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

mfmaybe

You could ask about a payday advance from them? When I came back from Mat leave they hadn't got it sorted in time, so I got it paid outwith normal payroll, and then adjusted the next month. Depends on the situation though. Mine was "you haven't paid me at all, how I meant to live?" so I had no qualms about raising the issue.

Honeysucklelou2

Could a request for interest to be added to the outstanding pay speed things up a little?!

Treadingonplaymobil

Week 28: day 5

Still slightly irritated about DH's payrise, even though I know he'll get it in the end (manager assured him again it would be backdated to June, and apparently there's two or three of them waiting. Some lame excuse for the hold up, which basically amounts to a failure to communicate the payrise to payroll).

Had a total meltdown yesterday - the person who is meant to be doing my new website (as a skills exchange, although he is doing me more of a favour than I am doing him) went very quiet and didn't seem to be doing it. I think it's all resolved now and it's going to launch a week or two late, but it's really unrelaxed. Favours/skills exchanges never seem to work smoothly - better to pay someone and be able to hassle them! Especially difficult as I am benefitting more than he is from this exchange, but equally having made the commitment it would be nice if it actually happened. Persevering as it would cost me hundreds and hundreds more to pay someone to do it, and he'll do a fab job when it finally gets done.

Got a last minute booking for some work today, which is great. Won't be paid until the end of the month, but will add £60 or so to next month's budget (which is particularly welcome given DH's lack of payrise :mad: ).

to do today
1. make picnic breakfast for car journey tomorrow.
2. make picnic lunch for car journey tomorrow.
3. make sourdough.
4. continue to tackle the ironing.
5. collect uniform/shoes order.
6. pack for holiday

to do this week
1. plan DS1's birthday with him (this fell by the wayside last week). Planned with him, now I need to do the research myself.
2. tax return - I have a feeling this needs to be done to apply for the 30 hours funding for DC3. No idea how I'm going to fit it in!
3. dry out the tent if DH brings it home wet (although the weather is looking positive at the moment!). Yay, it came home dry!
4. uniform and shoe shopping for the DC (weep).
5. check any other supplies needed for walking holiday (I think we have everything we need though).
6. Start a list of camping supplies that need replacing/repairing for next year - will be much better to do that in stages over the winter than in one big spend next May.

to do this month
1. Pay some extra off the MBNA card - I'd like this card gone asap. More than the £15 I managed in July would be nice. Well that's not going to happen.
2. Find ourselves with more than £228 in the savings account on 31st August. Ha. Ha. Ha.
3. Keep that overall spend figure down below £3,900 (baby steps!)
4. business planning and scheduling, so that I am ready to start making some immediate profit in September when DC3 starts preschool. Ongoing.
5. think outside the box with the food budget and keep a close eye on anywhere it might be going wrong.
6. Try not to need the child benefit money to balance August’s money, so it can go towards Septmber’s (it is paid four weekly, which is currently falling towards the back end of the month, so I have balanced the budget to work without it, and will aim to put it towards September’s income rather than August’s. We’ll see). Again; Ha. Ha. Ha.

Treadingonplaymobil

Just popping by to give a quick wave. We are having a lovely hols, I am trying not to think about money too much, although had to buy a new camping bed for one of the DC (we needed a new one for next year's camping, and halfway to holiday realised we had forgotten to bring the one we were meant to to the holiday house, which is a bed short). Other than that no alarming spends yet.

See you all in a few days!

Hiddenidenity

Have a lovely holiday x

EssexHebridean

Hope you're still having a fabby time TOPM! :T

Suffolk_lass

Ooh! I watched that TV programme with Alan Titchmarsh doing up gardens - tonight it was a house and garden - 8pm on 30th Aug on ITV1 - you have to see what they did to the children's bedrooms to use the space! A really innovative approach with "bunk beds" in different rooms. I thought of you as I watched it!

scotdebs

Hi TOPM - just popping by to say a quick hello after finding your diary - I have been away from MSE for about 18 months and as you can see from my signature and £47k of debt it has done me no good at all . Have subscribed and will be cheering you on from the sidelines

Sarastro

Hey,
Very impressed by your cool and collected response to some quite harsh (but well meant) advice. Meal planning before shopping would be a major saving area. In my experience, Children enjoy the quality of time with you; they actually don't care how much money you spent when they're younger. A day in the park (free) will be as valued a memory as the trip to wherever (expensive).
It's really hard being self-employed when you;re income is erratic. I'd suggest getting a separate bank account for your work. Pay all of your work expenses from it and all of your work income into it. Ideally get to a position where there is a float of £500 or so and enough to pay you a regular amount each month. Then, the erratic income problem will be separate from your personal bank account and it will be a lot easier to budget. If the 'float' in your business account starts to get high, then you can afford to give yourself a bit extra - don't forget though you need to be putting something aside for tax. It will be painful to get there but would make your domestic budget easier to manage. Good luck - there are many people on here rooting for you!

Treadingonplaymobil

Week 29: Day 7

Hello hello hello! We got back from holiday at midnight last night. I'm a tiny bit tired <understatment>, but we had an amazing time, such a lovely holiday. Made me realise I really need to properly budget for holidays - since LBM I have seen them as something of an optional extra and imagined we just wouldn't take them while paying off the debt, but this has genuinely been one of the best summers we've had for years, and having all the various camping trips and the proper family holiday to look forward to has been a huge part of that. The biggest costs have been purely accommodation/camping costs, as food and entertainment has been the same or less than at home for the camping trips, and only a little more for the family holiday. Not that the camping/accommodation costs have been insignificant, but if we can put that by, then the rest shouldn't be too bad. Anyway, a discussion for another day.

Meanwhile, back here in the real world, I jumped straight back onto YNAB today to reconcile everything. Totally depressing. My dire income from last month which meant needing to use the CC to cover outgoings plus DH's non-payrise this month mean that we are dramatically short of what we need for the month. I am going to sit down and work things out in my next post as I need to think about what to cut and what can be jiggled.

Meanwhile, let's take a look at the plain and simple debt numbers:

Weekly round up
debt total on day 1 of week 28 £55,331.13
This week's debt total £55,011.96
Total paid off since day 1 of week 28 £319.17
Grand total paid off £3,596.17

The repayment has slowed significantly, but I'm pleased that it has actually still gone down since the end of August, as I was worried we'd spent more on the CC than we would pay off the debt with the DD payments.