Chica's gonna get a house! (hopefully)...

ChicaBonita

It's finally payday!!! :j

Last night's boxercise class was good, very hard as it was a leg one! Annoying though as some people seem to go to mess about, why turn up and pay money for a class if you're just going to make farting noises and skid across the floor? And these are grown women....
Spent £5 on the class (we have one more class to pay for and then we get one free!), and then £13.50 in Tesco. Some of this was for food for work, toothpaste, cat treats and dinner for last night.
As my money has come into my account, I have moved across:
£300 to holiday fund - the full balance of our June holiday can now be paid. I still need £500 for spending money, and probably £100 for clothes and holiday bits, so this needs to stay at £300 for the next couple of months.
£300 to house fund
£61 to house fund from as my payment to myself for my car insurance.

Total as of today: £5,990.41/£15,000 = 39.93%
Almost 40%!

I was supposed to put £400 in my house fund, but as I was in my overdraft last month I didn't want to leave myself too short. I will probably have to go over into my overdraft this month, but hopefully I can keep it to a minimum if I keep my spends down.

ChicaBonita

It's finally the weeeekkkkeeeennnnnddd! It's funny how short work weeks somehow seem much longer...
Yesterday was a NSD so that's good.
Tonight I am seeing Book of Mormon with my bf in London, it was my christmas present and I'm so glad it's finally here. It shouldn't be too bad spend wise - money to get up there via train, having wagamamas for dinner (this will be less than £20 each as we only have one drink each, a main and one side between us), if we take sweets or something for the show we'll buy in a shop beforehand, and no drinks in the theatre!!(rip off). Then we'll probably go to get some dessert after the show at a place called Snog which does lovely little pots of ice cream and whatever toppings you like!
Had an email from ebay to say that the listings are free this month, so only pay when you sell. Definitely need to take advantage of that, although I don't know what else I have to sell now....definitely need to do some digging around as I know I have plenty of stuff!
£1.54 interest on my savings account, so that's £1.54 added to my deposit fund.

ChicaBonita

So Book of Mormon was AMAZING! It's not everyone's cup of tea, but my bf and I found it hysterical, loved the South Park references. Definitely recommend if you were looking at going, I believe it finishes this year so chop chop!
The evening didn't really go to plan however.... due to issues with the trains we had to get an Uber to a different station (I paid), so first spend £7.96. I' spent £8.60 on trains. There were issues on the central line which meant we were later than scheduled to get to Leciester Square. Once we got to Wagamamas it was a 20 minute wait so we went to Burger King instead lol! BF paid for that. Then we went to a newsagents and bought a packet of sweets and 2 bottles of water - total £4.99 (ouch).
After the show we walked to Snog the frozen yoghurt place - 2 x frozen yoghurts (large mind you!) plus 2 toppings each - £12. Mad money but that's London! BF had never been there before and he really liked it. Rounded off the evening nicely.
Trouble with the trains AGAIN on the way home, but finally got to Liverpool St and found our usual train running, so that was a much cheaper ride home than intended as it would've been another uber ride otherwise!
So total spend for me tomorrow (including approximation of train fares) - £33.55. Not fantastic but it was an incredible night, so well worth it.

Today has been pretty productive for a Sunday - done a 4.6 mile run in 48 minutes, hoovered my room, cleaned my bathroom (I particularly hate this job!), and put 4 items on eb@y. Loads of items finished today with no luck, but one did sell, so that will be packaged up tonight to be posted tomorrow.

I did buy some ebooks....I keep a wish list of the books that I want to buy, and wait for them to be reduced in price. I don't like paying full price, so if they go below £4.99 (although I prefer it when they go to 99p ), I pick them up. An author called Robin Hobb has several books, and some of them came down in price. I intend to get them all and read them all at some point anyway, so bought the equivalent of 5 books (once was 3 books in 1) for £16.47. Averages out at £3.29 per book so that's fine with me!

All in all a pretty good weekend! :j

ChicaBonita

As a quick update...
Yesterday was a low spend day, only spend £2.85 on postage for an ebay parcel, and £1.35 on eggs for work lunch (makes 3 days' worth of lunches).
Total - £4.20
I had some money in paypal become available, £6.34 to be exact, so this has gone into my house fund.
Today I will be taking my mum to see My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 at the cinema (I LOVED the first one so hopefully this will be good too!). We have a £4 cinema in our area, but I have the meerkate movies so will get both tickets for £4. I will probably pay for parking and some treats while we're there, but when I usually go to that cinema with my bf I usually manage to get everything we want for around £13. I don't begrudge that at all!

I'm supposed to do a short run today, but I don't feel all that great, and have a dodgy stomach today, so may just leave that for today. I don't mind missing the short runs.

ChicaBonita

Well yesterday didn't go as planned...my stomach ended up being really bad (and still is today) so didn't go to the cinema, so no spend. Also haven't spent anything today (so far! the night is young).
Exciting news -£9.27 became available in paypal so that went straight into the deposit fund. That takes me into the £6ks and over 40%!! :j
Not sure how much I will have to move over from ebay now as only have a two more payments pending, and then that's it. Not had any more luck with bids/sales so will get some more stuff up tonight. Aiming for 10 new items this week but running out of things to sell!

ChicaBonita

To add to the post above I completely forgot I bought petrol today - £25. So not a NSD as I first thought

ChicaBonita

Had another spend last night! £18 on a bluetooth adapter for my car. My radio doesn't have bluetooth, and I really want to be able to play my podcasts and listen to spotify while I'm in my car. I'd looked at radios, but it was looking at up to £100 for a new radio, and then you have to pay for it to be fitted/get someone who knows what they're doing to fit it. So I had a look, and on amazon they have the plug in adapters for £18. Hopefully this will be a good solution! I've told a couple of other people about it and now they want one haha. Had to buy one for my stepdad too.

Might be naughty and have a kfc after my run tonight. Luckily my stomach is better so I won't have to skip another run.

Claimed a £5 amazon voucher through swagbucks yesterday, so that should come through soon. Also spent £1.99 on an ebook that had come down in price from £8. Both me and my boyfriend are interested in reading it (his kindle is attached to my amazon account so he can make use of all the books I buy/have bought!) so I don't begrudge that at all. Need to work on my reading though, I have a list of books on my TBR (23 now to be exact) and I'm reading 2 very long books at the moment (almost finished Nelson Mandela's autobiography which is 750 pages and one by Robin Hobb which is 800-odd :O). Haven't finished any books yet this month and a week in is very slow for me!

ChicaBonita

Happy Friday!

I managed a 3.2 mile run yesterday - in the rain! Couldn't see for most of it as the rain went in my eyes, but hey that's dedication for you.
Then went to kfc and picked up some for the bf and I, and also his dad. I never normally fancy it but I really really enjoyed it yesterday. They gave me the money for their share, so that was a £9.05 spend for me.
Finally finished the Nelson Mandela book! I did enjoy it, but I've been dipping in and out of it since November last year and if I'm honest I just wanted to finish it so I could get rid of it.
Spend £2.49 on a book this morning, that will go into my holiday book list. Every year I pick 10 books that I will read exclusively on holiday. I tend to read a boook a day when I'm on a beach/pool holiday, and read one maybe on the flight there and back so I should get through them easily.

I have to spend £5 today as I'm picking up a dye tester from a woman who I'm hoping will whip my eyebrows into shape. I'm going to have the HD brows done next week, so need to check I'm not allergic to it first! That £5 will be taken from the price I pay next week, so not too bad. Excited about it as my brows have been the bane of my life lately! :rotfl:definitely first world problems.

Also spent £4.30 on food for work - a meal deal and some milk for the office. And a bag of jelly sweets for my pre-run snack on Sunday. Not fantastic but I never buy meal deals so thought I'd treat myself.

ChicaBonita

It's the weekend!
A couple of things to report...
1) the bluetooth thing works great! I had to fiddle about with it for a bit to work out how to work it, but once I got it sorted it was amazing. So glad to be able to listen to podcasts and spotify in the car now.
2) I woke up, first thing I did was check my online bank statement (morning ritual!). I noticed an "arranged OD charge". Hang on a second. I don't pay for my overdraft!!
Got straight on the phone to n@twest. They told me when I took out the student account it would eventually move over to a current account. I said that's fine, but you never told me when it had changed, and you never told me I would now be charged to use my OD. I have been bad the past few months, I admit, and I need to get out of the habit of using it (especially as I now pay!) Anyway they raised a complaint, and told me that it had changed in January (thanks for telling me), I had received an email (didn't get it) but as a gesture of good willl they will refund me the £6 charge already on my account, and they won't charge me the one that will be applied for the OD last month. Oh and they will refund the interest as well. So partly my fault for not managing my money well enough to stay in the black, but that's saved me just over £12. And now I know!!

I was meant to go to a birthday dinner tonight, but it's in a place about 25 minutes from mine, I'd have to get a cab and then the food on top would be looking at clos to £60. I'm taking my brother to a Dr Who walk tomorrow as it was his xmas present, so there'll be travel for that and I'm taking him for lunch. I thought with the two things combined it would be too much, so I'm now having a night in instead of going for the meal. It would be nice, but it's an Indian and I'm not overly fussed about it as a cuisine anyway. Means I can read some of my book and get an early night (woooooo wild Saturday:rotfl:)

I need to do some life admin today, do lots of washing and hoovering, and go for a run. I've had no bites on ebay this week - two items finished yesterday with watchers but no bids gonna get some more of my stuff up today. I got some shirts from my bf, some superdry and river island and asos, all brilliant condition (most not even worn as he doesn't like them) so I'm going to put them on there, and take a 10% seller's fee and give him the rest haha. He's been good lately, been getting up early to have a coffee from his machine at home, rather than going to work via cost@. He'd get a large latte a cookie/brownie, so it's a fiver a day easy. Sometimes he will still get one, that's fine, but I told him any day he doesn't go to cost@, maybe put the money instead into his savings. He would have spent the money anyway, so better he sees the savings go up. Not sure he will do it, he's not quite in the same mindset as me about money (although over the 2.5 years we've been together he's gotten much better! Mainly down to my influence lol) so I can only suggest these things to him and hope for the best.

ChicaBonita

Phew what a busy day! and it's not over!
I was up early to take my brother to a Dr Who Walking Tour in London (it was his xmas present). Drove to town, parking free as it's Sunday my mum had topped up his oyster card, so I only paid for my travel (I will approximate for the day it's £8). Bought us coffees from McD to sip on the train as we were both tired (he's a teenage so definitely not used to be up before 2pm on a weekend!), and luckily got there on time. I thought it started at 11, but I told him I would get us there for 10:20 so we would have time to go to the toilet etc beforehand. Anyway, turned out the tour started at 10:30 so good job we were early, as we were just on time!
It was really fun though. I've only ever seen a couple of episodes, but my brother loves the new Who series. The guide was very eccentric, dressed up as the fourth doctor and waving around his sonicscrewdriver. The 2 and a half hours went by fast even though I only have a limited knowledge of the show. Beautiful to be in London on a Sunday with the sun, and not too many tourists for a change!
Afterwards we had McD (food this time!) using some vouchers, and then headed home. All told, including 4 trips to the toilet at 30p each, I spent £17.28. Pretty cheap I think considering we had a lovely time.

I've just uploaded 8 of my boyfriend's shirts to ebay, and two of my items. You may note above he had given me 9 shirts - well I decided I've always wanted a denim-look shirt and I like them baggy, so I'm keeping one of them:o But fingers crossed for everything else.

Good news - I did have another sale :T got some more items finishing today, won't hold my breath that they'll go though eb@y seems to be super slow atm. I don't really want to adjust the prices down too much as I already feel they are supercheap for what they are. But if needs must I will drop them down as I just want it gone!

I still have my long run to do today. Just under an hour time-wise, so I should do around 6 miles in that time as long as I'm consistent. Between the walking today and then the run my poor legs will be sore tomorrow :rotfl:

I had some more money become available in paypal so that's £6.56 added to the deposit fund.