Third time's a charm!

Humdinger1

Panic crochet? Does steam rise? You are doing brilliantly love Humdinger xx 

twiggy86

So things have taken a turn for the worse this week and unfortunately I've spent nearly £1,400 on my credit card. My dog became extremely poorly so we've had multiple vets visits (including an overnight an the emergency vets) and he had to be put under anaesthetic so that could work out what was going on. Thankfully he is slowly on the mend now, so hoping that other than a further check up on Monday (which will possibly involve more injections) we are nearing the end of the bills. 

My incredibly kind and generous parents (who I am fortunate are in a financial position to help) instantly offered to lend me the money to avoid interest. I am currently weighing up how much to pull from my pots myself and how much to borrow from them.

I have:
£100 which was set aside for a further debt payment (so that's an easy one)
£140 in my emergency fund - which although I don't want to wipe out, this seemingly classes as an emergency
Total = £240

Then it gets a bit trickier:
£80 in my house pot - which was for diy projects so that can probably wait (although the shower is really ineffective and properly increasing our energy bills!)
£160 saved for my spending money for holiday 
£410 in my other pots (car insurance, tax, Xmas etc) 
Total = £650

So if you add the two together that's £890, meaning I would need to borrow £500ish. But I then risk falling short in the future... Although just remembered I have some cash in my purse that my Aunt gave me... hold please.... that's an extra £60. Plus it's also the start of a new budget month today.

So what I think I need to do is:
close off last month's budget and put any little odds left towards the CC
wait until we have a finalised amount 
rejig my April budget 
think about the best route forward and not just panic about the situation right now 

Unfortunately this wipes out most of progress for the year but fortunately I had made fairly good progress so the situation is not worse than where I was in January. Even better is that my pooch is still here as we thought it was it - and I would spend anything to keep him. In fact OH asked vet how much something would cost and I blurted out "does it matter", to which vet said "is he insured" - nope, just love him to bits! 

Humdinger1

@twiggy86 I completely understand where you're coming from.   Our dog was in hospital for a month last summer; he was paralysed and on a ventilator for 10 of those days.  He miraculously pulled through, against all the odds.  He is a second child...I simply adore him, having been a cat person for 50+ years previously.   Please keep us posted love Humdinger x 

vampirotoothus

Hi Twiggy I'm glad to hear your dog is on the mend. It's lovely of your parents to offer the money. What are the terms of the repayment, if you borrow from them? If it was me I would borrow the £1200 you are short (don't wipe all your pots out) and send them £50 a month, or if they want it back in one lump send £50 pm to premium bonds (or a decent rate regular saver). This will ensure that you don't leave yourself on the back foot after all your hard planning. Good luck V x

twiggy86

Thank you @Humdinger1 and @vampirotoothus for your comments. Humdinger - I cannot imagine the stress you went through! We thought we were going to lose him on Wednesday but he has made a great recovery and is nearly back to himself. 

I was most definitely in panic mode last week - and that's with incredibly generous parents! We've been back to the vets this morning and the final bill added up to £1,328.64. I decided to use the emergency fund to clear some of this but leave the rest of the pots in place - so have cleared £311.60 leaving £1,017.04 remaining.

The plan (at the moment) is to pay a further £270 off this when I get paid on Friday and then borrow £750 from my parents to clear CC5. In terms of paying them back it is "as and when" BUT they don't know the extent of my debt and I never want to take liberties with them so I want to prioritise paying them back - especially as the rest of my debt is at no or low interest.  So for now my plan from next months payday is to send £200 ish to my parents on payday, and minimums to the rest - but any extras will go to CC1 e.g. payments from TCB etc. 

Things will ease off slightly once my holiday is out of the way, as I'm currently saving my spending money (although hopefully I won't need it all!) so that will free up some money from end of May. Gutted that this has taken me back down to 8% of my goal for the year (after previously being at 23%!) but at least I'm not a minus! 

twiggy86

I realised I put a number in wrong in my spreadsheet (which is why I always try to reconcile!) so borrowed £800 off my parents - which has been sent straight to the CC - with £273.36 left on that card to clear. 

If you're good at maths you may spot that my numbers don't quite match with the vets bill above... as of course I had omitted to confess that I used the CC to buy a couple of takeaways last week. Even as I did it, I said to OH "this is a really bad financial decision"! However, I was too stressed about pooch to have the capacity to go food shopping and cook! 

But last night I made a meal plan and a shopping and went to do the food shopping finally! 

twiggy86

Quick check in! 

Other than a small bit of food shopping I didn't spend anything this weekend! I haven't done a meal plan yet for this week so I will go to shop and buy one thing I need for dinner tonight and then sit down later to do meal plan - I'm incredibly dangerous if I go food shopping without having done a meal plan, then worked out the shopping list from that! 

Some good news - I work for a micro business who have today told me that they are going to give me £100 for a client which came directly from a networking event I attended! I will put that aside for spending money for my holiday I think - as I get to say it was for something nice, but also it takes the pressure off the budget slightly! 

I haven't got time to go into details but my dog nearly cost me a lot more money after he played "chicken" in the dual carriageway!!!!

twiggy86

Oh dear - my lack of posting is a sign of how busy I was last week with work! 

Mixed weekend spending wise - overspent but also OH gave me some money so it's not all bad. Spreadsheet has also been updated which is always a good sign that I am not burying my head! 

All CC statements have come in and so the minimums (plus a bit) have been paid. I'm currently left with £103 on my Bcard which is what is left to clear from the vets bills* - I have another £100 set aside, but I always like to hang on to a bit until the end of the month in case anything crops up. (*Obviously parents cleared £800 of it for me which I haven't started paying back yet). I'm now back to 14% of my target for the year - which means I'm going to have to up my efforts if I still want to achieve it this year!

I do potentially have a few other bits that I can use to overpay so I'll consider them a bit more - for example a couple of my netball games have been called off because of the rain so that could be used for over payments. And I still have £30 showing as "confirmed" in TCB which hasn't yet become payable (and another £30 which I should get from my car insurance from September which isn't even showing yet! 

I do however need to have a rummage around in my clothes to see what I have to take on holiday next month - rather not buy anything if I can help it! I have a friend who's a clothes addict so I might message her to see if I can borrow anything! I also need to sort travel to and from the airport - it's the local airport but not great times for OH to pick me up and I'd rather not leave him without a car. There's a couple of us that need to arrange so I'll speak to them to see if they had any thoughts!

Right enough waffle for now! 

twiggy86

Couple of small money wins!

My £5 "reward" from my bank has come in... and gone straight back out again as a CC over-payment. 

Finally had the £30 become payable from TCB so I have requested that (plus another 47p which was payable) - once that comes in it will go to the CC. 

twiggy86

Feeling like a slight failure today!

Ignoring the vet bill (which has changed things this month) I have been prioritising one CC with the smallest balance whilst making payments of just above the minimums on the rest. However, I have actually just looked up all of the interest rates and when the interest periods end - well it turns out one of the interest free periods expires at the end of July! So I think between now and then, that CC will be my priority so that I can get it down as much as possibly before I have to shift it (all being well that I can shift it of course).  

It's slightly confusing as some debt is interest free and some is on low interest. So I'm not sure whether it is best to focus on debt where it is interest free, but that will expire before I can clear the balance OR interest accruing debt. Plus I'd also really love to knock a debt off but they're all going to take a while - which is why I was focussing on the smallest (which is at 5.9%).

However, at least I now have a clearer picture of the interest on all of them and can try and make an educated decision moving forward!