The Last Leg; 6 years later, debt free in 2021

Baileys_Babe

I have never had a problem with any car insurers getting the new customer price, sometimes they even discount this if you point out it is unfair to penalise customers who would like to be loyal 😉 Not that I care about being loyal, I want the best price for the right product.

greensalad

Managed to get a deal on my Christmas/birthday present (which I'm partially funding myself). I'm getting a new bridge camera, and I was browsing PriceSpy to put it on BF alerts when I found an independent retailer was already selling it for a good discount (about 15% off). Originally I wanted to buy it from John Lewis for a good warranty but this shop provides the same it seems, has good rep online and my Mum (who is buying the camera) spoke to them on the phone and said they were very pleasant and helpful. So that's exciting! My Mum and Grandparents are putting in for it and I'm putting in the other half, which is essentially my Christmas present from OH, as we saved up for his PS5 as his birthday/christmas present (and he is gleefully playing on it right now).

This means there's a tad more in my Christmas budget than expected. But I've still got a handful of things to buy. It may end up going on upgrading some of our Christmas food shops, e.g maybe getting some nice alcohol to enjoy over the festive period.

Also OMAD has been much better this week and I'm starting to get into the swing of it. I'm down 12.5lbs in 3 weeks which is crazy, but I think a lot of it is that initial shock weight I always lose when I start a new diet. Hoping it levels out to a more reasonable amount. Ideally 2lbs a week. My first target was to get to the BMI category below what I'm at now (cat III obese which is awful!) and I'm now only 4.7lbs from that first target so that is exciting! Weigh-in is tomorrow morning. Wonder if I'll be able to meet my target by the end of December. Will set me up nicely for Christmas (my aim was to be further away from my goal as possible so if I put on a few lbs at Christmas I don't go over that first goal again).

Kakiste

Well done on the weight loss! Even if it's shock weight it's still an excellent start to the new diet.

I set myself a target which I'm now not going to make as my weight loss has plateaued (gyms closing twice has absolutely done in my exercise regime) however I keep reminding myself that I've not put any weight back on and I'm 2 dress sizes down from this time last year so keeping it framed positively.

greensalad

Kakiste said:

Well done on the weight loss! Even if it's shock weight it's still an excellent start to the new diet.

I set myself a target which I'm now not going to make as my weight loss has plateaued (gyms closing twice has absolutely done in my exercise regime) however I keep reminding myself that I've not put any weight back on and I'm 2 dress sizes down from this time last year so keeping it framed positively.

That's great! 2 dress sizes down is loads. I wonder how long it will take me to get there. My aim is to get down from a 22/24 to a 16/18. I'm not quite sure how much I weigh to get to that size as it's been a long time but I reckon I need to be about 13st and I'm currently 18st (actually just under for the first time in a long time so that's good). It would be nice to appear in front of my colleagues after a year having dropped 3 dress sizes lol. 

Put an extra £50 in the premium bonds for the tax bill savings as a result of getting the bargain on my camera christmas present.

Pretty much everything has arrived now for Xmas shopping. I need to get some beer for my cousin and something for my youngest cousin, and order my OH's puzzle when I get paid. The remainder of the christmas budget I've decided will need to go on wrapping paper etc as I haven't got any left after using up stocks last year.

Ocado delivery arriving in the next few hours. Our meal plan for the week (I never claim to be frugal on our shop I'll admit, good food gives me joy!)

Monday: Pasta with pesto, spinach and shredded mozzarella
Tuesday: Lemon sole goujons and chips
Wednesday: king prawn massaman curry with potato and peanuts, and prawn crackers
Thursday: veggie burgers with cheddar and BBQ sauce and side salad
Friday: Greek night of veggie kebab meat, kolokithokeftedes, halloumi, homemade tzatziki, hummus and tirokafteri, and homemade flatbreads. 
Saturday: fish fajitas with salsa verde
Sunday: goat's cheese pie with roast potatoes and veg

Got the lot for £56 plus some cleaning bits that were needed and a crate of Coke (which keeps us sane while doing OMAD) came in at around £70 which is in budget!

Kakiste

Menu looks lush. Friday's especially! I am a sucker for hummus. 
I'm 13.5 stone and am a size 16 so you're reckoning seems to be pretty dead on. 

lantanna

What is OMAD?

lantanna

Don’t worry I’ve googled it. I’ve just signed up to start NHS second nature on Monday, I’m hoping to go from a 22 to a 16 initially, a roomy size 14 in the end. Good luck to us

greensalad

lantanna said:

Don’t worry I’ve googled it. I’ve just signed up to start NHS second nature on Monday, I’m hoping to go from a 22 to a 16 initially, a roomy size 14 in the end. Good luck to us

I'm sure you found the info, but for others, it's One Meal A Day. It's a fasting-type diet. 
I started on 5:2 a few years back but didn't really mesh that well with it. I've always been overweight since childhood except for a brief period where I was clinically depressed (it irritates me so much how everyone told me how well I was doing when I was literally suicidal but hey I looked good apparently). I've never really found a diet that works for me until I hit on fasting-based diets. The thing I've learnt is that I can restrict myself on when I eat and I relish the challenge. Bu try to restrict what I eat and I go stir-crazy before long. That was the problem with 5:2. I was able to to the 2 days just fine but I struggled with eating healthy on the 5. 

So OMAD is basically just 23:1 dieting. We only eat dinner, and we make them big. We eat balanced dinners but we don't shy away from anything so we can still have a free rein menu. It can be hard as it approaches dinner time sometimes I do get really hungry but it's such a short time until tasty food that I'm usually OK really. 

We don't do OMAD at weekends and I've noticed I want to eat less on the weekend naturally, which is good. Still I always have a little weight bump on Monday but it goes down by the end of the week. (I way myself everyday, sometimes more than once, because I use Libra which tracks trends rather than exact weights).

greensalad

Payday!

So I didn't get paid a shift premium I was supposed to this month, which is a little annoying because it's brought down my expectations for what we can save this month but it'll come in next month instead which is fine.

My target with money over the last few months has been to make up the difference between what I'd forecasted we could save vs how much we needed to pay the tax bill in January. I was at a stage where I was about £400 "short". Really we weren't short, it would just mean we'd have to forego saving for holiday or only pay a minimum on credit card and make it up another month but I really wanted to avoid doing that if possible.

Through picking up an extra week of on-call and a few shifts here and there I've managed to not only fulfill that £400 deficit I've actually gone over it by £600, so basically by January we'll have made an extra £1,000 more than was forecasted a few months ago.

This doesn't even factor in the fact that I should be getting a small payrise in December (I usually find out in early Dec and then it's backdated one month), OH also gets a possible payrise in Feb backdated to January, and I've got two cat bookings over Christmas that would net an extra £200. So instead of being £400 short we may be £1200+ up on where we needed to be end of Jan!

I don't get the cash in my pocket until 4pm today (Monzo early-payday feature) so will come back then to do my normal payday budgeting.  

Kakiste

Wow! That's proper grafting. £1200+ would be an amazing place to be at.