30 in 30 days...time to grow up!!!

Eyebright

Hi Diary,


Well MrCF, I did abandon MSE, but for the most part I haven't abandoned my debt free wannabe-ness!


I have continued to plug away at my debts over the last couple of months, the money I owed to our joint account has been cleared, so that's one debt down! I did however raid my EF to pay for one of OH's birthday presents....I kind of spent £200+ on a Go-pro camera for him, on top of other presents...


Yep, I'm an idiot, my spending habits will always be what get me into trouble, the EF is slowly coming back up to what it was, but I keep reminding myself where it would be if I hadn't stolen from it. A birthday present certainly does not constitute an emergency! What would I have done if we had had a real emergency, say the boiler broke? Oh yeah, that would have had to go on the CC


Anyway, hopefully I have learnt my lesson now. I made an overpayment to the DFS sofas last month, by the amount we usually pay a month, so I have brought the end date of that forward by 1 month I plan on making another this month once the usual payment goes out in a couple of weeks.


I have already been a bit spendy this month, and technically it's not even June yet :eek:, so the plan is to rein that back in now. I've joined the NST team challenge thread for June, which limits me to just 10 spend days for the whole of June :eek:


One of them will go on the 1st of June, as we have no car that day so I will have to catch the bus! Won't be a good start to the challenge :rotfl: but I will do our weekly food shop on the same day. Will take lunch to work, and won't go browsing on the usual websites that tempt me. Will also delete the tempting emails they send me to try and lure me in! If I'm doing well, I may treat myself to one thing nearer to the end of the month for being a good girl


My target to end the month with £100 left in the account, which I will split between the EF and paying towards a debt. Also going to list some bits of ebay see if I can make back some of what I have spent!


How is everyone else doing? Feels nice to be back xx


Feeling motivated again finally!

Eyebright

In an effort to try and "up my income", I have logged back into My Survey, Onepoll and Swagbucks to see where I'm up to with them all.


Pleasantly surprised as I can redeem my points on My Survey for £10 Paypal vouchers. I haven't logged in since 2013 either it helpfully informed me :eek:


Onepoll is at a measly £15.75, and you can't take anything out until you get to £40, so I might achieve that sometime this decade :rotfl: I have 490 points on Swagbucks, so again a little way to go there.


I'm also going to take the plunge and list some things on ebay. I have a few bits kicking around that I can hopefully get some money for. Anything extra I earn I will roll onto the CC to get that cleared.


The CC should be dead by September at my current speed, so I'd like to bring that forward 1 month at least. DFS HP is due to end next February, but I want it gone this year. That will just leave what we owe FIL for the house deposit, and I would like that to be at £7.5k by end of the year. Currently at £8300, so need to pay off £800. Pay £100 a month off anyway = £600 by end of the year, so need to find an extra £200.


Good job I love a challenge!

Eyebright

Just listed 10 things on ebay, omg I forgot how much I hate putting things on ebay :eek: Hoping it all sells, aiming to make at least £80 for it all


Also created a new spread sheet in the same vein as the make £2015 in 2015 challenge, to monitor what extra income I generate, whether it be from surveys, cashback website, OT, ebay sales etc. Hoping it might motivate me a bit more to make some effort to up my income, so I can chuck more money at my debts

Eyebright

Small spend today of bus fare, which was a necessity otherwise I wouldn't have gone to work :eek: sounding like not such a bad idea after the day I've had :rotfl:


Took my lunch to work and although sorely tempted at one point to buy myself a treat, I managed to resist


Logged onto Tesco late last night and have £22 in clubcard vouchers I'm saving for Christmas. I also have £5 on Morrisons Match&More. OH is going to check our nectar card as that is in his name, but there is definitely £50+ sitting on that, as OH has been accumulating them for at least a couple of years!


Now I'm going to pop onto Onepoll, My Survey and Swagbucks to see if there are any surveys I can do for a pittance. Ebay listings have had some viewings and 1 or 2 things currently have watchers, so fingers crossed they all sell on Sunday.


Oh! I'm also going to attempt a meal plan for this week, as pretty sure we have a load of stuff in, might just need a few bits for packed lunches and snacks...

Eyebright

Soooo tired, work was hell today! Staff off sick bleurrgh...still managed not to spend any money though, RESULT! I was so tempted mid-afternoon to grab a chocolate bar.


Just done a survey on My Survey, only a couple of hundred points off a £15 paypal voucher. Haven't checked ebay yet, but it's probably too soon for any bidders


Night off, need some sleep! xx

Eyebright

:eek: :eek: It's been a week since I last logged on! Thought I had better give a quick update, to help to keep me on the straight and narrow, as I've been a wee bit spendy in the last 7 days


So let's start with the good things.

• I sold all bar 1 thing on ebay and made a whopping £114 excluding postage and fees when they come out.
• I cashed in my My Survey points for a £15 paypal voucher, which I'm awaiting to be emailed to me
• Got another £5 Morrison's voucher which I'm putting towards Christmas
• Earned another £1 or so on OnePoll
• Applied for a Tesco CC to do a BT from my Lloyd's CC. No fee and 18 months 0% which is more than enough time to clear what's on it

The not so good points however are that I spent around £30 over the weekend on drinks and a Chinese as OH had friends visiting which I had completely forgotten about!
Also as they were here the weekly food shop went from the £40-50 mark to £75 :eek: :eek:
I spent £4.96 in the 99p shop on padded envelopes and other assorted goodies for ebaying, and also threw in a tinted moisturiser whilst I was at it (I have so much make-up as it is...)


I then did what I had promised not to, and opened an email from Debenhams. 10% off makeup so a UD Naked palette and a MAC lipstick somehow found their way into my virtual basket and got ordered (£48.15....). I'm very cross with myself about this. I'm drawing a line under it. There's not much I can do about it now. Just have to list more things on ebay to cancel out my madness. I've also made it much harder to get to the end of the month with £100 left in the account, which is my personal challenge to myself! I will just have to tighten the purse strings even more, and lock myself out of my emails somehow :rotfl:


Right well, MySurvey apparently has some more surveys awaiting my attention, so I'm off to punish myself with some boring surveys! I will clear this debt and get control of my spending habits back....somehow. Come hell or high water!!!


Hope everyone is doing better than me xx

Eyebright

Also forgot to mention that I had an email through from eBay last week, saying that if I sold an item for £25+ before the 14/06 I would receive a £25 PayPal voucher. I sold 2 items for more than that amount, so hopefully that should wing its way to me after the 14th.

Eyebright

Well it's been around 6 months since I've last posted to my diary, and been on MSE properly. So I think it's probably time for an update...

The last 6 months have been spendy. I did go quite far off the rails I'm afraid, and £338 was added to my CC on impulse purchases, that were most definitely not essentials. This has meant that my goal of clearing the CC in 2015 was missed. There is £102.78 left on it, which I'm aiming to clear by the end of this month.

I also spent way more on Christmas than I wanted to, and in addition to spending the money I had saved up for Christmas last year, I also spent a further £200 that was in my Emergency Fund. That's now down to £50

In more positive news I did clear my HP debt to DFS early, and have cleared the money I owe to the JA, though I've done that numerous times over the year, when I borrowed from it once I had ran out of money from my wages.

So I currently have 2 debts, and after being paid on the 25th of January that will be down to just 1 debt. The Big One. I just have to continue to work hard to ensure that I don't accrue anymore debt in the meantime. I think we are going to need a new oven at some point, so I need to have a think about how I'm going to approach that, without it ending up on the credit card. The mortgage is up for renewal at the end of the year, so I want our finances to be in good shape! The financial checks have got so much stricter since we last remortgaged!

kittycashcake

Welcome back, best of luck to you x