Diary of a 30-something idiot

WinterWarrior

@Kim_13 of course! Completely missed the dvla reference, doh! 

MFWannabe

foxandflowers said:

Updated budget (including April prices for bills). 
Debt total this morning is £40,978.08. Determined to be under 40k by summer, but also gutted I left my debt colouring in workbook at home, because there's quite a bit to colour in!
I have 2 friend loans outstanding (pls note that I will be setting up an SO to friend 2 this week as per budget), Stepchange & whatever the situation is with Prowaste. Either that will be knocked off, or paid by the end of the week. They haven't got back to me yet so I still don't know if I owe them any money or not (I probably do but it's been ages since then so maybe they will let me off?)

I have cancelled YT Premium, but I miss it a lot. So it's still on the budget while I decide if I want to put it back in or not. If not, that money will move back into the "General" pot. 

Looks better 👍
However some of those items still look high: 
Internet - is this just for internet or basic sky tv as well? If just internet then it’s high
RAC - this is a huge amount; I only pay £60 per year for full breakdown cover 
Mobiles - are these in contracts? If not sim only is much cheaper and you don’t get less for your money 

If it were me some of those extra entertainment expenses would definitely go and if you can make this budget work there is no reason to sell the house x 
Step change will tick over at £99 per month and not sure how much you owe to friends? 

stymied

What's Adrian Flux? Sorry if you've answered this before.

I second that the car repairs category needs to be higher if van battery costs £500. My car is currently on for £1400 repair although thankfully has only needed tyres, bulbs and wipers the last couple of years otherwise so £700 ish a year plus servicing.

Also agree that a personal spends pot outside of general would be ideal.

Maybe clothes could be funded by Vinted and that £40 transferred over?

CoffeeSonata

Adrian Flux is car/van  insurance @stymied  

Agree van costs ideally need to be more set aside. 
But this is a start where you weren't able to set aside before isn't it Fox? 

 Also good to work to yearly road tax (& insurance)

 wondering are you able to use some from the car sale to put aside to cover the car tax and the insurance for one full year when you get the new van? So you aren't paying extra in monthly premiums or rates for both,  and the lowest cost yearly?

 It saves some, and gives you flexibility in setting aside to pay yearly. 
  Also means two less payments to keep track of monthly with dates and outoings. 

 Obviously then you need to set the amount aside monthly yourself, and not dip into it, but for me it's been possible, and worth it to reduce the overall cost and not have to keep track of is it due etc, risk bounced direct debits .
It's helped stabilise my monthly cashflow, getting some things  over to yearly and my stress levels. 

enthusiasticsaver

On your income with no mortgage you  should be able to live relatively comfortably.  The debt figure is not that huge either so it does seem like a lot of your income drips out on non essentials. Do you really need all those extras?  YT premium, netflix, amazon prime, spotify and ring doorbell , playstation etc. There is a lot going out monthly.  Can you not just pick one or two which are most important?  Many of them you can get for free with adverts. If you got rid of a lot of those you would have more  disposable income to go on the odd treat to make you feel that life is worth living.  As others have said even with a healthy income we ration the subscriptions we have or share with other family members.  We do have netflix but  share SIL apple music. We don't have amazon prime anymore. Why do you have the playstation plus?  What does that give you? 

redlaces

Controversial but I found having Amazon Prime enabled me making more unplanned purchases, because it's basically stuff on demand, I click and have something with me 24 hours later and don't even really notice the money I'm spending.

Not having Prime makes me stop and think a bit more before pressing 'buy'. Plus then, the few times a year I do make an Amazon purchase they normally offer a Prime "trial" at checkout either free or for 99p a month, which I take (for the quick delivery) and cancel before the end of the month. Might be food for thought

Kim_13

redlaces said:

Controversial but I found having Amazon Prime enabled me making more unplanned purchases, because it's basically stuff on demand, I click and have something with me 24 hours later and don't even really notice the money I'm spending.

Not having Prime makes me stop and think a bit more before pressing 'buy'. Plus then, the few times a year I do make an Amazon purchase they normally offer a Prime "trial" at checkout either free or for 99p a month, which I take (for the quick delivery) and cancel before the end of the month. Might be food for thought

I second this. Didn't you cancel it earlier in the year having found that actually, an item was cheaper in store? They're also adding ads to the video service unless you pay extra.

I tend only to take their offer of a trial when I need the urgent delivery. Other items are popped onto my list and purchased when there is enough to qualify for free delivery - which also gives time to reflect on whether I really need them.

foxandflowers

I wrote a big reply and its all gone because I closed the wrong tab by mistake. I ought to stop titting around on here when I'm supposed to be working, but it is helpful. 

DVLA is the van tax - should actually be £12.25 - I didn't spot that when I was updating everything. Insurance wise, I have until October before the van insurance is up for renewal, so at that point I will see about paying for the year up front. There is £800 in the 'van' pot currently, and if we manage to sell it / px with a smaller one, then I would like to pay that cost upfront. 

RAC is invididual cover, not vehicle cover. It covers Mr Fox whatever vehicle he is in, and it was £13 initially but the costs keep going up and up. I've got 3 months free but not until next year. 

I would love the clothes to be Vinted funded entirely - sell £40 worth and spend £40 worth. A revolving door of £40. My downfall has been Vinted. It's brilliant for getting rid of things and making some money, but it's also really bad because it's essentially a charity shop that I can search. I keep seeing things on there that I would love, or would have loved when I was younger and poorer, only now I have adult money and my mum doesn't judge my outfit choices. Dangerous. Hence needing to set that at £40, otherwise I can fall in a wormhole and then its game over. I would like to try Porject 333 but need some time to figure out what I'd pick for my items! And it's still too cold and wet to start the "Spring" category.

The rest of my hobbies are really pretty low cost. I love to read, but I get all my books for free, and book club is only £2.50 a month, when I do go. Sea swimming, again, is free. I found an extension on Firefox that blocks ads on Youtube, so as long as I watch on my laptop, I can carry on not paying for it. I have enough cross-stitch kits to keep me going through the apocalypse. 

The only thing I really miss is having my nails done. But I am trying to get behind doing my own nail care. It's been about two years since I last had a set done. I don't compromise on my brand of oat milk, or using liquid hand soap instead of a bar, and I have a diet coke habit that is strictly limited to a can a day. But most other things have fallen by the wayside.

Amazon Prime is still going currently, I did cancel it, but then we brought it back as the one thing we couldn't find cheaper after subscribe and save discounts was filter coffee and razor heads. Plus the entirety of House is on Prime Video, I use Kindle First Reads for my one free book a month from them, and we use the perks from Amazon Gaming towards PS games/Pokemon Go. 

On lunch today I went to Boots to get some more spot patches as my skin has been really bad recently, and they had shapewear 60 denier tights on sale. Normally £7.50 but as they are discontinuing them, they were reduced to 50p! 3 pairs left and I bought them all, as I only have one pair that fits and isn't bobbly. Hurrah. Absolute bargainy goodness. 

CoffeeSonata

Might be time to switch. Are you locked into RAC for a year? 
The AA has a offer on until 2nd April , 40% off for a year if you have added home start, national recovery etc. 
So an individual policy with national recovery is now £9.65  a year (normally £16.50)

With national recovery and home start is £12.25 for a year. ( normally £20 ish)

After that obviously it goes up. But if you can leave now, and take advantage of the discount, I absolutely would. 
 It is individual cover. 

 amazon prime. Are the savings you get for razor blades and coffee throughout the year relaible and enough to warrant £107.88 a year? 
  The rest is nice to have but maybe not always worth it. I'm with you on the kindle free books being lovely though. 
 You can buy the House box set for about £45 , probably cheaper second hand. 

 I'm just thinking it's a lot to pay yearly for possibly smaller savings annually on the coffee and razor blades than you are paying on yearly fees, and the rest of the benefits are nice-to-have /non essentials right now. Also when prime is lethal for impulse buying! 
 We do have prime, but considering dropping it because of the ads in prime video issue (AND less quality sound/resolution), we don't use subscribe and save as they haven't been reliably always cheaper, or sometimes  we end up with too much of something. It's been easier just to shop around and keep an eye out for offers, stocking up when we need it and when a good offer is on. (I know this is easier in a town with easy access to supermarkets etc). Only buying certain things when they are on offer. 
 We don't order that much stuff from there to make the free delivery /quick delivery worthwhile anymore I don't think. It has been very useful for partners last minutness in ordering christmas gifts and birthday gifts but again, not worth £107 a year.  I did also use the speed for work supplies and equipment/toys but that's also changed now. We are thinking we are not getting enough benefit from it for the cost at the moment.  Even though I appreicate the books, a free book from restricted choice isn't worth keeping the cost over the whole year. Might as well buy my own or have a few months of kindle unlimted.  It's probably going. 
 
 Monzo plus: I *think* that startling accounts do most of what the monzo plus does, without a subscription fee? It has 5  virtual cards, rounds up to pots, has over 50 categories, does insights etc.  Again wondering are you getting  enough benefit from the nice-to-have extras for it  making it worth  £60 a year to you? Maybe starling would do. 

 That is a fab boots bargain! You made me laugh with cross stitching to the apocalypse. I have enough wool/yarn to knit and crochet to the apocalypse. 

   That is excellent news about the youtube ad blocker extension. I might resort to that! 

dawnybabes

Does your local library do ebooks ? Ours does so might be a better option if you close the prime account. Are any of you students - you could get the student discount ?  (For our college If you’ve ever done a college course then you email address details are the same forever 🥴🥴🥴🥴)