The Edcawber Principle

Goldiegirl

Hi Ed, just been catching up with your news.

You've had lots of food for thought from everyone else, so there's not much I can add, but I thought I would say you are probably way too hard on yourself. You are ahead of the majority of the population, a lot of people would never think about their finances in the way that you do.

We never know what happens behind the public face that people show. For all you know, your friends who appear to spend money like water may have massive credit card balances themselves. They may be high earners, but it doesn't stop them having large debts either. Back in my banking days, we used to see people with £150K to £200K unsecured lending, that they wanted to consolidate on to the mortgage. If we were able to help them, it wasn't unusual for them to come back a few years later with another load of unsecured debt and want to remortgage again to clear it all!

You will find the right balance between living and debt clearance. Anything too draconian tends to be too difficult to keep to, so there may be a bit more spending than you want - but you'll also think of compromises so the living expenses are kept at a level you think of as reasonable.


Hope you are enjoying your afternoon

AlexLK

I second Goldie.

One of the things I really like about MSE is that contributors all provide a different point of view from their own experiences, usually without judgement. I think the relative anonymity of this forum allows a honest conversation to take place and for contributors to benefit from advice not found in the "real world".

Well done re. weight loss, Ed. I've had an OK month food wise but haven't done any other exercise apart from dog walking. Also finding my lunchtime is not consistent with the work I'm doing (should get better when I start to become more independent in my work). Motivation is a little low on the cooking / making lunch for work front so finding I'm not eating particularly healthily at lunchtime. :mad:

edinburgher

Thanks Goldie and Alex - sage advice

Yesterday afternoon very enjoyable, but I need to be better behaved re. not drinking my weight in beer Stayed within my calories (just), but too much booze and ended up getting fish and chips instead of our pre-cooked dinner. It won't go to waste (having it tonight), but I need to be more realistic as regards thinking we'll go round to friends at 3 and actually come home for dinner. That was never going to happen...

A quiet day today, £23.85 paid off a CC (proceeds of an Excel textbook sold on Am@azon and £10 of Mr M's vouchers exchanged for shopping).

Nice roast linner and chilling with the family this evening, we went for a walk around a local park, but rain stopped play to a certain extent.

AlexLK

Sounds like a great weekend.

Karmacat

edinburgher wrote: »

Stayed within my calories (just), but too much booze and ended up getting fish and chips instead of our pre-cooked dinner.

Guess what, booze has calories

But I'm glad it was such a good weekend!

edinburgher

Karmacat wrote: »

Guess what, booze has calories

But I'm glad it was such a good weekend!

Really my dear? Yes, I was aware. What I meant to say was that I'm more concerned about the other deletrious affects of booze than the amount of calories it contains!

Back to work after a generally lovely weekend and spreadsheets have been updated. Thankfully my stupendously generous DB pension valuation has been updated, because everything else (house valuation, investments and cash) has fallen off a cliff :eek: Despite all these, we've seen a healthy uptick for the month to date. My main concern (somewhat expected) is the fact that our savings ratio has basically dropped to next to nothing as we're so focused on debt repayments.

With a grumpy mood and a promise to make up the difference, I have accepted the counsel on here to use the CB to help get things under control. I am noting the date of each payment and have noted the current Unit Cost so that I can make up the shortfall once the CCs are gone. If the value drops over the interim period, I will pay in whatever the missed monthly payments were without 'penalising' the ISA for any lost value.

£424.29 paid off a CC. At this rate, I'd expect us to have another card paid off by early March. From this point, the weekly payment will be allocated to whichever card has the highest balance, as I'm uncomfortable that most of the remainder is due to HB0S group (or whatever they're called nowadays).

On an unrelated moneysaving note, I'm going to use a small amount of our Am@zon voucher stash to buy some cloth handkerchiefs for the family - sick of burning through 2 boxes of tissues each time the family gets a cold. Even with say 3 colds a year, it's at least 8 boxes of disposables :eek:

badmemory

I've never been that convinced by the use of hankies. At least with tissues you can blow & throw.

edinburgher

badmemory wrote: »

I've never been that convinced by the use of hankies. At least with tissues you can blow & throw.

Yes, that's pretty much the reason I don't like them. In a house with a toddler, there's always laundry on and it's pretty easy to stick a bunch of hankies on a hot wash with towels and add something to sterilise them as required. I think that tissues are very easy to identify as a wasteful product caterogy because there are a million and one varieties. Facial tissue, 'mansize' tissues, tissues with balm, antibacterial tissues, tissues with pretty patterns for children. Purchasing something to remove snot from your nose should not be a complex purchasing decision :rotfl:

And don't get me started on 'branded' tissues. Like branded medicine, they're a !!!!!! attempt by advertisers to cash in on the fact that we feel vulnerable when we're ill and that only their magical snot collection product will deliver the level of care that you want, nay deserve!

edinburgher

£28.78 paid of CC after a couple of household purchases were repaid (hankies and letterbox, woo)

Karmacat

Hankies can be cheery things and letterboxes stop the draughts, at least. Hope your evening has been good, Ed.