Road To Financial Recovery

FootyFanDan

Spendywendywoo said:

Ah yes, that's understandable.  We stopped here last summer; Village Hotel London Watford | Hotel in Borehamwood, there's parking on site (think we paid £10 for 24 hours), and the HP bus is a 2 minute walk down the road, it's free with your entry ticket.  Took about 20 minutes in traffic to get to the studios, if that. 

Your little one will love it, ours did

Thank you, that seems ideal. I will take a look. She is absolutely obsessed with Harry Potter and everything that that relates to it, lego, clothes, food...lovely but not very MSE friendly. To be honest we are both lego geeks lol. We could both sit for ages in our own little bubble building lego.

FootyFanDan

Hope everyone has had a good day.
Today I am grateful for coffee! 

It's been a lot more of a calmer day on the work front, I managed to spend the morning making a huge to do list and started making some progress trough that. I loved a good to-do list and having everything down lets me see where I am at rather than just working blindly.

I am slowly trying to get into a proper night routine but as someone who has always stayed up late some nights are harder than others.

Today Spends

£25 petrol, there is £30 left in the budget which should be totally fine for what is needed.
£4.35 - Hot chocolate from garage this morning and a bottle of water. (personal spends covered this)

FootyFanDan

Another Monday rolls around
Hope everyone had a good weekend. 

This weekend was a pretty quiet weekend, my partner hasn't been too well so we decided a lazy weekend was needed, especially as next weekend will be pretty full on. 

Tonight I managed to do the food shopping and it was slightly over the weekly budget amount, but other weeks have been well under budget and we still had £15 left from last week budget. £35 petrol was also spent today and this should last me until payday on Thursday. We currently have £50 in the joint account that should still be there come payday and if it is I will then put this towards debt. Although we do have a takeaway planned for Thursday, the little one is away with school so it is going to be our first child free night for a very very long time haha. We have planned a takeaway and junk tv, its weird as when we were skint we used to get joy from watching silly stuff on tv and having a chippy to share as a treat! It makes me realise just how far we have come, but also makes me realise just how little time we get to spend together, so a focus shift needed here.

I sat through and forecasted our income/outgoings over the next year to see where I can juggle some months and get some extra payments done. Monzo flex is likely the one that will be gone first, although our monthly payment as dropped massively on this I have planned to have this paid off by April 1st so that is my first target. I went away from spreadsheets a fair bit ago but I do find it useful to kind of have a rough plan, I then enter the spending and stuff within YNAB. 

Today I am thankful for a quiet office today meaning I got so much done in project management world. I sound so anti-social but I work so much better when I don't have others to distract me. Today I made coffee at home and was able to get to the office and have my coffee whilst listening to a short podcast and putting together what I needed to get done and it was so peaceful. I was then able to just crack on with my headphones in and sort stuff.


Hope every enjoys the rest of the week.

Lonelygambler

Congratulations on the gamstop. 

LG 

FootyFanDan

Lonelygambler said:

Congratulations on the gamstop. 

LG 

I did what I needed

FootyFanDan

Hope everyone had a good Tuesday.
Today has been a decent day, I am trying to be a bit more organised and prepared at home and at work, with this in mind I came in from work and prepared my work stuff / lunches straight away so no rushing about in the morning. I also claimed a refund on a football ticket that had duplicated out of my account, normally I would just keep saying I will do it and then forget. Today I decided to try different approach, its in my mind and to do list and it will take 5 mins so I just did it.

I didn't really have the best sleep last night, so going to hopefully catch up on it tonight. I am going to lay in bed and read for 30 mins before bed.

2 days until payday
I am hoping to try start setting some decent habits. I really need to be making sure I stick to them

- Breakfast
- Cut down on caffeine 
- Drink more water/flavoured water
- 30 mins reading

I have started listening to audio books whilst I work and I find it just relaxing to just zone out and focus on work.

FootyFanDan

Ah that felt like one long day.
Not too sure why as I felt I slept pretty good, but as it got to lunch time I felt so tired. Today has felt a little less productive at work but slowly making progress through my current workload. I am also nearing the end of picking up other people's mess projects, so hopeful over the next few months I can get the three or four major clients stuff sorted so a busy few months coming up. 

Tomorrow is payday after what feels like the longest month ever!. We have got through this month pretty well, we have had a few additional stuff to pay out that we hadn't accounted for but we left a buffer of 75 in our account and this covered pretty much anything extra such as a unexpected day in after school club, a few bits of medicine and also covered a non uniform day at school. This will also be my first pay date since payrise, so interested to see what that works out at.

I have £200 in car fund and will be putting another £300 out of this months income into this, I am praying to the lord this is enough to cover the MOT/servicing and any minor stuff if needed. We do have other funds that I could use if more than this but hopefully won't be needed.

The one thing that I am really happy with (and doesn't get mentioned / thought about anymore) is my overdraft, there was months where I was constantly in it, over the last few months I haven't been in it so that is positive. I think in general our finances are in a decent place, although I would like to have a bit more of a safety net.

I think once I have got the car stuff out of the way and our trip at the weekend, I am going to look at what savings pots I need to be considering and set up locked pots in monzo to create that extra little bit of friction to hopefully prevent me just dipping into it whenever I want. 

lucielle

Have you got rid of the o/d?  I’ve just got a £100 buffer zone for just in case but don’t use it. 

L

FootyFanDan

lucielle said:

Have you got rid of the o/d?  I’ve just got a £100 buffer zone for just in case but don’t use it. 

L

hey Lucielle, 
I still have my overdraft in place, although it's only £100 now. 

FootyFanDan

And that is a wrap on the working week. I hope everyone has had a good week. This week seems to have gone so slow, dunno if it is just coz January is finally coming to an end.
I am looking forward to a lovely weekend break, hoping to keep it as budget friendly as possible.

I haven't had a chance to sit and go through salary/budget yet, but I have just made a fresh brew and grabbed a donut and will go through it tonight. Wow when did my Friday's become so Rock n Roll  😂.

The positive is we got through to the end of the month with the budget still in + figures so that is all good on that front. My payrise ended up working out at £98 extra so that is a nice sum, although it sucks so much gets taken off in tax.