Tales from the Avenue

Bobarella

That is great news about the payment coming your way!

TalesfromtheAvenue

Thanks Bob, it will definitely all help boost the pots a little.

Much shuffling of monies has gone on this morning. I've transferred the extra £20.40 I received in my wages into the emergency fund, as well as the child tax credit payment of £60.96 which appeared in the account this morning, that now stands at £312.39 so is an improvement on the £75 balance of last week. First aim is to get it up to £1K, then I can start working on building it a little more slowly alongside the holiday pot and the overpayments.
I've also been able to transfer £50.80 into my ISA via a standing order to slowly boost up my long term savings. There is currently over £2K in there, but this will be used up when paying for some essential work on the house that has been planned for a while now so I need to get that built up as soon as I can.

I had some really bad news last night, my darling Dad had a stroke yesterday. He is only in his 60s and in quite good health so it was a real shock. He is also carer for my Mum who has numerous serious health problems. I've been really upset all night. Life really does seem to be cruel to the nicest people.

Pink_Giraffe

So sorry to hear about your dad, I hope you are doing ok

Bobarella

Oh my goodness, I'm so sorry to hear that!

Honeysucklelou2

Sorry to hear about your dad. Are your parents geographically close?

Good news about the Child Tax Credit. Perhaps it will help you with your holiday decision too. Your seed order looked good. The Bright lights chard is a good variety, really colourful stems. Happy gardening:)

TalesfromtheAvenue

Thank you all, it's a worrying time at the moment, I have no idea how things will pan out but time will tell.

It's been a bit of a spendy week, but I'm still keeping track of the budget.

A planned (since February!) day out last week cost around £55, but this was budgeted for and was thoroughly worth it.

We've had a nice long weekend, generally not doing much or going far from home, but just enjoying.
I picked up a few more garden bits in wilko's over the weekend, as well as some groceries in Asda and some amazing YS bargains in an out of town Co-op on Sunday! I'll be going back next week to see if there are any more similar bargains to be had, although methinks it was because of the bank holiday.

I was also, very kindly, gifted lots of tomato plants by OH's Dad, so hopefully I will have a sea of tomatoes come summer time. OH also gave me some of his strawberry plants and I bought a woodland 'wild' strawberry plant in Morrisons for £1 (more because I loved finding them wild as a child rather than expecting lots of fruit from them), so I need to plant those tonight.

Most of my household bills and the mortgage have come out of the bank account today, so that's all been updated in YNAB. A couple of bills were slightly more than expected, but a couple, like the TV licence which has now reverted to £12ish a month instead of £29ish, were less than expected so it's all pretty much balanced out.

My assessed water charge letter came last week as they can't put a meter in. I was expecting it to be a lot lower then they have said, they only knocked £4 off a month from the rates, so it's around £31 a month. :mad: I phoned them up as I know we're not high users of water as my metered bill in the last house was rarely more than £18 - £19 a month, but they won't budge. Oh well, you win some you lose some.

I'd also like to get an inventory of my freezer done tonight. I inherited the huge american fridge freezer from the previous house owners. Can't say I'm a fan of it, but I can't afford to replace it so it's staying!
However, although the freezer looks big, it's a nightmare to try and stack things in it and once a few things are in there it's like an icy game of jenga trying to get stuff out. I have no idea what's in there presently, so need to sort it out and make some meal plans of it.

Oh, and an extra £14.76 from a little sale has been swept to the emergency fund which now stands at £356.95. I'm going to try and get it up to £500, then concentrate on the holiday savings until July.

Think that's all on the moneysaving front for now...

hugglemonster

Sending you all the very best wishes for your Dad

H x

TalesfromtheAvenue

Thank you HM xx

TalesfromtheAvenue

A £50 deposit refund from our recent short break has been returned to the bank account today, so that's been swept over to the car & house pot which now stands at £412.67.
I think I'll start working on the holiday pot now as I'm starting to worry about finding the money in time to pay the balance off in July. I need to find/make £323 in two months... :eek: Think I'll be ebaying this weekend.

TalesfromtheAvenue

Money worries are really getting me down today so sorry about the pity party post ahead...

It's only 10 days since payday and, as usual, I'm facing the prospect of a very skint month ahead. There's enough money to pay all of the bills (only 2 left to pay now) and there is money put aside in YNAB for a tank of petrol. Other than that, there is only £25 left in the groceries budget and £44 left in the 'everything else' budget.

Whilst we have plenty in the cupboards and freezer to last us for a while, I just don't know what I'm doing wrong. I don't feel like I've been splurging. I don't buy a lot of processed food or junk, I'm shopping around and in Aldi's or looking out for reduced items when I can and yet I always seem to run out of money early on in the month. I set aside £175 a month for the grocery budget for DS & I, that should really be doable, surely? Admittedly, that covers everything such as toilet roll, soap powder etc, but I don't buy this regularly anyway.

The same goes with the 'everything else' budget. I don't think I buy us anything frivolous. This month I have bought some seeds and compost to gorw our own veg, had lunch out and went to a play place with DS which came to £15, spent a little on a birthday present for a friend and one for my Dad and yet still, there's only £44 left in there for 'fun' for the rest of the month.

I'm so fed up with struggling all the time and worrying about how to pay for things; how on earth to put money towards savings and how to build an emergency pot up. If something went wrong in the house now I would have to resort to debt to pay for it. I almost resorted to applying for a credit card today, 'just in case' but know it would only end up with me in debt I couldn't afford to repay so stopped halfway through.
My OH was nagging me about restarting my company pension recently as I had to stop paying into it a couple of years ago when I bought the ex out of the house. As I told him, I can't afford it. I really can't afford to lose any more money out of my salary.

I work as many hours as I can fit in and I try my best at running my (somewhat failing, lately ) own business from home too to make things better for us, and still things are so tight. I know I'm lucky that I have a roof over my head and all, please don't think I'm being ungrateful, but life is so hard when you're single and paying all the bills whilst juggling childcare too.

I'm so tired of it all.

Sorry, rant over.