Frugal, thrifty, make do, mend! Let this debt come to an end!

Elisheba

Oh my goodness, I'm such a muppet! Turns out when I bought my train ticket at 5am this morning I bought it in the opposite direction from where I need to go! So I have a ticket from work to home this morning, and vice versa this evening! And there is a tenner admin charge for a refund 😳. 
5am me obviously cannot be trusted with anything 😂

SuzeQStan

Nice one on the reduced fare 👍🏻 

have a fab night out - let your hair down xx

EDIT - just read about the mixup re train fare - spose it’s easy done!  If it makes you feel any better I have booked flights to complete different countries than the one I was supposed to be going to - TWICE! 🤣🙄

Elisheba

Morning, all 😊, 

I had a very nice evening out last night with my friend. Fairly respectable with 4 drinks had over the course of the evening. I'll need to input my spends on the monthly spending s/s I have on Notion. Got a tiny bit of a sore head this morning, but I've taken a couple a paracetamol and am drinking lots of tea and I have a quiet morning planned, so by lunch time I'm sure I'll be fine.

The balance transfers have gone through to my new credit card, so thankfully I am no longer paying any interest. I'll have to see if I can find what date of the month the interest period starts to work out him much interest will have accrued. I also need to log on to the the new credit card online and download the app so I can keep and eye on things. 

It's much cooler here today thankfully. I might take my dog somewhere a bit different for his walk later on. I'm not putting much onto my to do list for the weekend as I'm being gentle with myself. Just got to clean the bathroom, give the kitchen a wipe down, change my bedding, and get my winter clothes put away. 

I'm now off to have more tea and read some more of my book, and maybe have a bath. Hope everyone's weekend is relaxing. 

Elisheba

@SuzeQStan Oh wow. Flights to the wrong place (twice) definitely beats my train tickets! Did you manage to realise before you were ready to leave? 

SuzeQStan

Well it was a costly lesson - luckily they were cheap flights but for some reason I thought my destination was mainland instead of an island. 

🙄🤣👍🏻

EDIT to add - impressive £15000+ off your debt in 3 years! 

Elisheba

Afternoon, frugal friends 😁, 

I've just been out and managed to get the dog walk done before the rain started, so that was good! 

Afterwards I went at Aldi and did a weekly top up shop. I thought she said a the till that it was £40, which I thought was a bit step for a top up shop. I just checked my receipt though, and I must have misheard as it was £20.50.i have to admit there were quite a lot of non essentials like biscuits and icecream on there though 😂. Unhealthy as it might be, I have discovered over the years that if I don't buy treats from the cheap supermarkets, then I will go out and buy them much more expensively when I am peckish during the week so it is a necessary evil.

I also stocked up on poo bags at Home Bargains while I was out. Over winter I couldn't get the big, thick ones I liked anywhere, so when I see them now I always stock up. Nothing like getting your hands dirty picking up poo for making you think ahead! Also HB sells them for 59p I think, which is very good value. 

I bought a pizza as my shopping day treat for an easy dinner, so I'll have that later. Then I have made veg soup for lunches the next few days, and will make a curry tomorrow which will do a couple of days dinners. 

Thanks @SuzeQStan - it's good sometimes to acknowledge the achievement, isn't it? Too often I look at the figure that's left and think of all the way so could have gotten rid of the whole lot of debt by now. But I have a good balance of enjoying life vs. the debt, which is also important if its to be sustainable. 

Back in early 2020 when I started this journey I don't think I really believed I could be debt free. I'd been in debt since Uni and it just seemed a fact of life. The big motivator back then was that I was paying interest on everything and the repayments felt like they were maxing me out. But lo and behold, I came back on this forum, which I'd been looking at on and off for years and saw I could cut back and over pay, and the rest is history. 

When I look at the interest rates going up and up, and the cost of food and energy now, I am so grateful I tackled it when I did. There is no way I could have managed all that debt and the interest and the repayments now. I feel so, so fortunate. 

Oh, I also went to Morrisons for petrol when I was out. I pressed all the buttons but couldn't see any way of using an e giftcard, so I probably won't bother getting one. The petrol station isn't that close anyway, so not hugely convenient. 

Take care everyone, and I hope you have a fabulously relaxing Sunday evening. Although we were forecast heavy rain and thunder from 11am here, there has only been about half an hour or rain, so I don't know how the rest of the evening will play out. 

Elisheba

Morning, all and happy Monday! 

I've woken nice and early this morning, so currently having a cuppa in bed while I write here. 

I'm feeling a lot positive than I have been recently so hoping to make the most of it this week.

Weather looks like it will be a little cooler today so I should be okay for a lunchtime dog walk rather than an early morning one. That's good as I need to pic up a library book so can do that at the same time. I also need to wrap up my returns from Simply Be and taken them to the Post Office so I might get that done today as well. Oh, and this week I want to dye the hair as well so I'll put that on the To Do list. 

I have some bras the wires have broken through on, so I have them out to get mended this week. Mending is a bit of a faff in my house as my dog wants to steal whatever I am mending and trues to get into the sewing box as well 🙄. However I'm going to try doing it at the dining room table and see how I get on. I don't want to go upstairs to do it as he and the cats barely get to see me when I'm working during the day, so don't think it's fair to them if I disappear upstairs at night as well.

My sister has finally gotten back to me regarding her birthday and asked if I can just give her an Amazon voucher. Considering it's her birthday today it's a good thing she doesn't want anything else! I think she's going to put it towards chef whites for a new job she has started so at Ieast it'll help her out a bit.

I watched a few Frugal Queen in France You Tube videos last night. I know she's not everyone's cup of tea but I find her straight talking attitude quite refreshing. She's also really good for making me check myself and my spending and pulling it back if I need to. I'm so lucky my rent is only just over a quarter of my take home income - it has given me a lot of flexibility to pay off my debts. 

I also cancelled a crossword app subscription I was paying for, last night. Only £3.50 a month, but I wasn't using it and every little helps. I'm also thinking of cancelling my Netflix subscription. Again only £4.99 a month but I'm barely watching TV just now, so not really getting any value for money. And there is almost £100 a year saved, just like that. 

I think I've resigned myself to the fact its going to have to be a part buy part rent house I'll have to go for when I get a deposit together. I need to stay down here for just now, and the canal boat doesn't seem like it's a goer finance wise. At least a fairly new build should be quite energy efficient I suppose, unlike my current late Victorian terrace which is a nightmare to heat.

I can start making plans about what I want to do in the garden now, if nothing else. I think I might get another dog as well when I have my own house. I'll need to see what the finances look like then, as pet insurance is expensive, but it would be nice to have two crazy monkeys around. 

Have a brilliant day, everyone. I'm off to feed my poor starving animals (that is the direct feedback I get from them anyway), get ready and then muesli and crumpets for breakfast. I'm determined to be super productive at work this week so we'll see how that goes! 

foxgloves

Morning lilypoo,
Re wired bras..... I find these infuriating! A well-known high street brand of underwired bra which I'd been buying for years, as they kept bringing it out in nice new colourways, has become noticeably worse for break-out wires. Once they are through the casing, it's difficult to sew up the hole sufficiently strongly to prevent it happening again pretty swiftly.
I now re-enforce the hole with a little piece of strong cotton scrap fabric folded into a square & sewn on, making sure I go over all the edges at least twice. As that worked on a current bra, I repeated these re-enforcements in the centre as noticed one of the wires was trying to make a break for it there too. So this bra now has 4 tiny cottom patches but they are on the inside & don't show. One of my annoyances about bras, as a curvy woman, is that most of the prettiest or unusual bra fabrics are inevitably underwired styles. Non-wired types seem limited in comparison. So I shall continue my re-enforcement method. Shouldn't be necessary though, so still annoying, even though it's effective as a money saving make-do & mend technique.
F

badmemory

The trouble with bras is you can't live with them & can't live without them!  Well unless you are my sister who has never needed one, where I have needed at least a B cup since I was a very skinny count your ribs type 13.

WinterWarrior

I have tried non-underwired bras, but they just don’t work the same somehow….even the dreadful looking ‘doreen’ type of unflattering, but functional non wired bras just don’t seem to do the job. I feel very sorry for people with a larger chest as the bigger the size, the more limited the designs. There is nothing worse than looking down and finding a wire poking up through your top, that’s happened to me twice so I keep a very stern eye on them 🤭