Half a world away

no1disneymum

Hey @cybertortoise, I found your diary

Just read through your posts. You're only a few years older than me & it sounds like we are the same in terms of spending! I am always 'just popping in Tesco/Asda' on my way back from the school run & end up spending £20-£30 a time. Then come dinner time I still don't have a proper meal in mind. On Friday I did make a meal plan & to be fair I have stuck to it for the most part. The only thing I did change is had jacket potato on Monday instead of the curry I had planned, but I had everything in so it didn't cost me extra money & then I made the curry yesterday.

Looking forward to keeping up with your journey & sharing my own. Good luck!

Brie

would love to help as i admire anyone who is trying to put together a sensible life plan

but

what's LBMs?
what's Lowells?  Why are there so many listed?  (wondering if these are PCN debts that might be resolved via the motoring forum)

RelievedSheff

Brie said:

would love to help as i admire anyone who is trying to put together a sensible life plan

but

what's LBMs?
what's Lowells?  Why are there so many listed?  (wondering if these are PCN debts that might be resolved via the motoring forum)

LBM = Light Bulb Moment

Lowell are a debt collection agency.

cybertortoise

@Brie as @RelievedSheff says a light bulb moment and Lowell is a DCA, to be fair they've been really easy to deal with. They've purchased lots of my defaulted accounts over the years, unfortunately they're all pretty old. I'm unlikely to get a settlement offer from them but I'm going to give it a try anyway.

@no1disneymum nice to see you, a meal plan is my job for today as my youngest is off school so I'm missing placement and need to accomplish something. I've also gone through the cupboards and bagged up things we definitely won't use, I'll drop them at the food bank when I go to Sainsburys later. I have a list which I will follow and I plan to make a batch of soup for lunches. I'm almost looking forward to doing my big food shop on Sunday and that's unheard of

Brie

fyi - food bank - might be stating the obvious but please ensure the items are still within date as most FBs can't distribute things that are beyond a BBD.  The volunteers may have an agreement to use them themselves but that's still better than chucking away if you can't/aren't using stuff.  I had some BBD Oct 22 salad cream I dropped off last week and there was one "customer" who loves the stuff so it wasn't an issue.

re Lowells - I'd try totting up all of those and offering a total of 10% just to get things rolling.  The total for them is £5297 so if you offered £500 to be paid next month as you aren't having any takeaways that would be a big boost to your plan.

cybertortoise

@Brie Thank you I'll try this. The worst that can happen is they say no.

All the items are in date, I wouldn't send anything out of date. Some kind soul had bought some items for the food bank in Sainsburys but it was ham and yoghurts and of course they're just sat there in the drop off box! Such a waste.

no1disneymum

Hi @cybertortoise, how did the meal planning go? I'm going through my cupboards & freezer this weekend to try & plan around what I already have in. My freezer is jampacked so I want to use some of that up & make some space in there ready for a few Christmas treats in a few months

cybertortoise

HI @no1disneymum I've started writing down some meals I know we all like and I'm up to about 15. I'd like another 6 ideas or so and we can rotate them over a 3 week period. I need to sit all the kids down after dinner and get some feedback from them.

I was due to be paid some money I'm owed on Friday, that was going to pay for a big food shop and I could start batch cooking over the longer weekend. However, the person who owes me the money wasn't paid so now it should be Tuesday when I'm in work/placement 6 days next week so not ideal.

Sounds like a good plan for you going forward, gotta have space for those Christmas treats

I need to use up what we have so I have space for my batch cooked stuff. But we actually have food for meals in, usually I have nothing that goes together, we've had some very strange combinations over the years!

cybertortoise

All my bills are paid up until the next time I get paid, so I've taken my last few pounds out of my bank accounts and transferred them to my emergency fund. I've got a whopping £12 in there now

I haven't had the best week, I had a big birthday to spend out for and had planned to pay that out of the money I was being paid back. Unfortunately, I didn't get that on the day I thought I would, so the birthday money had to come out of my general pot. Not a problem really as I will pay myself back in the week.

I had to walk to and from work on Saturday and was in so much pain after my shift that I really couldn't stand to cook. So I spent on takeaway but I'm allowing that to be the only one for the next 2 months. I used a voucher so it reduced the cash price. Still not great though.

I think I'm going to have to increase the budget for my planned second hand car purchase, there's just nothing halfway decent out there within my current budget. I'm desperately in need of a car, I've really noticed a difference in my daily pain levels using the bus and that's still a heck of a walk to and from the stops. I also need to get to and from university this year, whereas the last 2 years have been almost 100% online. That extra cost will be a shock but I have it written in my budget and now just need to be paid my larger income to be able to start following that budget. It's a change from weekly to monthly so will be a bit different to the usual. But I am trying to budget everything for the first of the month and then live on last months income. YNAB rule #something.

I've got to start taking care of myself better. I've got an app that connects to my smart watch and tracks my heart rate variability etc. Apparently, my stress was at 94% the other day and all I was doing was sitting and drinking hot chocolate on my break at work. I don't feel any more stressed out than usual but I live in a perpetual state of stress so I don't know that I'd notice.

Plans for this week:

• 26.5 hours of placement
• 8 hours of work
• No outings or birthdays due
• Write out my shopping list for batch cooking
• Eat from the freezer
• Be careful with the money that comes in
  
• Prepare for next week when the big income comes in
  

cybertortoise

I emailed a letter to Lowell offering £600 in full and final settlement of all of my accounts held with them. It's about 11% of what I owe so I'm sure they won't accept but it was worth a try and maybe they'll come back with a slightly higher offer.

I did the same with Cabot - offering just over 10% on each account. Fingers crossed!

I've rechecked my credit reports and noted down all of the 'open' accounts which are showing on them. I'll focus on snowballing them, over the ones that aren't actively shown on my credit report.

My payment priorities are:

• Creditspring
• Universal credit budgeting advance - 2 payments left
  
• Capital one
• CCI
  
• Capital one
• Zinc
  
• Studio
• Everything else