The Longshot route to a new life!

Itsa_Longshot

Good morning world! What a beautiful day it is!

Just over £28 spent on my weekly food shop this morning, taking me to £99.20 for the month, well below my target of £112. :j

Providing I don't succumb to temptation over the next five days, this will be the best financial month I've had for over 7 years! :eek:

Itsa_Longshot

Payday tomorrow! :j

As I've had such a good month, I've been trying to make an additional payment to the loan for the first time. Both my current account and loan are with NWest, and I do everything online. There's a 'manage your loan' section on there where you 'apply' to make an additional payment and they contact you by e-mail with how to pay it (all rather convoluted). Anyway, I did this on Sunday and should receive the e-mail within 1 working day, but nothing yet... anyone have any experience of this? Does it work? Will give it a bit longer then maybe get on the phone.

Itsa_Longshot

Time for my month end review!

I'm not quite sure how I managed it, but for September I've come out at +£499.89! This is the total change across all accounts - current, cash, loans and cards. I speculated I might get to £400, but to reach nearly £500 is great - I am a bit gutted it wasn't just 11p more though! :rotfl: The only 'extravagant' spend was £15 on a takeaway, so I've largely managed to control myself there.

A bit of a landmark reached too - my debts are now below £9k! :j

Looking ahead to October, five Saturdays means an extra food shop and fuel stop, combined that'll be around £70 more. No gifts to worry about, and my Open University fees don't start going out until November. I'll make a just above minimum transfer to the 0% card, and also pay off the full balance on my spending credit card to keep the interest off that, after which I'll have about £450 in my current account. Another +£400 month would be brilliant, might be a bit of a stretch though as I do need to get some more clothes for work soon, so I'll aim for +£350.

belleandthebudget

Amazing news - almost £500 is an incredible amount to throw at the debts in one month!

Itsa_Longshot

Not updated for a while, simply because there's nothing really to report! Even work has been quite good the last couple of weeks, so I can't even have a whine about that! :rotfl:

A little transgression last weekend when I took a trip to a different supermarket than usual, one which is much larger, and I gave in a bit to the extra temptations on offer - spent £40.15 on food, just a tad over target of £27.00. I did get some non-food things I'd been after too - couple of shirts for work, and some replacement kitchen utensils (nothing major).

I redeemed myself a little this morning, £25.76 spent on the weekly food shop, and I'm quite well stocked now, so the remaining shops this month should be fairly cheap.

belleandthebudget

That overspend is really not so bad! Especially if you picked up clothes as well.

Itsa_Longshot

Unfortunately Belle, the £41 was just the food spend - the total bill at the till was over £60. :eek: That's why I don't go to that supermarket too often!

Itsa_Longshot

Time for another thrilling update!

Not really much to report again, other than I'm likely to be waaay over the food budget this month. £32 spent yesterday, so I'm at £98 for the month with a target of £135 and still two weekly food shops to go. I can say though that I've managed to keep the rest of my spending in check, so still optimistic of having a good month.

One money matter I have decided on is regarding my loan. I had been looking to make some extra payments towards this as I have built up some funds in my current account, but I think I'll put that on hold until that well known late-December event that will not be named yet because it's still October is done and dusted. I want to make sure I'm able to take care of that without leaving any funds on my credit card.

I have quite a few days to book off work before the end of the year, so I've got a four-day week coming up, followed by a four-day weekend! Woooooo! As usual when these weekends come along, I'm putting together a big list of tasks to get done at home, and as usual I know I probably won't get half of them done, and as usual I'm telling myself that this time it's really going to be different! :rotfl:

Itsa_Longshot

Has it really been a week since my last update! :eek:

The weekly food shop yesterday was £16.26 after a £5 voucher, so now at £114.58 for the month so far. One more shop to go, with £20.41 available to beat the target - all depends on how many treats I get!

My extended weekend and long list of tasks has rather predictably been a disaster! :rotfl: I think a different approach is needed, so rather than try to get so much done over a long weekend, I'll break it down to a few tasks per day. I'll put down one or two things for each of thee categories:
Home - covering cleaning, sorting, money etc.
Study - getting a little bit of studying done each day even if it's just a couple of exercises.
Leisure - the enjoyable bits!

I'll see how it goes, though I wonder if this is just my Sunday-self talking. Every Sunday when having had some relaxing time at home and looking forward to the week ahead, I always start coming up with plans and thinking about how things are going to change and I'm going to turn my life around. It usually takes around half a day at work on the following Monday for those feelings to evaporate entirely before I then just have to try and get through the working week without getting too down. But I shan't worry about that today, I'm currently in a good mood and I want it to stay that way for at least a couple more hours yet! :j

Itsa_Longshot

I've been very slack with my updates of late, so here's a week late month-end review!

And a good month it's been too, I finished at +£372.32. This makes it four months out of four with a positive figure since I started the debt-busting, and my total for those four months is +£1,349.36. A landmark has been reached too - £1,007.77 has been paid off the debt, which is over 10%! :beer:

Looking ahead, things will be a bit tighter now, as I've just made the first of 8 monthly payments for my course, just over £100. A couple of family birthdays coming up, and that December event too, which will count against me. But at least November is a short month with four Saturdays, which is when I do my weekly food shop and top up the car, so shouldn't have too many problems making it five out of five.