Living in the black

Yellow_mango

Tomorrow is DH’s birthday. I have used my personal money to buy him some nice chocolate, and will take him out for dinner tomorrow evening. It’s nice to have my own money to spend. I also bought myself some supplements - that’s something I always feel bad about using joint account funds for. Other things I need to buy for myself but need more research / saving up are some decent sandals (I live in flip flops at home, but can’t wear these for work) and some new shampoo / conditioner. I want to try some solid bar ones.

No other spending or movements today. So to alleviate the boredom of waiting for payday I’m going to try and set some daily goals - inspired by other diaries I’ve been reading on here.

Health / well-being goals
1. Restart intermittent fasting, and be consistent with taking supplements / vitamins
2. Incorporate some form of mindfulness / visualisation practice. Still working out the best way to do this.
3. Do 10x press-ups

Financial Goals
4. Sell something / junk something
5. Stick to spending budgets
6. Monitor energy usage

Yellow_mango

So I’ve been completely hopeless at sticking to any of my goals. But I thought I’d check in anyway.

The figures are in for July and I managed a total reduction in debt of £625. Not too bad given the holiday I guess. Hopefully August will be better.

ohdearhowdidthathappen

That's a brilliant reduction considering the holiday!!

Yellow_mango

Thank you!

I’m honestly struggling to stay engaged and motivated at the moment. Just bored mostly I think now everything is set up and running and there’s nothing left to do or plan. It feels like forever until we’ll actually be able to start saving for anything fun. I even started looking at additional mortgage terms to fund the extension the other day. But we’re a way off being able to do that either (they’ll only lend up to a total of 85% LTV and we’re currently over 90%).

Oh well. I’ll just keep plodding on.

Yellow_mango

Some good news going into the weekend - a promotion I was working towards at work has just been confirmed :-)

So that’ll be a bit more money coming in from next month. I’m pleased I have a system in place to make sure the extra ends up going where it should and not just disappearing! DH and I both have year end bonuses on the way too - should be paid in this month’s salary.

I still can’t decide what to do with savings. I think I will after all just pay off the credit cards as quickly as possible, even though they’re on 0%. So that delays the decision for a few months. But after that I keep flipping between paying down the mortgage (in the hope we can effectively re-borrow in a few years), or just keeping in the best savings account I can find :-/

mark55man

I'm liking regular savers at the moment. with Nationwide and HSBC you can get 5% on £250per months for 12 months - so useful if its coming from extra income rather than moving blobs of cash/bonus around. 5% is more than most fixed rates at the moment, and a little more than most standard variables.

At the end of the year (note you have delayed a decision for a year and earned about £100 interest) then you can decide to knock it off the mortgage, pay of a CC or build up an EF (but probably not at 5%)

if you can afford more than one £250 and have enough bank accounts you can multiply this up

Yellow_mango

Thanks! I have an HSBC account so will be opening a regular saver with them. I’m not sure whether I can be bothered opening new accounts with Nationwide and FD to access more.

craftyali

Hi, Y.M . Just started my own Diary and reading through a few.

It sounds like you will be debt-free soon.

One of our biggest monthly costs is Sky (including Sports). Hubby keeps moaning about it - but the account is in my name, so I know that I need to put my big adulting knickers on and get on the phone to them. Need to get the Sports cancelled - we can use Now TV for F1 and I can live without the live golf and the extra cycling coverage. Problem is that last time I phoned Sky, I was on there for over 3 hours!! They really are the devil.

Yellow_mango

Hi craftyali - thanks for popping in!

Our Sky Account is in my husbands name, so he has to call them. He always seems to come away with some “great deal” that is totally not what we had agreed on! I’m not sure we’ll ever manage to totally cancel it.

ohdearhowdidthathappen

Yellow_mango wrote: »

Hi craftyali - thanks for popping in!

Our Sky Account is in my husbands name, so he has to call them. He always seems to come away with some “great deal” that is totally not what we had agreed on! I’m not sure we’ll ever manage to totally cancel it.

This made me laugh, my husband would be the same! :rotfl: