£50k to zero - made it across the finish line

One-step-at-a-time

It's been quite a productive day so far. I've done another hour or two of decluttering, cleaning and reorganising (with a working 'lunch' *cough* of leftover Christmas toblerone :rotfl: ), got all the current batch of charity shop stuff out of the house, and swept the garden (got finished just before it started drizzling!)

Shopping went a little over plan yesterday as I needed to buy a broom, but still within workable parameters (£1.77 left in the account!) and we have enough food to get us through most of next week. Some good orange sticker finds - half a dozen apples (which will be used to make crumble; I still have 3kg of blackberries in the freezer!) and garlic and cheese stuffed mushrooms, both marked down 80%. Tonight's dinner will be a chorizo, chick pea and potato stew with homemade tortillas (thanks to me unearthing my long-buried tortilla press last night!).

2019's target is to put 12k towards debt; as of today I've paid £893.95/£12000, with another £200 going on Monday, then all of Feb's card payments going out next week, which should take the total nicely over £2k. I'm trying to adopt the same approach as last year and being as frugal as I possibly can over the first few months of the year to try to get ahead. May, June and September are looking to be our heavy months this year with a LOT already in the diary so we will have to stay very focused.

One-step-at-a-time

A nice, almost relaxing day today!

I used the new broom to push leaves around fruitlessly in the wind, as much to get out of the house and move for a while as to do any serious yard work. Not entirely convinced that the new broom won't fall apart after a few uses, but this is what we have nails, screws and duct tape for!

SA tax return is done, and the most depressing part is that I was not due a refund, as the relief I qualified for did not make the difference that I thought it would - I owe HMRC instead of them owing me, but I'm taking comfort in the fact that there is no way in h3ll I will owe anything next year according to my current records! The bill is not a lot of money and I have it covered, though it means less spare to chuck at my February totals. On the plus side, from next month onwards my Netflix sub will be shared with my brother and he's given me his half of the cash for the year upfront, and that covers more than 30% of the tax bill.

I already have next week's breakfasts stored at work and tomorrow's packed lunch made (leftovers), and tomorrow is menu planning and (if we can muster the energy) the big L!dl shop for the month, so we should be well-stocked from tomorrow night. While I don't expect DH to follow suit, I'll be cutting down on meat consumption to drop the food bill a bit further. We just need to make sure we eat before we shop so that we don't go off the rails!

The last thing to report is today's decluttering progress - another bag full of old fiction books for the CS, and more than half of the stack of misc CDROMs for the bin.
I've also taken pictures of a number of t-shirts that I want to pop on FB before they go to fleabay as I have a hunch I will find some takers, but if it turns out that nobody is interested I'll just wait for the next cheap final fees day to list them.

Time to sleep now and be up bright and early in the morning to pay down some debt before work.

One-step-at-a-time

Nearly £700 sent to debts today, £3.85 earned on PA surveys at lunchtime, and I've firmed up this month's budget. Looks like we have some wiggle room this month, even with £550 in CC direct debits still to go out in the next week.

One-step-at-a-time

I've been in a really antsy mood all evening! Roaming the house trying to find bite-sized bits of decluttering to do (did a drawer, a small storage tub and a magazine file, then went round emptying the bins). Then I took it upon myself to try to remove the nozzle from one of DH's nearly finished aftershave bottles; he's got half a dozen stashed away with a view to dismantling them and decanting the leftovers into one bottle (they're a bad design and the spray pump can't quite get to the dregs). Annoyingly the bottles are completely sealed and all my attempts at pulling one apart with pliers just ended up with aftershave leaking all over my hands. Back to the drawing board on that one! :rotfl:

One-step-at-a-time

Evening all!
I'm feeling quite enthusiastic at the moment. Today I decided to see whether figuring out how much I still need to pay off to get to the halfway point would be at all motivational; turns out that it is! Under 5k to go; we should be there by the summer. :T :T :T
The pile of things that can potentially be converted into cash in the spare room is still growing. I just need that pesky auction site to have a low final fees weekend - hopefully that will happen soon.
I've updated the budget for Feb - all allocated pots are paid, the food shop for all the big staples for the month came to £90, £10 under the budget I'd set, and I have £40 in cash which I'm going to do my utmost to make last the month. It's looking hopeful! I *should* have enough left to make a £40 overpayment but I'll leave that 'til the last week of the month.

One-step-at-a-time

Good morning!
Well, it's been a HUGELY productive early morning planning some things for later in the year. I will be doing a fair bit of travel in about 7 months' time related to my self-employed side hustle, so I've been using TCB and a booking site to try to reserve some decent hotel deals quickly, and doing some route planning. Now I've got a number to work with and can spend time doing more research and shaving the costs down. This is hands down one of my favourite ways to spend spare minutes and is one of the best ways to motivate me to get on with raising cash. The main problem I've had with the debt-busting is that the side hustle can be very unreliable; sometimes it works out brilliantly and sometimes I lose out. Over the last year I've done very little because I've not had the confidence that the work would actually pay off. This morning has lit a bit of a fire under my bum

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Good afternoon!
Another lovely positive day so far. There's been a small freelance job offer and a couple of potential sales, which if they come to fruition will either get me a chunk closer to my target or cover half the budget from last night's planning

My Prolific account is at £5.71 after an approval this morning, and another 85p pending. It's been a bit quiet on the survey front recently but I'm hoping enough will pop up to get me a £10 cashout in the next week or two.

Potential evening out with friend tonight has been cancelled due to an outstanding tax return (not mine!), which although a shame means we will stay warm and not skint. Instead I'll get some admin done and a bit of digital decluttering.

One-step-at-a-time

A thought popped into my head a few minutes ago. I have two outstanding payments on one of my debts, £520 to pay on Feb 28th and £480.84 to pay on March 28th. Next month I will be £229 ahead from month two of the council tax holiday, and I already know that there will be no penalty if I pay the March instalment in February. That means I need to make/find/£251.84 in the next 28 days to be clear of this debt a full month early. Game on!

One-step-at-a-time

Hello diary and any lurkers

Progress! I've got £130 of work (after tax) booked in, it's not until the end of the month so I can't count it in my challenge total from the last post, but there's also £40 from sales which I *can* count/ so that's £40/£251.84 16% achieved, 27 days to go.

I've also had a flurry of surveys and once they're approved I'll tip over the £10 circle payment mark - that money will be added to the target too.

I am really, really antsy now about getting the pile of stuff in the spare room on sale, mostly because I've shuffled all the money I can, am waiting for the last scheduled payments for the month to go out and can't really do anything else at the moment.

One-step-at-a-time

£11 cashed out from Prolific tonight, £3.71 pending - today was a good day for surveys, some quite interesting ones too!

I have blipped a bit today and spent some of my £40 cash. We have a well-known Swedish retail outlet opening in the area next week, and as a family cardholder I had an invitation to a preview event today, so I popped in after work to have a nose around. There is a particular step stool that I have been trying to get hold of for months as it's perfect to have with me on some freelance jobs, but it's always been out of stock. I figured if I was going to find it anywhere it would be in a brand new store. Correct! I was so pleased, and there was no umming and ahhhing about buying it as it had been on the list for so long. It's really sturdy, will do double duty as a coffee table, and was a very reasonable £15, so it came home on the bus with me. It won't stop me from meeting this months's targets!