Gadget Crazy Abigail doesn't need a new iphone!

abby1234519

Just worked out that if I get my MB refund in soon I can make a payment to meet my debt pay off target for December (in combination with usual payplan payment) and afford husbands new phone without having to take anything out of savings. Might leave the ebaying til January

Also, from 2017 - I have taken my budgeted debt spend and rounded it up. So for example £350 becomes £400
A challenge!

One month goes up by £99 :O

abby1234519

AH MA GAD

I've paid off £970.16 worth of debt this month. This is exclusive of family loan paying off credit cards as that was basically robbing peter etc. No I mean I have paid £970 off the total amount. It feels strange as that's £970 I could have spent on crap. Essentially when you are paying debt off, it's a bit like throwing money away - because it's not returning any extrinsic rewards or material possessions. You are essentially taking one "number" to make another number smaller. And that's it. Obviously, there are benefits that come with that - hopefully a greater sense of well being and happiness, the ability in the future to save for a house or afford a better car. But in the moment all it is, is depriving yourself of something (deservedly) to make a number smaller.

So how can I keep this going. How can I stay motivated to have no money just so I can make a number smaller? Well I have no idea...At the moment I'm living for the rush - I'm enjoying that number getting smaller. But when the excitement wears off that will be the test. And that is exactly where I usually fail....

abby1234519

So despite having a busy weekend (a hungover weekend from work Xmas party) I've still made around £77 from MBing. Lucky week I guess, after all if I made that every week I'd be able to pay £300 extra off my debt each month. But alas, that isn't the usual figure.

Once the money flows back into my account this week I'll make my £77 payment to student finance. Although....I'm almost at my December target and what's left over is just my usual payment to SLC and Payplan, so maybe I should save it to be able to meet Januarys target. Or is that cheating as I made the money this month...I'll have to think about it. I think it's cheating.

I just realised that my statement in the last post saying I've paid £970 off debt this month is confusing. That is the total, but I only set myself a target midway through so didn't included payments made before. So since I set the target I've paid £757.71 out of £887.71

We have a measly £20 left in our food budget for the month. Can't see this being an issue as we still have so much food in. We've not been buying too much in terms of quantity but I spent money on food for the work pot luck, I've drunk quite a lot of pepsi max and basically we've had high value items.

The good news is I quit smoking on Friday, I know its only been a couple of days but as long as I can get through the evenings (don't smoke during the day) then I'll be fine. Also will mean I'm not spending £12 a week as the tobacco has been coming out of grocery money, OH is now going to have to buy it himself! Mwuahhahaha. Money is the main reason I have stopped and also OH smokes quite a bit and it was annoying me that I had to pay for it....so I stopped.

So much to do this week. It might be 9pm but need to go see if the chicken I left in the fridge is still okay to cook - then cook OH and DS tea for tomorrow. Then I need to make my soup for the week, find all the christmas presents that need wrapping, find all the envelopes I am meant to have posted, the cheque I was supposed to have cashed (OOOOOHHH forgot about that £102 extra)

Need to put stuff on eBay as well as I am bored now I've run out of money to put towards debt. Bring on next month......

abby1234519

abby1234519 wrote: »

So much to do this week. It might be 9pm but need to go see if the chicken I left in the fridge is still okay to cook - then cook OH and DS tea for tomorrow. Then I need to make my soup for the week, find all the christmas presents that need wrapping, find all the envelopes I am meant to have posted, the cheque I was supposed to have cashed (OOOOOHHH forgot about that £102 extra)

Need to put stuff on eBay as well as I am bored now I've run out of money to put towards debt. Bring on next month......

Well the chicken didn't get cooked, annoyed that I wasted two chicken breasts. Buuuut I did remember to shred my 50 pence rotisserie chickens and freeze the meat, had intended to use the carcasses to make stock but just not got the time at the moment!

Also discovered that I've thrown out £30 amazon vouchers, I don't think they were taken out of the box arrrrggghhhh! However...I emailed amazon to check that they would have been delivered in a certain box and they emailed back to say they'd sent some more!? I wasn't asking for more! I guess I shouldn't look a giftcard horse in the mouth. Ha.

Finally finished Christmas shopping, £50 under budget I think. I suspect I will need to shift the remaining budget to other categories HOWEVER that doesn't matter. I've still paid off the debt I said I would and there's nothing wrong with shifting leftover money around as long as I'm not taking it from debt payments or savings.

I now have a TSB bank account opened which I can keep up to £1500 in to get 3% interest. It's got about £700 in it at the moment and I'm transferring the £14.88 child tax credit over every week (I don't count it in my budget at all)

I've got a FD regular saver going at £200 a month at 5%

I've just opened a Tesco Bank Account which I can keep up to £3000 in which is also at 3%.

My plan is to have DH's student finance paid into the TSB account in January (which fulfils the £500 income for that month) then transfer anything above £1500 into the Tesco account. Then in February I'll transfer £500 from Tesco to TSB and £500 from TSB to Tesco. This way I'm always fulfilling TSBs income requirements but maximising the interest.

The money in the Tesco account will deplete every month by £627.50 but I am going to try to leave the money in there for as long as possible, even if its that I don't take it out till near the end of the month for the bills. I've got my pots of money saving in FD easy savers however the interest rate on those is so so low, I need to think about how I can maximise these as well

abby1234519

So our grocery budget for December is basically gone. £10 left for bread and milk.
However we’ve only spent £40 on petrol (benefit of having one small car rather than one small car and a huge diesel!) and I anticipate needing another £30 to last the rest of the month including travel to mums. So if needs be I can divert some of the other £60 left over petrol money to pay for food. Don’t need to really though, bought a huge amount of toilet rolls etc. Got tons of food in the freezer, haven’t got any more chips to go with DS’s fish fingers but have plenty of baked potatoes, and have ingredients to make more coronation chicken (which went down a treat at the work pot luck).
Spent £3 on a Terry’s Chocolate orange and 400g chocolate to make a chocolate orange cake. It’s my departments work meal tonight (at my boss’s house) which I am really looking forward to. I’ll have to pay for a taxi home which I don’t really have the money for so I’ll have to take it out of next month’s personal allowance which is really naughty. But lesson learned, make sure I’ve planned ahead! I’ve made the cake as she has paid for all of the food and booze so that’s my contribution.

Looking at the budget, I’ll have £180 left over from various categories at the end of the month. Some of that will have to sub food budget (hopefully not) and some of it needs to go into savings.

I recently visited the dentist as I’ve got a tooth at the front that needs fixing (with braces) not for aesthetics but because it falls behind one of my bottom teeth and causes issues when eating. Have been advised I should have FULL braces which is something like 5 as I need to correct bite issues. I said, I don’t have problems with biting, it’s just that tooth so I have been offered treatment that just puts braces on the top 6 teeth, costing £1950.

Not really sure what to do. I’ve got £810.50 in savings. I’m putting £64 in a month from tax credits. I am saving £200 into a regular saver but can’t touch that because otherwise I lose interest. I can reduce the payment into the regular saver to £25

Now….I could afford it by March but I would have to use the £810.50, reduce my regular saver, and leech as much money from my budget as possible. That would leave me with no savings.

Or I put it on 0% card (yay more debt) and pay it off with the £64 a month from tax credits plus any other additional income.

Technically both options postpone my debt free date.

abby1234519

Woe is me.

My son sat on my macbook.

£300 to £400 to replace the screen. Plus cost of getting to Leeds and parking etc next Saturday.

That will be half of my savings gone!!!

abby1234519

£428.64 spent on credit card.


£124.99 spent on an external hard drive (wireless one that will also connect to router to back up all of the computers etc. Been wanting one for a while and have made do with a portable one but not sufficient for family needs anymore)

£50 excess for MacBook repair on home insurance

£67.99 towards my new fitbit (used £60 vouchers from christmas). My old fitbit broke a while ago.

£35 for Skylanders Imaginators for DS birthday in august (not seen it so cheap so took advantage)

£61 M+S presents in Boxing Day sale for 2017

£56.99 on a Lumia alarm clock (I really struggle to get up in morning, borrowed a friend's and its made a world of difference, doubt it will be of any use in the summer)

£89.66 on bits and bobs

Paying this back with the December MB earnings of £408.37 and some money from my pocket money in January. Bill is due January 29th but will pay it way before then so that the money is out of the MB category on YNAB so I can start again. I like to clear the money out of the category before starting MBing again. Mostly on budget for December, had to move some money around categories, overspent on groceries by £65 but that was from going to MacDonalds 3 times.... well other stuff as well but at £15 a pop it adds up.

£428.64 payment set up to go out of account on January 9th. Credit card not to be used now. Only spent the above money as I already had the cash from MBing. I've transferred some left over money from fuel budget to credit card, that's already been taken into account. Then a few pence here and there have been transferred to the HSBC card.

abby1234519

January

The below are things I can change/impact.

Min payment set to go to HSBC £71
Min payment set to go to student finance £25

My allowance £100 pays for anything I want to do, ie slimming world and going out with DS on a saturday. So I have £25 a week, thinking of taking it out in cash to stop myself from overspending.


Petrol £100 - we’ve used a lot less since getting rid of the doblo, I am getting a new car but that also has a small engine so I’d hope I won’t be spending as much as I used to do on fuel. Especially as its a 1 litre engine and OH will be paying for his own fuel out of his allowance.

Groceries £150 (aiming for so much less as freezer is full etc). Need to do dummy order on my supermarket for weekly basics. Then set a target, if by end of 4 weeks I’ve met target then we can have a takeaway



Childcare £176 no idea what actual cost is going to be this month. Hopefully less, in which case I’ll put the rest into savings.



The only categories I can focus on really are my personal allowance, petrol and groceries. The others are either standing orders to their determined “pots” or things that don’t happen often.

If budget is stuck to then I should have £350 left over to put towards debt/savings. Tempted to put it on student finance debt as I could clear that in 3 or 4 months if I really tried

abby1234519

Today I did a thing.

I spent £30 at Monsoon :S

Basically I could have spent it on Sunday as that would have been January but it's not come out of my account yet so it will still appear in January's budget.

DS gets invited to parties a lot, and i get fed up with paying for a present i know they probably won't even like. For boys I get away with a couple of things from the pound shop but the girls are always so difficult, and they aren't at an age where they really care...Accessorize have a sale on, so picked up some girlie headbands etc for a couple of pounds each. And then some wraps (bit like ponchos) that I love on sale. I'm justifying the £30 in that the presents will save me money but I guess if I feel guilty about it then I shouldn't have spent it!

Other than that, zeroed off December - paid off all of the stuff from a couple of posts above.

abby1234519

Filled up the car today with £40 petrol. Hoping this will last the month as the car seems to do quite well with fuel. Well, it probably won't last the month - maybe half or two thirds. If I dig my bike out of the shed and try to cycle once a week to work then maybe I can stretch it.

Went to Morrisons today, spent £35. Despite planning on spending naff all what with having lots of food in, I had to stock up on loo roll, yoghurt, lady things and other essentials. But didn't pick up anything I don't need. Well - got some reduce parsnips and onions, didn't technically need those but will be making parsnip soup tomorrow to freeze for work lunches.

Tomorrow husband needs to work on essay so DS and I will watch a movie in the morning and then do some baking and cooking as well as visit the tip. Hopefully go out for a walk to. Tonight I'm going to make a quick freezer inventory and plan some meals. I'd like to plan the rest of the week and see how much batch cooking I can get done to avoid buying yet more food. Freezer is full!!