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

Treadingonplaymobil

Week 71: Day 6

Hold onto your hats everyone: my architect actually did some work yesterday. I have final plans for the house, a schedule of works and rear elevations etc. Of course, there are a couple of fairly crucial errors (like no new front door and wall we have asked to be removed from the drawings on a weekly basis for about three months. He keeps agreeing to remove it, but it's still there when the drawings are next issued!), but it wouldn't be my architect if there weren't, would it? Hoping to be in for planning in the next 10-14 days. Hollow laugh.

We're heading off to London for a family party soon - a breakfast-in-the-car day. I completely ran out of time to cook things for the picnic (and only realised fairly last minute we had to bring our own food to the party) so we went and bought things. OMG nice picnic food costs a fortune when you buy it pre-made. I am reminded why we always make everything from scratch! And also why we eat 90% vegetarian. At least I won't be drinking and DH will only have a beer or two, which lessens the blow a fraction.

I really am counting down until the end of the month now. I want to get started on our new budget, I want to shut the door on the budgeting nightmare that has been June and I want to look forward to getting the planning application in and thinking more seriously about our extension. Mostly I want to pretend June never happened to our poor budget!

To do yesterday
1. Phone call with head honcho chap from the people running the DCs' school.
2. Contract work for 2 weeks hence (even if I only get a bit done it will help me stay ahead).
3. Calculate cake sizes for my sister's wedding - need to start planning this! Expect my diary to become very cake and macaron based for the next few weeks.
4. Make sourdough. I left this a little too long, and in the hot weather it rose to high and lost its energy a bit, so I have four slightly flat loaves! They'll still taste nice though, I'm sure.
5. Clear the laundry and ironing - so much easier to have it all clear when we're away for the weekend so I don't come home to a mountain then add our weekend's clothes too.
6. Hand in forms for DC3's school start. One for Monday then.
7. Check whether I have wick stays for a batch of candle making I have planned in a week or two. I know I have everything else.
8. List bike trailer. I must must must do this. Perfect time of year to sell it.
9. Social media post - have let this slip a bit this week. And slip further.
10. Tidy utility room - it always turns into a dumping ground when left to its own devices for five minutes. The dumping continues.

To do today
1. Hang out the laundry I put on this morning while on autopilot. At least it's one less load to do tomorrow!
2. Pack the picnic.
3. Finish packing the car.
4. Leave!

Mini goals:
- £22.82/30 June rounding down pot.
- £2,806.97/£5,000 2018 debt repayment goal.
- I have deleted the extension shortfall from here for now as I have had to finally - sob - rob this pot to make the budgets balance after adding too much to it at the beginning of the month. I will reassess and update at the beginning of July.

Suffolk_lass

Sea_Shell wrote: »

What you could try....if you're not doing it already, is trying to cut down ever so slightly on all the consumables you use as a family. Even if it's just by 10% or so.

I'm thinking, toothpaste, shower gel, shampoo, washing powder, fabric conditioner etc etc. Even try one less sheet of loo paper each time!!!

If, like me, you use these products on auto-pilot most of the time....it is possible to squeeze out a little less, for no noticeable difference, but you have to concentrate!!!!!

10% less used, means they all last 10% longer, and so you'll save 10% on the spend!!!

Worth giving it a go, if you haven't already. "Every little helps" to coin a phrase.

If you wanted to try this, some of the tips over on the old-style board may help - examples are:

• pressing your loo-roll (I know these pop up here regularly ) a bit flatter so that it does not rotate so easily on the holder and suggest a sheet-count
  
• a pea-sized portion of toothpaste
  
• use half the laundry detergent recommended - it makes little discernible difference, unless it is a heavy wash

I also use white vinegar and bicarb for cleaning, and biological washing powder to clean my oven. And old damp newspapers for the glass in my wood-burner

armchairexpert

TOPM, just quickly, I make my living as a copywriter and content marketer. I'm relatively niche, which allows me to charge more, but I think my hourly rate comes out better than yours, and I'm certainly not baking and cleaning for clients!

I don't know what your website plan is and how it compares to that, but if you're at all interested in exploring this kind of writing I'm very happy to chat via email - it's a potential option for something you could do instead of your mysterious client facing job, while you build the other stream. When I started out it seemed to me that it was all low paid content mills, but there's some really good money out there in this field. I know multiple people who earn (in dollars) six figures.

Forgive me if this is teaching you to suck eggs, I don't know what kind of writing background you come from and you may already know all there is to know, but just a thought.

Treadingonplaymobil

Week 72: Day 1

And the countdown to the end of the month continues! The bank account is painfully low, there is no money for anything, and we are on the final limp of the last week of the month. I'm pleased that DH gets paid so late this month (not until this Thursday) as we can't be tempted to spend it before it's needed for next month's pots.

armchairexpert I have considered copywriting, but at this stage it would be another thing that I don't really really want to be doing to try to tide me over until I get to what I do want to be doing. But I am intrigued - what is a standard rate for copywriting these days? I do do a little bit for one company (bog standard non-technical retail website content) every now and again, and have been too scared to put my rates up for years in case they ditch me. It's a good idea to have in the background, and I definitely won't discount it, thank you.

Those of you sharing old-style tips, I'm pleased to report that we already do most of them - I am a total scrooge with all of those household items that get used up! If only I could apply the same logic elsewhere . The one good thing about the extension is that we will finally get our roof insulated - there is literally nothing up there, so we are trying to heat the entire world when we turn the heating on. Luckily our house is tiny and a terrace so we've been able to get away with it, but I think it will make a difference to our bills when it's done. Because that will totally offset the extension cost, right? :rotfl:

Speaking of the extension, we had another late night last night going through the latest set of plans and paperwork to make sure we have absolutely everything accurate before we apply for planning permission. It is not beyond the realms of possibility we could be applying within a fortnight! We should get a price estimate (done by an online quantity surveying service) done this week or by the early part of next week, which I am simultaneously dreading and really looking forward to, as it will really give us an indication of the funds we need to raise and whether our attempts to keep the build to a vaguely sensible budget have been remotely successful. Obviously the online estimate won't take account of the wildly expensive tiles, kitchen etc I have my heart set on, but at least it will give us a realistic starting point with mid-range everything.

Although I spent a fortune on nice picnic food on the weekend, I'm pleased to report that actually we had tons left, so were able to squeeze lunch yesterday out of it too, and there's still plenty of fruit and ham etc left in the fridge. So although it was terrible, at least it wasn't just one meal's worth. I have £38 left in the food kitty to get us through until the end of the month now, so I need to be super careful with what I buy when I go food shopping today! We still have some bits and bobs in the cupboards and freezer, so I think we can make it without too much drama.

My smaller business continues to benefit from the tiny tiny amount of extra time I have been giving it (literally only minutes more each week) and made me another £10 over the weekend in sales. It's tiddly amounts, but it does give me reassurance that it can grow again and help take some of the slack once I eventually reduce the client facing work.

Sorry, a bit of an all-over-the-place update this morning, just the things that are chugging their way through my mind this morning! Hope everyone has a lovely lovely Monday.

To do today
1. Tidy the house up - lots of bits and bobs dumped on various horizontal surfaces when we arrived home last night.
2. Menu plan.
3. Food shopping.
4. Pack orders for smaller business.
5. Check which cake tin sizes I have - for my sister's wedding cake. I think I have all the ones I need.
6. Make flapjacks for school snacks.

Mini goals:
- £23.68/30 June rounding down pot.
- £2,837/£5,000 2018 debt repayment goal.
- I have deleted the extension shortfall from here for now as I have had to finally - sob - rob this pot to make the budgets balance after adding too much to it at the beginning of the month. I will reassess and update at the beginning of July.

armchairexpert

There isn't a standard rate, really - it's absolutely all over the place! Over here, though, a mid-tier writer would be charging $80-100 an hour. I aim for $100/hr in billable time, with a goal that about 70% of my time is billable. The exchange rate is about 1:2, but I don't know the UK market well enough to know if that means a £50 hourly rate is realistic. I write for more technical companies, though: I suspect retail is cheaper. And there are definitely lots of low paying clients out there!

It also depends very much on the type of project: how much research you need to do, whether you need to do an interview/get expert quotes, all of that affects how long it takes. So I quote per project, but with one eye on my effective hourly. I'll PM you with some examples if you like.

Treadingonplaymobil

Week 72: Day 2

Still counting down until month's end... Seems like one thing after another after another this week. I daren't even consider my bank balance beyond the fact that I am not overdrawn. I'm going to take stock on 1st July and move on from there.

I am, amazingly, actually ahead of my list for work this week, which is rather nice. Takes the pressure off a bit and allows me a bit of time for some more creative stuff.

I've spent some time this morning working out my effective hourly rate for the various bits of work I do. I'm trying to work out how to shift my income from the work I don't want to be doing, to work I do want to be doing, without losing any income meanwhile. It's not easy, but I think it might be doable over the next two years.

Working out my hourly rate and generally being very conscious of how I spend my time has been a really interesting exercise since starting the life coaching - although I'm very 'busy' I definitely have some major inefficiencies which can be improved. One of them, sadly, is the amount of time I spend on this diary. Keeping a diary has been, and continues to be, absolutely paramount to my DF journey - I am sure that if I stopped it would take me about 9.7 seconds to start spending again - but I do need to ensure I'm not using up both my time and my writing enthusiasm here at the expense of earning money from it elsewhere. With that in mind, I'm trying to cut down by one or two the number of times I post on here each week. I'm going to experiment with a slight change to my lists too, giving them more of a weekly focus of bigger tasks rather than the minutiae of my day, now I'm firmly in the habit of using my bullet journal.

One thing I'm going to add though, is a monthly update of all our savings pots, because I think it will give me a little more accountability. I'll start this on 1st July, and then from August onwards I'll also be able to update whether they have gone up or down, and why.

Not sure where this is going to go over the coming weeks, just trying to make sure that my day is spent as usefully as possible while I have the time to be able to do that (ie. while I have minimal clients over the summer) so when things get busier in the autumn life doesn't totally get away from me again.

To do this week
1. Order supplies needed for my sister's wedding cake.
2. Get one full month ahead on contract work.
3. Declutter and tidy utility room.
4. Practise batch of macarons.
5. Plan out something I want to make for DC1.
6. Investigate our internet speed/usage with a view to changing to a more useful deal at some stage.

Mini goals:
- £24.57/30 June rounding down pot.
- £2,837/£5,000 2018 debt repayment goal.
- I have deleted the extension shortfall from here for now as I have had to finally - sob - rob this pot to make the budgets balance after adding too much to it at the beginning of the month. I will reassess and update at the beginning of July.

PositiveBalance

*Eyes well up*

But what will I read at ludicrous times in the morning?!

System

Same here , I always read with my cuppa in the morning .

Kitten868

Hello!

Thank you for being so honest. It's lovely to read a diary where you're real: £20 a month on stickers and you're feeling guilty about cancelling!

Just wanted to say that for someone so ethically minded you get your utilities from Sainsbury's?! I use tonik and they're 100% From renewable sources... well the electric is. I've just moved to them and they're cheaper! I've even got a referral code for you to get a £20 voucher if you like but that's by the by. Have a look and see if you like them. Certainly makes me feel better about using it.

Keep going!

Treadingonplaymobil

Week 72: Day 3

Don't worry, I'm here this morning!

For me it's going to be about fractionally reducing the time I spend on here without losing the benefits - I know that this diary is such a key part of stopping the overspending. The debt repayment is almost a side effect, as we've always made the card payments - it's tackling that constant need to spend that has made the difference, as it's meant the card payments can go towards actually reducing the balance rather than just slowing its rise.

Not that the need to spend has gone, of course . But it is at least slightly more under control. Honestly I've been like a kid at Christmas this week, with new parcels arriving each day with clothes for me, clothes for the DC, supplies for my sister's wedding cake (only I could get excited about the arrival of cake boards!) and a stock up of birthday gifts for kids parties. I hate to admit it, with my eco leanings, but that buzz of shiny new stuff that really still gets me and I do find I miss it when I'm not shopping.

Kitten868 I know, it's ridiculous with the stickers. But honestly, they love them! Their last one came yesterday and they were so excited. They have been warned that's the last one and I know they'll be fine about it, but I wish I could afford to keep doing it, it brings them such joy.

And yes on the utilities - I think we'll move again soon - it's on the (never ending) list. We went with Sainsburys because they had an amazing cashback or nectar points deal when we were last changing, and we couldn't resist, but I'd like to leave at some point and go for a supplier with more of a focus on green energy.

Well, we got our online quantity surveying estimate through for our extension yesterday. Yowch. It included absolutely everything - low level demolition that we can do ourselves (removing tiles, patio etc), a hugely expensive new front door, and all the decorating at the end, so I know we can knock £10k off it straight away, but it's still at the highest end of what I'd hoped, and doesn't include RSJs, as we haven't had a structural engineers calculation done yet to establish how big our RSJs need to be. Obviously I have no idea if it's likely to be similar to actual build quotes we get, but it's the best information we've got to go on right now, so we're working with it. There are parts of the project that don't have to be done at the same time as other parts (the front and the back of the house can be divided into two projects, with the back forming probably 75% of the work), so we may get a builder to break it down into part a and part b and do the front later, as we could live with it as it is for another year, and it isn't structural work (moving internal non load bearing walls and replacing a 1970s bathroom). Mainly what this estimate has provided us is an enormous incentive to crack on and earn some more money, as the better position we can be in by Christmas in terms of debt paid/money saved, the more easily everything will flow from that point. I think we'll also try to start around April time rather than February, as every couple of months will mean more time to save and pay off debt.

Seeing those huge numbers has made it all feel very real, and the fact is that even with our preparedness to get into more debt, we're looking at a build cost at the limits of our current borrowing ability in terms of loans and CCs, so we need to improve our financial situation rapidly.

I can see DH's pay as a pending transaction in our account and the overtime he's done this month hasn't been included this month, so I'm glad I wasn't relying on it for July. I'm trying not to think about it so it can just be split between extension and debt overpayment. I will remind him to chase to ensure it will be paid next month though!

DH has also drafted an ebay listing for the bike trailer, so I'll get that listing live tomorrow to finish in 10 days time - I've always found Sunday evenings to be a good eBay finish time. I think I might ebay one of the DCs too - it'll save money and space! :rotfl:

Ooh, MSE thing for me this month - I have propagated new succulents from the leaves of existing ones! I am inordinately proud of myself. I used this tutorial and about half of mine have grown little shoots and roots! I am terribly proud of myself and keep checking my 'babies' too see whether their roots have grown any more. DH looks pained when I rush through to show him another teeny weeny root. I'd like a few more house plants, so I'm hoping I can arrange a swap or two with a couple of friends and get some cuttings of their plants rather than buying any.

I have no clients in the diary at all at the moment - usual for me over the summer, as previously discussed - and it'a really focusing my mind on earning through other means. Using it to get ahead with my contract work is the first step for this week, as that will free up some time to focus on my own website, then from tomorrow and into next week I can really focus on my smaller business and my website. I'm certainly motivated to work hard now, after seeing that price estimate! _pale_ :rotfl:

To do this week
1. Order supplies needed for my sister's wedding cake. Partly done.
2. Get one full month ahead on contract work. Have prepared about three week's worth, need to finalist today.
3. Declutter and tidy utility room.
4. Practise batch of macarons.
5. Plan out something I want to make for DC1.
6. Investigate our internet speed/usage with a view to changing to a more useful deal at some stage.

Mini goals:
- £24.57/30 June rounding down pot.
- £2,837/£5,000 2018 debt repayment goal.
- I have deleted the extension shortfall from here for now as I have had to finally - sob - rob this pot to make the budgets balance after adding too much to it at the beginning of the month. I will reassess and update at the beginning of July.