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

Treadingonplaymobil

Week 17: Day 3

Morning! I'm getting back into my early to bed, early to rise routine after too many late nights over half term. Yawn.

Looks like the balance transfer has cleared into the barclaycard, but can't log in to the MBNA card on my phone to check whether it's disappeared from there - there should only be a few hundred left on that card once it's gone through. I want to update my repayment snowball calculator!!

Going to be a busy evening today - we have changed the older two's swimming lessons to a Tuesday (from a Friday afternoon) as of this week because it was such a pain to finish the week and then go back out for swimming, but it means DS1 has swimming then Cubs with less than an hour in between, so he needs to eat dinner on the hoof, and the others do too as they are with me for the drop off etc. DH made pasty filling yesterday, so I just need to construct pasties today.

Have finally lost a little bit of weight - about 3.5lb in total - so am fitting in more of my clothes, which gives me so many more clothing options and reduces my shopaholic tendencies a bit.

to do today:
1. NSD.
2. Bake bread
3. Clear that remaining half basket of ironing
4. Tidy and declutter the dining room (one room a day again!).
5. Bake flapjacks.
6. Move monthly savings (for Christmas, birthdays, car servicing etc) across into savings account so I'm not tempted to spend them.
7. Make pasties to eat on the way back from swimming.
8. Make 3x packed dinner, with a piece of fruit and a bottle of water.
9. Change DS2's school trousers for the next size up (saved from when DS1 grew out of them).
10. Knit a little more of the socks for my mum's birthday present - cheapest present ever, as they are using up loads of leftover scraps of yarn. They look bonkers, but my mum is v frugal and will appreciate the sentiment!

to do this week:
1. finish painting the pickets for the front fence. Not sure this will happen this week - it's forecast to rain pretty much solidly till the weekend!
2. plan June's working time (still haven't 'gone back' to work thanks to half term). Done!
3. roughly plan out summer working time (i.e. where I can squeeze in the odd hour while the DC are on holiday)
4. apply for new 0% balance transfer card. Done, accepted, waiting for balances to clear so I can redo the stoozing calculator.
5. research utilities providers - I suspect we can move again and save a little bit. Done. No real saving, but have avoided a price rise.

Cherryfudge

I think our love of storage jars is risking taking over your thread TOPM!

Well done for getting the new 0% card. And the weight loss!

I like Georgiana's idea about a luxury foods budget...

Just wanted to say, someone mentioned using dry weight of pasta as a way of controlling portions - the recommended weight per portion is 75g, :shocked: which is much less than you'd think. Took me a while to get used to it but I always weigh now.

JWPopps

armchairexpert wrote: »

That's inspired! But doesn't it mean you use up an awful lot of shelf room if one bag of pasta gets spread over, say 4 jars? I want to try this but I'm scared of the space requirement!

It does, to be honest, but I made a decision to get rid of a bank of cupboards and put shelves there instead - I like to be able to see what I have. Having said that, I don't imagine putting jars in a cupboard would be much different!

Lucylocks

Hi - I'm a newbie here and can very much relate to your diary as you've quite a few things in common with me (huge debts for one thing!)

Two things that I've done or in process of doing;

PPI reclaim - may be worth a look particularly if you've been self employed for a while or have long standing cards/loans. I've just had a positive result with an ancient top shop card from 1998 which will take a chunk off my current debt.

With regards extension plans, if your house is similar to neighbouring properties you can view previous applications through your local authority planning portal. Will give you an idea of what's achievable without calling in experts with the associated fees. We've recently done a major extension which is where much of my current debt comes from. It's fair to say that we totally under estimated, the build costs were fine but the interior finishing, boiler, kitchen, electrics etc have set us back serious amounts. If we were to do it again I'd want to know we had ample contingency as it was massively stressful

Treadingonplaymobil

Well, this weekly budgeting thing is a revelation. Normally at this point in the month I'd be thinking "it's fine, we've still got £60 in the entertainment kitty, loads of money' and happily spending it. Instead I'm thinking 'HOLY COW, we've spent well over our week's kitty already, now we only have £22 a week for the remaining 3 weeks of the month.' (Lots of transactions from the weekend before my genius idea to change it to weekly kitties). It's really putting into stark relief how overspending at the beginning of the month on the entertainment kitty (and the food budget, same thing applying here) is leading to overall massive overspends, as it's just not possible to spend absolutely nothing once that initial £125 or so is gone.

Slightly alarmed at the amount of debt repayment we'll need to make this month - the balance transfer went through just after the statement for the card the balance is coming from, and just before the statement for the card the balance has gone to, so we're essentially paying for it twice this month. The MBNA payment is £141.82, the barclaycard statement is £329.55, so a total of 141.82 so a total of around £472, when normally our total payment for both would be around £250! Not entirely sure where that money's going to come from, but the barclaycard payment isn't due until after DH gets paid again, so we can try to wiggle some budgets round a bit.

Survived taking the DC swimming and then to cubs all in one day for the first time, made nice potato, cheese and leek pasties to eat in the car, which worked well, will be repeating that trick.

to do today:
1. NSD. not quite done, had to go out for bread as I forgot about the loaf I was baking and burnt it! Also had to buy a bottle of water at the pool as I forgot to take any. Annoying.
2. Bake bread. See above :mad:
3. Clear that remaining half basket of ironing. Did it, but then added more. Story of my life.
4. Tidy and declutter the dining room (one room a day again!). Done! Really pleased to see it looking empty and clear again. It does cheer me up to have a tidy house.
5. Bake flapjacks. Done.
6. Move monthly savings (for Christmas, birthdays, car servicing etc) across into savings account so I'm not tempted to spend them. Done.
7. Make pasties to eat on the way back from swimming. Done!
8. Make 3x packed dinner, with a piece of fruit and a bottle of water. Done, apart from forgetting the water.
9. Change DS2's school trousers for the next size up (saved from when DS1 grew out of them). Not done, must add this to tomorrow's list.
10. Knit a little more of the socks for my mum's birthday present - cheapest present ever, as they are using up loads of leftover scraps of yarn. They look bonkers, but my mum is v frugal and will appreciate the sentiment! Not done, no spare time.

to do this week:
1. finish painting the pickets for the front fence. Not sure this will happen this week - it's forecast to rain pretty much solidly till the weekend!
2. plan June's working time (still haven't 'gone back' to work thanks to half term). Done!
3. roughly plan out summer working time (i.e. where I can squeeze in the odd hour while the DC are on holiday)
4. apply for new 0% balance transfer card. Done, accepted, waiting for balances to clear so I can redo the stoozing calculator.
5. research utilities providers - I suspect we can move again and save a little bit. Done. No real saving, but have avoided a price rise.

armchairexpert

Someone over on another diary (how's that for specifics?) said that she budgets absolutely everything weekly. As in, she gets every single expense from quarterly to monthly to annual bills and works out the weekly rate. This kind of blows my mind but it might work for you?

Treadingonplaymobil

Week 17: Day 4

I am not enjoying coming down to a living room full of airers and dehumidifier this week - looks like less rain today, so hopefully I can get some laundry on the line. I resent the electricity the dehumidifier uses when it's summertime - I don't mind it in winter.

Not going to be a NSD today as have to pay for DS2's swimming lessons with school.

Oh, you would all have been very proud of me yesterday. We want a washing up bowl (the glamour), and so I went off to browse my usual haunts - nice scandi websites, John Lewis etc - and found various options around the £25 mark, felt very pleased with myself for not contemplating the designer £48 washing up bowl, sent a few links to DH. Then had a reality check and remembered I can pick one up in Wilkos or similar for about £3 next time I'm passing, and closed all the pretty websites. Honestly, it pained me not to buy a pretty washing up bowl, but it can be a reward one day in the future for saving money - seeing my boring plain ugly £3 washing up bowl every single day will be a good reminder that I need to cut my cloth appropriately and I can buy designer washing up bowls when I have the money for it . Try not to all laugh at my little victory, it's baby steps over here!

to do today:
1. Bake bread, more successfully than yesterday.
2. Make extra flapjacks while the oven is on.
3. laundry out on the line.
4. Tidy and declutter the kitchen (one room a day again!).
5. Change DS2's school trousers for the next size up (saved from when DS1 grew out of them).
6. Knit a little more of the socks for my mum's birthday present - cheapest present ever, as they are using up loads of leftover scraps of yarn. They look bonkers, but my mum is v frugal and will appreciate the sentiment!
7. Ugh, just remembered I need to pay for DS1's football club too. Mind you, I'm happy he's sticking with it after forking out for kit (he's not sporty).
8. Plan budget Father's Day gift/activity.
9. Check the washing instructions on a silk shirt j ruined to see if it was my failing or the washing label's. Fingers crossed it was the label and I can return.
10. Do a couple of hours work this evening.

to do this week:
1. finish painting the pickets for the front fence. Not sure this will happen this week - it's forecast to rain pretty much solidly till the weekend!
2. plan June's working time (still haven't 'gone back' to work thanks to half term). Done!
3. roughly plan out summer working time (i.e. where I can squeeze in the odd hour while the DC are on holiday)
4. apply for new 0% balance transfer card. Done, accepted, waiting for balances to clear so I can redo the stoozing calculator.
5. research utilities providers - I suspect we can move again and save a little bit. Done. No real saving, but have avoided a price rise.

Treadingonplaymobil

Ooh and and and... I listed that chair on eBay! It only started last night and has precisely zero bids and zero watchers, but hopefully it will get a tenner and, crucially, leave my house!

Treadingonplaymobil

Ooh, more exciting news. I've just redone our Stoozing snowball calculator based on our new balances and 0% deals. Our minimum repayment has gone up by £40, which we're going to try to keep up even when it reduces (DH recently had an annual % pay rise which gives us about £25 a month more, so we'll just pretend the pay rise never happened, and we're still waiting to hear about his hopefully bigger pay rise), and the 0% deal obviously means more repayment is going on the balance rather than interest, so the calculator has knocked a whopping SEVENTEEN MONTHS off our DFD, bringing it forward to March 2025. Will update signature shortly to reflect that.

ada-or-ardor

Bloody amazing!!!!!

And well done on that chair too!!