£67,031.92 is a frightening number indeed....

Allotrope

I sold my Garmin watch on eBay and got a great price, but then 3 weeks later the buyer claimed it was an unauthorised purchase and eBay took the money from the sale pending their investigation. Fortunately I sent it tracked and had the receipt so they gave the money back. Just a little reminder to always get proof of purchase, and I get tracking too if it's over £10.

Well done for your success so far!

Treadingonplaymobil

BoP, PMo3 and Allotrope, thanks for your kind words! Always lovely to have someone check in and say you're doing ok.

Treadingonplaymobil

Day 7

Woohoo, we have made it to Day 7 without me losing interest! The fact that I have managed to make a reduction in debt beyond just the DD has kept me motivated, must remember how pleased it made me, and keep striving to make overpayments, even if they are only tiny.

I’m working all day today and tomorrow so won’t have much opportunity to spend money, but it’s the weekend and therefore prime risk for DH overspending with the children. He knows exactly what’s available though, and I’m fairly confident it won’t be a problem for a few weeks (until the novelty wears off!), when he might need a gentle reminder.

Because I’m working from home I still have time to fit in a few money saving activities into the plan...

To do today:
1. Make bread (I make my own sourdough). Should be able to get two big/four small loaves out of the amount of starter.
2. Bake banana loaf to use up manky bananas.
3. Spend half an hour trying to reduce next week’s shop - I’d like to knock a tenner off it so there is some scope for a top up shop while still remaining within the £60 budget.
4. List cot, travel cot and garmin watch on eBay.
5. Do as much social media while working today as possible (my business always does better when I am making regular social media posts, it’s where the majority of my customers come from).

To do this week:
1. Redo our budget to ensure that even if I only earn my minimum of £250 per month, that the shortfall is gone, whether it has to come from clothes, food, entertainment or whatever. It's lovely to try to earn extra to cover it every month, but I need to get us to a position where if I don't that we're not getting further into debt. Redone on Day 5 to reflect new lower guaranteed income.
2. We are away visiting family from Monday until Thursday, so no worries about food shopping until then (DH at home, but can make do with what's in the house, there is loads), but I'm going to challenge myself to make Thursday's top up shop to get us through until the following Tuesday (normal food shopping day) come in at under £30. Well the £30 got reduced to £18.60 thanks to DH's random extra food shop for himself, but we did it for only £14.09 in the end. Yay!
3. List child 3's old cot on eBay
4. Menu plan for next week and use MySupermarket to keep the cost down to <£60 for the week. As long as we can get almost all of it in Aldi/Lidl, it will come in under £60. Would have liked to have gone slightly lower to allow for any top up shop, but have menu planned for 8 days rather than 7 (to get into March) and it’s due to be around £55 in Aldi. I actually have £100 available in the budget, I just want to come in as low as possible so there is more spare for dept overpayment.
5. DH - water meter reading to make sure our direct debit is accurate. Done, and direct debit reduced by £9. Not much, but better than nothing.
6. DH - gas and electricity readings, to make sure direct debit is accurate. Done, and we are all of £3 in debit. That's fine, as it's the end of the coldest part of the year so our usage will drop, but I was hoping we'd be in credit. However, we were at zero in September, so we managed the coldest part of the year on the £104 combined DD, so hopefully in another month or two we'll see usage drop slightly and we can reduce DD a little and still accrue some credit ready for next winter. Not the big win I was hoping for but better than a huge bill. Will still try to make our usage more efficient though - a plan to make next week when the children are back at school.

MoneyMission

Hi TOPM,

Just dropping in to say I'm cheering you on. I love your style of writing - you've made me smile a number of times whilst I was reading through your diary! I know the situation is serious and you're quite rightly determined to be rid of the debt but a decent dose of humour will help you along the way.

MM
x

[Deleted User]

Have a great day today.

Pmo2
X

brizzledfw

Hope weekend goes well and Oh sticks to his entertainment budget!

Drawingaline

Hope your weekend goes well and is productive :beer:

Treadingonplaymobil

Phew, productive morning! Have done some work, but I probably profited as much from emptying out the food cupboards and finding recipes to go with the ingredients lurking there - homemade nutella, coconut banana loaf, mincemeat cake and welsh cakes are all added to the baking list.

zippygeorgeandben

Cheering you on too. World book day - dress as Burglar Bill. Buy a cheap black and white striped t shirt, get an old flat cap, pillowcase full of stuff for on the shoulder, wear dark trousers and you're good to go. Plus you can reuse the t shirt. You can also get a black eye mask for 1.99 on eBay.
All for under a tenner, and I'm using it again this year.

brizzledfw

That's a good one Zippy. My kids were also regularly pirates...cardboard sword covered in foil and tucked into a belt or scarf tied round the waist, (large foil wrapped cardboard buckle tied to shoes if you're feeling very creative) scarf knotted round the head, red or striped Tshirt, frayed 3/4 dark trousers...all dead easy to do and they loved it (they are girls)

As a big fan of Mr Depp, this worked for me too