DD's accountability thread

DD265

I got a decent bonus from work, so I paid 10% (£800) off the credit cards this month which feels great. Also noticed that Barclaycard have offered me a balance transfer again - not that I intend to take them up on it - so I'm feeling a bit better about the credit cards. The MBNA card is now at £2800, and the Barclaycard is at £2000. I guess if we hadn't bought the house both cards would be paid off by now, but I dropped repayments right down to save the deposit/fees etc. I don't think it was the wrong decision but I do feel a bit of pressure now. I need to pay the MBNA card off with/before October pay day in order to avoid paying interest on it.

Also put a decent amount into the door fund, and I might've implusively bought myself a new phone. I was sick of the battery not lasting on my iPhone 6S, (bought refurbished 2 years ago and has since had a battery replacement) but unwilling to take out a new handset contract or fork out for an iPhone. Well the Pixel 3 was on offer and I've managed to get one for £302 brand new which is less than half the RRP. Android is definitely going to take some getting used to though!

I finished the key holder, and I'm really pleased with it, but I haven't touched the knitting. We haven't turfed the garden yet either; the topsoil was delivered but the storms hit last week so it's still covered on the patio. The lawn is the job for this weekend, along with some serious cleaning/tidying. I noted that it's an eBay max £1 final value fee weekend too, so might take advantage of that, and we've got a wardrobe in the garage to get rid of too.

I got a pay rise from work, just short of £3k a year (some is a car allowance, some is basic pay). I probably won't find out my new basic for a few months though; I had decided not to do any more overtime after April, and I don't think that's going to work out. The customer I'm working on needs helping and there just aren't enough hours in a day plus it's extra income that can go towards the credit cards and I could definitely use that right now. I simply need to accept it as the way forward, then I'll be happier with the idea. My plan is that any income above my basic take home cannot go into the budget; it's got to go either to the credit cards (round £100s) or savings (anything less), and I'm intending to stick to that.

beanielou

Great news on the big CC payment

DD265

Thanks Beanielou, the big payments are extremely satisfying!

On Saturday we turfed the lawn, and yesterday we un-turfed it and got a refund from B&Q - of the 22 rolls of turf, only two were 'good' and the rest ranged from half dead to completely dead. We couldn't tell when we were laying it as there was a reasonable amount of soil on top of the grass which we expected to stand up after being left overnight, but the next morning it looked a right mess. No issues getting a full refund from B&Q, plus a £10 goodwill gesture which is much appreciated. OH is going to order turf from somewhere else. All good experience!

We did try to do the food shop in Aldi yesterday and it didn't go brilliantly. We got some stuff and it was cheaper, but there was a reasonable amount that they didn't have - and because I meal plan/we'd been to the butchers already, I didn't want to switch it up - and a lot of the fruit for example looked really rough. What we did get was cheaper than Tesco/Sainsburys, and we do have an Aldi nearer home that we can try as it might be a bit bigger. There's Aldi and B&M and Iceland right next to each other, then a Lidl and Tesco a little further on, then Sainsburys is a bit further still. We haven't tracked down our local Asda/Morrisons as we tend to only go there for specific offers. We do get discounts at the big 4 supermarkets through my work scheme, plus we get loyalty points at Tesco/Sainsburys, but I reckon there are areas we can cut back.

I'd bought four end-of-line Bravissimo tops on eBay but I am returning them all as the styles don't suit. I absolutely adored the colour on one though, and I have bought it in a different style direct - at the price of 3 of the tops I'm returning. :eek: I slept on the purchase for a couple of days, as normally I'd only ever consider sale items, but as I'm trying to fill my wardrobe only with clothes that I love, as well as wanting to look smarter at work, I bit the bullet. Delivery to store was free, and it's an excuse to go explore the city as I don't feel like I know it yet. I'd just gotten to grips with Leeds then we moved away. :rotfl:

My phone contract with O2 is cancelled, the handset was fully paid for and came unlocked, so I'm prepping my old iPhone to recycle - I feel a little sad after just hitting the erase button, but I'll probaby never go back as I can't justify the new iPhone prices. Hopefully I'll get £80 but I suspect it might end up as less as there's a little cosmetic damage to the corners. I'm going to have a quick look around though as I think CEX pay more - which means other stores might too. Worth a shot!

DD265

Finally got some turf coming this week; we've struggled to find somewhere to supply it because it's such a small area so nobody wanted to deliver. Collection was proving near impossible because the windows were so narrow - and during the working day - or I'd have had to go meet somebody on the road, again during the working day. However we've ordered slightly over what we needed, for £50 in total so almost half the B&Q cost, and it's coming on Tuesday.

On Wednesday we have a skip coming for 30 minutes. Having it left on the road would inconvenience our neighbours but everything is ready to go anyway so we're taking advantage of a 'wait and load' service. Any left over turf from the new delivery can go in, plus the B&Q turf, a load of bricks/gravel from the raised beds/BBQ we took down, and some rubble from the soil. I'm looking forward to having our garden back!

We've had a quote to put raised sleeper beds in, but at £420 it'll have to wait, as keen as I am to get on with it. Having priced the sleepers myself it's not a bad total but we have other priorities. We've got a couple of decked 'planters' with nothing in them (just some decorative gravel) and I think I'll fill those with compost/plants to scratch my itch. When those are removed I can relocate the plants so it'll all work out.

Inside the house we've just done a few small bits - like a robe hook on the bathroom door - and some deep cleaning. Have made a start taking the sealant off the shower - it's harder work than I expected! We'll be replacing the seals too (they're better but I can't get them clean) and turns out we can get replacement rollers, as 3 out of 4 don't roll any more, so it'll be practically brand new by the time we're done. :rotfl:

DD265

May has been more expensive than anticipated, but it feels like we've made good progress. I will have to put some of my next pay towards catching up - buying a phone saw to that, but no regrets as the battery life is so much better!

I've started doing oodles of overtime again and got some listings on eBay so I will keep up the momentum on that. I am incentivised by us clearing out the garage, and all the items that need selling are in boxes in the spare bedroom which irks me. :rotfl: Once the money starts coming in though my motivation will jump even higher.

Initially I'm listing the remaining my little ponies - auction style, and individually. I've set a low start price which is enough to cover postage (I always do free postage, it's less hassle) and fees. Any that don't sell first time I'll take a view on whether to relist as-is or put them into lots. Will need to have a think about the horsey stuff and clothing, but ponies first.

The turf is down, some patches are a bit yellow but it's noticeably greener today from yesterday - I think the intermittent showers and sunshine are just what it needs. I'd taken 5 bay cuttings (the previous owners left behind a dead tree but it had lots of suckers) and 3 are still going strong. I reckon the other two are properly dead but I'll give them until the next green waste collection. One of my ivy hanging baskets is thriving, the other not so much. I'm going to leave it alone as maybe we were over watering it.

We bought a lawn mower today, with B&Q having 20% off 'outside stuff' this weekend. OH had £50 in vouchers where the scheme had ended, so we were able to trade them in for vouchers from a wide range of retailers, including B&Q. Between those and the 20% discount, we paid under £10 for a £70 lawn mower! We're probably going to treat the decking after all, or at least some of it. We have concluded that realistically we can't afford to put composite down/extend the patio this year so we will work with what we've got. I think there might even be some leftover paint from the previous owner which will do given it's a temporary measure.

The shower is still a WIP - with doing the overtime this week I haven't had a lot of time to keep working at the sealant, but the new seals and runners arrived. I also managed to find a pair of small nesting tables for £25, so we've replaced our coffee table as it was just too big for the room the way we have it laid out. At some point - because it's like a metal tray on a base - we're going to put a wooden top on it so we have some cat proof storage. Trying to focus on one DIY project at a time though.

As you can probably tell, I find the garden far more exciting than inside the house. :rotfl:

DD265

eBay sales are going very well - all my auctions are ending this week and so far up to £400 paid for with another £200 in pending payments or bids on still live auctions. I worked out the bare minimum I could sell for by the time postage (I always offer free UK postage, it's less hassle) and fees are taken into account, so whilst there are a couple of items where I've only made a few pence profit, I won't make a loss on anything. I'll need to deduct fees and postage from those figures then, but I'm very pleased. I've still got loads more to prep and list, only between the listing and overtime I ran myself into the ground last week so I'm taking a bit of a breather.

We bought an air fryer at the weekend - a £60 one so not excessive but we need to make sure it pays for itself - and have already used it twice. So far so good. I also did some baking last night; muffins and flapjack, and had a go at homemade Nutella but I'm not sure of the end result of that one! We're aiming to swap out the breakfast bars, snacks and takeaways with home-made options. There's the initial outlay on ingredients, but the box of cornflour and the bottle of honey for example will last a while.

I'm thinking that when we do the weekly shop, we ought to do a bit of a circuit with the order based on location... Aldi>B&M>Lidl and then either Tesco/Sainsburys depending on the mood we're in/whether I need fuel (no petrol station at Tesco even though it's a big 'un!). I always meal plan, rather than taking advantage of something because it's on offer, but we can try and get 'bits' cheaper - it'd be interesting to see how that works out. Often it just feels like too much hassle. We've also started swapping out a few brands; gone is the Coke Zero, replaced instead with Sainsbury's own which tastes just fine.

My plan for the eBay funds is to pay the hundreds off the MBNA credit card. Change can go into savings towards the door. MBNA is currently down to £2600 - well on the way to getting it paid off by 'interest date' in November. The Barclaycard is at £1900 and they're still offering me balance transfers (not that I intend to need it!) so I feel like I'm making progress on those.

So far this month I've got 2 no spend days, and it's about time I aimed to build those up again. I'd like to aim for 15/30 and get back into the habit, which is also good for the weightloss!

DD265

Car gave me a bit of grief this week; I thought the suspension had gone! It ended up costing £20 - just a big stone wedged between the wheel and brake caliper - but am in a dispute with my breakdown provider over a charge for having the car winched from the road onto the back of the truck. I wasn't told about the £135 charge beforehand (it was in fact a good 7 hours after the recovery before they rang me about it) and I wasn't given the option. Apparently 'winching' counts as using specialist equipment but I fail to see how!

I also got a reminder from my boss that as of April, I need a car younger than 10 years old in order to keep my £450pm car allowance. They gave me a 2 year leeway but I conveniently forgot about it, and we bought a house so... no new car fund! It's caused me quite a bit of stress because the ideal budget would be £8k. I've still got to prioritise paying off the MBNA card whilst it's interest free, but the Barclaycard is 0% until June next year so in theory I could just keep chipping away at that and divert funds towards a new car. I don't like it though, I was so looking forward to getting those cards paid off this year!

This means keeping on with the eBaying (intending to start listing again this week) but I am not sure I can keep up the overtime. I've burnt out; I'm tired all the time, lack motivation for most things and generally feel like I've lost my spark.

Going to take the weekend to regroup and go from there. I think I'll also do a revised SOA too because it's been a while.

DD265

The current plan is as follows:

1) pay off MBNA credit card (£2600 to go)
2) throw that money at the car fund - aiming £4k by March
3) pay off the Barclaycard after (will be down to £1k by March)

Mostly I'll do this with a combination of overtime/bonuses from work (neither of which are guaranteed) and eBaying.

Unfortunately, the car is going in for a full service and a cambelt change on Wednesday. It's due so it'll be done, but I could've done without the bill. The eBay sales so far should cover that hopefully. All it means is that I'm another £500 or so behind where I thought I'd be on paying down the MBNA card.

I'm still exhausted but I have Friday off work so looking forward to a short week. My plan for the day is to get as much eBaying done as possible; it's a shame that the £1 FVF offer was this weekend but fingers crossed there'll be something next weekend. Relisted some things today, got another batch of ponies to get on and then all the horse stuff/clothes/misc in the spare room. Mom's given me a load of good quality stuff she was going to donate and said I can sell that and keep the proceeds which will definitely help. This includes her gorgeous and expensive mother of the bride outfit. I've got my wedding dress to deal with too...

I've bought some shelves for the garage to carry on with the 'gym conversion'. It's fairly well organised already but I can do better! I have a 'health' pot in my budget where I put money for physio/chiro/prescriptions/glasses/dentist etc. I do have the healthcare cashplan but it doesn't cover everything, however the pot has been building up nicely so I used some for the shelves - the gym is for my health afterall!

We've got fresh herbs in the garden now, and some strawberry plants. The garden is definitely still my happy place.

OH finished stripping the sealant from our shower; it needs to be thoroughly cleaned then resealed and the doors put back on. Looking forward to completing that this week. Another in-the-house job is sorting out our kitchen 'pantry' cupboards; as I've been baking/we've been trying different recipes, we have more ingredients and it's all a bit shoved in. We've got some plastic containers from Ikea that were used to hold the cat things, and I have some sturdy boxes upstairs so I'm going to do a swap, and those containers can go into the cupboards. I think it'll work well.

Our boiler has been playing up though; the pilot light is out. We may possibly have drilled through an electricity cable above the thermostat, but the boiler does have power so we aren't sure. We have cover with British Gas - free with our utilities contract - so they're coming out tomorrow. It's £99 excess and the callout/labour/parts should be fully covered up to £1k so not expecting to pay out any more there, but we have the emergency fund if we need to!

Charity bag collection tomorrow for the air ambulance so I'm off to sort through some clothes.

beanielou

Hope the car gets on ok on Wednesday.

DD265

Thanks Beanielou.

Full service, cambelt, rear coil springs and rear brake discs/pads... £717 later, I'm wondering whether it was worthwhile. It all needed doing, but I could've not spent the money and gone and gotten a car on finance (be it lease or PCP/PCH) instead. I still don't want to do that but the more I think about it, the more I think that I'm not going to 'win' however I go about it. If I buy a car outright, I'll know that I can only keep it for a couple of years, so whilst I've no strict monthly repayments I'll be putting away a lot to save for the next one. If I get one on lease, I'll be making the repayments which is probably a similar amount or less than I'd need to save to for next one, but I might never escape the cycle then. I've decided to see what the lay of the land is when my MBNA card is paid off.

Current payments for July are £400 to MBNA and £100 to Barclaycard. I'm waiting to find out what my eBay postage bill comes to (will keep track going forward) and see how much of the £150 in my PayPal account is 'spare'. I want to pay £700 off the MBNA card this month if possible, to take it under £2000.

I had Friday off work and mostly spent it tidying the garage. It has been decluttered (tools/DIY gear not withstanding) and we've got decent shelves in it. The budget for those - less than £45 - came from my 'health' budget category as this is all part of making it useable a gym. I've ordered some rubber floor mats (£85) to protect the weights and make the concrete floor a bit more comfortable to train on. Again, that's out of the health budget. It's a bit of a make-do gym, but I don't need much!

I watched Marie Kondo's series on Netflix and whilst I think most of it is common sense, I've felt a bit more motivated to declutter. I'm typically great at putting storage solutions in, but sometimes we really make the most of every inch when actually I prefer it if our cupboards are not packed full. The kitchen had an under-cupboard DVD player in the kitchen (can't fathom why) but the bolts - and wires - were taking up valuable space in the cupboard where we keep our glasses. Removed that today, donated to the local air ambulance chazza, and a bit of magic alternating the way the glasses are stood and we have so much more space in there now. It makes me far happier than it ought to. :rotfl:

I've treated myself to a mini peach tree and a mini nectarine tree for the garden; wanted them for a couple of months since I found out they could grow in containers. I've also bought massive pots for them (£20 each from Homebase, I had them reserved so didn't quite compute how big they'd be in real life ), then found out that you shouldn't 'over-pot' a tree because the roots can't cope with all the moisture. I'll think of something; we've loads of bricks still so maybe I'll fill the bottoms of the pots with those. :cool:

The garden is still definitely my 'happy place'; I would much rather spend my fun money on that than anything else right now. Garden centres/places selling nice pots are currently my favourite places to shop, and I am loving taking care of my plants. At this rate there'll be no room for furniture as I shall have filled the entire patio with potted plants.

I've got one more 'payment' to make for the front door from July's salary then that's covered and frees up over £100 a month. July is potentially a triple bonus month, (though I'm only certain of getting one right now), but it should also be relatively quiet. My sister's birthday is coming up (budgeted for) plus we've a social event on Saturday; cinema tickets will be free and I'll try to keep costs down on the rest.

It would be great to clear the eBay backlog in July then going forward I can simply list as I find things to put on. My overtime at work (and my potential to earn bonuses) is currently on stop so I have the time if not the motivation!