Little By Little...

Lydia42

Just popped by to say chin up, and hope the council accept your offer to pay off the debt. Keeping fingers crossed for you.

Willing2Learn

Just dropped by to say well done on clearing one of your Lowell debts, and good luck with your council repayment offer.


Re what you were saying about your difficulties with handling YNAB, and how you may try a spreadsheet...Well have you looked at the MSE Budget Planner spreadsheet? It needs either MS Excel or OpenOffice to work. Might be worth a go...

redmel1621

Willing2Learn wrote: »

Just dropped by to say well done on clearing one of your Lowell debts, and good luck with your council repayment offer.


Re what you were saying about your difficulties with handling YNAB, and how you may try a spreadsheet...Well have you looked at the MSE Budget Planner spreadsheet? It needs either MS Excel or OpenOffice to work. Might be worth a go...

Thank you

I was struggling with YNAB, but it was starting to become clearer the more I played with it and watched videos on youtube. I had decided to try a few months of it, but then found out you can only pay annually, so pretty much ditched it. It is a shame because I quite like the concept and if I could have paid the 6.99pm I would definitely have given it a few months trial.:cool:

Kitten868

Hi,

I think you're doing great! Just taking charge and knowing what's happening is half the battle and you're definitely getting there. Look how much you've already paid off! I think you need to focus on what debts you've got - as judging by the call are you even sure now? Find it all out write your new list with your actual debts on and then you can make a plan with f&fs. It might work easier clearing it a company at a time or maybe picking off all the little ones. Don't overwhelm yourself with it all but taking charge, I feel, makes me feel less overwhelmed. Keep up the great work xxx

redmel1621

Hello.

Not much to report here. We are reluctant to overpay anything at the minute, as we are not sure about dh's job. He is due to finish the contract he is on this week and has had no word on whether they have more work or not. Fortunately he has been in touch with some contacts and is pushing for a job at one of the companies they work for - FINGERS CROSSED.

I have double checked all our debt amounts and they all seem to match up with what I have recorded on here. It was only Lowell I had wrong because I didn't have any recent letters, but I do have for the other debts.

We have cut back our spending on takeaways, fast food and drinking this month. I'm not sure have cut back enough, but it is better than previous months. We have spent £53 so far and £20 of that was in service station when we went to collect the new motorbike. So a more accurate figure is £33. Dh has only been to McDonalds once and Costa once. We have only ordered one curry and have stuck to cheap drinks if we have gone to meet friends in the pub.

I know we need to cut back a bit more, but it is a start.

In terms of other spends, we have not bought anything apart from bike parts for DS1's bike. He came of it and broke a few bits on it.. Anything we have spent on it we can get back off him when he gets paid, but I might just leave it as we have bought it for him (It's probably cost about £70/£80ish in total)

Just a load of random waffle/musing from me today. I want to make sure I am regularly updating this diary otherwise I will get out of the habit. I want to keep my mission at the forefront of my mind.

redmel1621

I've filled out the financial sheet from the council and will send that off later. I'm still waiting to hear back from Robinson Way (Lloyds) to see if they will take the settlement figure I offered.

I've paid £10 off the Restons. £10 off STA and £10 off Next. As soon as we know where we are with the job situation, Both Restons and Next are £5pm agreements, so although a £5 overpayment isn't much, it's better than nothing.

It is my day off today, but I MUST get some work done and get organised for the week ahead.

kindofagilr

redmel1621 wrote: »

Thank you

I was struggling with YNAB, but it was starting to become clearer the more I played with it and watched videos on youtube. I had decided to try a few months of it, but then found out you can only pay annually, so pretty much ditched it. It is a shame because I quite like the concept and if I could have paid the 6.99pm I would definitely have given it a few months trial.:cool:

You can pay monthly, when I went into my app to cancel the subscription, the options were there to pay monthly or yearly xx

redmel1621

kindofagilr wrote: »

You can pay monthly, when I went into my app to cancel the subscription, the options were there to pay monthly or yearly xx

Ah ok. I haven't gone on to cancel yet, but everywhere I looked it only had a yearly option.

Dh has just been given his notice, so I don't think it will be wise to sign up to anything yet anyway. I will give a spreadsheet a try for now If I can't get the hang of that, I may just go back to good old pen and paper lol. It did me well enough many years back.:money:

kindofagilr

I hope you can I love my spreadsheet lol

Sorry about OH xx

BabyStepper

Great news about the Lowell debt...well done! Surprises like that every day would be great.

Cutting back is hard and I think you have made a great start. Reducing takeaways, drinks out and visits to costa is less of a shock than stopping it all suddenly. You are much more aware and that is a huge bonus.

I can't say I ever wanted to try YNAB, lots of people say it's hard to get your head round and also you have to pay for it. Kind of defeats the purpose for me. Let us know how you get on though, I may be persuaded to do the free trial. :cool: