Facing reality

Sarahwithlove

Payday is here!! It’s so nice seeing money in my account, even if it’s not going to last. I had my annual update through for my sofa finance and after realising that I was nearly £350 in credit on one of my credit cards (I over did the balance transfer) I decided to settle it with the card. So I have one less direct debit coming out. I made up the difference with the DD I would have paid on the 1st along with febs council tax payment (as you don’t pay it) and some of what was leftover in the bank at the end of Jan. I should still have some additional money left at end of feb to pay off my other cards on top of the minimum payment which is done by DD.

Today’s spends were a bit naughty, had a McDonald’s for lunch and a costa coffee this morning with the change I had in my purse. I now have enough points that my next one can be free whoop. I also did a small Aldi shop, probably have to do a top up later in the week but wont do I it until my housemate is back as need to buy some household bits so we can split the cost.

I transferred my mileage part of my wages into their own account so I can pay future petrol with it. I’ve also got next months payment set up ready for 1/3 as I sent the claim off today and had it confirmed.

Busy weekend for me, off to a friends in morning as she wants me to go with her to hairdressers as I make her braver. Then we will have lunch (not sure what we’re doing yet) followed by football. We usually get the train but might suggest that I drive and my friends just give me some petrol money. I’m then off to an engagement party in the evening which I still need to get a card for so hoping to go to a card factory tomorrow. I’m going to drive again so that I’m not tempted to drink anything more than soft drinks and keep the cost down. It’s with a different group of people so it means I can wear my new birthday outfit I got a few weeks ago again. I’m hoping to keep the days spend under my £20 budget as I don’t have anything on in the evenings this week that should require money.

It’s an expensive month for me, have my dads birthday next weekend and we’re taking him out for dinner, hopefully my brother should split the cost with me for that. Then it’s my nieces birthday mid feb so need to send my brother some money for that (they live in Germany) I’m tempted to send some euros in the post with her cardboard but don’t know if will get lost. Anyone ever done this? I have football 3 other times this month, one of them being a Tuesday night so will meet my cousin for food beforehand. Hopefully find somewhere we can use a voucher and get it for under a tenner like we did in January. I have 4 returns left on my ferry ticket so that’s should be ok for this month. Just be train fares which is £2.50 for a return so can’t complain at that.

I have the funds in my allowance for all of it just means I am going to have to be very careful the rest of the time to not spend much of it. A few quiet weekends in for me I think. Good excuse to make a start on decluttering and selling some items on eBay and Facebook.

DancingInTheRain

Hi Sarah
Just popping in to wish you well. What a difficult time you've been through but it sounds like you've got a good plan in place to bring the debt down. Well done on getting rid of the sofa finance, that's one debt busted already :T Is it worth snowballing that payment on to one of your other debts? (So adding the £83.13 to the monthly payment for one of your other debts to bring that particular debt down faster) or perhaps splitting it between your EF and one of the debts?
Also, in addition to Shoppix and Receipt Hog I've recently discovered ZipZero for scanning receipts and would recommend.
Prolific Academic is a good survey site too to build extra income if you have the time, these surveys are at least usually quite interesting, I've little patience for the other survey sites but have stuck with this one.
Good luck x

SadieO

So sorry about your mum, and I wish you well in your debt free journey. Just a little thing - seems like a costa is a little treat for you. Do they do gift cards? If so, you could buy yourself a gift card each month (budgeted for, of course!) and then you can have your little treat when you need a pick-me-up and know that it's not eating into any other parts of your budget. :coffee:

Sarahwithlove

SadieO wrote: »

So sorry about your mum, and I wish you well in your debt free journey. Just a little thing - seems like a costa is a little treat for you. Do they do gift cards? If so, you could buy yourself a gift card each month (budgeted for, of course!) and then you can have your little treat when you need a pick-me-up and know that it's not eating into any other parts of your budget. :coffee:

Thanks I did think about that but for now I am going to try and budget it into my weekly spends by being stricter on myself and only having it once a week. I managed it in January so just need to be firmer with myself in February to make it happen.

DancingInTheRain wrote: »

Hi Sarah
Just popping in to wish you well. What a difficult time you've been through but it sounds like you've got a good plan in place to bring the debt down. Well done on getting rid of the sofa finance, that's one debt busted already :T Is it worth snowballing that payment on to one of your other debts? (So adding the £83.13 to the monthly payment for one of your other debts to bring that particular debt down faster) or perhaps splitting it between your EF and one of the debts?
Also, in addition to Shoppix and Receipt Hog I've recently discovered ZipZero for scanning receipts and would recommend.
Prolific Academic is a good survey site too to build extra income if you have the time, these surveys are at least usually quite interesting, I've little patience for the other survey sites but have stuck with this one.
Good luck x

Thank you it’s been difficult but starting to feel like I can come out the other side, just impatient and want it gone already. I’ve boosted my SO to my emergency fund by £50 a month so that’s now £100 going n monthly and then the other £33 I’m going to put towards paying off the credit card quicker. I’ve started using zipzero weekly, took me ages to find out my billing information but have it set for my gas and electric at the moment. Only thing I’ve found is it’s much stricter with receipts, if there’s even slightest thing wrong they decline it whereas the others don’t.

I will look into the surveys thanks, be a good use of my evenings and hopefully stop me picking too much.

Sarahwithlove

Busy weekend for me, didn’t go to plan moneywise. Going to have to have a few NSD this week. I really need to learn that I must have a shopping list and plan my meals. It’s because I popped into Aldi to only get a few bits and ended up buying more. £32 later and not sure I have all that much, doesn’t help that I had used up a lot of stuff last month, hopefully the next few shops will be lower as a result as I stocked up the freezer.

I have £3.81 left in this weeks budget account plus the cash I withdrew which I just counted and with all the change actually comes to £20. So should be fine. I’m hoping to persuade my housemate to pay towards the food shop as no doubt she will eat the meals I make from it so that would be another £8. Fingers crossed.

ohdearhowdidthathappen

Hi

Thought I'd repay the visit!
Sorry to hear about your Mum, my Dad died April 2018 too and it's still incredibly raw. You had the added upheaval of having to sell your home, which must have been very unsettling.
Well done on getting rid of the DFS debt so quickly. I'd be tempted to throw all debt repayments at the smaller CC (RBS I think?), it'll be gone in no time and then that leaves you the other CC to hit next.
Looking at your SOA, the items standing out to me are food, TV and phone.
- food, you should be able to bring this down a bit, perhaps aim for £30pw?
- tv, we use Now TV, only costs £8 pm for entertainment package. We then use free view on top. Broadband, we use BT, the MSE website usually has some deal or other going. We pay £32 a month for this... so in total, phone, TV and broadband costs us £40 a month.
- mobile, we all have SIM only deals, again through BT. £8pm each, unlimited calls and texts and 8GB data.
Hope those suggestions help and good luck on your journey :-)

Sarahwithlove

ohshithowdidthathappen wrote: »

Hi

Thought I'd repay the visit!
Sorry to hear about your Mum, my Dad died April 2018 too and it's still incredibly raw. You had the added upheaval of having to sell your home, which must have been very unsettling.
Well done on getting rid of the DFS debt so quickly. I'd be tempted to throw all debt repayments at the smaller CC (RBS I think?), it'll be gone in no time and then that leaves you the other CC to hit next.
Looking at your SOA, the items standing out to me are food, TV and phone.
- food, you should be able to bring this down a bit, perhaps aim for £30pw?
- tv, we use Now TV, only costs £8 pm for entertainment package. We then use free view on top. Broadband, we use BT, the MSE website usually has some deal or other going. We pay £32 a month for this... so in total, phone, TV and broadband costs us £40 a month.
- mobile, we all have SIM only deals, again through BT. £8pm each, unlimited calls and texts and 8GB data.
Hope those suggestions help and good luck on your journey :-)

Thanks for popping by. I’m sorry to hear about your loss as well.

I am thinking I will throw it all at rbs as Tesco has an extra couple months 0% anyway.

Food was just a guess as never really kept track and it’s hard to do it from bank statements as I usually pay and then my housemate transfers me her share. But I am going to aim to bring it down to £30ish a week by menu planning and trying to have some simple meals. It’s something I’m working on and trying to get my housemate on board with.

My tv is locked in until end of April and my phone until September. But I am leaning towards using now tv and taking my virgin down to either just broadband or switching to BT. Sky is rubbish in my area. It’s something on my to do list for March. There’s also nothing wrong with my mobile so will be moving to sim only in September as I know roughly how much data I use so that should save quite a bit.

Sarahwithlove

Today has not been a good money day for me.

I agreed to meet a friend during my lunch break for a costa as I had enough points on my card to pay for it and she needed someone to talk to. We got there to discover that it’s clsoed for refurbishment so tried Waitrose cafe which all tables were full so we thought we’d get them to go. Only to discover that they don’t give out takeaway cups anymore you have to take your own. So I ended up buying one for £3 which isn’t that bad and I do need a new one as seal on my cheap one had broken but that with my coffee was an unexpected payment for me.

I then got home and stripped my bed as I had spilt some squash on it during the night, only to discover that behind the basket I kept my spare bedding in is a massive patch of damp on the walls. So £12 later I have ordered a new dehumidifier and I am currently googling ways to deal with it. Not something I need right now. I also got a message from my future sis in laws sister to suggest we start formalising the plans for her hen next month which I had completely forgot about and hadn’t budgeted for. My DD also came out for my finance which I settled the other day despite me cancelling the DD so now it’s in credit. I have messaged them to request it back but who knows how long that will take. I’m glad I hadn’t made the additional payment now.

I’m going to go hibernate in the corner and have a cry before anything else goes wrong.

Tomorrow won’t be another non spend day as going to head office about my apprenticeship so will be paying for parking, at least I can claim it back. Also did a menu plan for rest of week and realised I need a few more bits to make the meals, basically ran out of rice and noodles and loo rolls, at least I will get half back from my housemate for it.

Sarahwithlove

Urgh so just discovered that my housemate hadn’t increased her rent this month and mentioned it to her and she was like well no I thought it was from April when the bills go up. And then was like I don’t see how the bills are going up that much that you need to increase it by £50 a month. I have to admit it’s annoyed me a bit, when we first set the rent when she moved in she was only spending 3 days a week here and never here at the weekends as she stayed at her boyfriends. Now they have split up she’s here 7 days a week and I’m starting to notice the difference. Especially in terms of gas and electric usage. The fact that it’s all going to go up in April with inflation is besides the point. I pay out £820 a month on the bills and cleaner so don’t think it’s too much to ask. I had a look on spare room at rooms in area near me and they are nearer £400 a month. I suppose that’s one of down sides of allowing a friend to move in money matters are harder to broach. It’s got me seriously considering whether to have the cleaner or not. It means I will have to take on more of the responsibility but it’s £70 a month and if I’m going to have to wait until April to get the extra rent then it’s one I don’t know I can really justify.

Ok rant over.

Ok update, just text the cleaner to say this week would be her last week. I’m going to just have to bite the bullet and do a bit each day and a big clean at weekends. Everyone else manages it so I will have to do the same.

savingholmes

Sorry you have had a rough time. Hope things pick up soon. Chin up, things will work out.