Put away your purse & become debt-averse

foxgloves

Savingmore - Yes, it's definitely worth having a play with online interest calculators. As BaileysBabe rightly says, it is perfectly possible to work these figures out with a calculator & rough paper, but it is so much quicker to use an online tool. Even with interest rates being so miniscule at the moment, it shows that the saving habit is worthwhile. We only compared figures over a period of 5 years, as we felt that the crazy situation at the moment means it is difficult to second-guess the effect of the economy on individual circumstances, but it clearly showed that even finding an extra £75 a month for our savings account did make a worthwhile difference after 60 months. Give it a go!

OBL - I know what you mean about overdrafts. When we joined our finances together & opened a joint account (this was post-LBM & debt levels were decreasing), we were offered an account with access to a bigger overdraft but we had talked about it beforehand & as we both had historic form for abusing our overdrafts, we refused it & have been perfectly happy with an overdraft limit of just £200.  I think it concentrates the mind more on not dipping into it, to be honest. The only time we just dipped a toe into it was years ago now, & it was because we were expecting quite a hefty work expenses payment which was delayed for a month. That wasn't our fault as we had every expectation of that money arriving, but it was a lesson as I also increased our buffer zone from that point, just in case another unforeseen happenstance appeared. When I first started tackling my debts, I paid off my overdraft before anything else. It was quite big, so I couldn't do it just in a month or two, but I cut back on frittering so that each month-ending when I got paid, more of my money was my own. Once I got it to zero, it was suddenly so much easier to work on my other debts, because all my monthly pay was suddenly my own instead of a big chunk of it disappearing off down a murky black hole!
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foxgloves

Nothing interesting to tell you today, but I was pleased that there have been no signs of mice activity since I checked yesterday morning. I think we could be getting on top of it now. 
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judiciously

We're doing the whole budget thing as we've just accepted an offer on the house and moving on. We're buttoning everything up tightly, not even going to have TV so we save on the TV licence, no more Sky but are taking on Netflix. The aim is to save so I shall be interested in learning about compound interest calculators.

Your proactive approach to the mice is paying off nicely foxgloves.

Blackcats

Oh yes indeed I'm a veteran of far too many public sector meetings.  I like the "straw man" agenda that you described but you haven't allowed time for creating your mission statement and team values proposition 😱.  The best/worst ice breaker I ever experienced was being given a tub of pink play dough and being asked to sculpt something we dreamed of .... well I'll say no more but I was on a table of very naughty ladies who did not approach the task in a very mature way.  

foxgloves

Lol, Blackcats. I was once given a pile of craft materials at a training corse & told to create something which represented how I saw the future of a particular initiative. I duly delivered a collage of somebody flogging a dead horse. I don't think it did my career a lot of good, to be honest, but it felt very liberating.
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cbsexec

Thank you for the best laugh for ages.   I’d have loved to see that collage.  

savingmore

These office madnesses are not just confined to the public sector!  I love the flogging the dead horse collage, tucking that one away!  At this moment in time, oh sorry...was getting carried away....still giggling at the pink play dough on the naughty ladies table.   I work in same industry as my husband and he often says ‘I always know which table you are on as it’s always the loudest one where everyone is laughing, and not taking the ‘management speak/team building/boringness exercises seriously’. 🤣🤣. no doubt when I retire I will probably discover I will miss it all 😜🤣😱😱

Sun_Addict

Glad to hear the mice may be on the retreat. Laughing at the public sector jargon as I am also in that sector. 

Blackcats

By coincidence I was on a call today when we were having "a deep dive into a level of granularity to identify specificity". 🤷‍♀️

foxgloves

Well, Blackcats, as my Dad would have said, "I had one of those once, & the wheels came off"!
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