Oh the shame! Champagne Lifestyle on a Lemonade budget

OnwardAndUpward81

pjcox2005 wrote: »

I'd say stick with yoga if it does have the health benefits. Potentially if you go multiple times a week and pay per session then you could drop one a week for a home yoga DVD.


I'd stay in the pension, as someone else said you are just shifting money around, and actually the tax saving and long term growth will be very beneficial to you in the future. Drop out of it, and so often people don't find a "right time" to start making contributions.


I personally think it's easier to tackle joint finances when they are truly joint (rather than separate accounts/allocated bills) as it means that you both have the same goals and tasks to go for.


Is the student loan a proper loan or normal student company debt which just gets paid out of salary when above the threshold? If it's the later, I wouldn't worry about it and instead focus on making sure you have a budget which means you spend less than you earn each year.

Definitely going to stick with the yoga and it works out cheaper to pay the 89 plus I get concessionary rates due to my job.

Since the whole pension thing, have found out that the civil service pension is one of the best company pensions going. Going to leave it for now but still see what my options are. Can't believe I had not noticed how much it was though. which confirms how reckless I had become with money.

We pay a lump sum and a little extra into our joint account and then all the bills, groceries come out of that. It's been good to see that so many couples do things differently, thanks for sharing how you do yours. We weren't explicit with our expenditures from our individual accounts and so when we had a discussion regarding saving for emergencies and a need to take more money out our individual accounts that's when it all started. We also realised we were still trying to live the same lifestyle we had when we were renting but the it was completely different amount, much less!

Yes, the student loan is old and comes out of wages. Definitely going to focus on the personal loan but not beat myself up over it, which I think I was doing. Will do what I can in my power to pay it off earlier though and just spend more wisely.

OnwardAndUpward81

Ok, so, where do I start? As you've probably gathered from my previous posts and replies to other lovely MSErs, I had a bit of financial debate with the OH hence going AWOL. On the brighter side, we been through the rough to get to the brighter side. The brighter side is that the OH is now happy to cut back so that we can save for emergencies and furniture,etc and is open to all my MSE ideas and being a debt free wannabe which includes the following:-

Sunday - We paid of our AMEX, I currently have no credit card debt, woo hoo! I also paid 99p at some point since Sunday, I have no idea for my reasoning behind that !?! During our miserable day, we somehow managed to sort some DVDs for Music Magpie for £32.56

Monday - Went through our CDS today for music magpie which came to126.56, so we'll post that when I get back. I've never used music magpie so I'll wait until I receive cash first before the excitement.
Off to Scotland tomorrow until Sunday, we had booked the flights and hotel already otherwise we would not be going! Anyways, I spent the best part of three hours planning our trip to have a great experience but without our usual spending habits so....
-Thurs- £30 Tesco vouch. for ChimiChanga/Free 2.5 guided tour in Edinburgh/Nectar points Pizza x 2 -Pizza Express/ 2 Vue cinema tickets with nectar points
-Friday- £30 Tesco vouch. for Zizzi/Free 2.5 guided tour in Edinburgh/£30 Tesco vouch. Soba/ Scottish National Museum/Scottish National Gallery
Saturday - Holyrood Park/Calton Hill/£30 Las Tasca Tesco.vouch./A friend's fancy birthday do, food and champagne all included. A gift I hear you cry, well we received 4 bottles of complimentary aftershaves at a promotional event for an amazing brand, they cost £60min. each and we have bags with the branding, so that's sorted.
Sunday - Royal botanical gardens and the rest I have left open anticipating we'll be meeting friends. Where as before I had would probably try and keep up with the Joneses, I feel ok saying, er we just moved, can't afford it.

have made a whole itinerary which includes alot and I have not paid a single penny. We have budget of 200 between us and I'm confident we'll have money leftover. Oh put our Thames Water cheque which has helped.

Tuesday - So, the OH is currently doing the decor for his studio but as we're

Back to today - Well what do you know, we received a cheque from the council tax from last borough which was £18.12, had no idea that was coming at all!!!! So we banked that today. So, we need furniture but on nano budget so I thought I would look at those freecycle websites, there's a few similar. I found a vintage Singer sewing machine and a not terribly old samsung hoover so have asked for those so fingers crossed we get them! We also placed some leftover CD singles on a site and lady asked for them straightaway explaining they would help out for her daughter's 18th, she came and collected them about 2 hours ago, so that's my good deed for the day.

Last and final thing. So....I have not spent any money other than travel and bills since the 28th June. So today, I needed to get ladies things ( you know what I mean right?), which I obviously need! I was thinking oh no, I am going to have to spend money before tomorrow and tada......boots advantage points!

So.......there's my very long update, I know it is very easy to fall of the MSE bandwagon, it's happened twice before but I know if I am writing on here it's less likely to happen. So, we have our 200 quid budget, wish us luck! Oh yes, I have already looked into how much breakfast is at the hotel, 7.95 for buffet breakfast....er I am not doing that to stay in the hotel or spend that amount on brekkie!


Night folks

OnwardAndUpward81

Back from hols and we didn’t go over our £200 budget and still have £30 of La Tasca vouchers and a Pizza Express voucher for 2 pizzas. To be honest the party we went to and continued celebrations the following day helped us remain under our budget because it was all paid for through the kindness of our friend’s father, including taxi rides back to the airport. All in all, considering I was wondering how we would get through the holiday on our budget, we didn’t do too badly and had an absolutely amazing time (apart from when I felt unwell) but definitely could have cut back a lot more. Oh and I am back to square 1 with the weight, ha ha.

I’ve not made any extra money but I have signed up to the following thanks to an MSEr, Aesop, who helps run the ‘Make £10 a day’ thread:-

Clic and walk app
Onepulse app
App Trailers app
Streetspotr app
Ashleighmoneysaver
Lucky Phone
Free Postcode Lottery
Prolific Academy
QMEE
My Survey
Slice the pie
Swagbucks
Opinionpost
Inboxpounds
Opinionworld

We have a trip to Brussels this weekend, this was all booked before my recent LBM by the way! We looked into cancelling but can’t. So… I’ll have to draw up an itinerary for that, finding all the free stuff definitely helps keep the budget down, it also usually involves a lot of walking which tends to be the best way to discover the delights of a city anyway.

Oh yes, I picked up roadkill the other, 2p
Have a beautiful week everyone xx

Bobarella

Sounds like a good break, & fairly MSE anyway.