The Ultimate Incentive muddles along

clearmydebts

Well done Dinah. Any money you can make from them sales on eBay is fantastic!

Happy Monday everyone else. Hope everyone had a great weekend. I was supposed to have my work night out last Friday but was smothered with a cold so didn't go. The kids had a great weekend, GAA for them both Sat morning, party in the afternoon and their cousins over on Sat night for a sleepover. Yesterday Max went with OH to a coderdojo sampler session so he'll be joining that after Xmas I think.

This weekend we are going to Tuscany. No spend or very low as it's OH's Xmas party!!! They are taking us away for 3 nights to a villa, private driver and lots of wine tasting, restaurants etc. Can't wait!

Cinny91

We are.... recovered!! I decided to top every thing off with some tonsillitis so we were well and truly covered in terms of lurgy. Ready for London in 2 days, have most things prepaid for so I'm glad we can go - although I was determined to go and sit in the hotel room all weekend if we were still unwell :rotfl:

Tuscany sounds amazing, your OH must work for a very generous company. Hope you have a great time

Has anyone been setting any goals for 2017?

clearmydebts

Cinny91 wrote: »

We are.... recovered!! I decided to top every thing off with some tonsillitis so we were well and truly covered in terms of lurgy. Ready for London in 2 days, have most things prepaid for so I'm glad we can go - although I was determined to go and sit in the hotel room all weekend if we were still unwell :rotfl:

Tuscany sounds amazing, your OH must work for a very generous company. Hope you have a great time

Has anyone been setting any goals for 2017?

Ugh to tonsillitis. It is so so painful. Glad to hear you are all okay now. We've had bouts of sickness over the past few weeks, am hoping that's an end to it now!Oh love London, what are ye up to there?

He has been with them just over a year but they seem really generous, which is great as his last work nearly drove to a nervous breakdown, so a big turnaround.

2017 - financially I want the credit card paid off and then to make a fairly big dent in the loan. 2016 has been an awful year payments wise but we have had one thing after the other and I suppose we did buy a house

Personally - I want to learn to drive (again) and pass my test

My 2016 resolution was to only spend time with people who wanted to spend time with me. It's worked out really well and I'll be carrying that through to 2017

Cinny91

We're being extreme tourists - have tickets for Madame Tussauds, Sealife etc and going to Winter Wonderland. Plus going to Planet Hollywood and Rainforest cafe :rotfl: Trying to find interesting and colourful places to eat so Oscar just looks around gormless while I shovel in carbs :cool:

That is amazing! Must have been horrible for him to go through that, but at least he's found a place that appreciates him now

They seem like good goals! I need to find out how to get my debt free badge stripped from me now I'm married (only taken a year-ish) because we want to pay off the loans OH has taken out which is about 17k (does include student) his job seems a bit iffy atm with them laying off a lot of people so our plan is to save up until we can pay it off - just to give us a good buffer if the worst does happen.

ruby_eskimo

Hope you have a lovely time CMD, never been to Tuscany but heard that it's gorgeous!

And glad to hear everyone is better now Cinny, hope you have a lovely time down south - the weather is un-seasonally warm at the moment here, it's very unsettling.

Went to Prague last weekend with the husband (it was his wedding anniversary present to me as I haven't had a holiday since our honeymoon). Had a wonderful time but one week back at work and I'm just emotionally drained again. I've never worked in a place with so much politics! Was at a conference yesterday and I just kept thinking that it wasn't worth it anymore and maybe one of my resolutions for 2017 is to be more selfish, but in a good way. I'm always worrying about others but maybe now I should focus on myself. Maybe it's the whole turning 30 thing in a couple of months that's setting me off on a mid life crisis of sorts! I also want to get my finances sorted - I'm debt free but I do find myself dipping into the overdraft every once in a while. With buying the house I need to be more stringent with my spending and not buy things for the sake of buying them. Also there's the bog standard 'get fit / lose weight' thing too.

Hope the new bedrooms are coming along well Dinah - I remember getting a bedside table for Christmas one year and I was so excited about it. My parent's thought I was weird but I didn't care, and I'm sure Grace and Ben will love it!

Cinny91

They sound like good resolutions, Ruby! I completely get the putting yourself first one, it's incredibly difficult but when you do manage to shake things off it's so liberating. We had to do it after Oscar was born because we were running ourselves into the ground trying to see everyone and keep everyone happy. We got to breaking point and just started refusing to go out after a certain time. Bliss!

I've downloaded an app called Daily Budget which is really interesting so far. You put in all you income, then all your outgoings and you're left with a daily amount that gets added to each day (so say it's £20 the pot goes £20, £40, £60 until you input a spend) pluuuuuus playing with it yesterday I found you can sent "big spend" goals and targets in certain time frames, and it breaks them down over the period into a daily amount. So to get our loan paid off next year we need £28.77 a day, which starts in 18 days :eek: It's free if anyone doesn't use it already and is interested!

We had a lovely time in London though, Oscar did so well and bar getting a bit upset on the London Eye/overwhelmed in Winter Wonderland he loved it. He's also discovered he can snog his reflection so that's his new favourite thing to do thanks to a floor length mirror in our hotel. Hope we can afford to go again next December, but I also get we're going full on scorched earth for a year so I'm not expecting it.

Other news was we discovered Penn and Teller are coming to England in June so we cut back our London spends and used the money to get tickets. So at least we have something to look forward to after our night away in January

Dinah93

Still here. Still alive. Utterly manic in the Christening and run up to Spain, home next week and then I imagine Christmas and spending time with the kids is going to fill my week - but I'm still around and will get back to posting more detailed spends come 26th December if I don't find the time before.

tootallulah

Have a good Christmas Dinah - see you the other side!

roomontheend

Happy Christmas everyone hope have had an amazing day ��������

roomontheend

They ���� are supposed to be Christmas trees but obviously mse doesn't like my emojis