My 5 year plan

supersaver1000

Woah, that is cheap for discs and brake pads - I'm sure mine were about £200 fitted for one set. Great that you can do the work yourself too. Saves a lot of the cost.

I keep putting PPI claiming off - like you I don't think we had it on loans or credit cards, but DH keeps on about getting a company to do it for us. I did apply to the bank about our PPI but they said we didn't qualify, but since then there have been some new rulings and we've had a letter through from the bank to ask us to reapply. I think that might be a sure thing so I really don't want to give a cut to one of the claims companies (as they take about 40%), but do want to get it right and give us the best chance.. There's a whole section about it on MSE so that will be my bank holiday Monday job if its still raining.

fatrab

I think with a PPI claims company you have to be in the mindset that 65% of something is better than 100% of nothing, if you genuinely don't have time or are pretty sure you didn't ever have it then I suppose it wouldn't hurt to let them have a go. But you'd be gutted if you found out there was £1000's and you'd lost 35% for the sake of filling out a few forms.


Yeah it does save a few quid being handy with a bag of spanners, and can get decent discount on parts with plenty of pals in the trade. It's also worth watching places like ECP as occasionally their discounts outweigh the inflated prices. My son is an HGV mechanic now, but he's been working on cars with me since he was 12 so he's pretty handy to have around too lol.

fatrab

March's stats:

Fuel 32%
Shopping £27%
Clothes 16%
Eating Out 11%
Car Repairs 7%
Car Tax 4%
Rock Salt 2%
Travel 1%

This morning's weigh in - 15st 13lbs.

There is a lot of room for improvement in April. I know I've done well so far but I can do better.

Have a great weekend

Paspatur

Hi Rab
On PPI, I wrote a letter for a friend and he received over £750 PPI
I started wondering if I ever had any and I was 99% convinced I had never accepted it
Wrote a letter to my bank requesting details of all past loans and whether they had PPI
Turns out I had it once only but it was on the biggest loan
2 weeks later I received over £6,000
It really is worth the few hours admin
If you don't ask you don't get!!!

Kitten868

Martin Lewis has a sister site called resolver. I really love it. It builds templates for complaint writing and sends them to the right department for you. I've done this for my mum's PPI (nothing but still super quick) and complaints to other companies where I was getting nowhere with customer service. It's brilliant. It even tells you when you can escalate a complaint to the CEO and FOS. Hope this helps as it does make it easy enough to just send off all your PPI in minutes xxx

fatrab

March's Goal totals - 18/18 NSD - 16/16 Lunches - 26/28 AFD - 27/27 TAFD

April's Goals - 21 NSD - 20 Lunches - 28 AFD - 30 TAFD (take away free days) - look into PPI - lose 6+lbs

LegBeforeWicket

fatrab wrote: »

Jeez, where is the year disappearing to? First quarter gone already!!!

Over the past 13 weeks I have lost 24 pounds (in weight lol), paid an additional £4148 to my debts and now have a safety fund. I've sold an expensive-to-run car and bought a more cost effective one, set plans in place to save myself hundreds of pounds over the coming months, achieved challenges that I never thought I would and I've even inspired others with their plans which is way above and beyond anything I ever thought would come out of my journey.

Here's hoping the next 3 months are as productive as the first 3 have been!

Just catching up on your recent posts and this one really stood out for me.

What a fabulous summary of achievement over what is in fact a short space of time. Fabulous work, Rab! Here's to the next three months of success (and beyond) :T

fatrab

April, did not get off to a great start. It was a planned day out with the lads on Sunday but I definitely drank and spent a lot more than I'd budgeted for, and after yesterday's hangover from hell I think it's safe to say I won't be doing it again for a while. So I've set myself a little challenge....

90 days alcohol free.

Starting from yesterday, which takes me up to my birthday week in July, I am off the booze. And no takeaways either. Depending on the weather this week I may re-join the gym. If the weather improves I'm just going to walk/run along the beach every night after work and do some light fitness at home, push ups and sit ups mostly. If not, there's a gym near my accommodation £20/month with unlimited access to all sports centres in the Highlands. I should've started training again last month but I took my eye off the prize a little in March.

I received an email this morning from my home insurer, apparently they had a "technical problem" and charged me too much interest so I'm being refunded £10.54. I have mixed feelings about this. Woop-de-doo, I'm getting a refund but I should never have been paying interest on it in the first place. I'm really beating myself up about this because I should know better than to pay monthly. I made some absolute schoolboy errors last year.

This is going to be a very cheap week, I have everything I need food-wise to last me until Friday when I head back home, only had to buy milk, bread and cheese. Unless I join the gym my next spend day will be Saturday. The little car is averaging 70mpg and won't need any more fuel this week.

I've gave myself a much needed kick up the backside yesterday, so this month I am going to refocus and get everything outside of moneysaving back on track.

So - April, lets see what you've got in store.....

fatrab

As much as I love my big car, the time has come to be sensible. I don't need a £22k car with £510/year road tax or 30mpg. I bet some of you could already see that, I just needed to realise it for myself.

I've always been of the opinion that life is too short to drive boring cars. So I've always had something sporty or a bit different. But my priorities have changed. I've got a wee baby, I don't want to be working away from home much longer and I want to be debt free. I need to be debt free (excl. mortgage) to be able to afford to take a job at home and live within my means.

I'm on good terms with my local main dealer for the car. Mine is very low mileage, it's 3½ yrs old and it's only done 12,000 miles, full service history and it's immaculate. I'm hoping he'll retail it for me. I've bought 6 cars from them and sold 3 cars through them in the past.

I only bought the car in October, but this was a few months before my light bulb moment. It only had 3000 miles on it then and had been absolutely cherished by it's previous owner. So it wasn't necessarily a "bad" purchase. But looking at what else is on the market today, at half the price, I could still be driving something relatively nice and just as capable. And a hell of a lot cheaper to run.

2017, it would appear, was a year of far more bad decisions than I gave myself credit for.

I've emailed the dealership. We'll see what happens next in the fatrab saga.....

Working_Mum

I totally understand your perspective fatrab. I read the book by Thomas Stanley The Millionaire Next Door around the time I came out of a brutal divorce which had decimated my finances - it resonated with me and helped me get my financial plan in place based on being debt free, mortgage free and ex-Husband free!!
Your diary is a great testament to you and your strength of character and is inspiring others along the way!