A Ditherer's Diary (again)

lucielle

You are doing brilliantly. Hope your son feels better soon. 

L

Naomim

I will! I keep telling him to ignore it all and take the high ground but social media is a b1*ch. So glad it wasn't around when I was a teenager.  

moving_forward

Ok so I'm still learning 🤣🤣🤣

Naomim

Sorry @lucielle & @WinterWarrior cross posted.

You're right, it really does matter at that age what everyone thinks. He's spending a lot of time with his best friend who is lovely and at least teens these days, especially boys are more open to talking about their feelings. 

jokono

Hey Naomi! Finally catching up, I was behind since late November 😁
Lots to catch up on, sorry about the 16yo's break up (my oldest is only 10 but I'm dreading heartbreaks already), I hope the brother and husband are fine and great to hear that even though you tested positive you didn't have any serious symptoms. 

I see a lot of chat about managing spends/budgets. I've never try ynab so can't compare it to that but I have been using Money Dashboard for about a year and it seems to be doing similar things. It has an app and a web version, you can connect it to your bank accounts and see all transactions, it puts them into categories but you can also move them around and create new categories, you can set up budgets for each/any/some categories and (this is what I loved most at the beginning) shows any regular payments that are scheduled to be taken out of your account, so you always know how much you need for any DD before the month ends. You can connect as many accounts as you want to have them all in one place - this shows me that I am now worth (lol) -£7,968, this is my just over 10k CC debt plus any pots/EF/savings (but not my personal loan which would take me below -£20k). You can use all accounts or only some of them for tracking and budgeting.
You can easily set a pay cycle, there are lots of options for this - for example my one starts every month on the 28th or the previous working day of that falls on a weekend. I haven't used it so much in the last few months, I would like to go back through the transactions and then check the yearly spends per category.

I don't remember if I told you - we have a cavalier called Benson and a cat called Ozzy - I thought that was a nice coincidence 😊

moving_forward

Oooh @jokono **scurries off to look up money dash board**

jokono

moving_forward said:

Oooh @jokono **scurries off to look up money dash board**

Forgot to mention it's FREE!

Naomim

Hi @jokono 🖐

It's good to hear about what others use for budgeting. I do also use the Emma app - replaced Yolt when they stopped late last year.  I use it just to keep an eye on the actual figures on my accounts and cc's,  My current net worth is -£22k 😒

We chose the name Ozzie thinking it would be unusual, only to find a few other dogs sharing the same name! I do love it as a pet name though.  What type of Cav is Benson? Oz was a tri with little brown eyebrows that made him look permanently grumpy! 

moving_forward

Oh what a beautiful not at all grumpy looking boy 💖r.i.p xx

Naomim

Thanks M_F. He was the gentlest soul and has left a huge furry hole in our lives but we were all the better for loving him.