cake with an afternoon infusion tea, Light lemon and poppy cake with another infusion tea, some pizza bread sticks and a chocolate teacake mix, all from the ligth range so won't blow the diet too much haha.

I'm quite impressed, never had a graze box before but just presumed it was all nuts and berries kinda thing. I've now got my afternoon tea break to look forward to. Good old mummy!!

HarrysMummy

Hello Lovely people of Diaryland

I've had some cashback land in my account so made a little extra payment of £15.00 to the cc, total now stands at £1791.69 Hurah it's now below the £1800 mark. It will only go downwards from here.
This will also more than cover the bit of interest they add on when the next statement is due.

My other cc (that I was holding onto for emrgencies) has now been closed. It was sitting there unused but the temptation was linguring in the background. So I thought I may as well close it down and then if it' not there it can't be used. It's not even needed, plus it may make applying for (and getting) a 0% deal a little easier in a few months when I want to switch everything about again.

Not a lot else to report. Big monthly shop done (and suprisingly only came to £75 odd. The freezer was already quite well stocked though so mainly just a few cupboard stuff and fresh with the odds and ends sort of thing. I've been trying to stock up on a few extra things with each shop so it's obviously paid off and now we can live of that for a while. Made a meal plan and have enough (bar the fresh fruit/veg etc) to last for around 35/40 meals, probably a few extra actually as some of those are chilli/lasagne for me and dude which get split into a few portions and frozen. Hubby away at the back end of next month and a couple of weekends in between so will probably stretch even further.

Also got a family do coming up so will be away for a night and will be fed there. Probably sound like a right old scrouge now don't I?? (you can say it, I'm thinking it as I type)

I have to make a cake in a couple of weeks for the family do (to feed about 50ish, they wont give me numbers!!!) So will need to go shopping for those ingredients, however they're giving me the money back for that. I've bought a few bits in the 'big' shop for this already so just keeping a tally of the cost as I go. My gift is the time, (it was kinda dropped on me at one of those akward moments where you can't think of a good enough reason to say no). Been pinning like mad on Pinterest to try and find some easy decoration type stuff. I've baked most of my life so thats the easy bit, but only recently started icing/decorating stuff so it's all new and just been for home/parents and dude so hasn't needed to be 100% perfect. This time people who don't know me will be oggling it all day so I'm kinda feeling the pressure to decorate it to the hilt..... I don't do pressure!!

anyways, ramble over, nothing much else to report so I shall mooch around the rest of the diaries

HarrysMummy

Hello

Well another £15 paid off to the card today so the total is coming down nicely. My next goal is to try and get it to under the 17 mark by the end of the month. Not sure if thats actually possible but I will try my best. In theory it's only £76.69 so should be able to squeeze something else a little tighter and make that happen. Maybe.

All bills have been paid so nothing really else should be spent. It's my payday next week too so I'm hoping to tighten the belts a bit more with next months budget.

Dude's birthday is in November and a few of his little buddies have been having parties over the last couple of weeks that he's been going to. This got me thinking about his birthday. Our house is just not big enough to have all his little friends over for a party so I'm thinking of a soft play or something. Been looking at the prices and for him and his friends it's looking to be around £80-90, which I don't actually think is that bad. They do all the food/games/prizes and they get 90 minutes in the softplay before the food/games. It's probably not very MSE but it saves me buying/preparing/clearing food and stuff the littlies have left everywhere. They're all gonna be safe and secure in a softplay so I don't need to worry about anybody escaping or falling down stairs etc. My mum has also said she will put towards it. Plus he's not actually getting a lot spent on presents (he has a million toys and really doesn't need anything so will be small gift as he'll never really remember) so I may just do the party for him. I never actually thought we'd be having parties so young but he's such a little socialite!! He seriously has a better social life than me. If I get asked ot do something I don't have to check my diary I have to check his!!

Anyway, so I shall be putting a little bit aside each month to go towards that, the remainder (if any) of what I have put aside will go in his bank account.

I've also been looking at those little toddler tablet type things for him to play games etc on, he's obsessed with my phone and won't leave it alone now that I've figured out the kids mode. So will be keeping an eye out for one of those for Christmas I think. He will probably get a lot of use out of it so should be a good pressie. Again that's probably the present he'll get from us as everybody else normally spoils him rotten anyway, (sound mean now don't I, he also gets money in his account)

Nothing else to report so I will have a wander round and a read of some more diaries. I cannot keep up with everybody at the moment!!

HarrysMummy

Just paid off another £8.94 to the cc by rounding down my account. I've got enough in there to last until payday and should be able to pay some more off once I get paid. Probably another £20 or so from whats left in my account. Then I get to start using next months pay to get that figure down to the 1600's.

I feel like I'm starting to make some headway into the cc. I never really checked my deab free date, but looking at the figures on the cal it's around October 2017!! However if I can find and extra £30 a month that would bring it down to Feb 17. I'm hoping to be debt free by my 30th Birthday so thats September next year. Which means I need to find probably an extra £100 a month on top of the min payment. So this is my next target.

To find an extra £100 to pay off the cc each month. Can I do it? I chuffing hope so. I also want to get rid of some extra weight! I'm probably realistically about 3.5-4 stone above what I shoud be, however I've never actually been that low weight wise so not sure if that would be going too far for me personally. So I'm gonna set a mini target of 2 stone and see how I feel then. If I feel I could go down some more then I will or if I'm happy I'll stay at that. So thats 28lbs, theres 22 weeks (if i counted right) until the dreaded C word, so I'm gonna say 2 stone down by then. This way I can drop some more if I feel I need to and be hopefully happywith my size and debt free by my 30th.

I feel very positive today so hope this lasts and I can keep it going..... you're all gonna help me and drag my sorry *rse into gear if I start slipping though right?

HarrysMummy

Well payday today so I have paid what was left in my account to the cc. So a total of £25.18 has come off the total. Only another £42 odd and I'll be down into the £1700's
still got the.minimum payment to go out and that around £30 so will easily be under this by the end of this month. Yay.

Dudes not been feeling so well over the past few days so not a lot has been done but I have got a pile of things to list on book of face or e of bay. Hopefully get this done on Friday when he's at nursery and I have the day off.

Sorry I've not bee comment on a lot of diaries. I have been keeping g up with what's going on through email subscriptions but just got a lot going on at the moment and not had much time to keep up with general day to day things!

DFB35

Well done on the CC overpayments HarrysMummy and good luck with the weight loss! I will be popping in to see how you are doing Xx

HarrysMummy

Well what a funny old week I've had! Family do at the weekend was weird to say the least. My cakey goodies went down a treat though, even if we did get ignores upon arrival. They soon changed their tune when they were trying to find out who had made the 'amazing' cake. Er that would be the girl at the back who you've all totally ignored and snubbed, and oh is it so and so little party in 2 weeks who would love a little cake. Shame I live so far away then hey.
Seriously the cheek if some people!!

Squeamish people skip thus paragraph! Dude managed to pinch my arm and actually snap my implant! Had to get it removed yesterday in 2 pieces, so now have a very sore arm.

You can read again now! Other news is I've sold a little bundle of nappies and so just made a £15 payment to cc, will update sig once it's actually come off the balance. I also rounded Don my account by around £6 in Friday so about £21 extra since payday a week ago. The min payment come out in just under a week so will know where I stand better then.

Feel like I'm starting to make headway and will hopefully keep up this momentum.

After doc visit yesterday I'm also down 6lbs in around 2 weeks so that's good too.

Also just waiting on a referal from a friend to switch bank accounts so we both get £100 so that will be a nice amount to be stashed in the joint yearly fund pot.

Really happy that all accounts are looking healthy. All the big bills have gone out in the last few days which is quite scary when the account goes from yay to eeeek but that's pretty much everything gone and we're not so much in the eeeek stage but more of that's quite comfortable stage.

Happy post day!!