It's time to begin.....

Kakiste

Thanks
We'll be good. We've got a lot of frozen soup from batches we've previously made and plenty of pasta, rice and sauces and lots of frozen mince and bacon so if we do end up staying in for a week it will be bland but fine. My honed ability to make pizza bases and pastry from scratch will shine through!

Yes I love my job. Lippy, grumpy, aggressive teenagers with criminal records are my wheelhouse and they're ace.  My colleagues are (almost all) brilliant as well so every day is interesting and fun with everyone; kids, management and staff roundly taking the mick out of each other and constant banter. 

It's such a relief after a decade in my previous school where everyone was just ground down. I was literally the only teacher not on anti-depressants or signed off on sick leave and only then because I entered a 'I won't let them break me' mentality for my last 4 years there. We used to count down the days until the next holiday from the second we got back from one, whereas I miss being at the new school during holidays.

Kakiste

NSD today (as obviously can't go out) 
Budget dinner tonight;
3 packets of aldi own brand supernoodles (22p each) 
1 carrot
half an onion. 
half a cup frozen peas.
soy sauce  
Boil the noodles for 4 minutes- whilst doing that use a peeler to cut the carrot into thin strips and dice the onion. 
Put a tablespoon of oil in a wok, add the onions and after 2 mins add the carrots. Drain the noodles and add to the pan and add the peas. Stir together and then put about 3 tablespoons of light soy sauce and stir through. 

Less than £3 in ingredients cost (inc. the soy sauce) everyone likes it and it always gets completely eaten
 
I also put in a teaspoon of Chinese 5 spice and then a splash of fish sauce and rice wine vinegar (one of our friends who lived with us a few times is chinese and still comes to stay frequently and has bought those and left them in our cupboard for when she cooks for us) but I've made it before with only soy sauce and it tastes ace. 

missymoo81

Wow kakiste that sounds lush!

joedenise

I do something similar with noodles (just the plain noodles), cool quickly and add any bits and pieces from the fridge and stir through sweet chilli sauce.  It's really tasty and makes a great lunch.

Kakiste

So husband's test came back negative which means I get to go to work tomorrow which is great. 
Picked up a sun lounger for my friend's birthday for £10 second-hand on fb rather than £70 new which is a good bargain and made her some cookies  She got engaged to her partner yesterday so I'm going to walk round with a bottle of Aldi's best prosecco and her presents later

Kakiste

So I tweeted Martin Lewis and he liked my tweet!  

Mumoffourkids

Great news on the negative test and on the tweet!

missymoo81

Oh yay! I’m so pleased for you on the negative test! What a weight off your mind! And OMG a like from Martin Lewis! That’s epic! 

Kakiste

Cashed out £13.50 from Prolific today- which will go into my EF fund. Need to crack on with the sewing as I've had a couple of days doing gardening/cleaning in the evenings but it's bugging me that there that there is basically money just sitting there but it needs constructing first! I've got one finished but there are at least another 4 that are partially cut out which just need sewing together (about 2 hours each one) and then I can list all of them; I've found that I tend to make better sales if I post 4 or 5 things together as a group rather than individually listing each one as it's finished. 

Kakiste

I'm having a musing moment. I'm hopefully getting a payrise promised a year ago in about 5 weeks time. Depending on my negotiating skills this should hopefully give me with between £200 (worst case) and £550 (best case) extra a month. My plan is to keep all my incredibly minimal and frugal budgets the way they are and just push all the additionally money towards debt. 
With the extra money I'm going to increase the amount I'm paying back both relatives by an extra £100 a month which will hugely speed up those repayments and get them cleared in early 2021.

However! My thoughts on my non-family creditors that I owe money to in the DMP (Currently £16k left outstanding) Of this massive amount just over £14k is owed to one bank which has had it's interest frozen on it. However the remaining £2k is split between 4 companies; all of whom are charging interest. I owe one just over £1000 however the other 3 are 'only' amounts in the £300s...… So i'm thinking that if say I end up with an extra £300 a month from the payrise, to pay my PIL £100 extra, my dad £100 extra and save the extra £100 and every 3 months pay off one of the 3 companies in full and then save it up for 8 months or so (because I'll have continued paying the big conpany off as part of the DMP in the meantime) and pay them off in full. That way all my DMP payment will be going against debt and not paying interest. 

I think that I'm pretty set on approaching it that way, then I can bring forward the date my DMP ends significantly because it will all be going towards the one bank and paying off that balance- my DFD according to Stepchange is March 2026 but I've calculated that with fair winds and continuing to earn decent extra money from sewing, I could be completely out of debt by December 2021. But first.... gotta go earn that payrise!