Flying solo

twiggy86

And today's bits and bobs...

• Take lunch to work 
• Take pillows (which I'd lost the receipt for) to work for boss and he will give me the money 
• Update spreadsheet with weekend's spends (although Saturday and Sunday were NSDs!) 
• Work on birthday present at lunch 
• Start working on POA form 
• Make meal plan 
• Make shopping list 
• Shop to list - I've got a voucher for L*dl but its £5 off a £25 spend and I'm not sure I'll spend that much, but do I stock up on essentials? 

PennysIntoPounds

Are there any upcoming birthday gifts you could use it towards like chocs or wine or fancy cheese?

twiggy86

Ooo great idea @PennysIntoPounds - I'm going to tot it up in my phone as I walk round and then decide what do grab if I need to make it up to the £25... maybe I'll just treat myslef to fancy cheese now you've planted the seed in my head!  

PennysIntoPounds

Free £5 cheese 😍

Do check if you're thinking of buying wine as a gift that the offer applies to wine, I would imagine it would in this case but my free £10 L*dl coupon didn't allow wine, what an outrage, they can see from my shopping history this is an essential foodstuff 😁

Essentials can add up to a fair bit though and make it a good use of voucher if you do a little inventory and think 'ooh I am running a bit low on coffee/cleaning product/nail varnish remover etc/a few pizzas or bags of veg for the freezer'
Included in my one-transaction voucher shop was a lone banana just to fully get my money's worth 😂

twiggy86

I didn't get fancy cheese but I did manage to use the voucher! Couldn't get over the price of foil(!) as was actually paying attention and totting it up in my phone as I added items to my trolley. I did muck up at one point so I added a couple of essentials (toilet roll and washing up liquid) to make sure I went over £25. Spent £29 in the end - well £24 once I took off the voucher. 

Instead of wine as a birthday present, I'm making my friend a crochet scrunchie! I made a couple over Christmas and she "demanded" one! I had a car service this morning so decided to start it last night as it was an easy thing to sit and make in public. I went through my stash and found something suitable - annoyingly I didn't have enough of the colour I wanted to use (I associate her with green) however I'm sure she'll appreciate this. 

Also yesterday my boss gave me a £10 note yesterday for the pillows - however the pillows were only £7.99 so I would need to break into it to give him change. Instead of buying a bar of chocolate of something just to get change, I gave it back to him and asked him to get change! He is more likely to pop to the shop by work for snacks! Anyway today he gave me the change which is good for two reasons 1) I didn't make a small but unnecessary purchase; and 2) I now have change for netball tomorrow! I will transfer it from my "netball" pot into the savings pot. 

Speaking of my misc savings pot... I've been feeling like I'm not making progress - I think it's partially the mid-end of month slump and partially because I've been putting extras into my savings rather than paying off the CC, so the progress doesn't feel the same as I'm not seeing the numbers go down. However I have actually managed to save £675 this month on top of the £225 which has actually been sent to the CCs as the minimum payments. That's £900 - which is absolutely amazing! It has been helped this month with the extra pay I received from jury service/ lack of tax/ other deductions plus not paying council tax this month. This means I have £1,390 sat in my misc savings at the moment - well my smallest debt is £1,650 so if this money doesn't find another use then I could nearly clear it! However, I will be holding on to the money until situation with ex is completely resolved. 

Anyway, enough waffle - on to today... 

• Take leftover pasta to work for lunch 
• Do pot shuffling now I have the money from boss for the pillows 
• Take beef out of freezer for dinner tonight 
• Work on crochet scrunchie at appointment - will quickly finish tonight 
• Work on crochet present (a deer so more complicated and involves sewing multiple pieces together) this evening 
• Tidy around in utility room 
• Find something else to do to make me feel like I'm making progress! 

Floss

I would consider stashing that amount of savings into an emergency fund, so you have something to fall back on if you need it. 

twiggy86

@Floss - I have a £1,000 EF stashed away separately (and the comfort/ control that gives me, I question why I never prioritised it sooner!). I started creating a "mic" savings to cover my "known unknowns" i.e. would I have a shortfall from jury service (thankfully I didn't), will I need to pay for legal advice re Ex and/or give him any money - this is still unknown so I'm continuing to build up these savings!  

PennysIntoPounds

Excellent work all round. Do you know when you or your ex will be wanting to have that conversation? I know I keep putting my nose into your business but it's out of feeling protective after all you've been through and wanting you to thrive, I'm not just a nosy bossy mare! (I have many other bad qualities too 😁)
But if he's going to try to take the mick please remember he doesn't have a leg to stand on and fight for your lovely savings and debt repayments money

twiggy86

PennysIntoPounds said:

Excellent work all round. Do you know when you or your ex will be wanting to have that conversation? I know I keep putting my nose into your business but it's out of feeling protective after all you've been through and wanting you to thrive, I'm not just a nosy bossy mare! (I have many other bad qualities too 😁)
But if he's going to try to take the mick please remember he doesn't have a leg to stand on and fight for your lovely savings and debt repayments money

He's coming either tomorrow or Friday to clear out the majority of his things so I suspect it may come up then. In all honesty I've been looking at all the things he's done around the house/ garden and I feel like I wouldn't begrudge giving him money. (I'm far too soft I know given what he did to me!). However, what I would begrudge is if he just wastes that money - if I gave him something I would want him to use it to set up his future. Not for me to spend potentially months/ years having to recoup money that he wastes on takeaways and what-not! 

twiggy86

I received a massive £9.77 in interest on my savings! Meaning I now have over £1,400 (just!) sat in my misc savings - it's so funny how things going into the next hundred/ thousand can feel so much bigger! I'm also still waiting on £9.50 from a Vinted sale that will go into there. Speaking of which, next month one of my CCs will drop from in the £4ks to the £3ks! Plus if I do send a bit more than the minimum to another, I can take that from £7ks into the £6ks. I think I will do that, as it will hopefully kick my motivation up a gear! 

Having said that, I do have a few plans next month including an "all you can drink" brunch. I'm not much of a drinker so probably won't get my money's worth but it's for a close friend's birthday and the ticket has already been paid for. I'm also going to a local beauty spot which is lit up at night - again ticket paid for out of this month's money. The other thing is a day trip to Bath with a couple of friends - will probably involve train tickets, lunch and possibly a drink a two (says the girl who just said she doesn't drink!). PLUS I also really want to go to festival later in the year (think summer camp for adults!) which I want to buy the ticket for when there is the next release at the end of this month - will possibly opt to pay monthly as I don't have the full amount saved yet.

And after all that waffle, on to today's bits and bobs:

• Take last leftover pasta to work for lunch 
• Update spreadsheet - may also have a play around to see if I can pay for the ticket in full (may be possible given the reduced council tax next month)
• Work on crochet present 
• Print some things at work 
• Try finish crochet blanket - this would feel like a great achievement as it's been a year long project and would also massively help my stash busting challenge as I count the yarn as out of stash once the project is finished (feels like a bit of a cheat on this project given that the majority of the work was done last year!)  
• Two games of netball tonight - which wipes out the "netball pot", so I said no when I was offered a game tomorrow