Put away your purse & become debt-averse

foxgloves

I think we're at an age where we need to have a bit of a plan in mind, Blackcats. Sounds like you have been giving yours some thought. I can see how VR could be an advantage. I took mine a lot earlier than I had any intention of doing, but we are both in agreement that it has improved our quality of life, even though we need to be careful. Sliding back into our historic spendy ways is absolutely not an option, as we wouldn't have that second income to absorb it.

foxgloves

Grrrr, am fesh from doing my mid-month budget check-in....... no mystery to it, it does what it says on the tin. Was not at all happy to discover that we are £91 adrift. I do write out each month's budget in my Money Book, then double-check everything, but I went back to it with a calculator to see an error had slipped through. Nope! All figures on paper are correct, but we should have £91 more in the bank atm than we currently do. Studied bang up to date statement & can't for the life of me see any overlooked payments or transactions which shouldn't be there. It's infuriating!! I've had to leave it & get on with other things so am hoping that I will be struck by a beam of realisation at some point today.
So I'm 'proper grumpy' about that. I think I'll cheer myself up by putting a colour on my hideous roots, going to talk to my greenhouse veg & maybe delving into my yarn stash to see what else I could cast on.
£91 missing though!
Bloody hell!
More grrrrrrr.
F x

Dottles1

I was in a similar position last week and realised later that I had accounted for £175 twice ! It's so infuriating when you can't see it isn't it?

Blackcats

I agree it's infuriating. Hope you work it out soon. I'm sure you will because you do your accounting regularly so it can't have happened too long ago.
I remember in the days of writing lots of cheques that I was so blas! that I didn't even write on the stub sometimes. When a bank statement came through i would not even recognise what the cheque had been written for. As long as it hadn't bounced I was happy. What a daft approach to money I had.

foxgloves

Dottles1 & Blackcats - Yes, too right it's infuriating, but I think I've sussed it now, although it's a weird one. I'm intending to make a start on my job list this morning (if I'm not subsumed by an avalanche of courgettes when I go in the kitchen) then pop up to my HQ & have another look at it.
At least I didn't have Mr f's start to the day..... let's just say he got out of the bath all clean & fragrant....... & failed to spot the carefully placed stealth cat puke in the hall. Ewwwww! I wisely stayed in bed until the all clear.
Right, I've had two coffees, I need to get cracking. Worst task first, I think, which means dealing with the ironing, but I need some of the clean bedlinen within for sorting out 3 guest beds for the end of this week.
At least as I do my ironing upstairs, I won't be able to hear the Courgette Army banging on the fridge door to be let out.
Will pop back to explain the missing money, as if it's defo what I think it is, I'd be interested in whether anyone else has been caught out by a similar thing.
In the meantime, wishing you all a nice calm morning.
F x

carrielovesfanta

Poor Mr F! I did chuckle though

I'm very intrigued as to the mystery money. Last time we were totally adrift, luckily we were £100 up. I never did work out why but it was around end of 2017 when I had severe flu. I guess I did something wrong in the spreadsheet.

foxgloves

Soggy afternoon greetings, Diary readers,
Has it actually stopped raining today? If so, I think I blinked & missed it. Useful day on the whole....baked bread, covered a seat cushion, made a table runner & covered a glass jar (for a tea light) with a length of lovely cheery fabric I rescued while clearing Mum's craft hoard. Dug out a recipe for courgette fritters, as intend to make inroads into reducing the courgette mountain tonight, & cleared the ironing, including the bed linen I need for imminent guests.
And importantly........I have solved the mystery of the missing £91.
I was so annoyed by not being able to see why this money had vanished, that I've been doing some real forensics on it. And my findings? (Drum roll.......)
The £91 is NOT missing. It never existed in the first place. So how did this happen?
Can I just suggest that if you are likely to be bored by forensic detail of why someone thought they had £91 more than they actually did, that you go & find something infinitely more interesting to do instead, because I think this is going to be very tedious to explain.
OK, so my monthly Big Budget Day takes place on payday. I begin the process by accessing an up to date statement from our online bank account, so that I can work with up to date figures. As it is payday, the most recent transaction is the salary payment into our account. I printed off a statement & set about my usual budget day procedure. When I did my mid-month budget check-in yesterday, it was clear that I was £91 short of what I should have. That's more than a couple of little tidsy spends I've forgotten, or a mobile bill being a couple of photo-texts over, isn't it? I went over all my figures again, even though I double check everything on Budget Day. I just couldn't find the error. Talked it over with mr f later on & he suggested a few things it could be, but it wasn't any of them. We did decide though, that if all the figures were smack on, then the only answer is that we 'never had' the £91 in the first place & that for some reason, I thought we did. So it was annoying me so much, I went back up to Foxgloves HQ & checked my outgoings spreadsheet, just in case I'd accidentally worked on a different month's outgoings by mistake. I hadn't. Hmmmmm. Decided to get out the statement I printed off to work from. I also now have the statement from the same period which came in the post recently. While I was looking at these, I noticed that despite covering the same period & I was specifically looking at the same few days, the statement I printed off & the statement I received in the post were not the same. The statement I printed off & worked from on Budget Day began, as always with the salary payment going in. But the statement I received in the post shows two transactions that were made BEFORE the salary date, which didn't appear on the one I printed out. I put the two side by side & asked mr f to have a look just to check I wasn't losing the plot. He agreed. The statement I printed off & the one posted out to me are not the same. These two transactions clearly show on the posted version before the salary date, but on the print-off I did, they don't appear at all. I didin't realise that the transactions one sees on one's online account & those on the official bank statement hard copy received in the post could be different. But they obviously can. The correct order would have been 'blah, blah, blah, transaction 1, transaction 2, blah, salary being paid in', but the transactions only appear in the correct order on the posted version & are missing from the one I printed off.
So that my friends, is the missing money. It hadn't disappeared. I never had it in the first place. I must watch out for similar discrepancies in transaction ordering in future as had honestly not noticed any difference previously in statements I've printed off from which to work, & the statements I receive in the post.
Has anyone else spotted similar anomales?
Oh well, i can't have back into August's budget what was never there in the first place, can I?
I don't think there's any doubt that I deserve a cup of coffee & a rhubarb muffin now.
And so do any of you who made it through to the end of this tedious post!
Bah to wrongly ordered bank transactions.
And to endless rain.
But at least I didn't cop for the cat sick....there's a small win right there!
F xx

Squirrelly

Hello Foxgloves,


Thank you for your interesting an inspiring diary, its taken my about 4-5 days but I have read the whole thing! I really enjoy the debtisodes (triple spending birthday money rang far to true) and all the gardening, cooking and shopping from home.


I have about 6K of debt to lose and then I will need to adjust my budget from, pay off the debt as quickly as possible, to find a sensible balance that we can live with. I really like your and Mr F approach, as to me, you seem to have a great balance between being frugal but enjoying the odd treat (even if it is a freebie coffee).I really like the idea of personal spends and your other piggies. Obviously a lot of people here are in the same boat of paying things off but it is important to think about what comes next.


Anyway I have subscribed and keep up with your adventures


Squirrelly x

crazy_cat_lady

Glad the £91 mystery is solved - I knew you wouldn't have overlooked that amount. You're just too good for that.

Dottles1

Hurrah for solving the mystery !! It always feels better if you can see were the money went (or in this case never was so never did) rather than just having to let it go. I'm still fine tuning managing my budget to account for every penny. It's not because I spend it but that I move it and then don't account for it. Still, a work in progress.
I'm sure I have heard you mention a bullet diary in past posts. What is this and how does it help?