Time to face up.

tunnelandlight

Hello Diary,

I have been getting on with the recovery plan!I should be getting on with preparing for back to school but getting back on track is crucial for me right now.

The debts is now as follows:

OD - £150
Bcard £1200
H$SC £3094.55
Loan £5550

The overdraft started at £900 and is the priority as it is 17.9%, I only dip into it towards the last week or so of the month but it is an easy win.
With the Bcard I am on a 0% deal for 24 months (there was 0.68% transfer fee). I have shredded the actual card and this total incorporates my MBN@ balance, I set it up to be repaid at £50 a month, so repaid within the 0% period, although when more costly debts are paid off I will get this settled early.
The H$BC is on 0% from November/ this January last year for 20 months. I have been paying £100/ month which is slightly over the minimum payment, it will be where I focus after the OD.

The loan payment is £205, the interest was frontloaded but I am hoping to get some of it back as I will be repaying it a year early on the plan (the bank says I can!).

So, the total is just under £10,000 and the debt snowball is indicating I can still pay it off by the end of next year. The sooner the better, of course. This is without taking into account that my student loan (taken out of later in life teacher training will be gone by next year, this will mean an extra £174 in my pay packet each month) and I am due to get a raise in September, although the exact percentage will not be confirmed until I'm back at school.

Just about to take a look at the budget until I get paid.

tunnelandlight

So. The budget for the rest of the month.

I'll get paid again on 20/9. Until then I have about £300 in my current account after all DDs are taken into account and about £50 in cash. The final festival of the summer is a fairly local one that starts Friday night and ends Sunday lunchtime. The tickets are free thanks to BF :)and I don't even have to take pics as there will be a proper photographer being sent by the website for which BF reviews.:j I'll take £50-£60 for spends and no card so that'll have to do!! I will also have to save a little of that for a weekend at BF's parents' house. They moved to the Liverpool area at the end of last year and we're visiting the weekend before payday. Not great timing!

Summer has been wonderful, but expensive. It's put me off track, but if I had thought about it, I'd have seen that was inevitable. September will be expensive as I have both parents' Birthdays. October - November will be OK. Christmas will be expensive so I will accept now that although I will not save any money in December, I will not resort to cards and will just use my above minimum debt repayment money to cover it.

Sorry to blather on, diary. I have sorted my head now and will get back to work with a plan in place. Woo hoo!
:beer:

Xx

tunnelandlight

And finally...


In Hungary at the festival, BF and I got chatting to a very interesting lady. She is a teacher, has lived in Budapest for a couple of years and was about to move on to a senior role at a school in Africa. She gave us contacts and BF and are looking into teaching abroad. The salary is lower than I currently earn, but with no tax to pay, no accommodation or utility charges (or council tax) 80-90% of the £2200 to £3500 a month you'd earn can be saved, even allowing for a decent quality of life.


We're going to investigate further, but the way I am dreading going back to work is making me feel it's time for a big change. Thinking I could come out of a 2 year contract like that debt free and with quite a lot of money in the bank is a beautiful thought right now!


Xx

tunnelandlight

Hi dairy,


At BF's house in readiness for a festival in the midlands that we'll aim for tomorrow. Feeling somewhat grumpy both at the thought of going back to work and also with BF. He insists I come over early as he pretty much expects me to clean his house. And I'm the mug that will do it because it is in such a state. Currently the drive is full of weeds, dirty clothes are dumped on the floor, the dining table is piled with paperwork dating back months, there are pizza boxes everywhere, piles of ironing, plates, the bedding that he expects me to sleep on has not been changed since I last changed it - in July. And as for the bathroom. Utterly YUK. I will do an hour. That's it. I have lots of my own stuff to prepare for the big return on Monday. He would never have his house in this state if his parents were due to come over and when he comes to mine, the covers are changed, the bathroom and kitchen are freshly cleaned, any shirts etc he has left are washed and ironed and there is food/ wine in the fridge and a meal cooked/ takeaway ordered. Whereas after I arrived at 9 p.m. yesterday to find him out, I saw a missed text giving me the name of the pub he was at and after finding it, having a soft drink, I gave him and his friends a lift home (other side of the city) and spent £13 in Tesc* on a bottle of wine and the post beer snacks he put into the basket. He also hardly spoke as it was the football transfer window and this left him glued to his phone. All this after he insisted I came over early so "we'll have more time together". Agghhhh.


Also grumpy because the Halifax haven't paid me my reward and looking online it is because a DD was taken before a SO was credited. There were just 17 minutes between the two events but it's cost me a fiver. Grrrr!


Sorry, will cheer up soon. Will go out now to buy bleach.

milasavesmoney

Perhaps you should bring his mother with you if she's handy. :;):D

tunnelandlight

milasavesmoney wrote: »

Perhaps you should bring his mother with you if she's handy. :;):D

Not a bad idea. He is terrified of her!!!


I got my fiver after all - hip hip!!- and BF won £100 on the horses so treated me to a slap-up dinner out and was grateful for my cleaning efforts. Festival was fab. So I cheered up.


School tomorrow. But staff training, so an easy start.


How is it September already???


Xx

[Deleted User]

Hi tunnelandlight.

Keep going, you're doing great.

Pmo2
X

tunnelandlight

Deleted_User wrote: »

Hi tunnelandlight.

Keep going, you're doing great.

Pmo2
X

Thank you so much for the words of encouragement. Very much appreciated, if perhaps not deserved! I have been catching up on diary reading for inspiration over the past couple of days and actually feel a little ashamed. I don't have children to worry about (apart from the ones I teach!) and have a regular wage coming in which should really be enough to live comfortably, BF gets us a LOT of free entertainment and I see others feeding families on less than I spend for just me, clearing and eb@ying tons, batch cooking and baking and taking on extra work to pay things off yet still finding time to encourage other on their on money saving journeys...some people are doing all this whilst battling serious heath issues, too.. Really glad to have this site for inspiration! :T:T:T


Xx

tunnelandlight

Had a wonderful weekend. I'm feeling somewhat guilty for not working at all but I'll get over it...


I went over to BF's place and we went out just to watch the football, then for dinner and drinks, but not too many - no hangover this morning, just a pleasant evening of chatting and discussing our relationship. BF thinks he has a novel in him (!!) and he may be right, he has had a lot of his work published and has a successful blog. His idea is that he'll get his redundancy (if offered) about June next year - the office where he works is closing but it may be that he is offered working from home/ another office, he's hoping not, but there is no guarantee. If I can secure a teaching post abroad with accommodation he'd live with me and work on his book, he'd have his redundancy (possibly) and a rental income from his house. He is working hard to pay down his own debts, but he does love to go out, so I'm not convinced he'll make much progress, although he's even done a spreadsheet so perhaps there's hope. He pointed out that lots of conservative countries would not want an unmarried couple so "We'll have to get married". Oh, the romance! I was too shocked to comment but he didn't even wait for an answer and apparently has already told his son that's what we'll do. Wow! Talk about a curve ball.


Left his house quite early this morning and have had a lovely day sorting the house, enjoying the weather, reading diaries here and even managed a bike ride which was a great way to get some fresh air. I miss my little Isobel (my cocker spaniel) very much. She died last year aged about 17 (I don't know exactly as she came into my life by appearing in my garden in rather a state when I lived in Spain, she was about 7 then) right to her last days she loved a walk/ run and I miss the exercise as well as her company.


Hope everyone had a good weekend, enjoy another week of battling those debts.


Xx

[Deleted User]

Morning,

A novel? How exciting! What sort of stuff has he had published?

I think it's lovely, how he's thinking about the future, a lovely MSE wedding to go with the two MSE babies

Hugs to you xxx

Sounds like you've had a rather interesting weekend