Trying to be back in black, in the words of ACDC

beanielou

Fudgefund ~~. Good news on all things phone.

teafor2

Hi Fudge well done on the bingo win :T I know I shouldn't but I am laughing at the silliness of paying insurance for something you don't have. Hopefully that sort of malarkey is well and truly in the past

Get a pot started for Christmas and Trips. Honestly, you'll be surprised at how quickly the money grows and it really does boost morale to be saving for something nice.

Have a great week. xx

Fudgefund

I made it to payday. Because I've known for a while how bad this month is going to be I've been thinking about this day for ages. Last night it felt like Christmas Eve. It's amazing how excited I can get about the prospect of having no money really. :rotfl:

The past few days have gone well, I managed to get a birthday present for my niece for £3 which should have been £25. When I got to the shop it said the price was reduced from £25 to £23, and I had a £5 voucher I got from Sa1nsburys which brought it down to £18. I then used a £15 gift voucher I got for my wedding and bingo, £3 gift (£1.50 when split with DH). Other than that the past two days I've spent £2 on chocolate and that's it.

Today I had to go for a meal with work due to someone leaving and spent £12, absolutely no way I could get out of it. I also spent 85p on milk. I had 85p in my purse, and the £12 I have budgeted for (I was going to go up to £15, like the last of the big spenders). This month is really a treading water month, but I have already got my debt down a bit over the past month, and I will do well not get into even more debt which is what would have happened otherwise, so this is okay.

I've paid £200 for the holiday I'm going on next week, and transport will cost me £91. :eek:
I've paid just over the minimum to FD, £60
BC is getting £63. The interest this month was more than I thought it would be following my mega payment. Sad times.
I owe DH £93 which includes a ticket for a show at the end of the month which I was worried about, but he's going to pay for my meal.
I have £40 a week to live on.
Me and DH have £250 between us for holiday spends, but I'm assuming the £40 will go too. My biggest problem is the holiday kitty. Completely impossible to control what other people are spending and drinking so can't be responsible for keeping costs down I'm going to try and drink as little as possible in the hope the alcohol will last longer!

If all works out I'll have £36 left of my overdraft by next payday. My budget is as tight as my jeans.

Fudgefund

I'm back from my holidays. I had a very nice week, financially it wasn't great but it wasn't a complete disaster either. I was extremely fortunate that my Mum was a bit of a star all week (she has no idea I'm in debt again and would kill me), she had expertly ordered the food for the week and did a lot of cooking, so we only ate out one evening in the week. Me and DH still managed to spend £381 between us, but the over spend after our budget and weekly spends was only £60, so not so bad. I've paid him £30 which leaves me with £10 from my weekly spends.

The good news is I absolutely hate hot weather (summer is a terrible time for us chubbers) so I'm happy to stay in this weekend and rack up a few NSDs. I didn't spend anything yesterday, today is looking good and I'm hoping to pull through until Tuesday. God knows I have enough housework to keep me busy and I also have tv to catch up on from being away. I'm going to withdraw £10 and try to have as much of it as possible by Friday, fingers crossed. Going out in the big smoke on Saturday so need to keep my eye on that, but hopefully if I have £10ish from this week and £40 for next week I'll pull through. This is a four week month for me which is a welcome bit of luck (5 weeks next month but I don't have to pay for my hair).

It's not looking good for an overpayment this month but I need to maintain some perspective on all of this. I started off by saying I would commit to £250 a month to debt repayment, then took money out of my joint savings to pay off £3000 and promised DH I would pay this back as a priority at £250 a month as we need to save for much needed house repairs. So I'm now in the position where I need to pay £250 to savings, £60 minimum to one card and anything I can throw at my other interest charging card per month. If I go too far I'll have no money for anything else and it's not as though anything will happen if it takes a couple of months longer to pay off. I might write that on the front page of my budgeting note book.

No other excitements here, I do feel as though I've gained a week as the bank holiday is early this year. I'm going to try and get back into routine and then weigh myself on the 01/09/2019. My plan is to try to lose 28lbs by Christmas (trust me, it's the one type of pound I can comfortably afford to lose) and then weigh myself monthly. If I weigh myself monthly I won't discover I haven't lost anything one morning and eat a four pack of Twirls. That's the plan, anyway. :rotfl:

Fudgefund

PS - I've updated my signature to reflect my whole debt, which looks horrific. I have been compartmentalising my debts in my mind, or, to put into common parlance, been in total denial. Honestly in my mind my overdraft doesn't count and my FD card is basically out of my field of vision.

beanielou

Glad that you had a nice break

teafor2

Hi Fudge Glad you had a good holiday and you sound like you've come back ready to get down to some serious debt busting.

Are you being charged interest on both your cards? I know you've said you're going to pay back £250 to the joint savings but do you think your husband might be willing to re-look at that so you can pay more off your credit cards and get them cleared sooner, especially if they're accruing interest.

Good luck with the spending challenge this week and also with the weight loss. I've been losing 2 stones since DS was born and haven't achieved it yet - he's nearly 14 :eek::rotfl: I'm sure you'll do much better than me though. xx

Fudgefund

Thanks Beanielou.

Teafor2, I'm being charged interest on one card (£1050 balance) and I have zero interest for 21 months on the other (embarrassingly I have no idea when this ends but it's at least a year off). I know as a snowballer I need to be paying the interest charging card off first but I am seriously worried about my roof in particular as we've had a leak in our spare room after really heavy rain. DH wants the money back ASAP to repair it so I'm prioritising that. I'm just going to throw everything I can within reason at the card. I feel really bad about it, I wish i'd never used the money to pay repay the card and yet here we are. I'm just trying to make the best of it.

I probably won't do better than you with the weight loss, but I feel in the zone to have a go. The zone comes and goes for me about twice a year so all fingers crossed. :rotfl: I keep reading your diary and wishing it was Christmas. I suppose I will be soon!

beanielou

Have a good day:)

Fudgefund

Post weekend update - both positives and minuses (not all of the financial variety).

I managed to stay in all weekend and post 4 NSDs! I'm very proud of this. If I didn't have a job I reckon I'd be smashing NSDs out of the park, I genuinely love staying indoors. I'm also proud that I didn't eat too badly and I have been alcohol free for 6 days now. I'd love to make it to the end of the month without any booze.

Today the wheels fell off a bit. I had to buy some stationery for a course I'm doing (I wasted so many beautiful notebooks last year I got a delightfully bog standard number for £2.25). I had to get milk for work - 85p, and then the unholy horrors of the office collections after a couple of weeks off. £5.85 for two leavers and a maternity leave. :eek: I ended up in the position of having to put in for a more senior colleague who didn't have her purse, who already owes me £2 for a previous collection (she did mention this). I'm really hoping she'll turn up with this soon as she doesn't carry cash as a rule and I don't want to have to ask her.

Finally - I treated myself to a couple of books from WH Smiths as I was given some gift vouchers. Overspend of £3.99. I don't know why, but I harbour some kind of eternal shame over spending gift vouchers and always feel the need to overspend with them. Honestly no idea what that's all about.

Anyway, onwards and upwards, I have a hair appointment next week and I'm hoping against hope it will be £5 less than I budgeted for. If this is the case or my colleague pays me, I will be back on track. It's driving me mad that there's a £19.99 disparity between my overdraft balance and the amount I have left to 'spend'. I thought after bank holiday it would become apparent, but no. I've racked my brains and can't think of anything. Absolutely living the life here. :rotfl: