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

One-step-at-a-time

Hi @remote_control - I used Ziffit this time but I tend to check prices on MM and another one called Zapper as well before deciding where to send things.
I do feel that if I stray too much from the strictly MSE side of things it would be really easy for someone I know to figure things out (and I do know a lot of people who visit this site), so that's why I seem to have tunnel vision here
The side hustle has flatlined, as nearly all of what I do currently falls into what the government has claimed to be unviable industries and I've had no work on that side of things since March. My side work now is mostly admin for a friend but that depends hugely on the ebbs and flows of his business, and everything else can be bundled under the general heading of craft sales. Print sales are quite niche due to subject matter, but I'm pushing those as much as I can - October-December is usually the best time of year for this.
Another thing I haven't talked about much on here is that since I've been WFH I have far less energy to get stuck into creating new things, even though I've gained time back from the commute - I get flashes of inspiration here and there but at the moment if feels a lot less stressful to concentrate on the things that also help to improve my surroundings, like the decluttering/small sales. 

One-step-at-a-time

Book balancing and brainfart time.
I upped the grocery budget from £200 to £250 this month as we're starting to overstock the cupboards and freezer, and after our most recent supermarket shop I've got £15.33 left. That may seem tight for 17 days, but anticipated extra food needs for the rest of the month are under £10 (there will be a lot of batch cooking/freezing happening this week). I'll most likely be doing the same in November and December. Usually out of the budgeted £200 we come in somewhere between the £170 and £180 mark, and the leftovers funds get reshuffled elsewhere. It's still a fair bit of money for two adults, but we eat pretty well.
All our planned spending for the month has been done now, so other than the last tiny bit of food shopping we should be looking at NSDs for the rest of the month. 

It's been interesting examining my reactions to spending recently, as September/October have been quite unusual. There are certain things that we've had on the 'necessary purchase' list for a few months that we haven't been able to control the timing of, due to wanting to buy second-hand and waiting for the 'right' price to come up. Several of them have become available very recently, and although the money has been (grudgingly) accounted for, it's felt extraordinarily decadent to be buying several household things within a short space of time on top of upping the grocery budget. A few years ago I wouldn't have given a second thought to spending a couple of hundred quid in a month on household stuff; now I look really carefully at the effect each purchase has on our budgeting and plan ahead.

I've also come to look at paying min £1000/month on the card as sacrosanct, as the DFD depends on it, but I have absolutely no idea as to whether this will continue to be realistic for 2021, and this is where my remaining anxiety lies.  There is currently no spending I can do that is more satisfying than paying off debt.

I know this diary can make it sound as if I have zero life outside of debt repayments and working, but this is simply where I come to 'think out loud' on the financials without boring DH half to death, we're not suffering any kind of debt-fuelled purgatory
We're lucky in a way that the events this year have been something that we've been able to adapt to pretty well -  without travel our hobbies don't involve going out and spending money, and our close friends are so scattered over the country/world that communicating electronically with people has always featured heavily.

One-step-at-a-time

The problem with everything at the moment is motivation. I'm generally a glass half full person but I'm feeling pretty low right now - the bad news over the last few weeks has been absolutely relentless, and it seems that we've barely processed one horrible thing when something else happens (and this is without even thinking about the insane levels of government ineptitude at play in our daily lives). We've lost another friend this week, this time to Covid. The financial stuff seems so trivial and pathetic by comparison, but at the same time it's one of the few things I can actually exert some control over.
So, on that note:

• I've got an ebay auction finishing tonight which should clear £7.
• The CD-selling investigation was actually pretty disappointing - 80% not recognised/accepted, and most of what's left would fetch only pennies. We're looking at around £40 for the highest-priced 30 items, and that's provided that the packaging meets requirements and that they all still play. I know that we can shift quite a lot through online fan groups, but that's a lot more time consuming as we'll need to set prices individually.
• I'm going to list more photography gear to try to drum up another £200-£250 (through individual sales rather than selling to shops) - stuff I won't be needing until next summer at the earliest, and which will be easy enough to pick up secondhand or borrow should I find myself needing it then (I suspect I won't).
• I've also renewed all my Marketplace listings

I'll try to get to more of an upbeat place for the next update!

enthusiasticsaver

Sorry you have lost a friend to Covid.  What awful news. It can put things into perspective but the thing about having control over your finances (as you now have) is that it relieves stress so you can cope with other stuff going on. You do seem to have had one bad piece of news after another.  Glad your DH has got on board with decluttering.  The only place my husband is allowed to clutter is the garage and his hobby room which is solely his domain.  The rest of the house is clutter free as I cannot cope with untidiness so everything has a place to be stored. 

Drawingaline

So sorry to hear about your friend. 

One-step-at-a-time

Thank you @enthusiasticsaver and @Drawingaline. The shock with this friend is the speed at which it happened - he'd been very active online over the last couple of weeks and hadn't even mentioned feeling under the weather, then we heard he was in hospital and two days later he was gone. I don't know whether he had any pre-existing conditions.

I woke up with my head in a far better place this morning and it's not raining so I'll be able to nip to the PO this morning without getting soaked through. I've flexied my time again and will be starting at 11 today. 
Re: clutter, most of it has always been behind closed doors, this is probably why we're not done with it yet - the cupboards can just breathe better now  At the moment the clutter in my office consists solely of things I have listed to sell. I may be overoptimistic with the prices I've set (and time will tell on that) but I'm hoping that this lot could collectively fetch around £400. It feels good to have taken a bit of action.

One-step-at-a-time

I had a nice surprise checking messages on my first break - there's been a bite on one of my marketplace items. Provided it's a genuine offer, that'll be a £30 sale to throw at the card. I've also now redone my DSE assessment and requested a separate screen and a laptop stand, as these should resolve the remaining WFH-related niggles. DH is in do-all-the-things mode today, which is great other than being regularly interrupted by him giving me a running commentary on what he's doing! Much as I love him, the office door has to stay shut when I'm working, my attention span is bad enough as it is

remote_control

Sorry to hear about your friend. It puts things in perspective but also is a wake up call to get finances sorted and live without that stress (although on the flip side that attitude can lead to extra spending!). Take care

One-step-at-a-time

Thank you. Far too many additional wake-up calls recently. It's weird how attitude can be affected. Personally I've had two events - not quite near misses, but serious enough health incidents to give me pause for thought. When I was recovering from the first one I went through a number of stages mentally, and one was an 'if not now, when' form of defiance that led to excess spending on travel and made the debt worse. The second occurred a lot more recently (long after my LBM), and left me terrified at the thought of leaving anyone else in a mess as a consequence of my actions.
The news recently about friends (especially with each of the four being completely different circumstances to each other) has just made me terribly sad, but if there's any silver lining to be found, it's the reminder to find something good in each day and appreciate the life you have, because you truly never know what's around the corner.

One-step-at-a-time

Today's update:

• Currently we've got £12.37 + £7.50 vouchers left in grocery budget, no milk needed until the weekend, fresh veg that will be fine until early next week. Lots more batch cooking planned, including a huge vat of soup. 
• Lovely post today from a friend - a CD and some sweets. Unexpected!
• No further messages from the enquiry yesterday. Hoping they have just been busy and still want the item, as it's annoyingly bulky and that £30 would be really nice to have
• Still waiting to do that Prolific cashout
• Parcel now addressed to send off (£12+ to come from that).

I'm seizing every excuse to be outside today between meetings, it's good to get some sunlight on my face!