Keeping afloat till I can get round to the debts!

NeverendingDMP

I'm so glad they finished. The wind and the rain here since has been awful. Budget is intact. I googled how many weeks till Christmas and wrote a list of how I buy for. I've not got quite enough in the Xmas pot yet but there's a bit of time left. It's just a pain thinking of what to get people. I think I might plan some time/book a day off in November to start buying things. 

NeverendingDMP

I'm in the slow bit of the month were the bills are going out and there's not much left to save. Exciting news though. We've just had 13 pounds interest in our big house fund account where we kept our money aside for the building work and windows. That won't happen again as the account is now drastically reduced but what a nice suprise. It is an incentive to eventually be rich enough to have savings 😂 and it's a nice welcome towards the plastering fund. We had 88 left in the account and now it's just over 100. Plasterer is booked. Just have to find the rest of the money now ha ha 

jwil

Nice interest total!  It will be lovely to have all the plastering done as well.

debtfreewannabe321

Good luck with getting the build work finished. I was so glad when the builders finally left my house at the end of summer. 

My water bill has shot up too. I don't know whether I'm in an expensive area or not though, how do you find that out?

NeverendingDMP

I think anyone down south is expensive anyways but when we've been chatting at work our water bills have all gone up by 20-30 a month so it's the new way I suppose. 

NeverendingDMP

200 in the plastering fund. Might not have the actual amount saved by the time they come but I'm working on it. We were under in the food budget this week by 35 pounds. 30 has been wiped out by a school trip letter and 5 has gone to savings. Least I've not had to look for money for the trip though so I'm calling it a win. 

badmemory

Well my water bill has gone up by 27% this year & I know some southern ones have gone up by 35%.  I only have 2 things I spend on that haven't gone up by at least 10% & those are my council tax because that was restricted & my fuel but that is only because I spent money on having solar fitted.  Put it another way - I have gone from saving over 25% of my income immediately pre covid to having to use savings 5 years later - after having had cost of living increases.

NeverendingDMP

It's unreal isn't it. I've got from working four days a week to five days a week and the only real reason we are better off is cos I've reduced childcare costs now they are older! Cost of living wiped out any other difference and caused a fair bit of the debt in-between. Least I'm managing day to day though. That's better than most!

NeverendingDMP

Oh wow been a long time since I posted. Debts are up. Have had a run of bad luck, extra costs etc. present situation is
Xmas spends saved ✓ plastering money saved ✓ £180 so far in the school iPad fund. I have been also been on a game testing website and earned £20 so far by playing mindless games on my phone. 

Not so good/not saved at all yet is
A) money needed for temp roof repair as the damp patch is now two foot long £200 -planned asap.
new toilet required and plumber to fit -ideally asap no idea 2-300??? Need a quote 
C) c card is at 1000 as a result of lost car keys, unexpected costs, some bathroom works already done and food spends on c card to enable money being set aside for plastering. Plan -pay minimum for foreseeable
D) need a skip or clearance man and a van to get rid of building materials and general rubbish caused by work on house so far. Cost ? Currently excused myself from sorting this as roadworks on the road outside of house so impractical to do now 😂 
The quandry is do I use Xmas and iPad money and kick the debts further down through line. It won't solve it but will keep the interest at bay from the c card for a while longer.

jwil

Sorry things have been tough. There's always something isn't there!  At least work on the house is an investment and should make life easier.  I probably wouldn't use Xmas money as that's almost here, but when do you need the ipad money for?  It doesn't solve the problem, so I probably wouldn't bother using it unless I knew I wouldn't need it for a longer period of time, but that's probably not the 'correct' answer.