NST July - Bobs Bucket & Spade Boogie to the beach!

apple_muncher

And a quote:

Don't stop believing...No matter how tough it's been, you must keep going. If you stumble, get back up. NEVER quit. Stay consistent through tough times, persist and persevere through dark days. Look long-term, not to just tomorrow. You can do it. Keep at it. Plan and prepare for success.

Go turtles!

Bobarella

Apple - what an interesting insight into your early inspirations. Have you ever had any debt or just always been very frugal? I think the change to Student Loans did most people no good. I came out with £12,000 worth of debt in 2001 having worked part time through my entire degree. That money covered my rent each term and that's about it. 3 years in central London was very expensive. I think having had Student Loans it made it feel more natural to make use of overdrafts and credit cards. I still consider myself one of the fortunate ones in that I graduated, got a good job immediately and the bank made me transfer the OD to a loan so that was cleared very quickly. Never had a high CC limit back then so that was easily cleared too. Took me 8 years to clear the £12k.
My OH is 8 years older than me and had a completely different uni experience. Grants but nothing else. He had no debt when he came out. But was up north!

Thank you the party was really enjoyable. The kids had fun doing an activity and the mum and her husband ran a tight ship. Aside from a bit of sweeping up I got off lightly. Chilling with a cuppa

Bob

Westie983

I made it to 10/10 SFD....

decided Milk can wait, I hope to get 11 too, but I am at the hospital on Monday so no doubt ill get a coffee while I wait in the waiting room, as you are never seen on time, and my day will start ridiculously early being picked up at 6am, for a 9am appointment...

Hope Saturday has treated everyone well :-)

mothernerd

Trying to be happy with what I have done but still not satisfied. Bedding plants and more rags for cleaning have gone to the other house. I have brought back plant pots and seed trays (65l rucksack filled + a couple of reusable shopping bags - not very heavy).

Have left geraniums soaking and filled several more pots with soil. Also transferred plastic shelves and raised beds (recycled plastic in one metre lengths so they all fit in a jumbo kitchen bin) and some other bits from the shed to the vestibhle. Thought if I go early tomorrow with my faithful dolly truck, I didn't want to be disturbing the neighbours by rummaging around.

Hope to repeat this and really make the most of the bus ticket this week. Will transport these, then move next items from the shed ready for moving. Some of the old kitchen units may be okay under the stairs here, when I do the next shuffle - hope I don't regret this later. Keep telling myself I am doing things (like moving the large pot on Thursday) that I was not capable of a month or even a week ago.

Bob (and others who may be interested) there are two types of arthritis. Chronic arthritis is Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) an immune system problem, characterised by swollen joints (knuckles etc). The other kind, which I had is a stress injury - typically only one area is affected, mostly a knee or hip. My x-ray showed that my other bones were in excellent condition.

It's much more common in women, probably because our bones are more 'bendy' (to stretch in childbirth) and in men the knees and hips are directly in line whereas in women they are not - again wide pelvic girdle to accommodate a growing baby and ease getting it delivered. So I suppose that every step we take we are putting additional sideways pressure on our hips. I also wondered about the way we 'c o c k our hips' (censors) to hold a baby or toddler if standing for a long while.

The only other group who experience this type of injury are athletes. Now I have never been a runner, but I have always walked everywhere from a very young age - my baby brother went in the pram, my other brother had a seat on top of the pram, my job was to hold onto the handle and 'keep up'. My mother was a fast walker and describes my 'little legs twirling like egg beaters'. We only caught a bus if going to the seaside (45/54 miles) or to Manchester (13 miles).

I have done jobs which involved standing or walking all day and walked back from jobs 8 - 10 miles away if I had missed the bus (1 hour intervals). I have also carried an awful lot - not just food but plants / compost / diy materials. I know when I rebuilt the back wall here I carried sacks of sand and cement mix back from the diy store in the big rucksack - I think they were 20cwt, but not sure (maybe 20l, 20cwt is the weight of a sack of coal).

Apart from the move to the big house 8 years ago and the move back lat November, all my house moving (parents to here, here to bf house and back again -whilst pregnant) has been done on foot with my faithful dolly (+ new dolly, old dolly has been re-welded, painted and had new wheels) and I've helped DS1 move in and out, brought odd items home (a fridge from a friend of my aunt's) and moved furniture around in the house (moved a very heavy television upstairs with the aid of three small boys by wrapping it in a sheet, giving them the corners to pull - no chance of them getting their feet caught - and supporting it underneath) as partner was never around when things needed moving. I can put flat pack furniture together in my sleep.

Right, enough from me. I will get fit again, even if I have to make some allowances for age. Today I am grateful for DS3 going out (peaceful day for me and he had a good time and was sleeping like a baby five minutes after he came in), for shed sorting (every day in every way, I am getting better and better) and for finding another bag of fish (may scrape through another week, even if I have to put sheets and towels in the empty freezer drawers to keep it working efficiently).

Bobarella

That is interesting Mothernerd - you have done more heavy lifting than most in 3 life times. Also interesting on the men vs women distinction for arthritis I have never heard that before.

So onwards to the 15th. This month is moving fast. I am personally getting to the bit where I am pretty much out of any disposable income and debt slaying will slow down to drops rather than a torrent (still going with the beach theme)

I hope to kill the final £34.72 to hit £4,500 by 30th July. But have the extra cost of DSs summer childcare biting hard. We also have a family event to attend next weekend that will involve car hire at around £50 plus a gift. I'm looking at all the options for travel. If train plus taxi is cheaper will do that but suspect not.
I have one more extra income source lined up, another party. This time it will be between party 1 and 2. It is a catered party but only for the children. Which means a much lower margin unless there are adults staying on and ordering drinks. But that is another roughly £60 (they've already paid the booking fee) plus I have another £30 due on thursday for letting the space out for 2 hours to a local group. Anyway long story short some more debt slaying is possible if I'm careful.

I am sure you will have heard this quote before but in the spirit of motivating sentiments I found this one.

" Success is not final. Failure is not fatal. It is the courage to continue that counts." Winston Churchill

Go Turtles! !

Bob

apple_muncher

Hi bob. Fraid I'm a bit of a fraud being on this thread as I've never had 'proper' debt. But I loved ninjasavingkat's style and have been kicking the mortgage into touch.

I remember getting a credit card at 18 and barely using it - just for occasional flights really. And recently my bank withdrew the credit card I had as I just hadn't used it in ages! (they did write about it, it wasn't a shock! And I opted not to use it as I still have one with my mortgage provider, which I have to ensure I use for a small purchase every 6 months in order to keep it active.)

I've not alwasy been 'good' with money, but have learned along the way. When I bought a house my sister suggestd opening another bank account and paying over enough money for the bills every month so that when the bills came along - quarterly at that time, non of this monthly or online malarkey - I'd have enough for them. Simple, obvious, and effective.

I do wish that in my pre-dd days, when both dh and I were working full time, we had made more inroads into the mortgage. But that is history and I cannot change that. It is what we do now that is important.

When I started on these challenges, I was unable to imagine a day when the mortgage would be paid off. And now, less than 2 years after joining, I have a date to aim for. Still got about 50k to go though, so not a walk in the park just yet!

dolly84

I have made a cc payment today, I was aiming for an additional £80 this month but can only manage £58, still not to be sniffed at. Next months cc payments will be lower than normal as we are going away twice between July payday and August payday so we need to include some of the holiday expenditure (holiday and spending money is already saved for but extra food and diesel is not).

Bobarella

Apple - not a fraud at all. Many of the people on our daily 'small things' thread are debt free and have been for as long as I've been on there (several years off and on) they bring a different perspective to the daily chat as do you here. We are all just trying to make our lives better, whether that's being DF or MF or whatever our challenge is.

Dolly - well done you. So close on your stretch target too!! I have gone for £5 to the gods of PAD today. For me I'm finding that a really motivational idea. Don't know why I hadn't done it before really. Not rocket science

academiablues

Hi all - apple, I'm a "fraud" too, only real debt I have is the mortgage, which I'm trying to reduce the term on from 24 years to 12 (ambitious, but even if I fall short, I'll still have reduced it massively). I also have a student loan, but that goes off my wage so I don't think about it really. I think the talk of increasing student loans is silly, many people don't end up paying them off fully now, so in the future it will be even harder to pay off.
Was at a one-day workshop yesterday that was paid for by the people I volunteer with (£75 for the course, and someone else drove so I didn't even have to pay for petrol as that was paid for by volunteering too) - it was REALLY interesting and useful, and I spent £13 on some additional resources that are hopefully going to make things easier for me at work today was spendy too as went food shopping - bought some YS rhubarb and the cashier charged me full price, so went to the service desk and got the difference back. It was 27p and OH thought I was mad, but I'm still pleased that I'm trying to take care of the pennies.
Spending the rest of today relaxing, as yesterday was a long day! Making some crumble with my rhubarb hope everyone's having a good weekend!

abundant1972

Hi everyone!

Well it's a wet Sunday here... Still waking up and planning on a SFD and the gym later...

Catching up on Friday and Saturday's posts... both were spend days for me as had a leaving do with work and meal with a good friend last night, and topped up the salad draw again!

Westie - hope you get to the bottom of things. Can't be fun. Get well soon. Way to go on the SFDs too!!!

Applemuncher - ditto re NSD/SFD concept. My friends give me blank looks as they just spend as and when without thinking about it.

NannyG - you work like a trooper. Plants wither when I approach (not green fingered) - I'll clear it in 5 minutes like that haha! Keep up the good work. Trust that whoever falls in love with the house will see past the little things that need tidying and repairing, and just love 'the feel' of the place and see its potential.

Bobarella - no car... I've thought about it - I just can't imagine it at the moment. Well impressed you made that lifestyle choice and stuck to your guns though. With you on the running out of disposable income. Spent WAY more on my leaving do than expected.

TheOnlyGirl - you're almost there!!! That's my plan also - think I read it in Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover. Some of it is very US orientatated but I liked the general principles... Worth a read. Martin's advice on here though is second to none.

Stewby - good news on the gluten free diet. I tested myself again and ate regular bread, and POW! Bloated and uncomfortable...

Academiablues - is inspiring that even though you don't have any 'bad debt' - just the mortgage, like Applemuncher, you have adopted the MSE way of life... This is something I need to do...

I've never had this much disposable income in my life and twice this month when I could have been thrify - I thought 'what the hell' and spent way more than I should have. This behaviour can only lead me down the wrong path. These weren't planned spends and I didn't budget for them - They came from excess money I had left over, after taking out my savings, essential monthly payments, and food budget - but money I could have ploughed into saving.

Part of me says, 'give yourself a break - you just got debt free... live a little...' But is that the same voice that got me into debt in the first place? The same voice that got me into bad gambling habits briefly... 'the next spin could be the one that gets all your money back...' I've done a lot of work on myself recently in counselling after my bad start to the year, and uncovered old patterns of destructive behaviour that I fall into in relationships... The same can be said for money. By the end of the therapy we had mapped out 'Emergency Exits' from the map that would effectively break the bad cycle and lead to good behaviour (e.g. telling myself I am worthy, taking time out to love and accept others and myself...)... I think - having these 'Emergency Exits' for my financial programme would be amazing!!! Once you know you're map and it's written down - I find I can't just bury my head. If I make a bad choice it is conscious and I have to take responsibility for that. It changes from an unconcious impulse to a knowing action (with consequences).

My World of the Strange attempt will be to:

1) Find a recipe for gluten free bread so I don't have to pay £2.99 for a half loaf!!!
2) Get to work on my financial behaviour map today, and will let you know how it pans out. Might be of help to others if they recognise it too.
3) Have a car park fund. I always used to have £5.00 in a little bag in my car in change. Twice in the last week I had to put extra in, but lost out as they don't dispense change (paid £2.00 when I only needed to pay £1.60 for example). Take care of the pennies, and the pounds take care of themselves... or something like that!

Have a great day. Today will be SFD number 7... Hugs all x