AimeeMum's Debt-free challenge

Whatlifeis

(De-lurking for this one.)


Ah, a crisis of confidence. The traditional writer’s anxiety. Even the most successful writers feel the dreaded self-doubt on their abilities so don’t let it stop you. It’s all a very normal part of growing as a writer. Besides, you would miss writing dreadfully if you stopped (I speak from experience).

At the end of the day, you’ve just got to keep chipping away at it, over and over again, regardless of your worries. Writing is like any craft – it needs constant practice. If it’s any reassurance, you ARE a good writer. You write with a great deal of humour and insight, plus your writing cadence is excellent. I wouldn’t be logging in here every day to read your updates if I didn’t love the way you write and I’m sure your historical writing is equally good. So keep going! (P.S. Sign me up for your book when it’s finished – I’d love to read it!)

aimeemum

Whatlifeis wrote: »

(De-lurking for this one.)


Ah, a crisis of confidence. The traditional writer’s anxiety. Even the most successful writers feel the dreaded self-doubt on their abilities so don’t let it stop you. It’s all a very normal part of growing as a writer. Besides, you would miss writing dreadfully if you stopped (I speak from experience).

At the end of the day, you’ve just got to keep chipping away at it, over and over again, regardless of your worries. Writing is like any craft – it needs constant practice. If it’s any reassurance, you ARE a good writer. You write with a great deal of humour and insight, plus your writing cadence is excellent. I wouldn’t be logging in here every day to read your updates if I didn’t love the way you write and I’m sure your historical writing is equally good. So keep going! (P.S. Sign me up for your book when it’s finished – I’d love to read it!)

Thank you so much for the kind words (and for taking the time to write them!). This week has been particularly tiring and I think that's why I was feeling so doubtful of my abilities. I thoroughly enjoy writing - it is my outlet and my one and only creative bone so I wont be giving it up anytime soon. I have decided that I merely need to enjoy it again and have spent some time this last few days examining some future themes and making lists of possibly blog posts, things I need to research and other things I need to follow up on generally. This is now my to-do list and I will just keep on swimming - so thank you again for the advice. You're right that I need to just keep chipping away.

As for the book I think it may be a while off yet....I'm 2k words into it and while I have a decent plan for my story, I am still far from it 'flowing' so I know I need some more time and energy to make it a success. Plenty of time...or that's what I'm telling myself anyway

aimeemum

What a week. I seem to have just spent this week spending money! I took the plunge and bought the last 2 pairs of shoes for the boys. Hubby and I went to the outlet yesterday looking for some replacement PE trainers for eldest and came out with walking trainers for DS1 (50% off at Mountain warehouse - cost us £14.99 which is the cheapest I've seen and he loves them!), a load of sweets from the haribo shop (naughty!) and a few other bits and bobs....and ended up going to ASDA to get the trainers and so picked up a couple of days of food to make the hourney worthwhile too. Anyway, after putting fuel in the car, getting a few other odds and sods (filler for the hole youngest made pulling down a curtain rail, superglue for middle DS's toy he broke, etc) we spent £130 :eek:

Still, at least that is now ALL the spending I should need to do until the end of June (can't afford it anyway, even if I needed it! lol) - I've sorted the bills for this week and next so the books are balance and I need to do some really frugal shopping for the next week or 3 to make it all work, but I know I can do it as I've been doing it for the last 3 months!

One bit of good news.....late last year hubby took out a loan against his credit union to buy us a new TV and a roof box for the car. Both very much needed items and the credit union is a very cheap borrowing system so we went for it. His payments are currently set at £60 a week to cover the loan and put a bit extra into capital. We have worked out that on the 4th July the payment will mean that there's less left on the loan than he has in capital so he's going to pay off the loan in 9 weeks time and lower the payment by half to £30 a week. That's an extra £120 a month (about that, some months are 5 week months but for easy maths) - £30 is to go towards his gym membership that he wants to start then, so £90 a month will be extra in the kitty - that's a lot of money!!! :eek: And it wont even affect UC or anything because it's already part of his take-home pay and it's one less debt too....even furter down the debt free road

Becuase of the spendy nature of this week I've not done my debt repayments yet (apart from the 2 that are on SO for a thursday.) I'll update my figures tomorrow once I've been to Morrisons to do the shopping. Not going to do the £10 of vouchers as I can't afford £100 in shopping but I do have a double points voucher to use

We also went and voted today...hope everyone used their vote wisely.

aimeemum

This week felt like a very long week but it's the weekend again :j - woohoo! No school runs and another short week next week too

Good stuff to report - I did the weekly shop for £47.55. I had a hard limit of £50 so i'm very pleased with that. I had to buy all the savers stuff I could muster, but we get to eat for the next week and that's what's important. That bill also included £1.80 on food for our camping trip (Kelloggs variety pack for £1 and 2x tins of Spaghetti and sausages for 40p each) - I'm planning on picking up a couple of things each week between now and the trip (have 3 more shops in that time) so I'm not having to go to the supermarket for a big shop as soon as we get to the campsite! lol Will do my usual and pick up milk and bread on the way there so we've got fresh stuff the first morning (although I think there's a shop on site - will have to check). Still on my list to get:
- Ingredients for Corned Beef Hash (tins of Corned beef and potatoes)
- Porridge Pots
- 5 x pot noodles -naughty but we always have them when we're camping!
- Jar/Tin of large hot dogs
Aim is to have at least half our meals already sorted so we can then just simply get bacon and top up with a couple of take-away meals/eat while on trips out. Love a good pasty!

On the home front today the weather is a bit on the changeable side. I had intended to get the strimmer out and tackle the front garden and the pumpkin patch (we aren't growing any this year so the weeks have kind of taken over!) - will see if it dries up enough otherwise it will have to wait until another day. Other jobs on today's schedule - laundry, boys are doing their chores, and I need to clean my kitchen (my hob needs doing!). Other than that, we're free. Kids are enjoying the snooker at the minute - a while ago MIL gave us a snooker/pool table (just a little fun size one but it's still 6ft long!) and we have set it up in the kitchen and they boys are loving it!

On the writing front I've set up a new page on my website to put up reviews of heritage sites we visit as a family. I love to do this so thought I may as well make something of it. We have a trip planned for either 11th/25th May (I'm planning on doing a car boot on one of those days so will go by weather etc and take us out on the other one) - just need to decide where we are going!?

Anyway, best be off to get the boys their breakfast - all my banking etc done and we have veggie fajitas on the menu for tea (not sure about the boys...will see what they fancy).

Forgot to add....logged onto my credit scores today and my TotallyMoney has gone up from 512 to 517.....not a lot and still in the 'very poor' section, but it's gone up!!

aimeemum

Decided to stop putting my skimmed pennies into my H2S (there's £9.48 in there atm) and instead I'm going to put them all over to the CCJ. Started today with an extra £1.50 sent over. I skim every other day so hopefully there will be more to send across on Monday and again on Wednesday to add into my pot. Idea is to try to bring the CCJ total down earlier - currently sat at £343.50 and a 'gone' date of 8th Aug, but want to get it gone by the end of July if possible which is 2 whole weeks earlier! - and then will see my totals going down quicker too. I feel like we've stalled a bit (not in a 'we can't do this' kind of way, but in a 'we need to do more' kind of way) and I don't like the slowed pace.

aimeemum

Not done one of these for a while so thought I would pop one up to give me some perspective again!

Hubby's Aqua CC - £650 - £132.80

My CC Vanquis - £952 - £745

CCJ (28/1/2016) - £580 - £343.50

Council Tax (including Arrears) 2018-19 - £1300 - £0:T:T:T

OVO Energy (Arrears) £1336 - £1339

Yorkshire Water (Arrears) - £220 - £160

It never feels like I've made much progress but seeing it written out like this, maybe I have!

Decided I needed to set some new targets (figures are current balances so they will change every week/month I put in my normal payments anyway but I'm going to try to stick to this schedule.

May - Water Arrears GONE - £160
June - CCJ GONE - £343
July - Saving to cover Summer holidays - £188 plus any extra I can muster.
August - Electricity arrears all GONE - £1,336
September - Aqua and Niggly little Lowells that are not included in the main one GONE - £331 total
October - Vanquis CC Gone - £745

abba1772

It's good to have targets it keeps you motivated xx

aimeemum

abba1772 wrote: »

It's good to have targets it keeps you motivated xx

Defintiely agree. I'm finding the motivation a little bit lacking at the moment - basically because these last 4 weeks I've not been able to make any headway due to masses of expenses. I'm hoping they're over now and I can get back to getting rid of debt. Good thing to think though - normally I wouldn't even have been able to find the money for the expenses but because I'm budgeting the majority of the money has been accounted for/budgeted ahead of time so no nasty surprises. That's a massive change to just a few months ago for us as a household.

I am also a bit wary of being too optimistic...too many times in the past i've thought/said that we'll be good at the end of this month/week/year and then it's not come to pass because of x, y or z. I'm determined that this time it will be different....and as a result maybe I'm being a bit cautious with my positivity.

abba1772

The budgeting will help with the optimism like you said it's not happened because of x y or z but look at you now, you're finding the money within your budget so therefore not adding to your debt which means your debt free goal will come around quicker for you xx

aimeemum

Aw what lovely news about the Royal baby. I'm over having babies myself but I love a good baby arrival. A few people I know are pregnant/have little tiny ones at the moment and I love the cuddles!

Everyone is back out to school today and I'm relieved. I love the kids and we had a nice laid-back weekend but I need to get back to some sort of routine. I've now got 3 days to myself as hubby is at work all week until Friday and even then he's out most of Friday. I did a lot of housework yesterday and it's an oven-ready tea tonight so hopefully I can try to get some work done this morning and maybe watch a movie this afternoon if I can.....not sure what I want to watch though.

Money stuff - this week I'm going to sort out some more stuff to go to the car boot. If the weather looks ok I'll get the rest of it all down out of out the loft on Friday morning and give it all a good dust. Hope it's on (It was cancelled this weekend as the weather was naff) as it would be great to get rid of all the clutter and make some spending money for the holiday.

Not a lot else going on - pay day on thursday. I will do my meal plan and shopping list at some point today as normal. Going to do the shop at Lidl this week (because I'll be going into town anyway on Thursday so may as well) and I think I'll do a trawl of the charity shops to look for reading books for the kids as they've run out of new material! If I happen to find a new top while I'm in there that would be great too.:o