Prosperous soul in the making

savingholmes

DH and I so wanted to eat out tonight, and yesterday and the day before... but we resisted. Both feeling down currently. DD is under the weather yet again. Really hoping she goes into school and does a full day - she is already making noises about only going in for 2 of her 3 lessons tomorrow. She is due an inset day Friday. I accept she isn't at full health but it is still frustrating. I am hoping to work from home tomorrow and was looking forward to relative peace for most of the day which I won't otherwise get... Work is really busy so I need some quiet focused time to get stuff done...

By Friday, I also need to decide who my car insurance provider will be and pay it. I have some quotes but haven't finished it off as I wanted to keep the money in my account as long as possible. I have a CC due out for around £174 going out in the next few days, as well as my utilities. If my insurance is £250 or less - I will be at around -£50 by pay day - if its more it will be worse - still have hope it might reduce...

MovingForwards

Sorry to hear DD isn't feeling to good, I hope she gets sorted out soon.

With your insurance you could consider putting it on the CC, but earmark a good chunk of the repayment from this wage then the remainder the next time. I know it isn't ideal, but it's something to consider?

savingholmes

Hi MF - we have access to £250 free overdraft facility so we don't need to put it on a CC. It's just I'm trying to stay out of OD so am disappointed when we keep falling back into it. However, in the past we had an overdraft of £3.4K so in comparison its nothing LOL.

DH is seeing his pension adviser today to see if he can move his pension to a better fund at a lower annual charge rate. Will see what he comes back with later. I've given him the essential points to ask. I wonder whether he would be better coming out of his pension for a month - transferring the balance out and then restarting. It's performance has been that bad! They match 6.5% though so don't want to lose out on that.

DD is off school today and she has given me her sore throat...

hugglemonster

Great progress with everything, credit files are annoying mine said it had been updated in teh last 7 days but hasn't in fact updated since August.

Hope you all feel better soon, I can sympathise about the sore throat!

H x

savingholmes

Hi Hugglemonster - love your name

Yes mine 'updates' mid month but in practice doesn't seem to. Some good news today - my payslip is up so definitely getting £50 in expenses. Just haggled with car insurer - renewal quote originally was £295 - getting pretty much the same cover - slightly less miles - for £260 so a saving of £35. Did get comparison quotes Av*** was slightly better initially but the cover didn't fully match so went with DL but used Av as a bargaining point. The best bit is although the renewal goes live on the 12/10 - they won't take the £ until 1910 so I am not going to be in overdraft. I am celebrating the double win with a £14 Chinese for me and DD as both feeling off-colour.

Pooch has come into season too - so not getting my normal walk around the block... May take her our really late around our estate as we haven't met other dogs that late recently. Only 1 more day in work before the weekend. Woohoo!

Will look at my spreadsheet after to see what happens to it with the payment going out a different date...

savingholmes

DH's pension adviser showed him that while his return over the last 5 years hadn't been amazing his return over 10 years had so advised him not to switch too far from what he already has. He did accept that there were other things he could have invested in with a higher return. He is going to get a log-in so h can potentially manage his own pension allocation more - and potentially see the adviser again in 4 months. Also I thought he was paying really high fees - but the government has made them cut their fees and the cost is now around 0.5% so better in some ways than we thought.

I want to see my pension adviser when they are next in too - even though mine is defined benefit - to understand what my options are. I still need to chase up my old pension from another company - as the pension statement never arrived.

My CC payment hasn't gone out - must be due Monday. This is the one I was trying to set up online access to the other day. Will try and sort it out tomorrow along with taking our signed N bank paper in to N. I also need to sort out my log in access to my other CC too. It's not been important really as its not my priority for repayment yet and I am part of the MSE credit club so that would alert me to any fraudulent spending. DH's CC s next. It has around £4531 to pay - hoping to pay it £631.71 next week just for those of you who like neat numbers. Hoping to repay in full by the end of January.

Planning to put £1K back into our emergency fund as soon as I get paid on Tuesday so our CC payments still stretching for the month at around £968 total. However - because I have prepaid DS's accommodation - I'm not due to send him any £, so that is a £400/£415 improvement on normal. I cancelled the £15 discretionary payment too... I am also hoping to top up our other savings again in the run up to Christmas. If OH's overtime does get paid this month - may be able to pay off more.

I really should be at work by now - so best get going LOL. I enjoy work - but find it so hard to get up and out in the morning....

StripeyTightsSpottySocks

Hope you and DD are feeling better with your sore throats savings, there seems to be a bit of it going round.

Some great figures in there and - Wow! you will have the debt paid off in no time :T

Is £1000 in emergency savings a DR step? I keep wondering what i should aim for which i would class as emergency and not mortgage like i do now...

Hope work is good

savingholmes

Hi Stripey

DR Step 0 is repay any overdraft facility. Step 1 as save £1000 emergency fund. He used to tell everyone to throw all their money at their debt but in practice that meant they often fell at the first hurdle when Murphy came to call and resorted to borrowing again. By having a £1K buffer - most normal emergencies could be dealt with - improving the likelihood that people would ditch debt for good. We used up our EF and savings to buy a car, tax and insure it as DD's health has worsened this year and now she is at sixth form further away from home was needing help with transport more frequently than we anticipated. I was also worried about DH on a motorbike - particularly over winter.

We earlier in the year used a previous EF to fund £1K+ that DS needed to borrow at short notice as part of his Oz study abroad year and following an injury that prevented him earning money. He has yet to repay - but the good news is that we managed to avoid further borrowing since about Christmas of last year. We are planning to dock with DS's knowledge the £400 we would have paid towards uni costs at Christmas as the first instalment of his debt repayment. We expect the remaining £600 to be repaid by June 2020 - even if we 'dock' it from what we would otherwise have given him. We gave him those terms upfront when we made the loan - that if he didn't repay it voluntarily we would take it out of his 3rd year uni money so he needs to get a job.

Step 2 - is clear all CC debts and loans excluding mortgage and student loans (which are step 4).

Step 3 is to build a 3-6 months emergency fund. This is minimal expenses - not necessarily the same as desired over-payments etc.

Steps 4, 5 and 6 are done all at once - repay house and student loans, save for kids college and up pension investments to 15% of income.

Hope that helps. Work was okay but I am so glad I'm home. Came home early-ish today - but its flexi so all balances out. The good news is that my new boots came and both pairs fit so will spray with waterproofer and keep both.

girlatplay

Great news on the boots

savingholmes

My child benefit has come in for Monday - which was a week earlier than I expected so good news. Because we had a hiccup in September wasn't truly sure when it would come.

Last night I spent a couple of hours looking through Deb*****'s website but realised I was looking at bargains rather than what I truly wanted. So I went via a cashback website to a catalogue site and I've spent some of my 'payday' personal spends early and ordered myself a couple of Joe B dresses. I went up a size. Really hope they fit. It gave me £15 off so was pleased with that and I saved on the £3.99 delivery fee by using click and collect.

It underlined though that I need to lose weight, which would then boost my self-esteem and health and hopefully lift my overall mood. Our whole family is overweight - and worse DH is diabetic. So for the coming month - I am going to commit to a healthy eating plan. I've arranged for a food delivery tomorrow so I can batch cook again - which helps with healthy eating and money saving as it is harder to justify eating out when we have a home cooked meal ready to be reheated. I also tend to find that if I eat better the rest of the family follows.

DH hadn't spent his clothing allowance (quarterly pot) so he bought a couple of t-shirts he wanted yesterday. Thinking of taking him to Primarni as I bought him a £10 shirt a few weeks ago from there that he now loves and has had so many compliments on. He's currently out on his motorbike riding with a mate. Meanwhile I slept in and then had the joys of packing the dishwasher and trying to make our house look a little more respectable. I need to make plans to start 'living' again. Need to work out what that looks like for this month and plan some nice things in.