Keeping on the Straight and Narrow...

DancingInTheRain

So the builder came today, all the prep has been done and he'll be back tomorrow to finish off. Work not as busy for me as usual for a Monday, meaning I had time to hand my notice in and have a proper chat with my manager. Also told my colleagues so no going back now :eek:

£5 cashed out from Shoppix today after scanning some receipts Mum passed on to me and another £5 gained from paying some 5p's in to the bank. Instead of sending to CC1, have popped these in a savings pot earmarked for new workwear

[Deleted User]

Ooooh scary/exciting times DITR!

Hope the chat with your manager went well x

savingholmes

When do you start the new job?
Good luck with the building works too

FootyFanDan

Hope the manager chat was not too awkward but now it becomes more real haha. I really hope they don't make your remaining time there difficult, some companies do, get u are on the countdown already

DancingInTheRain

Thanks guys, the chat went really well. He understands it’s a bit of a no brainer for me with the terms & conditions being as good as they are. I’m going to do shifts at one of our branches others don’t like to cover so I think the last few weeks will be fine as I’m helping everyone out by doing them plus I can claim travel expenses so win win!

So I’ve been a bit quiet on here this week as a result of work being quite full on the last two days plus having the builder at our house. Building work all done now though & it’s nice to see it all looking finished after a year.

Final bill for that will be £400 so just going to pay that out of my wage tomorrow rather than using savings.

We’ve also decided to just pay minimum payments to the debt this month & next month as a result of the upcoming changes. I need to take the pressure off and I simply won’t have as much time to focus on the small wins for a little while until we settle in to a new routine.

This will also help us to pay for the building work, a new work wardrobe for me and we also have DH & DS2’s birthdays in the next few weeks which we’d like to have a small celebration for.

Once I get paid from the new job at the end of September we’re going to look at increasing the minimum payments to our 3 debts, utilising the increase in income, so should be able to catch up again soon.

Trying not to be too hard on ourselves about this as we have paid more off the debt than we could’ve hoped for since starting this diary, just don’t want to lose momentum.

I finish 5 weeks tomorrow then start the new job 5 weeks on Monday so lots of change ahead.

DancingInTheRain

What a hectic week, my feet have barely touched the ground!

I got paid yesterday so time to summarise the 2nd month of my debt free journey.

Debt Totals 01/07/19 £13,217, now £12,860. Total reduction this month £357. Total reduction since starting this diary £776

Standard Debt Payments £170, total extra payments £187

Extra payments made up from -
Receipt Hog £5.00, Ebay £85.70, Facebook = £18.00, TCB £57.30, Rounding Down Accounts £10.22, Prolific Academic £10.88

£9,999 01/01/20 Goal -
As of 01/06/19 I needed to pay £3,637 by 31/12/19. This is now at £2,860

Also managed 9 NSD's

Lost track of spends a little this week, lack of time to plan and organise has led to silly spends. Suffice to say grocery spends have ended up being higher than last month, certainly over the £400 mark :eek: Fuel costs have also been over £200 as predicted.

Both of these are high but at least after 2 months tracking I now have a realistic idea of what we are spending and where, so I can use this to budget better over the extra 2 pay periods where the plan is to stick to minimum debt payments in order to absorb some extra cost we can't or don't want to avoid.

I must admit I'm feeling twitchy at the thought of not paying any little extras so I can see me giving in to my overpayment addiction at some point, perhaps a weekly TT when I update my survey totals might help

August is definitely going to be busy with DS1 off school, working my notice period, DH and DS2's birthdays and a couple of meetings with my new employer to help me hit the ground running in September. DH also has another potentially time consuming project coming up at work too so can see these next few weeks passing in a heart beat again.

So let's see what Month 3 of the diary brings!

DancingInTheRain

Happy Monday everyone.

Day off today for me and DH so we've been catching up on chores and having a quietish morning as the weather's been atrocious. Starting to brighten up now so hopefully get the boys out for some fresh air soon.

Had a busy weekend out and about at a local music festival, total spends £50 from our personal spends. The boys spent time with their grandmas so, as usual, have been spoiled rotten

Have also spent some time setting up a YNAB account, have tried this a couple of times before but could never get to grips with it. This time I've discovered Nick True on YouTube and the way he explains it made it all really click with me so I think while I'm not overpaying, this may help me focus clearly on the budget without logging every little detail on here (as useful as it's been for me), will see how I get on in the free trial period.


In the last few days I've also made £15.31 from ebay but, instead of using this to overpay CC1 I've used some of the money to purchase 2 dresses from ebay to wear when I start the new job, total spend of £12.15 so £3.16 left to put towards something else.


Hope everyone has a good week, must spend more time catching up with diaries x

savingholmes

I've tried ynab but gone back to excel as I want to be able to forecast more easily.

the music festival you went to sounds fun.

FootyFanDan

Happy Monday, sounds like a fun weekend was had I think its nice to ensure there is still fun mixed in with the focusing on budgets and debts sometimes its easy to forget we have to live too Sounds like you have had an hectic few weeks though.

Interested to know how you get on with YNAB its something I once tried but could never really get to grips with it properly

Have a great week.

DancingInTheRain

Thanks guys, I think YNAB will help me to drill down on all the ad-hoc spends that life creates. I see it as another piece of the budgeting puzzle as our annual pots bill is definitely working well for us and I've definitely got more awareness on how much is spent on groceries & fuel by tracking them the last 2 months so will be able to monitor everything else now.

The music festival was fab, we're both big live music fans and DH is actually in a band which fits in around his regular job so when I say he's working on weekends that's usually what he's doing. So for the first time in a year I got to see him play on Friday,I always get a kick out of watching him play and it was a great night with a large, appreciative crowd. We had a walk around the festival with the boys on Saturday afternoon before DH played again Saturday night and then we went out together yesterday and saw a few bands including my nephew's band so had a proud auntie moment too For a fairly small family we seem to have a lot of musical talent (passed me by sadly as much as I love listening to music). It was great to let our hair down after a busy few weeks.


Just had another ebay sale on one of my larger items making £45.83 profit which will go in to the new work clothes pot.