Adventure wanted, but first we must rid ourselves of debt

AdventureWanted

Thanks Jwil. DD is much better today .

DH has been paid, so we've transferred £99 to CC2. Balance is now a very round £700.

Off to my mums shortly and she'll be looking after the kids for a couple of hours so I can have my eyelashes done. I know this is pretty extravagant, but last month I decided to actually spend my pocket money on myself rather than just buying bits for the kids. It is a luxury having eyelash extensions, but it does make me feel better about myself, so in that respect is worth it! Luckily it is all budgeted for and makes me spend less on toys/tat for the DC so is all good.

Storm89

Enjoy your pamper AW .

AdventureWanted

Gosh it's been a while since I've updated my diary. Not much has been happening money wise. Today is the first day I've made a pad since the 12th. It felt pretty good to be able to pay £204 to CC2 and 21p to debt savings. I've now paid over £8k off debt so far this year, which I find pretty mind boggling. It's such a huge amount of money. Just goes to show how much spare income we should have in the future. Balance of CC2 is now under £500. I'll be paying £325 off on pay day and Should be able to pay the remaining balance prior to the end of the month.

In other news I've been utterly useless and forgot to cancel my amazon subscribe and save order, so I annoyingly have some tassimo lattes arriving imminently which I really didn't want to pay for. Just had to rejig my budget on ynab to pay the £40 (what a ridiculous amount for coffees - this is partly why we never used to have any money!!). I know it's not a huge sum, but all my money had been accounted for so I'm kicking myself for being disorganised and not dealing with emails immediately. I am pretty terrible at forgetting to do things, (usually replying to text messages), so you would think I'd of realised it would happen! Anyway, it's done now, but I won't be making this mistake again.

jwil

That's a massive amount paid off, well done :T

AdventureWanted

Thanks Jwil

I've had a really busy few days gardening. Our front garden is definitely more presentable now. Still have some more to do, but might leave that for a couple of days. Gardening is really exhausting!!

Yesterday I paid £6 to CC2 and £1.06 to debt savings. Today I've paid £6 to CC2 and 64p to debt savings.

Can't believe it's almost the end of June. This month has flown by. It's my dad's birthday soon, so I need to buy birthday cards in the next couple of days. Going to have a look at the card factory online to see if it's easier to get them online than visiting the shop in the nearest city. Will depend on whether they charge for postage. It's my birthday at the end of the month, so DH wants ideas for presents. I'm really rubbish at coming up with ideas. I don't often buy bits for myself so it's so alien to have to think of things I might want.

AdventureWanted

Today's pads
£14 to CC2
61p to debt savings.

Have had a productive day today. Managed to do a decent amount of accounts work and move some furniture from our house to the summer house where it should be. Possibly wasn't the best day to be moving heavy furniture, as it's been so humid all day, but I'm sure it was good for my skin!! Need to spend the next week sorting through the outgrown kids clothes and work out what we want to keep. It's so hard when you don't know if you'll have any more children. If I knew definitely that we were done I could sell it all, but as we're undecided it all gets shoved in the loft!

AdventureWanted

DC3 slept through last night so today I feel like a new woman!! Got a fairly hectic day today which will involve a reasonable amount of travelling, so need to crack on soon and get everything ready.

The dd for CC3 has come out today (£120) and I've paid £20 off CC2. The balances are coming down nicely and I'm looking forward to payday when CC2 should get paid off and then I can make a start on CC3 next month.

I'm finding the budgets really tight at the moment, which is mainly down to trying to pay off as much as possible to CC2. Need to sit down and review the budget going forward and decide on the payment plan for the CCs. I want the CCs gone as soon as possible, but want to be able to build up more of an EF. I think I'm going to have to split any additional work that DH completes between the tax bill, EF & Cc payments, rather than using the majority for Cc payments. This month I've slipped into the habit of taking additional money from the business to balance the budget, which whilst ok to do, is really not helping stick to a budget. DH is working away for a few days so I'm going to try and spend a few hours each night doing the budget and business accounts. Need to look into setting new goals not just for debt repayment, but also for an EF and business buffer.

jwil

A good night's sleep makes all the difference doesn't it!

Good luck with the new budgets.

AdventureWanted

Gosh I've been really bad at updating this diary recently.
Since I last updated I managed to pay £115 off CC2 on 22nd June. Money has been really tight this month. Still trying to sort out my budget going forward. Luckily my next 0% cc ends in Dec 2019, so I've got a little bit of breathing space. Might try and increase the EF and reduce the level of debt repayments slightly for the time being.

Had a lovely day out with friends yesterday, although it ended up being slightly more expensive than I had planned. The friend we met just spends money left right and centre. They are obviously ALOT better off than us, but it's hard when their kids are being bought x,y and z and I'm telling my DC they can't have a go on something as I have no cash on me. It's quite awkward at times and although I do love spending time with them, it does make me want to see them less.

Today we've had swimming lessons cancelled, so that's saved us some cash . Weather is glorious again, so hopefully once we've been to our home ed groups we can sit in the garden for a bit.

Today's pads
£10 to CC2
£5 to CC3

CC2's balance is now £325, which will be cleared on payday.

Hope everyone has a great day.

AdventureWanted

Have had a busy day today. Have started bagging up some old maternity clothes ready for storing in the loft (until we make a decision on any further kids). I was just going to put them all in the loft, but think I'm going to have another look through them and only keep the bits that I really like. Same goes for all the clothes the DC outgrow.

Sold an outfit on eBay yesterday for £5, which I'm pretty happy about. Think I'm going to put all items to be put on eBay in a box, then when I have a free moment I can photograph them and then create eBay listings at a separate point. Really need to find the motivation to get decluttering, as I think it will improve my mood no end. I'm getting fed up with the house always being cluttered and not having time to do everything. Think if the house was more minimalistic (obviously not really minimalistic, as think this would be impossible with 3 DC!) then cleaning would be so much easier. Might try and find some good decluttering books to motivate me. I usually read Milly Johnson's 'a spring affair' when I need to get into the decluttering mood, but it didn't seem to work last time. All I felt was frustrated that the character was wealthy enough that they didn't have to eBay things and instead could just charity shop things or shove it in a skip! At this point hiring a skip would be too expensive for us!!

Have been reviewing the budget and credit card projections today. At the moment we pay £180 dd to CC2, £120 dd to CC3, £130 dd to CC4 and an additional £325 to CC2 on payday. CC2 should be paid tomorrow, so the question is do I pay the £180 and £325 off CC3 from July onwards or put it towards the EF. CC3s 0% ends in Dec 2019. As my budgets have been so ridiculously tight the last few months I was going to reduce the amount being paid towards debt by £200. This should stop me dipping into the business account to rebalance the budget, which is an old habit I've restarted doing. On the plus side my savings accounts are still looking good.