Debt free me!

Bobarella

Oh gosh, can see how that card would have been so difficult to suddenly read. It sounds like your neices birthday went well, and your gifts sound very thoughtful.

To add photos on here you need to set up something like a photo bucket account. Then link to that using a web address in your posts.

I always add milk and butter to mashed potatoes but you could try just milk for half the calories.

Perryface

We spent £88 on groceries yesterday. I bought some low fat soft cheese and will be having that with mash tonight (to test it out).

We also bought natural yogurt to freeze, however, the tub says 'not suitable for home freezing' gosh darn it! I froze some anyway just to see what happens! I would much rather only do one shop a month as the temptation to buy stuff we don't need is too much!

I bought cous cous and wraps for lunches and instead of salad (lettuce is pointless in my opinion!) we got jars of pickled gherkins, roasted peppers and beetroot, fillings will include leftovers, ham, tuna, chicken and cheese for hubby.

I plan on cleaning up the garage today, it is full of cardboard ready to package my paintings to buyers. But they are just dumped everywhere! The freezer needs to be moved so we have a good walk area and we need space to put pedal bikes when we can afford to buy them! That will be our exercise of choice -body willing!

We ideally want to demolish the garage - but hubby had a bright idea of converting half of it into my art studio.... However, I need natural light to paint so one wall may be replaced with those folding glass doors (another future project to save for!). It may all just be pie in the sky, but it is nice to dream.

Perryface

I haven't updated in 9 days.... Naughty naughty!

We have been eating out quite a bit this month and need to sort ourselves out!

I have bought Mother's Day presents too. Two of which need to be posted. I have £34 in my bank account until 24/3 but will not be needing any of it....fingers crossed. We have £40+ (haven't counted) in our money jar (left over from monthly allowance for milk, bread, etc) which will also pay for mums day postage.

Soooo although we have been less frugal this month, we will be reigning it in now and still hope to be able to drop hubbys overdraft by £200 this month.

Next month should be back to normal as we only have our wedding anniversary to celebrate and we have a spa day voucher (Xmas pressie) we will use for that. We are going to make each other's anniversary cards this year! It may even become a tradition! We are 'allowed' to buy each other a £1 Easter egg as a present! Lol.

I have already bought and delivered Easter eggs to two of our 5 grandkids so just £3 more and we are done.

In other news.... My daughter is engaged and getting married in the Dominican Republic in October 2018. So there's an expense We were not budgeting for! Hubby and I have discussed it and have agreed to pay £1000 towards the wedding costs and we will look at prices of holidays to Dom Rep when they come out next month. 2017 prices are around £1800 each!

Sooooooo, provisional budgeting idea is to get out of hubbys o/d by October 2017 (£310 ish a month) then save for the wedding without going into debt. I will be adding the wedding payments to my signature and treating it like a debt.

As you can see, I am hoping for a miracle! Does anyone happen to have a villa in the Dom Rep you want to rent to me? Haha!

Perryface

Just checked hubby's o/d and he has accrued £80 in bank charged this month. Is there a way of paying off your o/d with a 0% credit card? These charges are killing any progress we make!

Edit: just done our own research and have now transferred the o/d to a 0% transfer credit card. This gives us 0% for 9 months which is more than doable!

Why didn't I think of this earlier... Idiot!

Perryface

Well..... Long time, no write!

I thought I best update ��

Hubby and I finally paid off the overdraft using a 0% transfer card, so that's all done and dusted. The only thing left is the loan which won't be finished until May 2019 (I think I previously said Sept '18 but that was wrong!).

Hubby is set to retire in August '18, DD is getting married in Dominican Republic in Oct '18.
Hubby plans to return to work 2 days per week in Nov '18.

I am still painting and selling on artfinder.
I am looking for admin jobs I can do from home for pin money but not seen anything yet. If anyone has recommendations please let me know.

Oh and... I am all set for Christmas ish. I made all the adults gifts this year and have bought all the children's. Everything is wrapped and ready to go. I just need to finish hubbys gift buying then I am done!

I hope everyone is tickety-boo!
Xxx