early 40s and not fabulous at all

Happierdays

I can relate to the cables thing!
You arrive doing great though!

EssexHebridean

Another one here with cable-itis! better than it was though - we did have a sort out a while back. I'm pretty good generally on manuals for things - usually when we get something new I go through the box for anything obsolete while I put that one in.

I joined the "No buying toiletries until we've used the ones we have" challenge on here when it was very new and did it for ages - although I'm sure we egged each other on to buy, as much as use, stuff! I still remember the rather amazing Tesco John Frieda glitch which got you 3 items for £2 I think it was - I only recently finished the last conditioner from that haul and I know I still have some styling bits! :rotfl:

Tea&Kittens

I should join in on the cables purge, I have a big box of them in the cellar - I don't think I have the equipment some of them powered any more!

Plush

@Essex that sounds like a good glitch!

My cables drawer is still full, perhaps we should set a deadline for all of us

Pay day today, and proud to say I managed NOT to go into overdraft, in fact I had more than £3 left in my Halifax account yesterday. Very tight! Logged to my Barclays today, made some payments straight away, pre-loaded my Oyster card, paid money into the Tax Free Childcare account, set aside money for bills and other regular spends (clubs, upcoming Brownies trip, etc), then transferred the spending money to Halifax.

My budget until next pay day - groceries and all other non-bills spending - is £415. This week's groceries has already left the account so the £415 should be enough. Not much planned for November - no birthdays, only school fireworks night and my cousin's visit to London. My cousin is staying in a hotel though, which means only an afternoon and evening out with her, I should be able to keep it low spend!

Credit card balances are slowly going down, too slow for my liking! Paid about £80 more than the minimum payment. I'm now at £13100 total across Barclaycard 1 and Sainsbury's. Barclaycard 2 has been at £0 for a while and I'd really like to keep it like this.

Weight has been creeping up again. I've been reading a lot lately on this topic and I think I'm eating too much dairy - milk, yogurt, cheese and so on. I will try and cut milk altogether - which means no more free lattes at work, will stick to plain coffee. And reduce cheese - can't really drop this one because I love it. Apart from that, I'm low carbing as much as I can, no bread and pasta, no sugar, and limit rice and potatoes. Can't go into Christmas season with too much extra weight!

Dating-wise I'm not doing absolutely anything, not even chatting to people online anymore - the excitement of OKC didn't last long LOL

That's pretty much all for now, need to update YNAB

ej22

Subscribing
Will read and comment later

EssexHebridean

On the weight thing, have you tried logging your food into an app like My Fitness Pal or the FitBit one if you have one and just cutting down on portions a bit? When I started thinking a bit more about what I was eating the first thing I realised was that my portion sizes had crept up - I started looking into "proper" portion sizes for various things, and sticking a bit more closely to those, and also adding in just generally moving about a bit more. "Eat less - Move More" in fact. I refuse point blank to "diet" as I honestly don;t think they work as they're not sustainable long term. (Like your thing with the cheese - cutting stuff out just makes you crave it more, I think!). Must have been a good plan anyway as I've gone from a large-ish size 16 this time last year to a small size 12 (on the bottom half at least!) now.

Be VERY careful cutting dairy right back unless you have a certain other route to getting your daily amount of calcium as it can really cause problems in later life, too!

Cut yourself some slack with the cards too - they're going in the right direction, ie DOWN!

Tea&Kittens

I'd agree with EH on the food thing. I have an app called "Lose it!" to enter foods etc. It links up with other fitness apps. I've been really rubbish at it lately, but I really notice a difference when I'm in the right headspace for it!
Good luck with it, hope you find something that works for you

117pauline

Hi Plush

How are things?

Just wondering how you are. Hope all is well

Take care
Pauline

Plush

Hi all, I haven't logged in for a while - just too busy! @117pauline, thanks for thinking of me, you're a kind person!

@EssexHebridean and @Tea&Kittens: I don't like the idea of using an app to track quantities and portions and lose weight, that would put too much stress and focus on it. I know what I'm doing wrong... the lattes and the disproportionate amount of cheese means my diet is unbalanced - too much diary and carbs. I don't think the portions are too big either, and I don't snack. Oh, and I probably drink too much/too strong coffee, 2 per day but they're the equivalent of 4 per day as I'm always doing double shots. The other problem is my sluggish thyroid... So anyways I did cut on the lattes and reduced the cheese and the pasta/pizza/bread from last week and it's showing a bit, I lost a bit of weight. My goal is to go back to size 10-12 (from 14) so it's not that bad.

I agree with the moving more part though. I'm running only once a week at the moment, need to up that to 2x week. The free Tae Kwon-Do course I signed up for is interesting but it will end before Christmas. My plan is to go back to yoga straight after that ends.

No other news to report... need to start Christmas shopping as I've been avoiding shops like plague

Barclaycard #2 is stil at £0 and the spending account looks fine for now... although cousin is coming into town soon and that will put a dent into it. I'm liking YNAB much more than the Spending tracker, I even put my mortgage and pension savings into it and I have a good idea of where I am at the moment. I will very likely purchase the license when the free trial runs out.

117pauline

Well done with the debt demolishing since September. If YNAB is what works for you, that's great. The journey to debt free-ness isn't straightforward and we have to find the best things to help us.

Don't let your cousin lead you too far astray

Take care
Pauline