Diary of a 30-something idiot

stymied

Did you get a chance to ring the council today? I hate making phone calls! But it is a priority.

Do you have any money left over from the sale of the car that you could pay the bill with?

Did you already gift the festival tickets? If not, could they be sold on and something closer to your planned budget bought instead?

Time for more lists? And lists of lists?

Do you have a diamond painting on the go at the moment?

SuzeQStan

Hey F&F - I know this probably won’t help you but we offered on and lost out on multiple properties when we last moved 4yra ago.

what I’m trying (clumsily) to say is there are plenty fish in the sea house wise.  Don’t break your heart on this property.  

We can relate ans we were gutted especially on the 1st property we missed out on as it was my ‘dream’ property.  But the vendor decided not to sell and that was that.

It took us all of 1 week to find another suitable property we liked - we offered, offer was accepted & we got gazumped 1.5 hrs later. EA thought they would get a bidding war but we backed out and withdrew our offer completely (they rang us 3 weeks later when we really had found and had offer accepted for our current home saying the other buyer had dropped out and were we still interested - we weren’t 😉).

Looking back now we realise how unhappy we would have been in all the properties we had accepted bid & lost.  All our current home really needed was a lick of paint.  The others would have taken years to complete to their potential (loft conversions, extensions, new bathrooms, kitchens etc etc)

Chalk it up to experience - if it’s meant to be it will happen without a bridging loan or any other financially risky options. 

If it’s not meant to be you will find something better later on - and all being well with a committed buyer.

sorry it’s gutting I know - but the next perfect home is just around the corner for you.

peb

A lot of sense from a lot of regular knowledgeable posters.

Bridging loans are horrendous plus of course you'd be hit by high rate SDLT

Underpinned houses aren't always mortgageable.  Please tread carefully and slowly with this.

slm6002

On both occasions when I moved, I lost my first choice of house.  It just wasn't meant to be as the houses I ended up with were much better for me.  Of course I didn't see it at the time.  If this house isn't meant to be there will be one that perhaps is already done up just like it coming your way.  Agree with others, don't go down the route of a bridging loan

foxandflowers

Hi everyone.

Today I bit the bullet and borrowed some money from my friend. I now owe her... £7255. But I have paid off the car insurance, Bumper, and £1000 off the council tax, freeing me up £50 a month. I've also set up a direct debit for the council tax now so I won't get caught out again. It will be £216 including arrears, which will be cleared either by April 2024 if I pay the direct debit amount, or sooner, if I make some spare money and pay off more. My colleague who works in council tax has said to tell him every time I make an overpayment and he will readjust my direct debit amount each time to compensate for it. 

I also rang Stepchange and got my final outstanding debt with Vodafone added to the plan. It looks like Vodafone are still adding the contract amount each month to the sold on debt, which is frustrating, but I'm waiting for a specialist advisor to ring me back and I will see what I can do there. Either way, my list of people I owe money to is shrinking slowly, even if the amount doesn't seem to be shrinking as quickly. 

* Vodafone advisor rang me back. My contract isn't closed, which is why the balance has been going up. She's passed the debt back to Vodafone, who have cancelled my contract with 30 days notice, so I think another £44 will be added. BUT the good news is that I also had an active insurance policy that needed cancelling, and upon further investigation I have two policies on my account, so the advisor is refunding me for one of them. 

stymied

Can you set up a standing order of £50 per month to your friend to feel like you’re going in the right direction there too?

foxandflowers

stymied said:

Can you set up a standing order of £50 per month to your friend to feel like you’re going in the right direction there too?

Excellent idea. 
My child maintenance is up and running so I will be paying her back £50 when that comes in, and going forward. Thank you  

foxandflowers

Good morning everyone, 

I've spoken on here before about how food shopping and lack of meal planning is one of my biggest downfalls. Before we moved here I used to shop in Lidl almost daily, but that meant that I could pick up the veg boxes and then base my weeks meals off that. 
As it turns out, I went this morning before work to post a Vinted parcel, and as we park in Lidl to save on parking fees, I nipped in to grab some dog food, and then decided to do a weekly shop. So I spent £43.10, and I still need to get tuna, baked beans, eggs, squash and some supernoodles. But, I GOT A VEG BOX. And it was a really good one! My £1.50 got me: apples, oranges, on the vine tomatoes, miniature potatoes, baking potatoes, two avocados, a bunch of spring onions, a huge box of strawberries, and a head of lettuce. 
I also got 30% off a spatchcock chicken, and beef meatballs. I picked up extra milk, dog food, frozen prawns, cream, frozen cauliflower cheese (am lazy cow), spaghetti with the intention of making meals. Then some pudding things, and protein snacks. 

Meal plan is going to be as follows and will include slight freezer diving: 

Friday
Homemade prawn alfredo & strawberries and cream
Saturday
Jacket potatoes with tuna mayo and pepper, lettuce & tomato salad.  & homemade biscoff cheesecake
Sunday
Smashed miniature potatoes, salmon, green beans & chocolate puddings
Monday 
Fish fingers, chips and beans. 
Tuesday
Chicken wraps / Tuna wraps
Wednesday
Meatball pasta, with tomato sauce (quorn for Stepdaughter)
Thursday
Chicken and cauliflower cheese

Lunch = peanut butter sandwiches, crisps and fruit OR supernoodles (stepdaughter is obsessed with them) &  we only do pudding on weekends. 

But basically, I think it's all really doable. And still tasty and has plenty of variety. So I'm quite pleased. I'm hoping that this is a fresh start going forward, because my budget for the week was £50. Next Friday might be slightly more expensive because we have two extra children, but I'm going to do pizza on Friday and then homemade macaroni cheese on Saturday, and ham sandwiches for lunch, and that should help keep costs down. 

Baileys_Babe

Sounds delicious wish I was dining at Chez foxandflowers this week.

foxandflowers

Back to normality after the first of three bank holiday weekends this month. I've had a hell of a time of it. We went to our local country park/nature reserve yesterday, while little one was at a Brownies day out. She had a great time, but ended up full of cold and with awful toothache, so she went to bed at about 5pm... and is off school today. I'm back in the office, and trying to clear my head before settling down to a day of busyness. I have to post some Vinted parcels at lunch (£16.50 pending, and £1.79 cleared), and pick up shower gel & shampoo & something to eat. Both Saturday and Sunday were NSD's entirely, but yesterday went a bit off the rails. 

Vodafone are being a pain in the **** to deal with, and have taken the account back, so I haven't been able to add it to Stepchange after all. Now I need to wait for them to sell the debt on, so I can put it back on.

Firstly, I want to say that I have been thinking about what you've all said about the bridging loan, and I think you might be right. Something I wasn't accounting for, aside from the whole paying bills on two houses thing, was that technically it would be a second property, so that would mean I was liable for stamp duty. Which after using the calculator, would be £5,850. Obviously, I can't afford that. So now I don't really know what to do, because I really do NOT want to lose the house. I understand the house is a lot of work, and most people would think I am crazy for considering buying something that is sure to be a bit of a money pit... but the location is perfect, and you can fix a house up over time, but you can't move it. 
 
SO my current options, and I have maybe 48 hours to figure this all out. 
1) See if I can add the stamp duty to the bridging loan, and go down this route, potentially losing about 35k. 3/10
2) Wait for my house to sell and potentially lose the house we have had the offer accepted on. 5/10
3) Accept the drastically reduced offer of £275k from the man that put in an offer of 320k. "Lose" 55k. 1/10
4) Go back to the people we have put in an offer for, and increase offer if they are willing to wait. ??/10

Advice welcome, even if I don't reply, I do take things on board. 


Secondly, I sat down with husband and had a come to Jesus talk. He needs to bring in money. £200 a week would make a HUGE difference to me, and our family, and take us from being borderline breadline, to in a better position to overpay some debts, have some savings, and have a life. I don't care if he gets a 9-5 manual labour job, or if he flips furniture and lists things on Vinted, but money has to come in from him. It was absolutely horrendous. I cried, a lot. But I can't keep carrying this weight alone. I guess we will now see what happens. I don't know if he is going to stay in the van in Cardiff and work down there, or try and find something closer to where we live, or do something off his own back. But either way, I need a partner to support me, and contribute to our family. 

Thirdly... and this is the worst one to admit to. I have received communication from Mayglothling Waste via email. I've copied it below. What do I do? I can't afford to pay it, and I really don't want to ask anyone to borrow money again. I am going to have to ring them, but I'm so scared they are going to shout at me. I spoke to them before and offered them £40 a week, which I couldn't afford to pay. I meant to say £40 a month but I was too embarrassed to correct myself. And then I spoke to them back in January, and they brought it up and were really short with me and I just said I would see what I could do and hung up. And now this. I am so scared. And so upset with myself, because I keep ending up in the same place and I don't know how to fix things. 

Notice of Intention to Recover Debt

 

Take Notice that it is our intention to commence proceedings using

 

MONEY CLAIM ONLINE

 

To recover the sum of £ 983.08 which is due on an account dating from

 

16th June, 2022 and payable at our place of business as stated above.

 

The above amount includes interest of  £ 63.68 at 8% per annum.