Prosperous soul in the making

savingholmes

Fed up today. Regrade didn't get approved. I can appeal though so will try that. If that doesn't work or maybe anyway, will ask boss to give me some training that would at least give me some career progression. The course is roughly equal to the payrise I was hoping for. If I was to leave then in future - the course could help me earn over double what I do now if I am prepared to go contracting. It also increases the incentive to get out of debt and build up a 3-6 month emergency fund as i would then have a lot more choices.

My HL account is a nightmare. Managed to get them to give me my account number over the phone as I have my pin but still can't withdraw. They will post a letter out to me to validate my request to nominate an account to withdraw money!!! Seriously unimpressed. The people who answer the call are professional and you get through quickly but there are so many hoops to jump through.

savingholmes

doingitanyway wrote: »

You are doing great. Another DR fan here. He is a bot off-centre but he talks a lot of sense on many things. I really need to start building my emergency fund again...

Thanks for the encouragement. I don't agree with him about stopping paying pension but the rest makes a lot of sense. I love the debt free screams and am watching other you tubes from DR fans to to see what they did. I want to boost my income but not sure how really.

I have written a book - I need to get some cover art done - and then I want to self publish potentially. I have written 12,000 words of book 2 but have been stuck for a while. I reckon there are other things I could write to make money but am unsure where to start. I am someone who needs to keep busy

The food plan is going really well this week - OH cooked spag bol for me and DD which was tasty. There's enough left for another day.

savingholmes

I had an NSD yesterday (don't count DD or existing payments). Rare for me - this was despite walking with DD and the dog to the shop so she could buy something. i've offered DD £2 today to finish doing my washing and she agreed. I have a cleaner and she is coming today so hopefully I should come home to a clean and tidy house and the washing done. We got a cleaner years ago when we realised we ate out a lot and part of the reason was our house was such a mess.

I read a little on close captioning online yesterday. I am also exploring other ways of making money from writing. I have even declared it as a possibility on my Code of Conduct at work. Longer term I also want to make money from speaking and running workshops, group coaching and maybe even retreats. I have some qualifications and experience in all of these...I just need to take the leap.

Off to my day job now and trying to be grateful for a good boss, a good team and good pay.... While it would be tempting to leave to get a better paid job, DD has health issues currently so want to stay close to home.

savingholmes

Today I was tempted to buy lunch even though I had taken lunch with me - so in the spirit of the other diaries I have been reading I over payed a CC with £5 instead. I have paid DD £2 to do 3 loads of washing. Result! I also gave her some money to buy her tea as I'd missed her food for today off the shopping list when I went. Feel in the zone money-wise currently and don't want to rock it. I have a small eating out / fun budget pot of £50-100.

OH has had a £36 bill for his website for the next 3 years. Potentially paying that out of the miscellaneous pot - which means we only have about £30 in that pot to last the rest of the month... Best be good then. He has said if he has to he will use his 'pocket £'. I'd rather use the misc budget if poss though as he wants to save up to ride Route 66 with a friend in a 3-4 years time or perhaps for a better guitar. I've suggested he costs both projects out and we see whether it is feasible in future.

I quite like what some people here call a Tilly Tidy payment. My mortgage was updated today with the payments I had made this week - and was showing as £145,445.95 - so just made an overpayment of £5.95 to round that down to £145,440. I can see how people find this addictive lol.. The way my online app works though - I have daily interest - so the lowest figure tends to be mid month when my payment goes in. The extra will need to come out of misc or fun budget though... so better not get to carried away lol.

savingholmes

I have to say the c£70-80 meal plan I did for this week was great.
* We had roast beef (£9.65ish) on Sunday and again tonight (3 each time) and there is enough left for another 2-3 meals. It's working out about £1 a portion of beef.
* I also made chicken on Sunday and even after using that for 2 work meals too - I have one portion left. That was also Monday's tea.
* OH made spag bol yesterday - I have 2-3 portions left even after using one at lunch.
* I bought frozen chicken thighs - cooked tonight, deboned and skinned and put in the fridge £2 - really good value - although I don't like deboning stuff so not sure if would get it again. Plan to have that with salad and jacket spud - or as part of a crustless pizza at some point (ie put on casserole lid - and add other toppings and mozzarella). May have that tomorrow. Could throw a bit of gammon in there to spice it up a bit.
* Friday is due to be bacon, hash browns, beans, eggs etc
* Saturday & Sunday one meal is due to be omelette eg cheese, gammon, onion, frozen mushroom, frozen mixed peppers
* Saturday night is due to be chilli - but don't have enough mince beef left - so will just use up the gammon. Pre-cooked it on Sunday - OH has had 2-3 slices. So almost the whole thing left. May even end up freezing some if I get worried it could go off.

OH is doing a weird sachet diet for one of his meals a day and he has been on plan this week which has helped a lot. However, he may want to order the next lot just before I get paid so I need to keep an eye on that.

I think the only thing I under-ordered was probably potatoes and would have liked more cajun spice. I think the next time I might get a smaller gammon joint as this was a bit big while DS away and OH has been much better with portion control than normal. We are both trying to diet.

Lunches for me are jacket spud and something. Breakfast is porridge. DD is just using up stuff from the freezer.

savingholmes

I'm not a morning person - have been up half an hour already! Got an early meeting. So tempted to go out at lunch - but will try and force myself to take sunday's leftover chicken and potato dish, perhaps with a little bit of gammon and some salad. I've run out of potatoes - after OH made gorgeous roasties yesterday. I may be able to get them 'free' as I think I have enough on my c00p card. OH gets paid tomorrow. Can't wait - as it is then I can make serious in-roads into our CCs.

CC6 due to be paid off in full this month and then planning to cancel it to avoid future temptation. DR claims that you spend an extra 18% if you use a CC - I think when it came to our holiday - in our case it was more like double:eek:I did at least limit it to something I could pay off within a month with a bit of scrimping. And I did know I was due back pay.

On Saturday we are due to get the remaining £250 for the motorbike - which I am really looking forward to. Then I can make two over-payments. So should see a dramatic difference by Monday. Next challenge is to sell other stuff - I've still not listed anything. I have suggested to DD that she lowers her prices - d/k if she did though.

I will need to nip out for pet food later. We have a 1 year old puppy/dog and 1 rescue cat who is about 5. The cat likes to bring us gifts so trying to feed him a bit more so he desists.

savingholmes

The HL account has finally allowed me to request a withdrawal. Hopefully it should get to my bank tomorrow when OH gets paid. I left them with £1.01 LOL. OH is getting £132.11 more than I put in the budget. He got a payrise a few months ago but stopped doing on-call so it has taken a while to understand his base pay. Great news for overpaying. Goes off to tinker with spreadsheet :whistle:

savingholmes

So I have tinkered with my spreadsheet - and if I can find another £153 from somewhere over the next 18 months, I can bring our DFD forward a month. Exciting. Could also shave months off our MFD. Can't make payments until tomorrow at the earliest though.

savingholmes

So paid another £164 off CC5.

CC6 is due tomorrow - so think in practice DD for the full amount won't go out until Monday. The £125 security deposit has been refunded - but its too close to the DD date now to mess with without ending up paying twice. I'm going to leave the £125 alone for now and make sure we get to the end of the month (14/8) without going overdrawn. If we do, I want to pay it off CC5.

I tried to pay off the table but it is in OH's name - so they said he would have to ring. I had thought it was in mine.

Other financial things to do:
1) Sort out child benefit for child based on sixth form
2) Get me and OH to claim tax back from a packaged bank account payout 18 months ago.

savingholmes

Had a good week overall money wise. Have gone over a little on grocery spends - mainly due to DD fussiness over food. I topped up a bit at H&B last night and at C00p today. Ended up buying pet food ( some pet toys) using the misc pot - spent nearly £30 but will last dog months and cat about a month.

However had some good news on the table debt - it was £10 less then I thought it was which pretty much cancels out the food overspend. So that's now paid off £190.80. Paying off the table frees up £9.54 a month. It was interest free over 4 years - and was due to be my longest debt :rotfl:Sorted now. :T

Tomorrow at 8 am - we should get rid of the motorbike and get paid another £250 which is what has funded the CC and table overpayment today. I keep playing with my spreadsheet working out what would happen if I shaved off a little more money.

I have an emergency fund in place - a regular saver at 5% or 3% AER interest - and also use that bank for my sinking fund. Normally I put money in there (when I'm being good) to cover holidays, car, gifts etc. I borrowed from it earlier this week but last night I put the money back. In future months will potentially have quite a lot of money in there. I want to see how well I stick to the budget and then see if I should use some of this to regularly over pay CC or perhaps review in December and give myself a boost by significantly overpaying ready for year end.

I want to get to £27,700 or under by Jan pay period (mid month). Last December I was at £42,488 - so we only paid off £3,648 between then and the July pay period. This means we need to pay off another £11,125 from this year's income.

We decided with some of the extra £ we have this month to buy our annual family music subscription. I had dropped it to monthly for a couple of months cos I couldn't afford £149 in one hit - but this month I am going back to annual which gives us 2 free months per year - saving me £30.