A Ditherer's Diary (again)

Naomim

Grrr got caught out by an unexpected payment date today :mad:. The payment for SKY came out but I thought it was later in the month so it pushed us over the overdraft. Luckily I'd put £115 in the savings so I whipped that back out and will put it back when I get paid next week.

12 yo finishes school next Friday and 7yo the Thursday after.

I have some MrT's clubcard vouchers for bowling that need using by 7th August and we've planned two trips to London using the Merlin passes. London Dungeons for 12yo and London Eye for my FiL as he's never been on and can go up with 12yo on his carers pass.

I also have planned two more trips to Chessington World of Adventures with friends whilst the Merlins are still active and hoping to get a day at the New Forest in too as it's not too far away. We might even manage an afternoon tea

We also have a surprise 70th party to go to next Saturday which I'm looking forward to. Just need to have a think about a cheap gift!

Naomi x

Naomim

A lovely cheap weekend. Saturday did nothing much but signed DD up to the summer reading challenge at the library. Sunday DD and I went to Chessington World of Adventures. We took a packed lunch and DD found £6.50 on a ride that had obviously fallen out of someones pocket! So we had ice creams! :T (it was a hot day )

When I do my grocery shopping and get petrol, I put it on my MrT's credit card to save the points. I put by £625 a month to cover the cost. £475 on groceries and £150 petrol. I've totalled this months spend so far and it's £518. I have one more weekly shop to do on Wednesday so I'm hoping I'll be under budget by around £50-£60.

So all in all feeling pretty positive for now :j

Naomi x

Naomim

Well my positive bubble has burst I have a credit card DD coming out on the 13th (thursday) and I get paid on the 14th (Friday). There's not enough money in my account to clear it so I'm wondering if I call the bank they will honour it as it's one day.

MrM has also !!!!!!ed up his gym membership. He took it out in January and hasn't been. I asked him to cancel which he said he'd done via email. This was a couple of months ago, the payments came out so I cancelled the DD. They've tried to take payment. They say it's a 3 month notice period, they have no knowledge of his cancellation. His phone is old and knackered and keeps running out of storage so he's deleted all his emails so now he has no proof that he's cancelled. They've now added on a £20 administration fee. :mad: AND we're probably going to have to pay for another 3 months.

so today I'm not happy.

I also signed up to Prolific but there's never any surveys on there. I need to check the make more money boards ...

Naomi x

EssexHebridean

If OH's email is a hotmail get him to check his sent items - my iPhone certainly generally copies stuff across that was sent to the phone into my main sent items that I access online. Worth a try and it may be that others do the same.

Prolific - have you definitely done all the prescreening stuff? Without those you don;t get the surveys and if you;'re checking reasonably frequently and seeing nothing I'd say there's something wrong. The prescreening stuff can be accessed via your dashboard on there.

Naomim

MrM uses Yahoo mail. He could access online but it's a problem having no storage left. I bought an sd card but there's only about 3 apps he can put on there so it's not saving much space. He's deleted every unnecessary app & I've disabled a few of the preloaded ones. Buying a cheap phone isn't always economical.

With prolific. I answered loads of questions . There were LOADS! so I'm pretty sure I've done all the pre screening. I'll keep checking.

I've become a bit obsessive checking the bank account. I'm logging in about 4/5 times a day. This .month I got caught by a couple of payments coming out on dates I wasn't expecting so next month I should know exactly where everything is.

Payday on Friday.

Naomim

Ooh, so I went on Prolific and there were LOADS of other screening questions. I feel almost violated!:rotfl: I did have one survey so I completed that for £1.75 :j

I applied for a market research this morning too but haven't heard back so I'm assuming I'll not be doing that one.

Today has been ok. Nothing sneaking out of the bank account that I wasn't aware of or prepared for.

I'm going to go and check my MrT credit card balance now and make the payment ready for tomorrows payday :money:

Naomi

Siebrie

Naomim wrote: »

we have two ties and two PE kits. (He lost them, I replaced, he found them weeks later).

Hi Naomi,

I've been reading your diary yesterday and today right from the start, and you are describing my greatest horror. Not having enough money to renovate, getting a loan, and then a cowboy builder. It's the sole reason we have not yet added an extension to the house. Good luck with getting everything together again.

On the bit you said above: I think I'm a bit stricter than you on 'lost items'. If my girls lose something like this, I go through the 'lost and found' bin at school and pick out something that fits them. I've noticed that they then become much better at looking for the lost items When the original items are found, the items from school go back into the bin (washed and ironed...).

Also, your tooth fairy is expensive!! Fire her and hire a cheaper one! My dds get a 10cent coin.

Naomim

On the bit you said above: I think I'm a bit stricter than you on 'lost items'. If my girls lose something like this, I go through the 'lost and found' bin at school and pick out something that fits them. I've noticed that they then become much better at looking for the lost items When the original items are found, the items from school go back into the bin (washed and ironed...).

Thanks for reading through. I guess things have to get bad before they get good. I always thought I had a handle on the finances (Obviously not!) But now I'm far more aware of what's available and what's not. We were always eating out, not majorly expensive places but now I'm more aware and more enabled to MrM to say no.

7yo's school has a huge overflowing bin of lost property. I marvel at it and have been known to liberate the odd jumper with no name tag. 12yo's school doesn't seem to have lost property. When he lost the pe kit, I called & the office was a bit vague about where stuff is kept. It seems each department has its own lost property.

The house has been a nightmare but hopefully it will be finished soon. Tomorrow we have a plasterer coming in to finish the utility room & downstairs wc. Obviously we'll paint it ourselves.

Now I'm working on getting the overdraft cleared and credit cards paid off. Slowly slowly....

Naomi x

armchairexpert

Gyms are notorious for harsh cancellation policies (many of them will say cancellations have to be in writing and then not allow email) and taking the P. I'm sorry it happened to Mr N. At least you're on top of it now and I assume it's formally cancelled now? Make him go there every day for the next three months so you get your money's worth - even if it's just to use their hot water and shower!

GeorgianaCavendish

Hi Naomi, so sorry to hear about the gym troubles. I think it is worth writing to head office to express how disappointed you are, see if they can do anything as a goodwill gesture even if that is just knocking a month off the notice period.

Can you switch your direct debits to after payday? I've done this for two credit cards recently, just got to make sure I've made the min payment on one of them manually because DD doesn't start until August. I've got reminders everywhere!