The Ultimate Incentive muddles along

Dinah93

47.78% now paid off. How can over £500 make so little difference! I'm fairly confident now I'll have hit my goal of paying off my Barclaycard by the end of March. 

Payment came from around £30 from Amazon sales, £60 from a one to one, £50 from selling some old kids clothes, £270.93 from a refund from a week in a travelodge we had booked for Easter, £20 from an argos refund for a lost Christmas present and then about £3 which was a refund for a second hand cd which I got for one of the mini moneysavers and didn't work at all when it arrived. 

Had my vaccine this morning, I struggled to sleep last night, it was like Christmas. Arm is sore but so far no other side effects although I'm warned a lot of people get headaches, fever or chills so I'm just trying to get a little work done today in case that does hit, but realistically I have nothing urgent at the moment. 

kavics177

After the first jab my arm hurt the next day and I was shivering that night. After the second I had no symptoms whatsoever.
Cases are going up here and toddler Kavics is ill again. It's almost certain now that she had covid at the beginning of the month, she still coughs a lot. There is zero tolerance in nursery now so she hasn't been in again, and I'm due to be back at the office tomorrow. OH's sister kindly offered to have her this week so it's all sorted and I'm just hoping that she recovers and can go back to nursery next week. There is talk about closing primary schools again, if they do that I will need to give notice at work . There is no way I can answer hundreds of calls and have zoom meetings while I have to home educate mini Kavics. Covid can !!!!!! the !!!!!! now, I'm truly fed up.
Money wise we are all good thankfully, did manage to save a little bit more than last month so I'm happy with that.

kavics177

How is everyone doing? As the UK schools opened, the Hungarian ones closed. I managed 6 days in the office and now on annual leave. My boss does not allow me to work from home with the kids at home so will have to take unpaid leave after next week. It's a bummer but his reaction was expected. Time to find a new job I guess. 
We are also isolating as OH tested positive the day before yesterday. Toddler Kavics had her test this morning,hoping the result will be in soon,she still coughs a lot. 

Dinah93

Hi everyone, how are you doing? 

Sorry for going awol again, money took a dip in the wrong direction, and that majorly threw me off posting here as I'm still struggling to accept sometimes you have to go backwards to go forwards. 

Now for once, very good money dip reason (in so far as that can be true) in that the slightly leaky roof completely failed and we had 8 buckets and no electricity, so we had to replace the roof very quickly, and get the electrics fixed. So that came to £6500. So our house is now watertight, we still need to get the plastering redone where some roof fell in but it's not urgent until autumn if needs be, but when it starts to get colder we will need to as otherwise the house is very chilly. 

Our standard debt hasn't increased in terms of overdrafts, credit cards etc (in fact it's lower than 2 months ago), but we did have to borrow some money from one of my companies. Technically I could say it's not borrowings but a dividend, however I want to repay it to fund some medium term plans, and hopefully that'll come back many times over as a result. 

My companies aren't fully open again yet, but nearly, 17th May all being well. It's giving me a bit of time to get the new plans going as well, but I'm really mentally struggling to get my usual business running again in preparation because I've done that 3 times now where it's been cancelled and we've lost a small fortune as well as hundreds of hours of time. I really hope they will give us 2 weeks rather than 1 week's notice that the 17th May re-openings are going ahead. 

Made something of a money oops this week, my phone wouldn't charge after one of the mini moneysavers dropped it in soup. So I cleaned it out, still no charge. Tried another charger in another room, still no charge. Ordered a new phone (early upgrade fee was less than the £80 to pay towards repairing on the insurance). NIM borrows my charger to plug in his phone, and that's the point we realise that not one, but two chargers have given up working in one day, and my phone was actually fine. 

Kids are back in all their clubs now, so that's a lot going out again that I'd really enjoyed saving, as well as running around every single day of the week for various activities. We are continuing to try to encourage them to drop a few clubs, but they do several together so it doesn't really help if one quits football but the other doesn't! 

wendz86

Bad news about having to pay out on the roof but one of those things you have no choice on.
Fingers crossed they give you proper notice about restarting with your businesses. Must be a nightmare having no certainty.
Oops with the phone too, i would have assumed the same after checking two chargers.

@kavics177 how are things there now? Have the schools reopened? That is awful they don't let you work with kids at home when you have no choice. Hope your OH is ok after testing positive.

Things are good here, found out I am getting a payrise so that is good although won't actually make much difference in short term as i will lose my tax credits and some of my housing benefit but is a good thing in the long term. DD1 had a garden party for her birthday Saturday so was nice to see her happy and playing with friends.

kavics177

Ouch about the roof and phone, must have been a nightmare. But it's done and dusted!

Schools reopened last week,thank you. They were closed for 6 weeks at the end. I took 5 weeks off unpaid, and went back to work the week before schools opened. Mini Kavics missed 3 months of nursery altogether because of covid and closure but she settled back nicely thankfully. I'm back at work finally, it became unfortunately a full time job rather than a part time but tbh I am just glad that I have a job.

Hungary is easing the restrictions once we reach 4 million vaccinated people (currently standing at 3.75, population is less than 10million). Really can't wait as kids couldn't go swimming and I couldn't go to the gym either. I actually did very well with my running, doing 6k runs every 2nd-3rd day. Not losing weight unfortunately but at least I'm getting faster.

Dinah93

Morning everyone, I was going to say Happy Monday, but it isn't. Bank holidays always throw me. Had a bad week as NIM lost his last grandparent, but couldn't travel back due to not being able to get a PCR test in time (death to funeral was only 3 days) so he's been pretty down and out of it. 

Great news on the promotion Wendz, congratulations. 

Hopefully you're a bit closer to reopening now Kavics. 

Work is getting crazy busy now trying to plan for reopening in less than 2 weeks, it's a massive undertaking to get this many locations ready to go at the same time, and then there is the other side of it too that I need to not just have the venues and teachers ready, but also make sure people know about the courses to come to them as well! 

Good strides still in the right direction on paying things off, I've actually made the decision to draw all our money out of almost all our savings and stocks and shares etc, to pay off the debt. We wanted to have a cushion there in case of emergencies, and all the debt now is 0%, and it's been growing nicely to be honest, but because everything we have is index linked I just have a suspicion that it is going to stagnate or have a bit of a correction soon, so I'd rather pull out now, pay it off something we owe, and if I'm wrong all I've lost is future dividends and interest, not any actual money I put in in the first place. It's about £2500 but when it arrives in a few days time it should get us another jump closer to home. £1000 has already arrived and been paid off.

Sent off the old phone for £227 cashback, have put in claims for mini-moneysavers glasses with the healthcare cashback plan (and need to do another claim today as he broke them 5 days after getting them so had to get a new pair!). Going to update MSE signature now as well. 

Dinah93

Okay, huge boost unexpectedly. HSBC just wrote to me to say they've reviewed the fees, charges and interest on one of my accounts were applied mistakenly, and as a result they've sent me a cheque for £1740.20!!!!! I'm just about dancing around the living room at this point. 

wendz86

That's amazing Dinah, such great money news!

Dinah93

Wow, it's been a while, but right now I think money is on everyone's minds a heck of a lot more than usual. I've found myself back on MSE looking for painless ways to cut costs, as well as new ways to up my income. We're in a reasonable position, but I'd rather do what I can to keep it that way until it all goes down to a crisis point (which as our energy bills are already £400 a month for gas and electric it could quickly do!) so, is anyone still out there if I resurrect the thread?