Crazy Cat Lady Chapter 4 - The Aftermath

janb5

I completely echo Dawn and Foxholes comments re inappropriate message sending at silly o'clock!
Enjoy your day and remember 'baby steps' with everything else!  Remember your achievements and how well you're doing.  Soooo impressed!x

Chrystal

Great to hear you sounding so positive.  I hope you have a fab time with your friend and come home feeling refreshed and relaxed.  Totally agree with your take on Ex... and kudos to DD as the time messages were sent says it all really.  ((((hugs)))) XX

foxgloves

Hi CCL, 
I wondered if you would encounter this kind of problem when going for a mortgage because of something that happened to us when I sold my house & we went to get a joint mortgage on our current house. We were both working full time so 2 professional public sector salaries.... not huge but none too shabby either. We were asked by the building society manager about any outstanding debts. Of course this was back in the Spendy Years. So she added up our credit cards, loans & overdrafts & deducted the total from the amount we could borrow. As it happened, this left us able to borrow sufficient mortgage to buy our house, helped by the fact I was able to put up a decent deposit from the equity from selling my old house. I did take issue with her over one of the debts. Mr F had a £16k debt from a previous house buying disaster (bad relationship break-up) & it was my intention to pay this off in its entirety from the equity. I think I assumed she would add £16K back onto what she was prepared to lend us, but of course she didn't, as they weren't able to enforce that I did it & I could have gone & spent it on something else. It didn't prevent us getting a mortgage, but it did feel like a bit of a lesson in how debts can impact on us. Sadly not enough of a lesson to inspire us into changing our bad attitude to money though, as our spendy ways continued for a few more years before the LBM!
I think you'll find all sorts of ways you can cut back a bit. I used to make all sorts of little over payments when we were debt busting...... even £5 saved off a week's shopping by getting toiletries a the £ shop, a top sold on ebay, saving all my 20ps & banking them when they got to £20 & heaps of little things like that. Added to your regular monthly payments, every little bit really does add up. You do sound very focused & you know we will be cheering you on!!
F xx

Baileys_Babe

You sound really upbeat and focused.
Well done you in prioritising yourself. You definitely deserve a day off.

You are obviously thought highly of if they have given you extra papers to mark.

IMO your ex is selfish in not considering what time he contacted dd. Have you logged the details anywhere in case you need to refer to it in the future?

With regards to the debt v's 1% challenge, would 1% of 1% of the debt be more viable or 1% of 10% of the debt, I hope this makes sense to you, I know what I mean but I fear i haven't explained clearly.

1LuckyLady

HI CCL,  nice to hear your plans for the day.   I agree with the others about your ex,  would it be worth considering your DD changing mobile number?

crazy_cat_lady

Hey everyone  
I have had a lovely day with my friend, and I spent £19.24 so came home with 76p in my purse. I had my hand on some bargain wool to buy but put it all back again and am quite proud of myself for that because I sometimes have no willpower - however as long as I'm not exhausted and stressed then I can tackle anything. My friend is so lovely, she'd printed out some cat stickers for my planner (she bought me the planner and is encouraging me to use it lots), and some peacock pages as well. She's like my planner teacher - she checked through everything and told me off for not looking after myself for the past fortnight as I have literally just worked and slept. Not today though, I ate lunch, trawled BeeEmm and £land, got the couple of grocery bits I needed and had a lot of good chat and feeling rested, relaxed and a lot better than I did. Then we had coffee and trawled through the planners again to point me in the direction of debt busting, self care and frog eating.
Got home just as the windy weather was setting in - it sounds vile out there now. I can't imagine getting a decent sleep tonight but I remain hopeful that I will. I've not looked at the 17 papers at all because as I said, I'm having the day off. I have been all planner, laptop and budget - still no crochet just yet but I will get to that very shortly I know  
With regards to ex, I have asked dd a few times to block her dad but she won't - I don't think that she wants to lose the last point  of contact, just in case. She gets much less bothered by it than I do though (or at least she appears to - but I think it's genuine) and just ignores him. She will deal with him as and when she's ready I think - she's so mature and I am so proud of how she just carries on and doesn't let it get to her. My friend suggested today that ds responses may be due to PTSD and I shouldn't be so quick to reject that idea - it may be, but we will still need to put strategies in place to deal with his feelings.
It's funny about the mortgage stuff isn't it foxgloves? The mortgage lady said that credit cards are looked on less favourably than loans but I still have the option to switch to 0% offers on cc so I'm not prepared to move to a loan just yet. I will just batten down and get on with it - there must be a way of cutting back and reducing things again. Just getting ready to trawl through the budget again but I am a bit tired for it all tonight. I'm going to add it to my frog list.

24ta

Delurking,  finally the right outcome, so happy for you

f0xh0les

crazy_cat_lady said:

The mortgage lady said that credit cards are looked on less favourably than loans but I still have the option to switch to 0% offers on cc so I'm not prepared to move to a loan just yet.

The bank sees a, for example, say 10k loan ,as a regular (fixed-amount ) outgoing payment with a start date and an end date and a regular amount to leave your bank account .  So it treats it as such and works it out on a monthly basis and takes into account it may take more than one year to pay off.    They see the credit card as an open ended lending facility with no end date, they see the debt you have now ie £10k and treat it as immediate debt coming off your annual salary and do not factor in a timescale to pay it off. They subtract the total amount from your  annual salary and then divide it by 12, and then subtract the mortgage payment and bills, and then it looks like you have no money left and are living beyond your means.  Although you will pay back less  and thus pay it off quicker, because it is on 0%, the bank wants you to take out a loan as it makes money off it. It only makes money on the cc if you default.  Structured debt management (loan) vs unscheduled  ad hoc debt repayment (cc).

Hope that helps a bit.

crazy_cat_lady

Morning all,
Just a quick check in from me this morning as I'm about to head out and brave Ciara to get to tutoring this morning. EEEK! I don't want to speak too soon, but touch wood, it looks ok out there. Wet and windy but not worse than I've seen in previous storms. I presume it's because it's hitting the south this time round.
Didn't get any crochet done last night in the end - I got big into looking at my budget and seeing what I could do to tweak it even further. I hated what YNAB did to me in terms of double charging me for the access I had but I did really well using it so I'm attempting another go at it. I have my free trial again so will see how I feel about forking out another £80 next month for longer term debt management. It's all set up and ready to go and the kids have the job today of doing their own meal planning for the week ahead so we can look realistically at everything that they're having to see if there's room for downgrading or finding alternatives anywhere. Hopefully they'll get on board. DD definitely will but I'm less sure about ds.
After tutoring this morning I'm going to focus on getting planned for work next week, getting these extra 17 papers marked and thinking of the money. Will try not to obsess over the budget and find a bit of time to get some crochet done. Sounds like a plan to me and doesn't involve any excess being out in a storm.
Also, does anyone know if the PAD thread still exists? I had a little look but can't see anything and I don't know if it's the new forum or if it doesn't exist for 2020.

apple_muncher

I think it may be windier down here, ccl. And dd wants to go out with a brolly and be Mary Poppins! I've told her to let go if she needs to...