A Diary of Reinventing Ourselves

getmore4less

There is another saying.

Debt is borrowing from your future self.

perhaps look at the true cost of something by adding the interest?

if your current £31k CC is costing £1k interest(3.2258%) per month thats an APR of 46%, something very wrong with that.

I would get those CC statements and have a propper look.

if it is 3.2% per month if you spend £100 on something rather than reduce the debt buy £100 every year you keep the debt it is costing you an extra £39.

getmore4less

Forward_thinking wrote: »

Question - if I decide one day I shouldn't have written this diary am I able to delete it? Just a little worried about writing everything on here and yet it is such a great place to come and vent. But worried about making a permanent footprint on the internet......

I will pick up this.

you can delete/edit posts to remove things or have the thread deleted but you are basically anon unless you fill the thread with details.

nothing so far going to out you and if you stay as careful as you have been you will b OK unless someone close reads even then you can throw few distractions.

Just remember people trying to help can only go with what you say when it comes to numbers other support will be relentless

As you are setting up a business with web based content DO NOT MIX that with here or facebook or other portals unless all your web presence using the same name is 100% business like.

Remember your business will probably connect you to the OH if you are using the real you.

Apart from on a very high level any business advice I would go elsewhere ie specific sites or different user name

Forward_thinking

Sanctioned - yes, you are right. We were out of the UK for 15 years and it is a bit of a learning curve for us. I hadn't heard of the soft eligibility tests, husband hadn't either. I am starting to think there may be other surprises in store for me - husband is really dragging his heels getting me these account details. I've been asking for a week and he still hasn't got around to it. Having said that our burglar alarm has been beeping for about 7 weeks now and he hasn't got around to fixing that either. It will be really helpful to sit down and see exactly what is going on. I'm really surprised he doesn't have easy access to these details - he says he hardly looks at them!!! It's my fault too - I should have been more involved but have tended to leave the finances to him. I knew the numbers but didn't get involved in checking the accounts. I'm paying the price now.

Tommolise - thank you for your wonderful posts. Hugely helpful and wonderful to have such detailed examples on how you work your budget. I need to try and take over the shopping. I have to admit though, life has got even busier. As well as all our usual routines, I am now spending more time ironing, cleaning, (on here) and trying to do my website/get some work. It's really hard trying to fit it all in.

Today has been fine - did some more decluttering. Yes, I am following many principles of the Marie Kondo book and you may be right that this is my way of getting control. Having said that, I have always been ultra tidy and used to live in a show home. Our standards have gradually slipped as the children have taken over.

Husband is slightly driving me crazy. He now thinks instead of working with individual clients I should be thinking about doing lectures on my area of expertise. He says this is more profitable and just dealing with single clients will be time-consuming and not pay very much. He may have a point and I do agree that I would be good at doing this. However, I told him I would need to increase my current reading to do this; he reckons after studying the subject for eight years I should be able to just do it tomorrow. That is really annoying as I wouldn't be able to do that without any planning. Again, he's all focused on making more money and not accepting that we need to make other lifestyle changes.

Tired tonight. The children didn't sleep very well last night after our eldest told the youngest a silly joke about monsters!!! Might try and get to bed before midnight for a change.

Forward_thinking

Getmore - I appreciate your openness with me. Thank you. As I said previously, I don't want just pats on the back. That's not why I am here. I need to sort this before it is too late. You are quite right - we need to take far more crucial chess moves but it's really difficult when husband doesn't see the point. Sees it as a needle in a haystack. I quizzed him about the interest accrued each month. He agreed it is about £600 but then went on to give a lengthy explanation about how it is rising and with compound interest very little of the actual debt is getting paid off. I have to admit I had a little one wanting attention beside me and I didn't understand it in detail. I feel really out of control with our finances and want to get to know everything about our money situation. Can't believe I have let it get to this. Crazy.

Forward_thinking

Getmore4less - would you mind rephrasing:

....unless all your web presence using the same name is 100% business like.

Remember your business will probably connect you to the OH if you are using the real you.

I am not quite understanding you and really respect your previous posts; I therefore want to acknowledge the useful advice you are giving me.

Forward_thinking

:eek:

Just spent fifteen minutes reading the YNAB thread. It looks complicated!!!! I didn't understand half of what I read and I don't have a bad education:) Is it as bad as it seems or do I need to get the maths texts books out of the loft?

Forward_thinking

Just registered for my 34 day trial - now all I need is for husband to give me the details to actually look at our accounts. Or is he dragging his heels for a reason.....will nag at him again tomorrow.

Steerpike88

I didn't understand YNAB at first, but after doing a short course on accounting packages for work it made a lot more sense, unlike a spreadsheet accounting packages aren't quite as forgiving if you make a mistake. , still once you find your way around them they're so helpful.

I can attest to cooking from scratch to save money, check out http://cookingonabootstrap.com/ I make her bean chilli, I just fry up the onion and garlic on high in my slow cooker in the morning, chuck everything else in and put it down to low and leave it all day and have it in a baked potato, delicious.

She has a recipe for a gorgeous tomato sauce, fry up about 6 cloves of crushed garlic in a little butter and throw in a tin of tomatoes. I add some grated carrot and courgette, and maybe some celery and/or onions, whatever I have with a big helping of cheese. Again you can just put on your slow cooker in the morning. If you make a couple of cheap and easy meals during the week, you save yourself money and stress. I used to spend a lot of money cooking us, steaks, lamb and chicken breasts, and now I hardly bother. Just don't apologise for a lack of meat, no one ever notices in my house anyway.

I would also urge you to have access to all your account/credit card/business account information just in case he's hiding debt and feels bad about it. Tell him the truth about how you feel, say you would feel more secure about your future if you knew about your finances, and it doesn't matter if it's bad news you just want to work together as a team as you want to move past debt.

pelirocco

Forward_thinking wrote: »

Just registered for my 34 day trial - now all I need is for husband to give me the details to actually look at our accounts. Or is he dragging his heels for a reason.....will nag at him again tomorrow.

I would guess he is hiding something

getmore4less

Forward_thinking wrote: »

Getmore4less - would you mind rephrasing:

....unless all your web presence using the same name is 100% business like.

Remember your business will probably connect you to the OH if you are using the real you.

I am not quite understanding you and really respect your previous posts; I therefore want to acknowledge the useful advice you are giving me.

OK starting with the business, it looks like this will be a "me" business where you are the business.
(nice idea about the lectures and training but I think it probably needs to go along side practicing I have a friend into NLP and other stuff life coach etc. and thats the way they operate).

Rather than being some random mum every where you put a footprint you are becoming a public person.

Remember there are loads of people runing business in their own name. Think about if you are using your address and phone number.

You want to sell yourself and people will look you up not just your website but anywhere else your name comes up, all these places need to have nothing that would put people off.

The kind of thing we see on the employment board is people getting sacked because they said something on FB like my boss is a idiot. A recent one someone suspects that 2 people that are friends on FB have lost him a new job.

Consider a linkedIn profile that supports your line of work.
Think carefull about your FB public presense
Any other forums where you have used your name
etc.

You want this public image to reflect the business.

Try a google search on yourself, overtime you want all the top entries to be your business.

where you use anon forum handle like here then the connections get very tenuous and it is rare for people to make the link to the real you as long as you are reasonably carefull not to give away too many clues. So far I think you are fine here.

An example of putting something that can get people closer.
On another place I hang out someone posted the names of their 2 kids, it took 5 mins to find out where they live what they do and one of there employees is into cats.

Don't over worry most people don't leave a mess on the web but worth checking just in case there is something.