A new bundle creating a new motivation

Kebby

Thank you for all your replies and advice - I think my plan is whilst on maternity leave, any spare cash we do miraculously have - I will put towards the holiday. But keeping inheritance savings as an emergency fund, then when I go back to work we'll look to use this on the holiday and any money saved whilst I was off can go onto the credit cards. Seems a bit of a backwards way to do it I know, but I think it's just a mind thing in wanting the money to go towards something nice and not debts.

So actually a relatively successful last couple of days.

Sunday myself and the baba went to something called 'Little pickles market' - it's essentially stalls with people selling second hand baby bits. Managed to pick up 7 x baby grows 2 x trousers and a brand new book all for £8 (including the £1 entrance fee) - bargain! Will absolutely be going back for more bits to kit out the kiddie.

Monday I did the weekly food shop at Aldi - managed to spend £61, so slightly more than I had hoped but this did include some wine and flowers for my parents for their anniversary, and a few cupboard staples that needed topping up and I don't buy regularly. So I'm relatively happy taking these into consideration. However overall for the month think we're set to go over/probably have already gone over the food budget. Rah. To keep it positive though, it's less than last month. October I am determined that we will stick to the budget.

So other half's phone contract is due to expire end of October - had a look around for some SIMO deals and we've found one for £17 a month, he currently pays £58 (+ additional every month when he goes over his data!!!), so a saving of £41 minimum per month, and Quidco are also offering £60 cashback which is great.

Also been speaking to Virgin to see what deal they can do on the TV when our Sky is up next month, they've come back with £71 per month, so that's £19 less than we spend currently a month, but going to chat to Sky and see what they can come up with now too.

Now going to concentrate on doing a new SOA ensuring absolutely everything is covered, as it was quite a rough one previously - will repost when complete.

Also to round up the update, the husband has been doing a serious amount of overtime, so depending on what I actually receive payment wise at the end of the month (as I have absolutely no idea what I will be taxed), we could be doing much better than anticipated this month. Also he's been told he's getting a payrise, but yet to hear how much. So hubby is definitely doing well for the team

Kebby

So I'm still working on a new SOA as I'm just not happy with the figures. I'm also trying to incorporate an emergency fund saving, does anyone have any thoughts on how much is a good amount to have for an emergency fund? I was thinking around the £1k mark?

In other good news, signed a new deal with Virgin for £79 per month, although I think before that happens we might have missed the window on cancelling Sky before the payment goes up, and I'm struggling to get hold of them as their website keeps failing and phoning them I keep getting met by a 'we're busier than usual because of the storms' message.

I also signed up to a survey site and for mystery shopping. In just 2 days I've accumulated nearly £10 in surveys and have 2 mystery shop assignments booked in for Wed earning me £20. I'm giving myself a goal of earning an additional £50 a month by doing these things whilst I'm off and putting it completely towards the debt, starting with the sofas. I know a few people said not to bother on paying it off as it will be done by April, but I feel like it would be a mind over matter thing and not only free up an extra £30 a month but motivate me towards paying the other bits off!

Oh and I found a £20 cheque we hadn't cashed from some old car tax. So I'll cash that once I receive the baby bonus money, and both will go towards the Cornwall holiday.

Just looking forward to being paid next week now so we can get moving with things and also to know a little better where I'm at with my maternity pay, as just no idea what I'll be taxed!

GlendaSugarbean

£500 is a good minimum EF, £1000 is I think the recommended minimum if you own your house. Ideally you should aim for a buffer of 3-6 months expenses but that is a stretch when you are starting out!

Disclaimer: my EF is currently standing at a whopping 50 quid :eek:

Kebby

GlendaSugarbean wrote: »

£500 is a good minimum EF, £1000 is I think the recommended minimum if you own your house. Ideally you should aim for a buffer of 3-6 months expenses but that is a stretch when you are starting out!

Disclaimer: my EF is currently standing at a whopping 50 quid :eek:

Ah thank you - I'm thinking £100 a month to get us started and a bit of a buffer going. When you say 3-6 months expenses do you mean all of your bills? If so, this would take us a VERY long time :rotfl:

Kebby

So, finally managed to get hold of Sky and cancel our TV - they couldn't get anywhere near close to the deal we've got through Virgin. I did COMPLETELY forget though that my phone is through Sky and I get a £10 discount because we had TV.. pure panic when they told me this, but I spoke to the mobile team and not only did they wave the extra £10, they managed to reduce my tariff down - so now going to be paying £36 per month rather than £42. Most definitely wasn't expecting that one! That means once we change over the other half's plan to a SIMO deal, total bill cuts we've managed to make per month total at £63, not too bad!

We have a Tesco credit card that we put all of our monthly food, petrol and other spending on - which builds up clubcard points from us. So we had quite a bit of money built up, and so we've used their clubcard boost to triple our vouchers and get us a well earned, baby free, night away in October - also there's enough vouchers left to put towards an evening meal. So definitely looking forward to that, without having to feel guilty about spending any money!

Aldi shop today - only spent £31, really impressed with myself. This month I don't think the final food and petrol bill is going to be great (yet to tally it all), so I'm really hoping we can improve on this next month, I'm feeling positive after this weeks shop.

Still waiting for pay day, it's coming round very slowly this month! BUT other half has had an AMAZING month and will be taking home over £2.6k, we're just waiting on my payslip to see the damage from maternity, but he's given us an extra £700 this month, and because our new car payment doesn't come out until end of October (so only £348 to pay on cars this month) we should hopefully be in a better place than anticipated! Fingers crossed the tax man is nice to me!!

Kebby

So had a bit of a blow yesterday which I'm a tad upset about. My mother-in-law is a child minder and has always said she'd have our little boy for 'just some pocket money' - so in our eyes that's a small amount every week to buy her some coffees or something. Finally found out yesterday that she wants £225 a month from us (or £180 if a 4 week month) to have him for 2 and a half days a week. My parents will have him (free of charge), the other 2 days. Now don't get me wrong, I am ETERNALLY grateful as I know this is super cheap and just a drop in comparison to what other people pay for childcare. But what I'm upset about is that she didn't mention this before, and it's completely going to throw all of our finances out. Going to have to relook at all the figures, and hope that I get the promotion I've been promised when I return to work, otherwise these debts will take years to pay off.

Feeling a little disheartened!

Kebby

On a more positive note, payday arrived - and my maternity wasn't half as bad as it potentially could have been, although still waiting for my payslip to see the official damage to hopefully give us a better idea on what the next few months might hold.

However I'm extremely annoyed with myself on how much we spent on food and petrol AGAIN this month. Rahhh really need to get better at managing this. We could have had ALOT more spare.
Husband's hard work on overtime definitely helped us out this month though, and so ignoring the blip with the food and petrol we were able to finish getting the money for our Cornwall holiday and make a (small) start towards our big May holiday. Minimum payments paid all round.

Slow but steady.

Kebby

Small update from me..

Survey balance is sitting at £12.92 - keeping it in there for the minute so it can't accidentally be spent on something else! But will be going towards the sofas, alongside the £20 from my mystery shops when I receive that. Going to keep plugging away with both of these in the hope I can make a bit more so we can pay the sofa finance off sooner rather than later.

Another successful food shop - £36! Hoping I've cracked it and can stick within budget this month.

Heading up north to Manchester to see some family this weekend, so will have the added petrol expense and also we're heading out for dinner on the Friday night, so not ideal as think we're going to be super tight this month, to the point of I'm not even sure if we'll have enough to cover all of the bills! completely forgot about the child benefit this month, so that wasn't factored into anything so I've kept that £80 to carry over to next month, so hopefully that might help. This maternity pay stuff isn't great!!

Slow progress, but my main focus at the moment is just to try and avoid any additional spends on the cards whilst I'm off. This will be a big achievement if we can do it!

Kebby

Really frustrated over the last couple of weeks, as things just don't seem to be going our way. Had a letter to say our mortgage is up for renewal shortly - but checking the deals out online the cheapest deal because of the interest rate rises means we'll be paying an extra £80 a month - combined with the unexpected childcare costs, we're going to have very little spare to go towards the credit cards, let alone any extra spending outside of our bills. Our only hope is that the other half's payrise is decent when they finally let him know what it is, and to hope that my promised promotion on return to work comes through too!

In addition to this, we've been royally screwed over by Virgin Money on our second credit card. I set up a direct debit last month after stupidly missing the payment date (just completely lost track of time and also husband receives the emails so he didn't tell me when they reminded!) so we received one £9 late fee then, but this month I logged in to check our balance and see we had been charged ANOTHER late fee and the direct debit hadn't been paid. I quickly paid to avoid any further fees, and contacted them. They said the direct debit had been set up but it hadn't been recognised because it was after the statement date and that it would be taken this month. I was fuming. But even more fuming when I see a £70 interest charge pop-up on the statement too!!! I can only presume they have revoked our 0% because we missed two payments. I tried contacting them but couldn't get any sense out of them, so hubby is going to call up today to give them what for and try and get it refunded and 0% re-instated. Ideally I want the £9 fee refunded as well as I really don't think that's our fault! But I will settle for the £70 at the moment, because right now our balance is sitting at £4,361 which means we've not even dented our original figure and are worse off than we were before

Trying to look at a more positive note, I did a KIT day at work this month so should get around £150 pay for that, which is great! Also have 2 more mystery shop assignments totally £33, and then we sold a couple of bits adding up to £19 so both of those will be added to the sofa fund

Kebby

So another update from my. Hubby managed to get the £70 interest on the Virgin card refunded. Phew!! But late fee wasn't refunded, despite still disputing this wasn't our fault!! But just glad the interest was refunded. However huge downer is because of the interest payment charge our min payment for this month is going to be £122 God knows how we're going to afford this, our combined pay will be only £3,253 as other half didn't put in any overtime and I'm pretty sure I wasn't paid the £150 for my days work for this month (haven't had my payslip yet though so not 100% sure on that), we've massively over spent on food and petrol again this month, and I'm feeling really disheartened by this as I have been trying SO HARD to get the food bill down, and have rarely spent over £40 in Aldi. I think our downfall must be when we head into Tesco to by the formula, I really don't know what's going on, but I'm DETERMINED to sort it out. I haven't worked out the final figures yet but I'm pretty sure we're going to be in minus this month... so frustrated, feel like I'm trying so hard, but things just keep going wrong! I'll update when I have the final damage numbers...

To try and end on a more positive note I've been doing more mystery shops and surveys, and getting the sofa credit paid off is the only thing getting me through at the moment, despite how backwards it might appear! So the total towards the sofa's stands as the below:

Surveys = £22.27
Mystery shops (not all in my bank account yet) = £64
Selling items = £19
Total: £105.27

But what's even better news is that I double checked the balance and it's actually lower than I thought! So it currently stands at: £179.38 - so take off our October monthly payment of £29.86 + the extra £105.27 from above, and we've only got £44.25 left to pay! So that's only next months payment + £14.39!! So this means we should technically be able to pay it off by the end of November instead of April, I'm so happy about this! So after this is done all of my mystery shop & survey payments will be reserved for wacking the credit cards down.