Diary of a 30-something idiot

stymied

Some of those meals sound ideal to stretch to an extra 2-3 portions for the freezer although I guess fajitas used the same base as chicken curry, ditto for spaghetti bol & lasagne. Veggie lasagne with ratatouille in place of bolognaise is very tasty too!

MFWannabe

foxandflowers said:

No spend week has turned into a low spend week, which borders on being annoying but has still been productive. £73.13 of bills have come out, and I've had to pop to the shop twice so far this week as the bread and milk has run out and then so did the tea and deodorant for Mr Fox. I am v fussy about tea, love an Early Grey - but find all but the Co-op own brand too weak. Luckily it's not too expensive! Have spent £13.66 on additional bits, but made £12 on Vinted that cleared, so I'm only counting £1.66 as "out of budget" spending.... the week before Monday to Friday I spent £337.16 (£197 on Groceries) which is exactly the sort of shock I need to sort myself out. 

My big Lidl shop on Sunday cost me £157. I am on that basis nearly £40 a week better off. I've made and brought lunch with me every morning and I am eating healthier because of it. I've started making myself breakfast smoothies with oat milk, bananas and frozen berries, and half a little pot of coconut protein yogurt. That along with butter on rice cakes is keeping me mostly full until lunch time. Lunch is a sandwich, a piece of fruit, a packet of crisps, and a chocolate bar. Mr Fox has been cooking all week - we had fajitas on Monday with chicken thigh meat (yummy), chicken wings with chips and garlic bread on Tuesday, and chicken curry last night. Tonight is lasagna, tomorrow is Pizza and Saturday will be Spaghetti Bolognese. There's still plenty in the freezer too, so going to eat our way through some of that before I do another 'big' food shop, as there is barely any room to put anything away currently! I am going to make plum crumble tonight (we call it plumble in our house) and serve with cream. 

The trouble with not shopping is it quickly becomes obvious how much of a comfort it is. I really need to re-wire my brain towards frugality. I have a perfectly serviceable coat, I do not need an Oodie coat just because I get an email that has a sale on. I have been unsubscribing from everything I can in an effort to stop the inflow of junk emails. I want to be at a point where I have (using coats as an example) just one item that covers all the bases, is pretty, practical and durable. And I always know where it is. Am sick of having piles of stuff in cupboards (we own SO many coats) and not ever being able to find the one I need. I wore my Regatta x Orla Kiely Vinted bargain rain jacket today - stayed dry on my upper half, but may have to take inspiration from a postman and start wearing shorts when it rains. I hate having soggy legs. 

Mini Fox's dad promised her he would book time off and have her for two weeks (as per the court order) and take her camping. Unsurprisingly, he has let her down. It doesn't look like he will be having her any extra at all. Luckily Mr Fox is there to pick up the pieces while I work - he has promised to take her overnight in the van just the two of them, and spend lots of one on one time with her. 8 more days until I am off for 10 days. Got to make sure I do the back to school shopping before September. Am unsure if we are going to have Mini Fox on her actual birthday, so have decided best plan is to do a manicure/haircut/get ears pierced, and follow that up with a cinema trip on whatever day we have her that is closest. Her dragon themed birthday presents have been ordered, and most of them have turned up. Just need to figure out how to make a dragon cake now...

Fox x

Well done Fox and Mr Fox 👏
You sound more uplifted in this post Fox; nice to read x 
just remember buying more stuff means even more to declutter 🙄 speaking from experience and as someone who needs to do a massive declutter 🤦‍♀️

Sarahwithlove

I've finally caught up on your posts. 

I know how hard it can be when work aren't cooperative when it comes to your needs. You may find that occ health are more understanding. We've had to go back to office once a week and have a staff member who doesn't come in due to health reasons. I agree that writing it down is helpful. Maybe go back through the posts and note the issues. 

I know your OH isn't working but could he do something self employed? Delivery driver, gardener, handyman, anything to help bring in an income? Maybe work at a supermarket? Get employee discount as well then. He doesn't even have to work full time just enough hours to cover your debt repayments would be a massive help. 

birdsfoottrefoil

How are things Foxes? 

foxandflowers

August has been the longest month. I return here after having had ten days off work. We went camping with my oldest stepchild and her partner, in the Mendip Hills. It ended up being that the boys were unable to come, so it was just five of us. On the Saturday we spent the day in Glastonbury. It was very pretty, but also possibly one of the most expensive places I have ever been. I got a keyring for our collection and a bookmark from the Library of Avalon, had a stunning Bloody Mary in the King William Inn and generally had a lovely, if exhausting time. 

Mini Fox's birthday went well - although I am still slightly in shock that I now have a ten year old. She loved all her dragon themed presents, and her rainbow cake (courtesy of M&S because I was too lazy to make my own five tier concoction) and her birthday trip to the cinema to see Inside Out 2. My best friend came down to stay too and the following evening we went to my friend's house for a dinner party and Dungeons & Dragons which she also adored. So it was nice to be able to keep her busy, and entertained especially as the weather was not great.

The rest of my time off was spent pottering around the house, reading a lot, doing a stupidly hard 1000 piece tiger puzzle with Mini Fox, and avoiding doing any of the chores I had promised myself I would do! I've also really enjoyed using the Wayback Machine (aka the internet archive) to read New Yorker longform essays written by David Grann, who also wrote Killers of the Flower Moon. 

I managed to lose an airpod in Lidl - thankfully it was more of a 'fairpod' than an Apple airpod, but even so, it had cost me £35. At this point I have bought 3 pairs of 'fairpods' and the other two pairs have broken in strange and unsual ways. So I was discussing with Mr Fox as he has genuine certified official ones, and he said that they were 100% worth going for, as the quality was superior etc etc... So I hopped on Apple store, and nearly fainted at the £240 price tag. Then looked on CeX and they were £190 and I sat there for about ten minutes trying to see if I could justify buying them to myself... BUT then I remembered my frugal intentions (which have been significantly wobbling over the last month). So I went on Amazon and got some SkullCandy in ear "used - like new" for £25 with a years warranty. I have some over ears that are nearing the end of their lifespan from SkullCandy and they have lasted me seven years and have incredible sound quality, so fingers crossed my good intentions pay off.

I start my CIPP qualification at the end of October, which means £60 a month deducted from my pay   I need to add my term dates to my calendar. 
I've also booked almost my annual leave for next year maximising the bank holidays. Mr Fox and I have decided I should use one day a month "off" for my own sanity, unless I have longer holidays booked. We are going to create a couple of new traditions - in January we are going to do our own Blue Monday and go to Tesco, get sushi in honour of Yo's Blue Monday, and spent the day under a duvet. February is our three year wedding anniversary, March I will book off Spring Equinox etc etc. 

Food shop for the next week has been done. If being careful I can stretch it to ten days, with perhaps a small extra bread/milk top up shop at the weekend. Determined to wrangle the budget this month. We watched a docu-series yesterday called The Men Who Made Us Spend and it has absolutely ruined any thought I have of shopping or consuming. Time to purge, and get everything under control. I highly highly recommend it. 

Anyway there is probably loads I have forgotten to tell you, but I must sign off and actually do some work.

Take care, 

Fox x

Cherryfudge

It's good to hear from you again Fox. How are you?

Belated happy birthday to Mini Fox! The camping sounds like good family time.  

Well done on the reduced spending. I like your Blue Monday idea!

Not sure if this is relevant to you but it may be worth a look.

You have nudged me that I really need to look at my own CPD, I'm coasting along getting no where at present. I'm going to look up that programme too - sounds really interesting!

Sarahwithlove

Ooo where did you watch the documentary series? I'll have to see if I can find it 

foxandflowers

Hiya both. I found the first episode on Youtube (it was on iPlayer but has since become unavailable as it is approximately 10 years old - grr). You may be able to find it all on there. It was really fascinating, and enraging at the same time. Very odd to think of us all as 'good little consumers' running happily off the ledge towards debt and that its all been orchestrated by a handful of men within the last 50 years.

And then I go and do something silly on lunch, and one of the items I was watching on Vinted was reduced to £3 so I bought it. *sigh* I no longer like wearing jeans, and have put away my summer clothes and all of a sudden my wardrobe is looking rather bare so I am keeping an eye out for midi skirts or longer dresses to wear in winter with my boots. 

Back on the wagon now. Think we will attempt a No Spend Month in September - which rather means I ought to get a shuffle on buying Mini Fox trainers for her last year of primary school.

Sarahwithlove

Haha yes vinted is rather good at tempting you in. I've stayed away for now other than to sell my own stuff. 

foxandflowers

Another day, another dollar... or something.

I'm starting to stress that Stepchange isn't going to be taken this month as it is not showing as a pending Direct Debit at present. I'll have to ring them on lunch and figure that out. If it's not showing as a DD then I will set up a Standing Order. They've produced my August statement, but the additional debt I told them about when I last did my budget review has not appeared on said statement, which is another cause for concern. 

***
It has been lunchtime and I rang them and the Direct Debit was indeed not set up. So I have set it up, and manually paid for December's payment of £110.00. I got paid two days ago and have less than £500 in my account already. Current debt total is £42,204.82 - and I've paid off £8,857.32 since starting this diary / my ridiculously over the top spreadsheet system. I've basically made barely any progress. I've paid back twice what I've "re-borrowed" but frankly that just isn't good enough is it. I've only really done that because I paid some stuff off when we moved, not because I've made any major changes. I made loads of money on Vinted last year and I haven't got anything to show for it now. The money we got for Ronnie went on paying back all the bills I missed when I was ONCE AGAIN being stupid. I'm so so tired of myself.

At my current rate of paying back £181 a month between Stepchange and my friend, it will take me NINETEEN years. Sometimes I conveniently forget this fact. That by paying back what I'm paying, I'm losing out on almost £200 a month for the next two decades. There is no amount of taking lunch to work, buying second hand, etc etc that can fix that. If I literally never have anything go wrong in those 19 years, I will be debt free around the time I hit my mid 50s. 

I genuinely don't know what is more important. I don't know if I should be getting my emergency fund sorted NOW so that I don't have to borrow off anyone again, or if I should just try and bump up my Stepchange payments as much as possible. 

I am full of sadness and frustration, and I am not comfortable sitting with those feelings.

In other news: 
The fan belt on the van has a hole in it so it's booked in for Friday to get that sorted. I also need to retrieve my Switch from Cash Generators. And get my rings back from Ramsden's before November.

Last night I read Spent by Avis Cardella. It was an autobiographical account of overcoming shopping addiction, but it sort of more read as a catalogue of designer outfits rather than a deeper examination of why she was shopping, and how she came to stop. Can't recommend that one to you guys.