NST: May the odds be ever in your favour!

Bobarella

Fmess - interesting. I suppose it is one of those things where you have benefitted for the greater good and I'm sure your dad could see how trustworthy you were and did a great thing for you. I hope getting it all signed over is nice and easy. Well as much as anything legal ever is.

We are trying to decide what to do on the mortgage/housing situation at the moment. Similar to you Fmess because I went self employed 3 years ago I am a bit of a funny one on paper.
We own a flat that has a lot of equity in it. We've let it out for the last 7 years. When we sold our house to do the business we moved into a rented house. We are happy there but would like to buy our own place again. Due to the London market we both feel it would be a mistake to sell the flat. So the goal is to remortgage it to take a deposit on the next house. But we have hoops to jump through first. Such as getting debt free. As Mr is the higher earner by far we are focusing on making him look the best first.
I think we are 12 months out from wanting to move really what with a baby arriving in October, my son's school going through for another year, & our mission to get as sorted financially as we can. But a goal without a plan and all that...

Sorry for waffle!

wishus

Thanks everyone for the sympathy regarding my phone! It really is a bummer - I'd vowed to be extra careful with this one. I dropped it trying to take a piccie of a chocolate birthday cake I'd made and was really proud of! :bdaycake::undecided

At least it works... and I'll be covered for the damage, except the £50 excess. I have still saved that money through swapping to this phone in the first place!

I have only managed 4 NSD/SFDs this month, I doubt I will make 15 now, never mind 20, but I'm hopeful for next month.

Today is a bit stressful, as OH has a lot on his plate, and I'm waiting to hear from him. I hope he handles today's troubles as well as he can and isn't too disheartened.

I am taking him out for a meal for his birthday on Friday. It won't be cheap cheap, unfortunately, but that will be the last of the treats now. I have had a look at the menu and guessed the sort of thing he will pick and am prepared for it to be :eek:. We have also been invited to someone else's 40th on Saturday, but that will involve travel, hotel, food, booze, a present... we just can't do it.

Calling14

Hi everyone. Hope your all well.:j

Today going to be a SFD Messy eater was eating pilchards and a salad in work and managed to get most the sauce down my top, so will hide in office rest of day - sponged it off but looks worse now No shops for me - Makes 9/20 woo hoo.

Nannygladys hope you feel better soon, be careful with the headaches, get it checked out.

Bob - great news on the parties and glad to hear bubbly bath is back on. Can't wait for one tonight full of cold and ache all over, just be so nice to sink into - sorry Fmess.

Wishus sorry to hear about your phone always something. Sounds like a lovely weekend planned anyway without 40th Party and you have cake.:beer:

The Onlygirl thanks for your get well wishes, honey lemon and ginger drink now in the office. Good for you avoiding the takeaway. It has been well over 12 months since I have had a chinese - getting so tempted lately but then work out % of my debt I could pay off instead. I am so sad.

Nevermind 1 day to go and I reach under 5k mark - been a long time coming. At one point thought I would never reach it shows determination can pay off. Can't wait to update figures tomorrow.

Right need to get some work done before next job of granny duties. Need a rest zzzz

littleskintdragon

Hi everyone, had a busy couple of days and feel terrible so i havent posted, quick check in to say i've had 7 sfd's. Tomorrow will be a spendy day though i should think as i'll ned to go food shopping.
Will come back when i feel better

stewby

I have read but can't really remember very much of it, I'm sorry. It's not that it isn't important, my brain is just not working properly. Basically think I have burnt myself out and now have a cold (which is standard operating procedure for me).
:embarasse

Money-wise... I got £73.60 from t0pc4shb4ck for our holiday and some insurance I bought.
My dad says I have £320 to put towards the credit card to adding that to the £73.60... and convinced him to add on an extra 97p which should bring the credit card total to £2245.


Granny is doing much better and will hopefully get home soon. Turns out none of the bowel was removed (hooray), it was all stuck together but he got it unstuck during surgery, there is no cancer present... and to top it all off (sorry to be disgusting), she pooped this afternoon!!!!
:j

Her insurance company is absolutely amazing and are not only flying her home with a nurse escort but will accompany her all the way to her front door. Don't know the company's name but they are brilliant.


Future MIL has her op at the end of May and it should be a full recovery so just Grandad to worry about now but at least his is a routine procedure.


Apart from cracking up after work (think the stress from work and the stress at home just put a bit too much pressure on), it is all looking good.


Spent the day baking and cooking. Made a loaf of bread, some blondies and some soup... away to make pizzas with OH as a bit of fun (and for supper obviously, we aren't wasting money).


We have also discussed a new savings account for our wedding fund but OH is going to check his figures first then let me know if he can manage it. It is a lot to ask as we do have a lot going on. He gets paid £1500 a month and £900 is going into the bills account, £60 into food, £100 into the holiday pot and £30 -£31 into the xmas pot.
Doesn't really give him a lot to play with... so will be patient and see what he says.


Hope you are all doing well and I really hope no-one reads this at suppertime and gets put off their food. I couldn't help but overshare my good news.

apple_muncher

Glad it is good news, Stewby!

littleskintdragon-hope you feel better soon. Do keep popping on to say hello even if you don't write a lot.

Calling - can I join the messy eaters club please? I am such a food dropper, although dh is worse: as soon as he has a clean top on, then food is attracted to it.

wishus - hope you enjoy all the celebrations. It is hard to see money disappear so quickly when you are debt-busting. I think that planning helps, as you know what is looming and what is also lurking - soon to loom - and can get a plan of action in place.

Today is my food spend day. I added in about £7 of 'gf' goodies for work - you usually take cake and chocs when it's been your bday, and I can't usually eat them. So I'm taking in grapes, plum toms and midget gems!

After picking up dd, I suggested we do our 'cafe at home' version of going up to the local coffee shop (locally run) and sit out on the garden bench reading. So she had pink milk with ice cream in it and a cake, and I had lemon fizzy water and a hm brownie. Very civilised!

Today I am grateful for the tree cutters (surgeons?) getting rid of some very overgrown trees on the estate, for a quick bike ride, for a couple of lovely chats with complete strangers, for our cafe at home, for lavender.

Bobarella

Wishus - Well put it this way, you have managed to spend no money for 4 days, that in itself is still awesome. Probably far higher than most of the UK population. Sorry about your phone.

Calling - Thank you very much, & well done on your NSDs your 1 ahead of me, feel me at your heels :rotfl:

littleskintdragon - sorry to hear you havent been well. Hope you feel better soon. Well done on your NSDs though:T

The Only Girl - Meant to say thank you very much for the nice comment about the party. And well done for resisting the siren call of the take away. So hard when you are tired or unorganised, which happens.

Stewby - Very pleased about your Grans diagnois.

So I bagged my 8th NSD today, unexpectedly. But hey I'll take it. Have planned the next 2 days of meals around eating up leftovers. We have a basic pasta pesto that I made to go in stuffed peppers that I can easily throw something new with to make 1 nights meal, and there is some of the veg curry I cooked to go with the chicken on saturday still left, so maybe some prawns or something with that?

Also found 6p roadkill in total. No tips, but womble score is only £8 below £200 now, not bad in less than 6 months.

Night all.

Bound for the bubbles, Bob

academiablues

Hi all, sounds like some of you are struggling with coldy/sicky bugs at the moment, sympathies. It's not nice to be ill.
Spent all day at work today in a meeting (I hate meetings, they bring out the worst in me, I play "corporate speak bingo" with myself and am forever asking the speakers to actually say something meaningful instead of buzzwords!), so came straight home and changed into my PJs - means a NSD for me also got lunch free at work (one good thing about meetings!) and managed to get some exercise in this morning too. Tomorrow will be a spend day as going out with some old work colleagues after work, but will try to only buy one or two soft drinks and will wait to have my tea at home.
Nearly the middle of the month turtles, we're all doing well this month I think

The_Only_Girl

Hi all, nice to read all your posts today, seems like good news all round. It's a nice picker-upper for my somewhat bleurgh afternoon. It's LTW #8 but unfortunately not a NSD as we had to do food and essentials shopping. Finished work early today (7am - 3pm shift) and was meant to take DS2 to Explore Learning but he phoned to say the BT engineer has called in and said the phone line fault is not outside the house but might be inside and he can't fix it without an adult in the house. (We have had no phone line or WiFi since Monday night). So we cancelled our trip and sat out the trouble shooting and repair. By 5pm he was done and we were happy we were able to go out after all and have our phone line and most importantly our WIFi back (everybody in this household have been having the "shakes" without it, it's embarrassing how dependent/reliant we are on our gardgets). Unfortunately Half an hour later, the phone line is down again and the Internet is intermittent. Totally disappointing. Never experienced any of this with Sky. As hubby and I will both be at work all day tomorrow, it looks like we'll have to wait til Friday before it could get fixed again. Hmmmmp.

I am also a bit annoyed with myself about my car insurance. My old insurance from esure (£27/month) ran out on 4th April. I found a better deal with AA insurance (£19/month) and signed up with them starting 5th April. Naturally I cancelled the direct debit for esure. I received a letter and an email from them saying that if they didn't receive further payments my insurance cover would cease. I didn't bother because I had a new insurance. Then an agent rang me to say I should have cancelled my insurance and I needed to pay £30 as termination fee. However she also said if I emailed her a proof of cover with AA the termination fee would be waived. This afternoon they wrote to me again saying I have an outstanding balance of £108. I don't know what to do. I haven't even told my OH yet because he would not be very please. Any ideas anyone?

Sorry being such s downer this evening.

mothernerd

I am back. Did intend to be here for you a lot more than I have but our internet has been totally carp. Was out for all the weekend of DS3's birthday, got about 4 hours in 3 separate bursts over a week and a half, nothing all last week. Spent an hour on the phone on Saturday (DS3 was making spaniel eyes at me as I have left him to deal with it most days) then when we finally got it, it cut out after 5 minutes (DS3 was trying to upload his latest game which took ten minutes and then had to wait till Monday to go to the library to see whether the waiting customers had got a copy). Cue further hour re-instating the complaint they had just tried to close, insisting that the engineer we had been waiting in for all week actually came rather than sending a text saying they thought it was fixed (it wasn't).

Had it for about an hour and a half last night and it's on now, so just read through from page six.

Hugs to Fmess and anyone who needs them. Best wishes to Stewby and your poorly relatives.

Yes the election result was a blow. DS3 is expecting suicides amongst his friends. I feel slightly distanced from it but the last time it was this bad, I was working with unemployed people, especially young people and some of them never made it (not sure I ever did, really truly).

Still struggling to get the last cheque from the energy company and it's the one the Ombudsman didn't want to investigate so may reword my complaint and re-submit. The account I set up with the new energy company isn't accessible and the latest bill from the old company (for the other empty house) once again has £97 of gas I haven't used, as they have over-ridden the reads I gave them and used their 'estimates'. Sent off two brisk e-mails this morning (still waiting for the money they owe me 6 weeks after the 'fix' was supposedly put in place to re-calculate my bill).

It all wears you down and the problems I had getting back across town a few weeks ago have set me back. I am trying to take control and get back to more walking (I know my overall flexibility is improving, bending, stretching, little tasks I couldn't do before) and at weekend I did most of the kitchen and bathroom including mopping and cleaning the stove top (5 times I had to do it and once more the following day).

DS2 tried to talk about moving back in for a month (his landlady is moving in with her bf or he is moving in with her) last week but crossed us off the list when I said he mustn't attempt to kill or attack DS3. He claimed DS3 was the agressor but I think we have dodged a bullet. The extra cash might have helped but I have only just rid the house of the smell of smoke and not quite dug out all the fag ends and packets from the back yard.


Last week I reached rock bottom and filled in a stepchange form (last Thursday/ yesterday as could only do 45 minutes on the computers at the library). Their suggested budget plan gave me a few laughs as the things they suggested cutting were things they said I should put in eg £185 was their minimum for groceries etc, I have been beating myself up for failing to get it under £50. Could I not do laundry/dry cleaning at home (the £5 was for a box of wash powder tablets).

However they recommended a token payment plan for the next twelve months (or until the house sells when I could pay everything off) and I was considering going back to sign up (after I had set up a basic bank account and transferred all the standing orders). Saving this post now as internet access has gone again.