The long and winding road to debtfreeness

Ammeretto

Hello all.

Its been a while since i posted last (seems to be a theme
)

We had a fab holiday and even came in under budget.
October saw our debt increase a little as we needed to replace two new windows and a door. It cost £1500 so it wasn't too bad.

November and December have been the most awful two months ever.
Debt busting fell by the wayside in November and we incurred quite a few unexpected costs in December.
My mum fell ill the the start of Nov
They first thought it was a stroke. The next day we found out that it was Melanoma in the brain.
The day after that we found out there was two masses in her head and a couple more elsewhere.
Two weeks later we found out that it was terminal. She was given 3-6 months to live with radiotherapy and possibly a little longer if she had a specific gene where she could have tablets too.

My mum wanted to make this Christmas really special and get the whole family together for her last Christmas. We decided to go away to a big house for Christmas where we could all get together. My mums friend was amazing and paid for it for us.

A week later she lost feeling in her side, went to hospital and had a massive haemorrhage in her head. She never woke up.
We spent the next four days and nights by her bed waiting for her to pass.
My brother lives in Scotland. He doesn't have a lot of money so i bought a flight for him to come down so he could say goodbye before mum passed away.
Between finding out and mum passing it was 1 month.
We should have had more time. She really wanted Christmas.

We were going to cancel the house for Christmas but a lot of people convinced us that we should go, even if just for the kids.

It was so hard. I miss her so much. I felt guilty every time i laughed.
The children enjoyed it though so that was a good thing, and we go to talk about mum too and have a giggle over some of our memories.

I need to take a proper look at my finances for December but i just cant seem to build up the will to do it.
All i have done is make sure the bills are paid and not worried about sticking to any budgets.
I will try and do it this evening.

Ammeretto

Well I've finally gotten round to looking at the finances.

I ended up paying out £300 in flights to get my brother here and home, £375 to my brother to help with his finances as where he works gave him two weeks off but only at his contractual hours and not the hours he usually works so i helped him out.
I also paid £416 towards the buffet food at the wake as my step dad had paid out quite a bit already.

the outcome is i paid £800 to the debt in December (Bringing the 2017 year end balance to £11,000) rather than the £1000 budgeted and will only be able to pay £250 in Jan rather than the £1000 budgeted.
It was unexpected but i'm glad that we were in a position to help. If not i don't think my brother would have been able to get here in time to see mum and he certainly wouldn't of been able to take two weeks off work to come down for the funeral and Christmas.

Fuel and groceries was £200 higher than budgeted for in December also - Fuel was due to the 3 hour round trip to the holiday house, Food was due to multiple trips to the shops and not keeping an eye on spending throughout the month, and also we had to chip in for food costs for the holiday - We needed food and drink for 12 people for 4 days (breakfast, lunch and dinner)

Budget for Jan is set - its a little tight but we will manage.

Ammeretto

its been a busy few days.
I went back to work on Tuesday - after having pretty much the whole of December off i found it quite hard both emotionally and also cause of the shear amount of work i needed to catch up on.

Good news today though. I'm going to be taking on a little extra work so i'm getting a pay-rise. They told me today that it will be an extra £3.5k per year. I worked it out as an extra £190 ish per month :T

Debts as as 31.12.17 are (all on 0% at the moment)

MBNA - £1,260
Creation - £3,950
B/Card 1 - £3,340
B/Card 2 - £2,450

YNAB updated and bank checked. It all looks as it should.
£35 paid to MBNA