Small Debts, Small Income, Big Plans

cavegrrl

Bit of a mixed week so far - had some bad money choices (buying tea and cake for me and my mother - we both regretted the cake, probably could have shared a slice to save some money or gone somewhere cheaper) but also some good results -

I sold shoes on ebay, after relisting - so that was around £11. I have lots of free stamps in my purse so I used 3 1st class and one Large 1st class to make it up to the £2.80 second class postage (well, £2.84 but since they were free I don't mind wasting the 4p too much).

I listed a few bits on Gumtree and Facebook and have sold one big item already for £10 - I was paid in mostly £2 coins and two were slightly rarer - both errors of one way or another, so I've set those aside to see if I can double them!

I've been shopping at Lidl and discovered they have started doing outdoor bred sausages, ham and now bacon! All for less than £2, so I no longer have to spend £2.50+ a pack at Sainsburys.

My onepoll account is now at over £30 and I have been checking it daily. I've also started re-doing swagbucks - just the less time-consuming things, but hoping that it will all add up.

I'm sorting out some boxes of stuff not worth the effort to ebay and borrowing a folding table from my sister to do a car boot soon - mission declutter & recoup is gogoGO!

cavegrrl

Weekly shop at Lidls this weekend was impressive - got nearly everything we needed and it came to less than £30. We did have to go to Sainsburys for some things, and that was sadly another £17 but we are getting better (considering our shopping bill had been creeping up and was sometimes over £100. Although it did frequently include 'extras' (books, electricals etc.))

I've been checking onepoll every day during the week and my total is going up much faster - now at £31.75, so should hopefully reach the £40 cashout target within the next couple of months. Also did a survey for £3 into Paypal.
We babysat overnight for 2 nights at the weekend and were given £20 as a thank you, which was nice!

Other than food shopping, the weekend was fairly cheap.

I got my new car today, so had to pay the tax. I opted for monthly, the same as my insurance, to help with budgeting. It cost £9 a year more, so overall I think it's about £21 a year to pay for them both monthly. Next year I will plan better.

I've figured out some money goals - I saw someone post them somewhere else (sorry, I can't remember where or who came up with them!) but after much thought, I decided to save £1,000 before paying my debts off (since they are all 0%) and then saving a larger sum for life emergencies/if I decide to stay self-employed when I have children.
I set up a standing order of £10 every 2 weeks to go into an old savings account that is difficult to transfer out of - it used to be nearly 3% interest but is now 0.95%. Even so, I don't think I can do much better - I have an ISA but it's too easy for me to transfer money out of it as it is with my bank, so I needed something I would have to really think about touching.

Have felt a little frustrated that so much thought and effort is given to money right now. I'm sure it will ease up when the new habits I'm trying to develop have stuck a bit. Have started crafting more as a result though, which is nice!

Aims for the week: pass theory test, practice driving.

cavegrrl

Found I had another £3 in pinecone, so that's £6 this week transferred into Paypal.
I took the time to do a Valued Opinion survey, I think my total is up to £7.50 there now.
I cashed out Qmee - 63p into Paypal.

I've just spent a couple of hours sorting out my budget in YNAB - I saw it mentioned on another forum here. At first, I was a little reluctant to see how it could help, but now I've added the past month's info (thanks to my spending diary) and added next month's, I can really see how it is going to benefit me. My birthday is in a month, so I think I'll buy the full version as a sensible 29th birthday present to myself!

Anddd today I passed my theory test! I was worried I was going to flunk it (haven't had to do a test in a while) but I was fine, so that saved having to spend another £25.

I have a £6 off £60 shop at Waitrose, I wasn't going to use it as it is not the best place for a bargain, but I saw a post on here about someone stocking up there, so I'm going to use mysupermarket and select my 20% off offers and see if I can make it worthwhile.. I suppose split between the two of us it is £30 each, which makes the idea a little easier.

On Saturday I find out if ebay are going to cancel the fees on the phone I sold that I refunded - as there is nearly £6 due to come out of my account next week. I usually pay my ebay fees straight away after receiving a payment, but for some reason I didn't this time (probably knew something would go wrong). Oh well, it still sucks to think about it a little, but it is the catalyst that got me here, actively recording my financial journey and trying to make the best changes possible.

We are going to a local festival at the weekend, so I will be taking a packed lunch there. Entry is £5 and bf doesn't want to drive, so we're getting the train - I'm not really keen on spending the money and he is the one that really wants to go so will probably let him pay for those (is that really bad?) I can't think how else to manage as a couple when he has more free cash and wants to do things that cost money.

I need to start planning our trip away next month - we're house swapping with my sister so it is the cheapest holiday we can manage - just got to plan food, activities, travel & budget for that...!

cavegrrl

Taking the time to go through mysupermarket and the Waitrose picks website before shopping was totally worth it. I made my list in mysupermarket and then copied it down to take to the store, so it only took us about 10 minutes to shop. From using multi-buy offers & standard deals, we saved £5.52, from Waitrose Picks 20% off, we saved £5.36 and then the £6 off £60 spend = a total of £16.88! And it was all on things we will use, rather than just adding in unnecessary items to bring it up to £60.

We mostly got food that will keep and cleaning supplies, as even with the offers, Lidl would have been cheaper. Managed to pick up two of the Lidl News to get the money off vouchers for the two weekends the voucher is valid for, so saved £5 on the Lidl shop too (although it's hard getting to £40 in Lidl - have now filled the freezer with meat!)


Managed not to spend anything extra at the weekend. Using YNAB is really working out - usually I would have just spent, knowing I had money going into the account the next working day, but now I know that money is allocated I can't. Good, but now a bit panicked, there's really not much room in the budget for anything else. I know I can use the weekly food budget for the holiday week on the holiday instead (should be able to fill the freezer enough to cope with the spare days), but apart from that I don't have anything free. Going to get ebaying in a minute. Hopefully we can fit in a car boot before we go too.

I've got to start thinking about winter too. I'm getting boots for my birthday but I need a new winter coat (waterproof), leggings, socks and tights. Possibly some new slippers too, but I can crochet those if I have time.

I managed to cancel the ebay fees on the phone so that is a plus.

Monday blues thinking about driving though - I discovered there is a waiting list for driving tests here, and it's currently at Nov/Dec. I'm going to talk to driving instructor about booking me in for then, as he hasn't mentioned it (I'm not ready right now, but I will be way ready by then!) I was really hoping to be driving on my own by Sep/Oct.

HarrysMummy

Hey there

I love mysupermarket for price checking, it is well worth that extra bit of effort.

Gosh driving tests must be very in demand in your area with a waiting list that long, when your closer to being ready you could always ring them to see if there are any cancellations. When I booked mine I had about 3 weeks to wait but rang up and managed to get a cancellation for the next day. Might be worth a try, you never know.

cavegrrl

Hi HarrysMummy,

I know, I was so shocked - only found out as a friend failed hers and when she had to re-book they didn't have anything until October. Driving instructor didn't mention it until I asked and in the space of a week it had jumped to November! Will definitely try and get a cancellation I think, lessons are costing ~£200 a month and I didn't plan on keeping that expense up until Dec/Jan! Especially not as I have a car now to run too.

Apparently it is because lots of examiners take holiday in the summer and lots of people come back from uni to take their test somewhere familiar in the summer hols. Seems poorly planned if it happens a lot though!

Thanks for the suggestion, reassuring to know people do manage to get cancellations

cavegrrl

Wow, what a mixed day.

Started off quite poorly in the finance department - went to have breakfast with family (at their house) but they didn't have any bacon and Lidl had stopped doing their outdoor bred bacon (must have been just for that week), so I stopped off at Sainsburys on the way. Of course the multibuy 2 for £5 was on so £5 down on bacon I probably could have done without, then 50p on the health lottery for tonight.. And a paper for my step dad.

When I got my hotukdeals newsletter I bought the Amazon deal for some reason - buy £40 of giftcards and get £10 free (I sent the giftcards to myself). I do use Amazon a fair amount for essentials, but still wondering if it was really worth it.
Not learning my lesson (or perhaps telling myself free money is always OK, and spending a little is OK to get it..), the gift card app Zeek had sent me a free £5 with only a few days to use it. I ended up buying a £33 John Lewis gift card for £25. So £8 savings off a potential future stock-up trip.

I guess there will always be days like this, where willpower and sense go out the window. It was probably a pretty savvy splurge on the scale of things! As long as I'm careful with the giftcards when I spend them.

I entered a few competitions last week and got runner up in one. I haven't done too badly out of competitions in the past.. I've won beauty boxes, food hampers, silver earrings, natural beauty goods and more.

Added more money to my Valued Opinions and OnePoll accounts and have listed 5 things on ebay over the past couple of days.

cavegrrl

I should add, if anyone wants £5 off Zeek and wants to help me with my savvy splurges there, my invite code is 2CONO7

cavegrrl

So, spent my last £5 off £40 at Lidl on Saturday - panicked at checkout "I don't think we've got £40!" OH - "we've definitely got £40" total was something like £34. Checkout lady was lovely and let me grab something, so grabbed a bottle of wine as that was closest and she had a queue. We are hosting xmas day this year and not massive drinkers, so the essentially free bottle will go towards that (or maybe our holiday!).

We've decided to not eat out much on our holiday. We're quite big foodies, so it's quite a big decision for us but we're planning to use the JL/Waitrose gift voucher I got from Zeek to go towards some fancy food for the hol - OH also remembered he got a £20 JL voucher for xmas, so we have £53 so far. I managed to get Valued Opinions to £10.75 today, so I requested a £10 JL voucher. I think that should pretty much be food covered for the holiday.

Onepoll is now at £34.80 - getting so close now! Checking every day really does help.

Sold one thing on ebay - a top I got for £1 at a car boot for £5 - made about £3.50 profit after fees.

Hmm, what else.. Purchased breakdown insurance through Quidco the other day - £54.99 with £19.50 cashback.

Other than that, just been resisting spending as much as possible and trying to do either activities that earn money or things that are free.

I'm not sure whether to shell out for YNAB. Problem is, I don't think my budget can really afford the £40! I looked at some free alternatives but have not kept them updated/they don't seem to have the same 'power'. I've been continuing my spending diary, writing it all down has helped, but the format for YNAB is perfect for me. 20 days left of the trial, so I guess I'll have to wait and see. Maybe they'll have a sale..! Or maybe my onepoll will hit £40 before then! Fingers crossed!

Good things
+ Postie put a smilie on the delivery card this morning
+ Found some super nice chocolate that reminds me of Nestle crunch in Lidl (I boycott Nestle so haven't had any in ages)
+ Finally managed to fit in time to put away the tumbling tower of washing that was slowly taking over the bedroom!
+ Sunny days

cavegrrl

It was our 3 year anniversary the other day, so OH took me out. He had a couple of days off work so I took him out in return yesterday. Used Meerkat Movies and got 2 cinema tickets for £8.79, then a meal at Zizzi's. I had a 25% off code which saved us £9.55 and I had bought a gift voucher through the Zeek app for £29 when I had a bit of spare cash (face value £35) so total saving was £15.55 - and that doesn't take into account the fact I drank water instead of anything fancy, so my drink was free. Even managed to give a tip with the remainder of the gift voucher, so that was a bonus!
Unfortunately, we bought drinks and popcorn at the cinema which came to over £10 I would have shared a drink with OH but he only likes diet drinks and I can't stand artificial sweeteners, so I ended up with a £2.39 bottle of water. (Cinema had signs everywhere stating the air conditioning was broken so was not looking forward to a hot film without drink. As it turned out, they had brought in a portable AC so it wasn't hot anyway..).

Started the winter wardrobe shopping - bought 3 pairs of leggings in Primark for £9. I've actually had quite a few things from Primark that last longer than bigger brands. I volunteer in a charity shop and they are keeping an eye out for a duffle coat & body warmer for me, which is nice! They actually had 2 nice ones in the other day but one was too small and the other was too big..

No other exciting savings. Still ticking along. A bit nervous about my car MOT as my mum had it checked over and they quoted £300-£500 for the welding, but they did say they didn't want to do it so can't really trust that quote. Am going to get a quote from a friend in the next couple of weeks. At least if it's the same, I'll be giving money to someone I trust!