Put away your purse & become debt-averse

foxgloves

Lol, Purple Fairy - Thanks for highlighting that typo. I've corrected it. I've been a silly spender, but even I haven't burned through that much!
I agree with you about sensible money habits. I couldn't go back to my old attitude. If I am ever a couple of days late for doing my monthly Big Budget Day - even for really good reasons, such as being on holiday or dealing with a crisis - I feel quite twitchy & unsettled about it until I can sit down with all the figures & get it done. I think it's the difference between how I used to be, with never wanting to know what my finances looked like because it was always bad, & knowing now that where money is concerned, as with most other things in life, knowledge is power.
F x

foxgloves

Well, CCL, I think a lot of that has simply been outside your control. The control that you do have is not spending any more than is necessary, the usual 'wants v needs' mantras, etc. The rest of it is sort of held up until your legal stuff starts moving. Once you know what sort of figures you're looking at, you can at least get a budget in place to deal with it. I bet you could get your kids on board with it too......sort of 'the sooner this is sorted, the sooner we might be able to have a holiday', etc. I can utterly feel the resentment & fury from your posts that you have been put in this position. I would feel absolutely the same. I think most people genuinely want to move on after a big life change, even if it takes a little while initially to process mentally - it's to do with positivity, new starts, self-respect, etc, & others just go the opposite route & adopt full ostrich mode.
Once things have moved on the legal front, you will be able to implement a sustained Plan of Campaign, which could be awesome, as I reckon you'll be in a 'Kick !!!' frame of mind by then.
This whole delay has been both unfair & ridiculous.
Am sending you a virtual biscuit!
F x

foxgloves

Hello my soggy little Autumn leaves,
Yes, another full day of rain here. Yippee-doo to even more garden-squidge. Cat crossed his legs until lunchtime & then had to zip up his fur & make a dash through his flap for the nearest bushes.
I've sort of changed how I do my lists over the last couple of months or so. I still note tasks in my diary which defo need to be done by a deadline, but I don't do long daily lists any more. Instead I sit for ten mins or so on Monday mornings & think about what I want to achieve over the coming week, & from that, the shape of my week kind of emerges. Monday itself has become the day where I set myself up for the week, so I like to straighten budgets, check meal plans are all properly in place (this often involves dividing up leftover meat if we've had a Sunday roast, ready to use in further meals on Monday & often Tuesday), have a good tidy-up after the weekend, get most of the laundry done..... all the routine things which ensure our week then runs smoothly. I also like to bake bread on Monday, usually a wholemeal loaf & at the same time, I feed my sourdough jar so that the next loaf (usually Wednesday) can be a crusty white sourdough. So basically, a whole load of very routine stuff, but a firm plank in our financially careful lifestyle.
One of the things I'd identified to progress this week was continued Christmas prep, so I've finished writing our cards today - the only ones left are Mr F's work ones & he will do those. I've a couple into which I'll pop a letter, so I'll get those written this week as well. I think I mentioned I filled our Advent calendar with the contents of a free box of chocs last week, so I've hung that up at the bottom of the stairs ready for Dec 1st. I put decorations & festive things out gradually & don't really do anything significant until well into December. Wintery decorations feel OK, but not overtly Christmas ones just yet. Can you believe we received our first Christmas card this morning?? Though to be fair, it was from a relative in Australia who was probably making doubly sure it would reach us in time. I read it while snarfing the last of my test batch of mince pie twigs. Am defo putting those on my festive baking list this year!
I'm also very much hoping to progress rather a lot of financial stuff this week, but am still waiting for a couple of settlement letters. Maybe Postie will be bearing glad tidings tomorrow.
Time for a chapter or two of my book, I think, before we have our weekly contest of 'Who knows the most answers on University Challenge'. If there is lots of English lit, history, folklore, botany & questions on words, I'm in with a chance. If it's the usual predominance of physics & the wretched periodic table yet again, then it'll be Mr F's night! (He's very competitive, but thinks he isn't!)
Cheers all,
F x

foxgloves

Hello to my faithful readers - though goodness only knows how my life is interesting to anybody!
I don't feel as though I've been very productive today. I've done all my usual household running tasks - laundry, changed the bed linen, tidied, etc, but the main thing I wanted to achieve today was getting letters written to go in with a couple of Christmas cards. As these are people I write to just once or twice a year & very rarely see, I like to write a nice long newsy letter & it always takes longer than I anticipate. I've also had a tussle with our elderly printer which informed me through a series of sputters & general sounds of dischuffedness that it has run out of not only black, but also blue ink. I don't want to spend money on new cartridges as this is one of our tech items very much on the list for imminent replacement. perhaps it knows its days are numbered & it is sulking. I emailed the doc to Mr F at work & asked him to print it out during his lunch break & to let me know what I owe. It's certainly come out at a lot less than replacing cartridges & another job completed.
I've done today's online German practice & think there can be no further possible variations of I/you/he/she/we/they eat the banana or drink the apple juice & neither can I ever be in any doubt when it comes to saying 'The pasta is from Italy' in German, should the need ever arise. I felt I needed to start at the beginning though, as I gave up German after O-level & had forgotten most of it. It's surprising how much of it is now coming back to me, so I might be brave enough to do an evening class.........although I'm sure I should really be devoting this time to getting my damned novel finished.....I know an old friend of mine who also likes writing would say this is classic distraction activity. Grrr, I infuriate myself!!
Tonight, the Beloved & I are going to sit down & have a good look at our life insurance policies. Mine certainly doesn't have any kind of final pay-out or lump sum attached & was taken out solely to ensure mortgage payment should anything happen to me. We think Mr F's is the same, but we can't remember, so we want to look at it in fine detail. We are both thinking that if both are simply 'term of mortgage' policies, then we may be able to cancel them shortly & divert those monthly payments (£53 in total) to savings. We just need to read the small print to ensure that there isn't anything we're overlooking on his policy. Mine is different - a very simple one set up via my trade union. I used to have a much more complex life policy which did include a lump sum pay-out at the end of the mortgage term, but it proved to be an absolute heap of crud. I think it was borderline mis-selling, actually, but not enough to take it up as a case against the provider. When they wrote to me to say they'd need to increase my monthly payments to £113 (I was paying £36 at the time!!) in order to ensure I'd get any kind of payout at the end, & that this still might not be enough & may have to increase again, I asked for a settlement figure & cashed it in. You will be impressed to hear that I paid off some debt with the cash-out, as we were just post-LBM then & busy paying our debts down. I took out a simple policy via my trade union which guaranteed the monthly payment would never be increased (it never has) but the pay-out if I went under a bus (as mr F always refers to anyone's potential demise) would be £30k, On a joint mortgage, Mr F having his own life policy, I decided that would be fine & have stuck with that one, but I think they do need revisiting, as if we are only set up to pay them for the term of the mortgage, I think my feeling is that we would be better off with putting that money into our savings so that we do have a tangible 'pot' at the end of that. Am I making sense? Perhaps I'll make more sense when I've read all the small print.
Anyway, that's for later.....I'm also aiming to wave a load of cash bags at Mr F. He needs to pay me for the gadget he's just bought with some of his sealed pot money.....which is all very well, but he hasn't put it through the bank yet, so it is entirely in £2 coins! Tomorrow is my Big Budget Day, so I could do with it being paid in, ready for me to pay it off the 'Just for points' CC.
But before those money jobs, I am going to go downstairs & find out why cat is yowling his whiskers off then I'm going to make a batch of muffins. I have a lemon & some surplus dried pineapple (bought for Christmas cake) so I'm thinking lemon & pineapple muffins it is, then!
Hope you've all had a decent day,
Love F x

foxgloves

Grrrr..... an annoying car alarm went off on our street at 5.30am. I was already awake, but that woke me up good & proper, so by 5.50, I was up & dressed & by 6.00, I was googling answers to my current life insurance questions. Over breakfast, I managed to nobble Mr F with what must have seemed like 101 budgetary matters & was still earholing him about projected festive food expenditure when he was tying his bootlaces, gathering his work gear & disappearing through the front door! Can't you just tell that today is my Big Budget Day?
Still awaiting settlement letters so December's budget will definitely be a transitional one, rather than one which properly reflects how things will work moving forwards, but it needs doing, so that will be this morning's main task. First I must just unload the washer onto the heated airer, mix up a sourdough & defrost prawns! Then more coffee & out with the calculator. Postie doesn't get here till mid-morning. I'm hoping those letters do arrive today, because I'd like to work on actual figures & not 'best guess'.
At least I won't be distracted by getting out in the garden - Yes, another rainy day. How much more water can our garden absorb before we start seeing puddles on actual flower beds & lawn? I really don't know. Everywhere is saturated & massive squidgefest.
F x

foxgloves

Oh my days! Postie brought the mortgage settlement figure, which I was just reading over a cup of coffee & thinking it was pretty much around the amount I thought it would be, then aaagggghhhh!! Next paragraph is all about the figure only being valid until the end of the month, how I would normally be able to go over the deadline by up to three days but not if this extends it into the next month......which of course in our case, it would. If we don't settle it by Nov 30th, we have to apply for a new settlement figure & this will cost us £20 to procure!
So, as Mr F is owed an absolute ton of time because of having to deal with the flooding, he said he'd take the afternoon off if I can get an appointment, we can go in together,which will be good as we want to set up an ISA too.
So it looks as though today will be 'The Day' & it is completely ridiculous, but my legs have gone wobbly! What a narna I think I'd better have some toast.
F xx

twiggy86

I hope you managed to make today THE DAY!

foxgloves

Twiggy86 - Yes, we did.
The. Deed. Is. Done!!
We also spoke to a very helpful savings advisor & set up two new savings accounts.
I still feel quite weird.
Have postponed the rest of my Big Budget Day until tomorrow. Can't think straight now, but I'm sure normal service will resume very soon, when the enormity of this afternoon has sunk in.
I've just had to have 'stress crisps'!
F x

HairyHandofDartmoor

foxgloves wrote: »

Twiggy86 - Yes, we did.
The. Deed. Is. Done!!
We also spoke to a very helpful savings advisor & set up two new savings accounts.
I still feel quite weird.
Have postponed the rest of my Big Budget Day until tomorrow. Can't think straight now, but I'm sure normal service will resume very soon, when the enormity of this afternoon has sunk in.
I've just had to have 'stress crisps'!
F x

Congratulations Foxgloves on being mortgage free :T :beer: :j. Are you going to celebrate tonight?

Setting up the savings accounts is a very sensible and mse move .

1LuckyLady

Great news Foxgloves!