Adventure wanted, but first we must rid ourselves of debt

charlies_tribe

Good to see you back posting, I'm sure you'll have the debt gone in no time.
Glad you're all OK.
Hope the house move goes smoothly. 

jwil

Nice to hear from you again.  Congrats on the house move!

AdventureWanted

Hi all,
So far the snow we were expecting hasn't materialised. The DC are rather disappointed, but it may still arrive later today or tomorrow.  

I've been busy reading diaries today to try and get my money saving mojo back. I think as we have less money at the moment to pay off the debt that it feels like we're going nowhere.  Going to try and concentrate on the things I can do to help - they won't help loads, but as they say every little helps!  Making more effort with the food shop to keep within budget and ideally below budget.  Fuel we are saving money on, although DH has taken my car to work today and most probably will for the next few days if the weather ends up bad (mines 4wd, his RWD). Put fuel in last week and have no where to go, so hopefully won't have to fill my car up again this month. DH filled up yesterday and I'm hoping it may last the month. If it does we'll have £30 to send to either the Cc or EF.

So, this morning I've managed to do a prolific study for £1.40.  Hopefully a few more might become available over the next week. Balance is at £5.40 at the moment (excluding today's study). Tried to do a Swagbucks survey, but after 5 mins got rejected!

Have listed 4 items so far on eBay. @Jwil I honestly don't know how you get so much listed! It's taken forever and I'm only at 4 items photographed and listed! Got another 12 things to go 🤦🏻‍♀️.  Have a feeling I may be pricing too high, but will have to wait and see. I've gone with what I'd pay, but not sure others would agree, especially when you add postage on. 

Hopefully will post a few more things today or at least photograph all the things. This will depend on DC4, as I have a very clingy baby today (teething 🙁). Tomorrow is the final day of my £1 listing offer, so really need to get it done. 

Hope you're all having a good weekend. Does anyone have snow ❄️?

AdventureWanted

kindofagilr said:

Subscribed
I'm sure you are going to continue to ace it, I think a lot of people's will have gone up a bit cos of Covid xx

Thanks for subscribing. Nice to have people along for the journey 😊.

jwil

I think it's practice, I've been doing it so long I've got it down to a tee.  It helps if it's a lot of similar items though as you can have a standard listing and just change the title, photos and anything in the description.

Well done on the listings though, it all helps!  I usually start at the price I want for something and then gradually reduce it if it doesn't sell.  I always relist once at full price though, sometimes things seem to go on the second time.

AdventureWanted

Thanks for the tips Jwil. Most of the items are maternity clothes, so could use roughly the same description. Hadn't thought about doing that, but will save quite a lot of time. 

This morning I've checked the bank balances and updated ynab. DH has transferred £30 to our joint account, so I've paid that off the CCs.  

Yesterday I managed to list 8 items on eBay. Got quite a few more to go, so will try and get them prepped today and list them tonight.  Today is last day for cheap fees, so might get lots of posts ready and then when it's the next cheaper weekend I'll post them. Saying that, I should have a look at how much fees are usually - I think 10%? Most of the items won't sell for much so might be best just to list them? Looking forward to getting rid of the maternity clothes. Need DH to get all of DC1s clothes down from the loft. That will be a huge challenge to get rid of, as it's all his clothes from newborn to 10! 😱.  Definitely not having more DC, so need to part with them.  Gave DC4s newborn and 0-3m clothes to our local baby bank. Felt really good to give them to people who needed them. Apparently demand for the baby bank has increased loads over the last year and they are really short of things 😢.  Also have sold the newborn cloth nappies to a friend, but she won't be paying/collecting until after lockdown has ended. 

AdventureWanted

2 more items listed on eBay (10 active now 😁) and 2 more prolific surveys completed. Prolific balance currently at £6.88 and the 2 surveys completed come to £1.53.  

It's been ages since I've regularly completed the prolific surveys. Do you still cash out using circle for free at £20 or is it just PayPal now?

abba1772

AdventureWanted said:

2 more items listed on eBay (10 active now 😁) and 2 more prolific surveys completed. Prolific balance currently at £6.88 and the 2 surveys completed come to £1.53.  

It's been ages since I've regularly completed the prolific surveys. Do you still cash out using circle for free at £20 or is it just PayPal now?

They stopped using circle a while a ago, I cash out via PayPal xx

jwil

Yes, it's just paypal and you can cash out at £5

Well done on all the sales

AdventureWanted

Thanks Abba and Jwil. That's good to know that it's £5 you need to get to.  My prolific account is now at £8.95.  Might wait until it's at £10 to cash out, although it's taking a while to get there! There was a good survey on the other day for £7.50, but you had to use a computer and my laptop is having issues connecting to the internet at the moment 😩.  Keep trying to think of things I could do to try and get more money, but other than carry on with prolific and eBaying/gumtree things my mind is blank!

Today I've paid £10 to the debt. Always have that dilemma about whether to reduce the debt or try and get the EF higher, but think I will try and reduce debt slightly quicker (maybe 1/3 extra to EF, 2/3s to debt).  Depending on when our house exchanges I may have some more money to put towards either the debt or EF this month.  I imagine we'll complete in March, so won't have the new higher payments until then - I'm budgeting for the new amounts and will put any leftovers to the debt/EF.  We've just had to apply for a new mortgage, as our offer is about to end. The plus point is that the mortgage rates have gone down since we originally applied, so the total monthly mortgage amount will be about £50 less 😁.  The mortgage term has increased compared to our current mortgage, which is disappointing but we're hoping to overpay once the debt is gone to bring it down. At present the mortgage should be gone in 14 years when DH is 55, so will be a post debt goal to try and achieve!

Yesterday was a rather trying day! I seemed to be shouty mummy a lot, which is not great.  Think the DC are getting fed up being at home and just want to play Minecraft rather than do the small amounts of work I want them to do. Think the fact my house looked like a bomb site also made things worse for me! Pre covid I didn't quite realise how much I needed things to be organised and in my control.   In other news my dad has had his letter through saying he can have the vaccine very soon 😁 (he's in the vulnerable group), so I'm really pleased about that.