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

JoJoC

Wow - £150 for your bag is awesome! Great that you're not having to suffer this month for overspending. Ebay sales is a great way to cover these things so glad you had something of decent value to sell. I've got a lovely guess bag that I bought in Bali (it's genuine, bought out of a department store - not knock off!) but it's always smelled heavily of fish and I hadn't looked into it until now, but it's to do with how they treat the leather with fish oil. If I can get rid of the smell then I'd likely be able to make some decent money on that, but I think if i tried to sell it how it is, i'd just get a complaint and return.

You always set yourself loads to do and you seem to achieve loads in a day - I wish I had more time at home to do stuff but I fear even if I did, i'd end up just procrastinating... good for you for having the motivation!

armchairexpert

Treadingonplaymobil wrote: »

DH gets paid in the third week of the month, so I have a separate 'envelope' called 'money for next month' which that pay gets assigned to until the 1st of the next month, when I move it out of that envelope and make it available to budget with - it stops me inadvertently thinking I have it available to spend, as the 'available to budget' number stays at zero. I also do this with any ebay/cashback money that comes in that I want to put by until the following month, but don't want to move into an off budget account.

TOPM! I was going to say why aren't you just assigning that income to the following month so it doesn't show up (e.g., when I get paid in March, I assign it to Income For April), and that way it doesn't show up as money To Be Budgeted in March. But do you know, I can't find that feature in nYNAB. That's disappointing. I think I'll stick to Classic.

Personally, I do budget my money as soon as it comes in. Between DH and I we have income 5 times a month, and I quite like spreading bits of money around that often. I can see the other way working well once you've built up quite a surplus, though, otherwise you'd end up budgeting out your mortgage payment until 2034.

Treadingonplaymobil

armchairexpert wrote: »

TOPM! I was going to say why aren't you just assigning that income to the following month so it doesn't show up (e.g., when I get paid in March, I assign it to Income For April), and that way it doesn't show up as money To Be Budgeted in March. But do you know, I can't find that feature in nYNAB. That's disappointing. I think I'll stick to Classic.

Personally, I do budget my money as soon as it comes in. Between DH and I we have income 5 times a month, and I quite like spreading bits of money around that often. I can see the other way working well once you've built up quite a surplus, though, otherwise you'd end up budgeting out your mortgage payment until 2034.

I have a feeling there is a way of doing it with the new YNAB, but I haven't bothered to find it yet! The idea of surplus budget to last until 2034 is fairly appealing.

angelpye

I have the new YNAB and I budget money into following months due to how my income comes in. I did March and half of April in february...you just click to the month ahead and do as normal.

Treadingonplaymobil

Budgets done for April. I'm pleased to say we can meet my bare bones budget thanks to the bag eb@ying and the extra 'salary' I was able to give to myself for April, and that's without including the child benefit, which will come in next week and can be divided up between various pots according to my usual system.

I've got a few plans to up the debt payment level to get into the £64k bracket - I'll need to create an extra £171.53 somehow:
1. 20% of the child benefit will go straight to debt payment when it comes in, according to our usual divisions.
2. I'm hoping to shave something from the food budget. I have £340 budgeted, but I only have four weekly shops to manage, plus a top up or two, so that should be fairly manageable.
3. I'm going to eb@y that chair that keeps taunting me from the To Do list, but to be honest I have no idea whether it's going to make a five or £50 (I suspect closer to a fiver).
4. Other genius money saving/making ideas, TBC. :rotfl:

Verbatim

Treadingonplaymobil wrote: »

Actually, Cumbria Lass has just made me think about my aims for April.

Objective 1 (very easy): get to 2% paid off. This will happen through minimum payments anyway.

Objective 2 (trickier): get the debt into the £65k bracket rather than £66k bracket. This is going to mean finding/making an extra couple of hundred quid on top of minimum repayments. I'm determined to do it, somehow!

QUOTE]
Aren't you already in the £65s ToPM? Judging from your signature.

Treadingonplaymobil

Doh! 64 rather than 65, I mean.

Treadingonplaymobil

Ooh, have just remembered that MIL owes me £40 for DC3's birthday present, and the school PTA owes me £37 for buying supplies for the school disco last week. That will help with the overpayments too.

I am mainly posting this so I remember myself!

dktreesea

Hi TOPM,
That's great news about your health scare. Yaay for breastfeeding. Good protection for the future.


Each time you pay £1,000 off your debts, that's £1,000 for the banks and £200 quid a year....every year.... forever... for you. I know some cards are on 0% and hopefully you'll be able to roll that over somewhere else but 20% per annum interest isn't so uncommon for credit cards these days.


I know this is counter intuitive, and snowballing wouldn't agree with me, but don't forget to include your Mum and Dad in the repayments, even if it's only £100 every couple of months. Trust me when I say they will appreciate that more than you can imagine.

Treadingonplaymobil

I am on tenterhooks waiting to see if a client who has promised to pay for a booking tonight actually pays - if she does than I will very nearly be straight back up to two months expenses and salary covered, and that's before I get paid for March's invoices next week, which should very nearly take me up to 3 months in the bank. This will be such a milestone, and once I'm there I can start to divide money a bit more between various pots (future business expenses and debt overpayment, mainly).

I can't believe that in less than two months we've gone from total hand to mouth to having a full month's budget in our personal account at the start of the month, a couple of hundred quid in savings towards things like Christmas and birthdays and £850 in my business account. It has been a particularly good start to the year, work-wise, but even so it shows how mindlessly we were spending before.

I REALLY want to make some progress on that horrible number in my signature tomorrow. Will be able to make an overpayment, even if all the DDs don't come out until Monday, which will make me happy.

To do today:
1. Finish planning out Easter hols so that we don't have another over-budget month, and I get enough work done. Done! I have managed to fill it with so many play dates, family visits etc that actually I think we'll be fairly frugal, beyond the odd coffee and a cake at a cafe and perhaps one Big Day Out (zoo or similar) when we visit friends in the middle of the hols. Also one weekend hosting a set of parents, which will have a food budget impact.
3. Post eBay sale. Not done, but it's all packed and ready to go tomorrow.
4. NSD. Not done - had to get frozen peas for dinner, and then emergency soup for clients tomorrow, as the soup I made was monumentally boring - fine for us for next week but not for serving to clients.
5. Feed sourdough. Done!
6. Set up April's budget in YNAB. Done!
7. Freeze leftovers in fridge. Done!
8. Make houmous from the chickpeas I cooked yesterday. Done! And remaining chickpeas frozen - I find freezing chickeas much better than freezing humous, which never seems to fully recover.
9. Make soup for clients tomorrow. Done, unsuccessfully.
10. Bake biscuits for clients tomorrow. Done! More successful than soup.

To do this week:
1. List old nursing chair on eb@y too, unless my mum wants it back (we 'borrowed' it 9 years ago, she had said before we can sell it when we no longer need it, but I will double check).
2. Make candles. Annoyed that this keeps falling off my priority list - I need my essential oil hit!
3. Finish my socks and knit my dad's birthday socks - again, I really really need to do this. My dad is visiting over his birthday weekend so I need to have them ready to give.
4. Plan April's budget in YNAB. Done!
5. On 1st April do all the money transferring from business account and into savings, setting up our accounts for the month.