Third-Life Crisis

Goingroundincircles

Just dropping in with a quick April round up. I will update the debt totals tomorrow as some payments were only made today and aren't yet showing.

Have made it to the end of the month without touching the emergency/maternity fund again :T so it now stands at £600. There is also £25 in the car maintenance pot which I put in at the start of the month.

No credit cards have been used for the entire month :T

And most exciting of all, OH has earnt an extra £950 this month for me to play with :j I'm sure not everyone will agree with how I'm planning to allocate it for the month but I feel it's what works best for our current situation:

Emergency/Maternity/Paternity pot: £300 (so £600 in total in May)
FIL debt: £100
Spending: £200
OH Birthday: £250
Debt overpayment: £100

I'm guessing these two will be the topic of conversation. The £250 for husbands 30th birthday will include 5 days at MIL's lodge by the coast, a day in London, dinner out and a couple of small presents. My 30th was before I came back on here as things had gone wildly off track and we stayed in Paris for a night and went to the Moulin Rouge, so it would feel a little unfair saying OH could only have a few pounds spent on him. And at least this is planned and budgeted for rather than stuck on a credit card.
The spending may seem high too but it includes anything we need such as clothing/haircuts and is almost a contingency pot too, for little expenses that come up. I could allocate it all to debt repayments, but know from past experience that being too restrictive leads to massive credit card spending. So I am happy with my decision. At this point my focus is still on not increasing the debt and learning to stick to the budget.

Treadingonplaymobil

Great news on saving the maternity money again, it will make so much difference when you need it and you will be so pleased you went through this pain to get it put by!

Oh, and I think £250, while a lot, isn't completely insane, but what you are intending to do with it does seems a lot - are you sure you can manage five days away (I appreciate accommodation is free, but will you have the odd cafe trip or drink in a pub or sandwich out and about?) plus a meal out plus a day out plus presents for only £250? I'm 90% sure I couldn't. And remember that while you had a fantastic night away for your birthday, you are essentially talking about a week's worth of activities there. And I promise not to mention it again, because I know the pain of having to continually defend decisions you have made and are happy with.

Goingroundincircles

So glad you asked this as it made me check the train prices and restaurant menu and add it all up again. And actually, it needs another £50!! I'm planning on:
£55 small presents
£10 card and cake
£80 dinner out
£50 spending money for 5 days away (will use food shopping budget to do an Aldi shop and will make most meals at the lodge)
£60 train to London
£45 spending money for London (inc lunch)

There seems to be a mysterious £95 unaccounted for in our budget. If this is the case, and not a baby brain moment, I will use £50 of that. If not I will use £50 of my spending money. Oh and actually there's £30 in the birthday/christmas pot but I'd really like to leave that there if possible as it's already not enough for all the July/Aug birthdays coming up.

Goingroundincircles

Debt totals Feb 18 - Apr 18:

Lloyds - £2880 - £2258
Halifax - £2374 - £2326
Barclaycard 1 - £6194 - £6018
Barclaycard 2 - £9192- £9126
MBNA 1 - £6158 - £6035
MBNA 2 - £3340 - £3261
MBNA 3 - £3932 - £4494 (this one fluctuates as it now OHs materials card and it depends whether he has received payment from the client - I may need to rethink how I show it)
MBNA 4 - £2115 - £2820 (balance transfer to Lloyds)
MBNA 5 - £3746 - £3574
Mum - £1695 - £1495
Tesco Loan - £9300 - £8500
Sainsburys Loan - £8398 - £7754
FIL - £0 - £2000
TOTAL - £59,324 - £59,661

Difficult to see progress as we ended up adding the £2000 from FIL in March. Bit disappointing after a month of not using the credit cards. Maybe I need to track it differently.

Goingroundincircles

I've also realised I round everything up/down, both in our budget and debt spreadsheet. At some point this week I will re-do the figures with exact figures. I can then start a rounding down pot for the budget - stolen from TOPM

Treadingonplaymobil

Goingroundincircles wrote: »

Debt totals Feb 18 - Apr 18:

Lloyds - £2880 - £2258
Halifax - £2374 - £2326
Barclaycard 1 - £6194 - £6018
Barclaycard 2 - £9192- £9126
MBNA 1 - £6158 - £6035
MBNA 2 - £3340 - £3261
MBNA 3 - £3932 - £4494 (this one fluctuates as it now OHs materials card and it depends whether he has received payment from the client - I may need to rethink how I show it)
MBNA 4 - £2115 - £2820 (balance transfer to Lloyds)
MBNA 5 - £3746 - £3574
Mum - £1695 - £1495
Tesco Loan - £9300 - £8500
Sainsburys Loan - £8398 - £7754
FIL - £0 - £2000
TOTAL - £59,324 - £59,661

Difficult to see progress as we ended up adding the £2000 from FIL in March. Bit disappointing after a month of not using the credit cards. Maybe I need to track it differently.

Annoying re having to use that card for OH's materials. Can you show the basic debt balance as one line in your budget, then the 'variable' amount in a separate line? It would help you see (a) the balance reducing and (b) if the materials cost is gradually inching up over time due to any accounting errors or extra spending.

I think tracking it as you are (showing the £2k increase offsetting the payments) is, sadly the best thing you can do, as it keeps the reality of the situation front and centre. Otherwise it would be easy to think 'yay, £2k off' when the reality is that it isn't.

Magpie100

Hey Goinground...how are things? It's been a while since you posted. Hope all is well. M100

Goingroundincircles

I'm still here!

Where has May gone?? :eek:

OH and I had a wonderful break at the beginning of the month. We're now getting on better than ever and it reminded me that even with the saving/debt repaying we still need to make time, and put money aside, for spending quality time together. It's meant we've barely thought (argued) about the debt situation this month - BUT STILL HAVEN'T TOUCHED THE CREDIT CARDS! :j

This time next year we will have finished paying off both the loans and my mum, freeing up over £800 a month. This it my little light at the end of the tunnel. We can then tackle the credit card debt much quicker.

We have overspent this month but luckily we've also made extra cash from selling things so we'll break even. It's mostly my overspending. The food budget isn't big enough to cover my current pregnancy wants such as expensive squash and cereal. Aldi versions just don't cut it at the moment and having suffered with sickness the whole way through there are some things I just can't compromise on for my own sanity. I'm basically keeping ribena in business at the moment. I also had to make an emergency trip to Wales as my dad was unwell, so that was an unexpected tank of petrol plus the bridge and various food costs.

It looks as though OH has earnt enough again this month that will mean we will have extra to play with in June. Again we'll split this between spending/saving/debt etc. We have a list of things it would be nice to do before the baby comes such as go to the cinema and have dinner out. So our spending money will cover those things. We also have a list of things we would like to do to the house before baby comes! So we're going to sit down and look at that and work out what we could afford to do if we made some extra cash. We've already managed to buy paint with some of our carboot sale profits. We'd also like to re-do the bathroom, have the carpets professionally cleaned and there's a few bits we need around the house (like cutlery, where does it all go?!). Luckily we'll have no labour costs just the materials. I know some people might think we can't afford any of these things at this moment in time but waiting until we've cleared the debt isn't an option when the amount is so high. At least we are planning and budgeting for the spend. A year ago it would have all gone on a credit card without a second thought.

I hope everyone had a lovely bank holiday weekend. I have today off too, courtesy of the Queen :cool:

enthusiasticsaver

Well done for not touching the credit cards and covering overspends by selling stuff.

Splitting extra income between debt repayment/savings and spending sounds sensible. Glad to hear you seem to be getting on ok with keeping to a tighter budget. Having an extra £800 in your budget next year will be helpful.

I don't think anyone would suggest you don't spend on anything when you are looking at a fairly long period of debt repayment so long as budgeted and planned for.

Goingroundincircles

As if we needed a sign literally from above, we have water from the bathroom coming through the living room ceiling :mad:
So I guess that's the bathroom decision made for us. Husband took off the bath panel and lifted the lino to have a look. Turns out none of it was fitted properly. We're in 4.5 year old shared ownership property so just trying to find out where we stand on the repairs.