A new chapter, An empty nest, Drama school & Last year of Uni

Fortune_Smiles

That's amazing Spendless!  Congratulations!

Fortune x

Yankee24

You go girl!

Aimingforthegoodlife

Congratulations on becoming debt free!

Humdinger1

Fab news! Re ADHD and autism, apparently the majority of people in the acting world are neurodivergent (according to my DD's former acting teachers at uni) so DD will be in good company.   Onwards and upwards love Humdinger xx 

Honeysucklelou2

Wow! That’s amazing news - to be totally debt free. Congratulations 🥳🥳🥳

Spendless

Thanks for all the good wishes everyone. That's interesting to hear Humdinger. I'd noticed a little but wasn't aware you're more likely to be ND than not in that industry.

We are back from our mini break to Belgium with DS. We realised whilst we were away that the SO from our main acc that we set up to pay the CC off, we must have put an end date to, as it didn't go through. What we've decided is to add up this short trip costs, deduct that from the savings we used to do for the CC and put the balance into savings for this month. From next month we shall start transferring the same amount again but this time for savings. Other than something to eat at services on the way down  and a bottle of pop at a shops yesterday DS didn't pay for anything at all. The bill was on me and Mr S and that's exactly how we wanted it. We'd have also paid for his food at the services but he'd walked off to a different food stall. Speaking of which getting food at services can be a necessary evil but I spotted a deal where you could get any pasty, chips and beans for £5.99. I had that on the way back and it was cheaper than the M&S sandwich and drink I took back to DS in the car. He'd only just woken up as we pulled in and didn't want to join us. DS said he enjoyed his trip, I did feel initially that he wasn't always 'in the moment' with us but that did get better as time went on. A year ago today I watched him get married. I'm mentioning it here to acknowledge it and then I intend to spend the day doing irrelevant everyday stuff and not allowing it to take up any of my head space. I don't return to work till tomorrow, I'm going to do things like accompany Mr S to get his passport photo taken and do some laundry etc.

DD started seeing someone briefly (call him Freddie)  but then he did something that caused her concerns/red flags and she has ended it straight away. She told me that when she's now aware she has issues of her own she needs to work on, she is not able or willing to take on someone who has more. She also saw the potential for Freddie  to behave in the same way as Tex did both towards her and us, so has offered friendship but said she's not interested in a relationship. I am super proud of her for recognising this immediately and acting upon it. She has also managed to flag a concern about someone Freddie is  involved with, or more accurately  about another person  who is involving himself with Freddie, who is already vulnerable, through no fault of his own (recent  sudden death of a parent) and this person (a lot older male)  was isolating Freddie from his family and friends  (classic abusive tactic!) DD told Freddie's  Dad of her concerns and Dad (a therapist) completely agreed with her.  Upshot is Freddie has gone to stay with relatives in a different part of the country to get away from someone potentially dangerous. DD has told me before she doesn't get the best academic grades  and never has because she doesn't fit the box required to do so, but that she thinks  she has very good critical thinking skills instead. I think with this example I've just seen that in action. Not all plain sailing she still had to let us in the side gate last night, having forgotten what she'd done with the front door key - since found! 

dawnybabes

Sounds like a lovely break for you both and your DS. 

How insightful of your daughter and top marks for reaching out to his family and getting him away from the situation. 

Spendless

A few weeks ago we got a refund from a solicitor for some legal work we'd had done earlier in the year where we'd overpaid. An £80 chq was enclosed. unfortunately the dog got to the letterbox first and ripped it up, there's a guard on the letterbox but it had fallen down the day before and we'd not put it back up! On Mon we called in sol with the torn up cheque and they bacs'd the amt to us instead. Yesterday DH spent the time rearranging and decluttering the summer house where he WFH sometimes and bought some offcut underlay & carpet - cost £80! Result, love that equal balance. 

Spendless

DS has been up and down all week from what DH has been saying. Both of them took all week off. Earlier in the week it was what should have been DS 1st WA. I am suspicious that I heard DIL on the phone several times  to DS during one of the days we were away and it felt like DS wasn't really 'with' us. DH heard the same voice too and also suspects. We only heard this voice for the first day though. I am really annoyed if I'm correct and that DIL was trying to get in DS head, poss due to a combo of the dates and that we'd taken DS away to  a place that's a fav of DH's and he'd prev mentioned to DIL about one day us all going.

Also being looked into is the feasibility of DS buying the place he currently rents. We may need to step in and help in some shape or form. So glad we're in a place to do this, no mortgage of our own, loans, overdrafts or CC debts except the one we pay in full each month. DS needs to make sure though that his estranged wife can't financially claim on him  at a later date once he's built his life back up. 

DD's student loan details have come through. Her course starts earlier than most, so she will return late August. She's miffed this means she can't say yes to the Sept hols that 2 diff friends have invited her on this week. Unlike last year we are now in a position to let her have all her student loan to live on whilst we pay all her rent. We always did this with DS and much preferred it, it's just he studied in a lot cheaper places than DD has! 

Earlier this year we were doing a de-clutter by category and it was working really well. Then it came to an abrupt end due to DS marriage breakup. DH has spent this week tidying up his summer house. Originally built as mostly a play house for DD with a little working space for DH, it then became a gaming area for DS as he entered the teenage years before going to Uni. During the pandemic it came ito its own as WFH space for DH and that's now its sole use. He has a vision of maybe putting a small sofa in there as a place to sit and mostly for the dog to lie on whilst he works. He's got loads of stuff scattered over 2 filing cabinets, 1 small, 1 large. Aim is to see if one could be got rid of. This has to be done in conjunction with sorting out the paperwork in the house. I put a stop to decluttering  this area a few months back due to DH wanting to get rid of my historic payslips!  

Our main acc has already taken a bit of a battering due to our  mini break, DH getting new glasses and also sending for a new passport. He was caught up with the issue date and expiry date being diff and wouldn't be valid enough for our next US trip, but decided it was too risky to send off before we went away.  So glad he didn't pay for fast track though, he sent off for a new one on Mon and it was returned yesterday- result! Thought will leave the acc as it is for now if it's running low we'll look to see if it should be topped up from elsewhere. From next month we will look to sort various budgets and savings out in a more detailed way. 

Spendless

You can tell I'm no longer waiting for the days for more money to arrive to pay off debt as I totally forgot we had interest applied to a couple of our savings accts on 15th of month. It was a nice surprise when I checked online banking earlier/ Using the interest it means I now have  saved a nice round sum to help DS out for when/if he gets a mortgage. A mortgage broker was spoken to this week who believes that DS will get one.

Today we intend returning to the decluttering of our main problem area also known in our house as 'the corner of doom'. This is the paperwork area and a knock on effect of DH re-jigging his summerhouse last week. Also planned is a trip to Ikea, taking both kids. DD needs her crockery etc replacing, DS needs a chest of drawers because he's been struggling with storage since DIL literally took half of the wardrobe. 

Our bank accts are both looking ok considering its mid month, even with the extra expenditure I mentioned before. Amazing how much of  our wages has stretched now we're not servicing debt. Next on the agenda is to go through  our bills again and see if any can be reduced further. The CB CC needs to be paid off. This is mostly our trip to US again half of which will be refunded due to DH working, but we won't receive the refund until the end of the trip. This will be taken from our savings.  . 


DH applied for a new CC. Our CB one is somewhere that isn't universally accepted and on a couple of occasions we've been at places that don't accept it thwarting our plans to put X on the CC to be paid the following month, so we needed another. Not keen on keeping the card that the debt was on and we recently paid off because it was such a pain when we tried to pay it off. The new CC came with a £50 Amazon gift card. DH has used half to buy a mat for his recently refurbed summer house office.  

We are also in the middle of planning booking for a trip with friends at the end of the year. We used to do this annually pre pandemic. It's to the same place we took DS to recently. We will need 2 o/n rooms night before we set off, DH has got enough hotel loyalty points to book one for free and we're splitting the cost of the other with our friends. We will also split the ferry cost.  When we went with DS we booked the premium lounge going out and were so glad we did considering we got an email the day before saying we needed to turn up a lot earlier than prev told meaning we didn't have time for breakfast at the hotel. Returning we couldn't do same as fully booked but that meant we experienced what it was like and the prices charged in comparison and concluded we def want to do the lounge in both directions.