Happier Nat's debt free diary

natlie

Hi,
Thank you for your support all. 
Funny I should post today after 5 weeks and then get an update in the mail? weird. 
PRA Group have taken over my Barcl@ycard account, the balance transferred to them seems less that what I thought I owed. I have updated SC and will send them a scan of the letter. 
Thats 2 of 7 accounts been passed over to collectors now. 
I have been cleaning today, and sorting a meal plan for this week. I have updated my budget sheets and going to see if I can find any savings 

Nat 

natlie

Hi All

Since I last posted (9th Jan) my mother in law passed away (15th Jan) so she didn't quite have the weeks we expected and last month was really hard. All of the trips to support my father in law as he does need some level of care really affected our budget, we have been managing on a £20 a week food budget for 4 of us and lots of free food from the local community fridge and OLIO to make up meals. this has helped with our fuel costs. 

Things are ticking along with the DMP. I have had a bit of a change in my tax so I am slightly better off, it seems that the £6 a week working from home benefit has been added. Next month with a reduction in travel I may be able to afford better food and put some money back into our EF which was up to £1700 before xmas. 

Our car Service and MOT is due tomorrow, we pay for it monthly so any costs will be any work that needs doing, I shouldn't imagine it would need much we have barely driven since the last MOT. 

Right off to work
Nat

Parkyp

Hi Nat, sorry to hear about your mother in law. That’s some budget you’ve had to live off, it’s times like that  when you realise just how important the need for an emergency Fund is. Hope you’ve not long to wait till payday.

Baileys_Babe

Sorry for your loss.

That is a very small budget, two sites which might be of interest are:
Cheap family recipes was created by Weezl with others from this site? To quote "Good food does not need to cost an arm and a leg, and frugality is not the same thing as deprivation. What we offer is a monthly menu planner for an average family – two adults, two teens – which covers everything a person will eat and drink in a month for an incredible 86p per day, whilst still offering an average family’s usual fare."
Thrifty Lesley has both meal plans and 600+ recipes, all working to the £1 a day budget.

natlie

Hi 
Thanks for the links @Baileys_Babe
Our food so far has cost us an average £22 a week we are doing really well, so well that I have managed to pay off my £250 overdraft (that wasn't included in my DMP). The DMP is fine. I've nearly paid off £5k.
The car service/MOT was fine we had to get new wiper blades £24.
Work is REALLY stressful - I am doing a lot of walking and cycling to counteract the stress which has led to a 3lb weight loss
Right off to work then 
Nat 

Baileys_Babe

Well done on clearing the overdraft.

Parkyp

Well done clearing the overdraft and losing some pounds 👏👏👏

natlie

Hi all, 

Something lovely happened today a neighbour brought us round a big bag of food from her Covid stockpile beans, chickpeas, grains and rice, hot chocolate and noodles thats a few meals for us I have been donated around £124 worth of food in Jan from OLIO a neighbourhood sharing app too. 

Made a big pot of veg and lentil soup and prepped a load of veg for a Sunday Dinner. 

I have a lot of cleaning to do today, so i'd better get on with it

Nat 

Parkyp

Hi Nat, what a nice gesture of your neighbour. 

You’ll make good use of that.  Leave you to get on with the housework. 

natlie

Morning, 
Checked the budget yesterday and somehow I miscalculated this month and ended up with around £160 more than I expected to have. I decided to use some of this to pay off my allotment for the year instead of paying monthly DD. I think that is a good move. I am trying to move more things to annual payments. I am hoping the weather will get a bit better soon so that we can get to the allotment to clear it for Spring. The leftover cash is currently in the account we have a £50 annual subscription for Playstation which my son and husband use, that will be due soon so will keep it for that. 

I am planning to clean the kitchen today (cleaned everywhere else yesterday) I am going to make a lentil dal and Harira for meals for the week and check the store cupboard for other meal options for the week. We have plenty in so i am not planning to do anymore shopping for a while. I managed to get hold of some yellow sticker cleaning products yesterday which was great and included dishwasher tablets! which are usually really expensive. 

Have been cutting back on the use of the oven and heating recently to make more stovetop meals and the bills are going down a bit, keeping an eye on my smart meter. 

Thats all for now 
Nat