Back to DFW but not back to Square One.

MrBloater

Am currently fighting an intense battle with an emerging flu (an early gift from Mrs over who has control of me over Christmas. My weapon of choice is Fireball, which is giving me an intense glow something similar to swallowing sugar-coated battery acid. So I need something else that gives me a feelgood fuzzy warmth so I thought I would wrap myself up in the comforting quilt that is these MSE forums. But not over there, not on MFW where I've been kinda hanging out for a while. It's all a bit intense over there. And judgemental. So I've come back over here, to where I belong.

We have racked up a bit on the CCs recently, nothing to get too stressed about, but we sort of realized Christmas would suck without buying things, so I will have (in the morning) a figure of debt to start attacking, and this debt will likely increase as we are outgrowing this house and so would like to get the loft sorted.

Positives certainly outweigh the negatives here though - after a solid year of work-related uncertainty and plenty of false dawns and soggy picnics, I start my 'dream' job in January - a 10 minute drive from home, in the sector I feel best with and at a completely new unit - to be in on something at the very start is a rare occurrence in my line of work, and it's also paying me £400 a month more than I am currently on. This money will be ringfenced for the loft conversion so I will be looking at cutting back expenditure on other stuff to pay the other debts down.

And the battle with the weight carries on - not as bad as it used to be, but still plenty of room for improvement. Am a fully fledged Fitbit fiend, and up until a few weeks back we had been Nutribulleting every day - need to get back into that, I kinda miss the industrial quantities of spinach I was consuming. Certainly more effective for the arthritis than the Glucosomine I had been taking.

So my short-term targets are:
- Get an updated debt figure
- Get a plan on how to wipe it out
- Get some quotes for the loft
- Get some exercise (very tempted to start the 4.30am runs again)
- Do a Parkrun before Valentine's Day
- Post more regularly on here
- Keep smiling

mickey_mouse

Well done Mr B on the new job.
I have just returned here in the last week or so after a long absence and looking forward to doing some of the 2016 challenges.
I am going to get a nutribullet for xmas from my in-laws and am v excited to start using it ��
I will cheer you on and follow your journey.

Emmala

Good Luck Mr B! I'm more a lurker than a poster, but I've subscribed and I wish you and the Bloater household well.

MrBloater

Gulp. Finally bit the bullet and have all the totals. We've managed to rack up 7.6k of credit/store card debt in the last few months. Nowhere near the crazy amounts (50k-ish) that we used to have when we lived on the edge, but still a substantial target to chip away at. Having worked out all the relative interest rates on these debts my immediate priority is to put all thoughts of the extension on hold, and utilise the additional income plus some significant cuts in our expenditure to get these balances down to zero before we look at anything else. I can't have history repeating itself and if I carry on being so laidback about it, I will sleepwalk back into serious trouble again.

MrBloater

Things are decidedly unfestive in the House of Bloater at the moment. Been up since 2.00am tinkering with spreadsheets and forensically going through paperwork/emails that have been piling up for a while. Added my union subscriptions to my monthly outgoings and have tweaked a few other things, rather than looking at the bigger picture I am, for once, sweating the small stuff and have got a payout from Topcashback of £11 that had been sitting in my account for months. Mrs B is fully on board and has rejigged her side of the finances as well - leaving us now with 5.7k debt split over 2 cards - we can either BT the whole lot over to the first card at 6.9% plus fee or have a look around for a 0% deal. Anyways, hope everyone has a cool Yule.

Buffythedebtslayer

Is it cheaper to pay the union fee monthly then? I wasn't sure and always end up paying it on the credit card........normally some time in November when I remember and they have sent me a few letters!

Emmala

Merry Christmas Mr B! I hope you've had a lovely day x

Igamogam

MrBloater wrote: »

Am currently fighting an intense battle with an emerging flu (an early gift from Mrs over who has control of me over Christmas. My weapon of choice is Fireball, which is giving me an intense glow something similar to swallowing sugar-coated battery acid. So I need something else that gives me a feelgood fuzzy warmth so I thought I would wrap myself up in the comforting quilt that is these MSE forums. But not over there, not on MFW where I've been kinda hanging out for a while. It's all a bit intense over there. And judgemental. So I've come back over here, to where I belong.

Wondered where you had been hanging out! Welcome back Now not going to be judgemental but over 5k on CCs in last few months:eek:. .............but you know what to do.

You and Mrs B do claim tax relief on your union fees don't you? Not a lot but every little helps and yiu can claim up to 4 years back if you are not claiming the relief or indeed if you have forgotten to update. Tax relief on subs on some other professional bodies you may belong to too.....worth a chat with HMRC.

Good luck with the new job. Look forward to regular debt busting updates in 2016:)

MrBloater

Lovely Christmas but reality has hit hard. I like to think that my general laidbackness is a good thing, but I do sleepwalk into trouble. Went on the scales for the first time in a while - I was under the impression that I was doing OK, but I'm not, I'm the biggest I've ever been - bigger than when I started my first MSE diary back in 2011, and even bigger than when I when I spent a summer holed up in a Lille attic eating cheap French cheese and half price cakes. It doesn't help that I choose to weigh myself in kg, as they mean nothing emotionally to me. But in old money, I am topping the scales at over 24 stone. Ouch. That really really hurts to type it out. Obviously this means I cannot be complacent anymore. And if my weight can creep up unchecked like this, then so can (and will) my debt. So, no more Mr Mellow. Yesterday I went for a 50 minute trundle and also did 30 minutes on an ab exerciser. This morning I was up at 4.30am and managed to keep moving for 30 minutes. And in moneysaving news, Mrs B started looking at a new sofa for the family room, so I investigated the cause of its problems and found out a strap had come loose. Fixed strap back up, gave the thing a damn good hoover and it's as good as new. Two hours of my life well spent. Shame I didn't do it 5 years ago when the thing broke in the first place, but you know, I was mellow back then. Am going to have to put the Parkrun deadline back to Easter as there is no way I can run in daylight in public at my current weight. But I need to keep my serious head on now. Playtime is over.

mickey_mouse

You can do it Mr B ��

MrBloater

These days, it's not often that I am in fear of my life. But this is one of those mornings. My daughter is going to kill me. Not with a kitchen knife frenzy or some form of GHD torture, but with her "That's alright Daddy, I don't mind" fake mellowness - when her and I both know that she is going to store it away for payback for the next time she gets busted doing something she shouldn't have.

It's all basically the fault of the Discovery Channel - I had a few days off at the start of the month and became gripped by the constant stream of Alaskan based shows depicting the struggle of bearded men against angry bears, broken machinery and big snow. As any attempts of mine to grow a beard result in an escalation of my "Escaped From Broadmoor" look - Mrs B is keen that I don't do it, so instead I took inspiration from the Alaskans' seemingly unbounded optimism that they can fix things that seem irretrievably broken. To this end, in recent times (aside from yesterday's sofa victory), I have also removed built in wardrobes and wiring from a bedroom, rehung doors, replaced light fittings, constructed a Heath Robinson-esque device (including coat hangers and bits of a bed frames) in the back garden that keeps the broken fence panel from escaping all over the neighbourhood, and saved the 'family' PC from being disposed of - whilst nobody else uses it other than me, cos it runs Windows XP and has Office 2000 on it, it's a sturdy workhorse that has kept going for the last decade - but when it gave up the ghost last week - the vultures were circling - so I spent many a happy hour defragmenting, backing up, resetting user profiles and even more exciting stuff with page files to get the old girl back working again. And all of these things worked, and were MSE - cos the alternative would have been to throw money at the problems. Money we now have but seem to get rid of. But by far my greatest moment was when I heroically fixed my daughter's Wifi problem on her beloved iPhone. It stopped connecting and all hope was lost. Til I read on a forum about a guy who had frozen his for 30 minutes and then everything worked again. Lo and behold, it worked for her iPhone too and I've had that proud Dad moment every time I look at her with it for the last couple of weeks. Then on Christmas Day afternoon she told me the Wifi had gone again. No worries - I just popped it in a freezer bag and put it in with the frozen Peas. And promptly forgot about it until I finished my stupidly early 2 mile trundle this morning. She'd even asked me yesterday if I'd seen her phone and I blethered on about she needs to take more care of her stuff. So whilst typing this up I have been sitting with a three day old frozen iPhone clutched to my leg hoping that my body heat will naturally warm it up to normal temperature and miraculously reanimate it. It's a long shot, it's a distant hope. Am glad I decided yesterday that there would be no more Mr Mellow cos today is going to be tough.