Put away your purse & become debt-averse

foxgloves

So pleased to be able to report that a local group of crafters who make things to sell for charity were delighted to take a huge amount of my Mum's craft stash. She'd have been pleased with that result.
Well, on with the stress levels. On the financial front there are two big ones. Mr f has heard that his job is not safe from the coming round of cuts, so that is a huge worry. And because we seem to have everything happen at once, we now have a shocking problem with our car (naturally just 1 month past the warranty period) - it's been with the repair people for 2 days & they are so flummoxed that they've had to contact the actual car factory. I think this is going to be horrible expensive. It makes me so thankful that we don't have all the consumer debt we ran up in the past. I'm not saying that a huge car bill will be easy for us to pay. It definitely won't, but we don't have £20- £30k of persistent debt lurking around in the background, which we would have done in the Spendy Decades.
Oh well, mustn't sit here worrying about stuff over which I have zero influence. Let's crack on with the day & see what I can achieve x

Honeysucklelou2

Your post did remind me that I have a lovely harvest scene cross stitch project to finish. Thank you for the reminder.

PurpleFairy26

foxgloves wrote: »

So pleased to be able to report that a local group of crafters who make things to sell for charity were delighted to take a huge amount of my Mum's craft stash. She'd have been pleased with that result.
Well, on with the stress levels. On the financial front there are two big ones. Mr f has heard that his job is not safe from the coming round of cuts, so that is a huge worry. And because we seem to have everything happen at once, we now have a shocking problem with our car (naturally just 1 month past the warranty period) - it's been with the repair people for 2 days & they are so flummoxed that they've had to contact the actual car factory. I think this is going to be horrible expensive. It makes me so thankful that we don't have all the consumer debt we ran up in the past. I'm not saying that a huge car bill will be easy for us to pay. It definitely won't, but we don't have £20- £30k of persistent debt lurking around in the background, which we would have done in the Spendy Decades.
Oh well, mustn't sit here worrying about stuff over which I have zero influence. Let's crack on with the day & see what I can achieve x

I'm sorry you've had these additional stresses on top of everything else foxgloves do you know when mr F will know for sure about his job?

As you can't particularly influence the outcome of the car or the job, I hope you manage some relaxing stuff.

How lovely to think lots of other people will benefit from your mums craft stuff, so many people would have just dumped it which would have been the easy option.

maryb

I don't know what brand of car your is but when our German made car developed a fairly major fault just out of warranty, we were able to negotiate a 50% discount on the repairs. We have been going to the same approved service centre since forever and the dealers make more money on servicing than on car sales in many cases so they were keen to hold on to us as customers

HTH

Onebrokelady

Well done on rehoming your mums craft stash, it's great that it's gone to a good cause

I sincerely hope your DHs job is safe and the car problem turns out to minor and cheap, when life decides to throw a curve ball why does it throw them all at the same time:mad:

crazy_cat_lady

Sorry to hear that life is chucking more rubbish your way. It's horrible when it just seems to be one thing after another, but remind yourself that you will deal with this if it happens (says me the queen of worry). I'll keep everything crossed that things are sorted with the minimum of hassle. It's got to be worth contacting the manufacturer about the car - sounds like a very scary problem and obviously unusual.
Lots of love

foxgloves

PurpleFairy - The job news is scheduled for December. Fingers crossed, but it's not good odds, so we are hoping for the best but planning for the worst.
F x

foxgloves

maryb & CCL - Yes, I will definitely be taking up the car issue with the manufacturer. To be fair, the garage staff have been great so far, but this is a scary serious problem to have appeared out of the blue in a just fractionally over 3-year old car. If the local franchise can't get the discount they said they'd try to get for us, given the newness of the car, then I will be writing an assertive letter to the company's UK customer services. I have a good track record with letters of complaint, so I agree it's worth doing & if it comes to that, I will pop a post on my diary with the outcome.

foxgloves

And before I relinquish the laptop to mr f so he can run a load of his declutterings through Ziffit, I'll just kick on today's diary post:
Not a bad day on the frugal front. Pay-day, so it's my Big Budget Day. October's budget reconciled & no nasty surprises BUT we have spent more than I'd have liked. No mystery here, simply a case of me being away for a fair bit of the month so needing to buy extra groceries, plus the smaller of the funeral expenses to pay for, & other similar expenses too, although these will of course be immaterial once Mum's estate is settled, as the money will come back to us. So I've set November's budget with everything at the usual levels - £50 a week for groceries, £60 each for November's Personal Spends, etc, but I am not in a position to pay our Savings Piggies this month. I could pay 2 or 3 of them, but it would let our emergency 'cushion' in our current account go lower than I feel comfortable with.
The major expense this budget is going to be the car bill......& it's going to be a real sh*tter, this one. A full service plus 2 tyres would have been ok, but car repair is going to put the overall bill up to the 1k mark. I've been working through on paper the various ways I can tackle paying this. In fact, it was nice that mr f is on leave today, as we were able to sit with a coffee & discuss it. We've decided to pay the bill from our emergency fund & to leave the cash currently in our Car Piggy to cover the next service. We have learned since the Spendy Decades that with most car bills being expensive, it is worth thinking further ahead than just the next couple of months. It's going to make a rotten dint in our emergency fund & I won't lie that I'm not gutted about that, but at least we have the money for just such an emergency. We never did back pre-LBM & all car bills went straight onto CCs, already hefty overdrafts or my never-ending loan (that thing deserves a diary post all of its own!!), so I am going to pay it through gritted teeth, but be secretly thankful that I am not still Mrs Spendy.
Anyway, first things first......hoping we will hear from the garage today as to how they are getting on, whether they were able to apply leverage for a discount & when the work is likely to be finished. In the meantime, I just have some bread rolls to pop in the oven, then I intend to spend the rest of the afternoon snugged up with my book &/or knitting.
Hope you've all had a decent day, with no nasty financial surprises.
F xx

Onebrokelady

Isn't it weird that before we came to our senses we would think nothing frittering away "our "money on all sorts of useless things,but now having seen the light we don't want to part with a penny even if it's from the fund we set up just for that reason,I've had to dip into my emergency fund a couple of times and I really begrudged it,I wasn't so bothered when I wasn't spending my own actual money