* Even a small change...

stewby

... can affect the whole future. My whole future. Our whole future.

So... here we are, third time lucky but with a much clearer plan in my head thanks to Apple Muncher's questionings.

So, I decided to create a new diary and focus on what I wrote and how I can change my life for the better.
I'm afraid it starts off a bit doom and gloom...


1) Make a note of your passions, hobbies and new activities you would like to try:
To be honest, I don't have any. I am sadly very work orientated.
I play on the internet a lot (not games), go to a music festival once a year and try to campervan when we can which is not easy due to work.
My latest geek thing is cooking. I want to learn how to cook more from scratch. I also want to do more wild camping which is taking the bongo out into nature and just relaxing.


2) Imagine your life 5 years from now:
Well, in three years from now we will be married.
I hope that in five years time, we will have very little debt and be the proud parents of two young children. We hope to adopt as I don't like pregnancy (can't help it, it's one of those weird things) and we both like the idea of giving someone with a rough start in life a chance.
The only problem I see with it is that I want to be a stay at home mother. I hate the idea of missing milestones because of work. However, with our current situation, one wage just won't be enough.


So, this has become the basis for this diary. It's time...

* Time to destroy that debt.
The credit card is slowly coming down but it needs to be gone, completely gone.

* Time to banish the bulges.
Aim is to lose a significant amount of weight. I bought a fitbit with my t0pc4shb4ck money and am using the "my fitness pal" website for calorie control.

* Time to regain the work-play balance.
I am far too work-orientated apart from the occassional trips away and this is not healthy due to my anxiety.
I need to find hobbies, activities and other things that will keep me occupied and stop me from focussing purely on work.


* Time to step up and save.
There is no two ways getting around it, we want to get married and in order to do that we need to save.
We also want to save in order to do work to our house (just redecorating, nothing major).
Finally, I want to save so that we can provide for our future children. I want them to have the same fantastic start in life that I and my brother got (my parents didn't have much but we never went without).

stewby

The second post is to break down the figures to show you what I have done so far (if anything) and detail any further plans I have to achieve my goals.

* Destroy the Debt:
The credit card started off at £3412.67!!
I must admit that I have still used it now and again which is stupid of me but I have stopped now and do not plan to use it again unless I have the funds to transfer straight back in.

Current credit card debt is: £2639.57 (haven't paid in for this month yet).
All goals should have a time-frame but this has never really worked for me in the past so I will say 20th February 2016. That gives me ten months which works out at approximately £264 a month.

* Banish the Bulges:
I am overweight... actually I am technically (thanks to the BMI scale) classed as obese. Which is a horrible thought for me.
Since my early teens, I have never been slim built or athletic but obese. It's a big shock to the system.
My current weight is 217lbs (or fifteen and a half stone) which is a fair bit considering I am only 5ft 2ins tall.
The plan is to reach 147 (or ten and a half stone) before we get married in April 2018. I would prefer to have lost the majority of it before my future sister-in-law gets married which is August 2016.

I have split this one down into more manageable goals of 8lbs a month. It is going to sound daft but I have a thing about even numbers. Hence the 8lbs a month which works out at 2lbs a week. Easily doable if I exercise more and quit eating the amount of rubbish that I do.
The target loss is: 70lbs!!


* Regain the Work/Life Balance:
I really need to look at this and make some changes. I worked 7 out of 8 days this week... this doesn't sound like much but when it is twelve hour shifts (plus the extra wee bit at the end in order to catch up on your workload), it soon takes its toll.
We tend to go for months with nothing really going on apart from work then we have a "big holiday" (the most recent one was Rome for 4 nights just to give an example of our sort of big holidays). This gives me a bit of a break as I then become focussed on the holiday, planning it all, booking the hotel, etc, etc.
But then, once it is over I am back to being all about work again.

So... I need some more long term hobbies. Something non-work related that I can use as a stress-reliever and to make me more interesting to people. I can't talk about work and going to a festival or on holiday once a year soon makes all conversation dry up.
The aim is to do more, not necessarily new things but just do more. We have a NTS card that we have used maybe four times. It is free to visit these places so we should go visit them.
I also need something that I can do in the house other than sit and worry about work whilst surfing the internet.
The plan is to do five things every month that is non-work related. These could be as simple as a baking day (baking five things doesn't count) to learning part of a foreign language.
Each time I complete five "tasks", my monthly goal will be achieved.

* Step Up and Save:
A couple of years ago, I stumbled across a thread which showed me that saving just £1 a day could create a massive dent in my Christmas spends... so I joined.
I have now become a wee bit obsessed with keeping pots. I have 1) a xmas pot which gets £2 a day (one from me, one from OH).
2) a holiday pot which we both put £100 in. It is currently empty and will be for a while whilst we pay off the Rome disaster.
3) my own wee pot for a holiday I take with my mum every year (£50 a month goes into that).

We are planning on starting up a fourth pot soon if my OH can manage as we need to save for our wedding which is already less than three years away!!
After the wedding, our fourth pot will become our playtime pot so that we can start saving for kids. We don't want to spoil them but we want to be able to take them on holiday once a year (doesn't have to be abroad) and also take them to Disneyworld when they are six and Europe when they are fourteen.


Hopefully this hasn't been too boring a read but no-one's future is set in stone and hopefully this small step will be the first day of a much better and brighter one for me... and us.

academiablues

Subscribing to this, will be interested to see how this goes for you, especially the hobbies - doing x amount of new/enjoyed things a month sounds like a great idea I'm sure you can do it all, you sound very determined

mumstheword***

Good luck, following with interest x

apple_muncher

Go Stewby! This is truly awesome!

Every time you do something towards one of your goals, you are adding another ice cube to that particular iceberg - most ice cubes will be below the surface, but the end result will be spectacular. xx

ps: have you looked at the primal blueprint? marksdailyapple.com

myteeduck

I will be following with interest. I need hobbies, so will be keeping a close eye on this side. I only have my course and a drama group to talk about. I can't talk about the drama group to my friends and family as they will be coming to see the play and anything I say will be spoilers (it's a murder mystery). I also do SW but I go there with my mum and my friends aren't all that interested. Other than that its my course (boring accounting) or work! So I am a joy to talk to!! x

stewby

Good evening...

Thanks for the replies. I am very grateful to not be talking to myself. I hope that it won't be too boring for people to read. I will have to figure out some more hobby ideas as I have already done the two that I had in mind.


Banish the Bulge:

To try and be healthier, I am making the lasagne with passata instead of a jar of sauce. It tastes exactly the same to me and by dividing it into four, it allows me better portion control.

Work/Play Balance for May: 2/5

* Yesterday I made a roast chicken. It turned out quite well I think. It was nice and juicy and not burnt so I class it as a success. Today, I have made a lasagne which will do four meals.

* Last night we went for a walk round the local botanical gardens and park. It was late afternoon/early evening and the sunset was beautiful.

I have also done SW myteeduck but I struggled as I didn't really eat much of the free food. I don't really eat any fruit or veg so I ended up using my syns to eat meals.
I did lose two stone on it before I gave up though. Hoping the calorie counting will work out just as well for me.


Hugs to everyone.

stewby

Work today which was not too bad considering. Complete relief although kinda dreading tomorrow. Tried to do some extra preperations for it today so can hopefully stop anything from going wrong.


Destroy the Debt:

* Today I paid off £339.57 which took my credit card down to £2300!!
* Fingers crossed I can get it below £2000 next month.
:j

Banish the Bulges:

* A grand total of 10040 steps today. Hooray!!!!!
Just a shame about the junk food I ate and the overload of calories with the fajitas at suppertime.
* Must try harder with my dietary intake.

Work/Play Balance for May: 3/5.

* OH and I went and played a game this evening. It's a bit complicated to explain but it is kind of a virtual reality mixed with real life sort of game and is great fun.
I use it to find interesting stuff that I would otherwise never spot.

stewby

Good afternoon... far too much radio silence on here. I obviously have neglected this diary already.


So... we had a lovely, cheap weekend away at my parent's other house up north. We were dog-sitting for them so they could go away in the campervan.
My parents (sorry, mum but mainly my dad) are my inspiration. He didn't earn masses of money but he scrimped and saved and used any money received (from family passing on and other things) to pay off their mortgage early and continued to save.
Not only do they now have a wee holiday home but he also has a decent pension saved up for himself and my mum.
I look at my finances and realise that I want to be like that. I want to be the sort of person who can look at the big picture financially and save.

There is a story in my family about when my brother was small. Every week, my parents would go shopping and it didn't matter how little they had to spend, my brother would always get his matchbox car.
If my parents had extra money leftover then they treated themselves to a bottle of cider but my brother always came first.

I look at my life and how we have so much more than they did... we can afford to buy a specific type of juice because we like it rather than because of cost.
So why, if we have so much, are we struggling financially. Why are we not living like kings and queens.

I will be honest. The reason why this has kinda turned up just now is a horrible one. My brother has just been made redundant and is now looking to his savings to help get him through the next wee while.
We have no savings... if either of us got made redundant, we wouldn't be able to pay anything. Not even for a month. Hence the "oh my gosh" moment (it was other words but I won't swear on here).

Anyhoo... will be back shortly with a nice coloured pretty update. Just thought I would ramble a bit. Sorry.

Mara_uk7

Ramble on hun, Youre inspirational

stewby

So... I feel a bit embarrassed that I haven't been on recently and I am sorry.
Basically, two weeks have passed since I started this challenge and not much had really changed.
:embarasse

However, today has been a lot more positive so I decided to write about it and admit to a oopsie or two.

* Destroy the Debt:
Still at £2300. No further spends on my credit card since Rome and slowly coming down.

* Banish the Bulges:
So... this is where is originally went wrong. My eating was absolutely awful and I ended up gaining 3lbs to go up to 220lbs.

However, recently I haven't been eating as much. Not quite sure why however, I have lost 5lbs this week to make it to 215lbs.

Due to my love of even numbers, target weight has now been changed to 148lbs or 10st 8lbs. Which means I need to lose 72lbs in total which divides nicely into 8lb months.

* Work/Life Balance:
End of month report is that I have managed 5 out of 5 for my activities.
1) cooking (roast chicken and cakes).
2) walking around the botanical gardens.
3) gaming on the phone.
4) dog-sitting for the weekend.
5) family bbq at our house.

Feeling quite proud although was shocked at how much more difficult it was in real life. I can think of heaps of activities but not really many I could do due to other commitments.
Need to work harder on this.

* Step Up and Save:
Oh dear... Nothing extra saved except the pots this month. The holiday pot is still being used to pay off Rome so no signs of that growing for a long time yet.
Spoke to OH and he can't afford a wedding pot at the moment so that has gone on hold. Hopefully will be able to start saving soon. Even if it is just a little each month.

In a slightly related but unrelated note... we were going to a "free" festival in July but have since cancelled as, although the festival is free, the actual travel and accomodation would be about £500!!!!
:eek:

So we are going to have a long weekend wild camping in Skye which will cost significantly less and be just as much fun.


Thanks for reading.
Hugs.