Road To Financial Recovery

alt80

@FootyFanDan as you know my son goes to a fee paying school, since the introduction of VAT we know a few parents concerned about meeting the fees and various other expenses that come with music lessons, trips etc. it’s not nice to hear, quite sad to hear that the kids are missing out in a few ways just so their parents can fund a school they had already budgeted for. I’m thankful we’re no longer have credit card balances as well as this additional expense. 

Is your girl going up this year too or does she have another year of junior school? 

I know you suffer with your sleep so too so it’s great to hear that it is better for you rn and I’m made up for you to hear that you are doing much better financially. Still looking forward to a post from you telling us that you and your Mrs have bought a house of your own of course - you’ll get there 100%. 

FootyFanDan

alt80 said:

@FootyFanDan as you know my son goes to a fee paying school, since the introduction of VAT we know a few parents concerned about meeting the fees and various other expenses that come with music lessons, trips etc. it’s not nice to hear, quite sad to hear that the kids are missing out in a few ways just so their parents can fund a school they had already budgeted for. I’m thankful we’re no longer have credit card balances as well as this additional expense. 

Is your girl going up this year too or does she have another year of junior school? 

I know you suffer with your sleep so too so it’s great to hear that it is better for you rn and I’m made up for you to hear that you are doing much better financially. Still looking forward to a post from you telling us that you and your Mrs have bought a house of your own of course - you’ll get there 100%. 

We have just started looking at secondary schools, she has another year of junior - where does time go! I feel lucky that we are in a position to allow my little one to experience things and also to offer her opportunities that I and many others didn't have growing up. 

I think the house purchase post might be a while 🤣, at the moment I am pretty content where we are at. There is still some work to do on getting the credit card cleared. Financially it has been very up and down, the change of job has massively improved that and we now have a income that I never thought possible. It does leave a bit of work to do though on making sure it is utilised properly and not just frittered away.

FootyFanDan

LzzyIsGod said:

FootyFanDan said:

Today wasn't a NSD - we had some birthday gifts to buy so these have no been purchased. 

So far this week I have managed no coffee and takeouts for lunch. I think I am going to try go down route of potentially maybe just having a drink out on Friday as a treat hah.

Also, sitting and reflecting on how far we have come with our finances and the work that we have put in to it, but It really highlighted just how much this place and the amazing people on the board do make such a positive impact and drive people to make changes and see that a bad debt situation can be resolved

Hope everyone having a decent start to the week -  I have been literally in teams meetings all day which is never good for the ever growing to do list  

I completely agree with this - it's still hard but without this board and all the people here I would find it a million times harder. 

We all have our weakness (mine is a pint!) It's the little things though that keep us going and make life a bit nicer

I do think the fact I was able to still have a few nice things as we progressed through our debt journey it has helped keep me on track. I think if I was working to just pay off debt with no fun then I would not be liking that. I know that approach works for some but nah I think its a balance to find. 

alt80

@FootyFanDan time flies mate. Absolutely agree re being in a position to give our kids opportunities that we didn't have. 

Glad to hear you're happy where you are - that's the most important thing. You'll get there with clearing your credit card balances in time and working out the best way to utilise your income will come thereafter. I recommend you speak to a professional; without my accountant and tax advisor I would not be in the position I'm in now. Appreciate they are probably not the right professionals for you being employed rather than in business but a decent financial advisor is likely to be able to help. You could be closer to a home of your own than you realise - one of my longer term tenants has just had a track record mortgage approved which is based on using his record of paying rent on time to buy his first home. He had a small deposit but I believe it's open to applicants on a 100LTV. 

FootyFanDan

Deffo some food for thought @alt80

Hope everyone had a good weekend. Budget wise we spent more than we had planned, nothing to drastic but it is so easy to let it slip when you know the money in the bank isn't allocated to anything. I have committed to taking a re-look at the budget and making sure we allocate as much as we can to useful things. I had planned to do that tonight but having woke up feeling unwell and a pretty rubbish day at work, I am feeling a bit sorry for myself and really can't be bothered tonight. So I will try look at it tomorrow if I feel better, pretty sure I won't be feeling up to going to work tomorrow so I will see how I feel. A day off might do me good.

I also need to do a food shop, I really need to do that tonight - we will opt for online I think, I normally go after work on a Monday but didn't tonight. Also finding go food shopping is just so crazy now. I went last week and I just hated it, there was just staff picking online orders and then just food carts everywhere. I appreciate  they are accommodating the masses with online shopping, however it doesn't half make the in store experience far worse.

Anyhow, moaning over for today haha, just one of those days I think. I think I am going to sit with a nice milky coffee and just try forget today! Here is to tomorrow.

Ordinary_Yet_Unique

Check that amount allocated to personal spending is realistic. If it is not and you overspend it can be disheartening. Better to overestimate and put any surplus to savings which can give a little boost to how you feel!

1stTimer

Hope you are feeling better today!

FootyFanDan

1stTimer said:

Hope you are feeling better today!

Thank you - I felt a bit rubbish still this morning but yeah as the day went on I felt better. 

FootyFanDan

Ordinary_Yet_Unique said:

Check that amount allocated to personal spending is realistic. If it is not and you overspend it can be disheartening. Better to overestimate and put any surplus to savings which can give a little boost to how you feel!

I think this is it, I mean in general we rarely allocate for dining out and in truth it isn't something we really used to do. This has now changed, so I think I really need to allocate some in here, I enjoy eating out at times as it can be only time we really get any couple time lately haha so I don't wanna feel guilty for it. I really need to start allocating the surplus so it doesn't just fritter away.

FootyFanDan

Evening Diary World,
Feeling much better today, I did drop off to sleep about 10pm and woke at around 04:45 ( this seems to be a regular time now). I like the early mornings as it does give me a bit of an head start with things and I can not rush around as much.  I did end up going to work, and it was a better day but there are still plenty of challenges, I think at the moment theres just so much going off I am trying to juggle alot which makes me then feel chaotic which doesn't do my mind any good.

I did eventually do the food shopping, decided to call in person after work and it was so much quieter than weekends so I maybe need to think of doing it during the week. There was petrol spends too so that should see me through until middle of next week hopefully.

I have made a start on tackling a full re-vamp of the budget. I plan on allocating some to eating out which I never normally do we kind of just take this out of the sum that is left after we have paid bills. There is a serious amount we could be saving and using properly but I feel as my income as gone up, I have become less aware of budgeting because its not as tight as it once was.  I would really like to reset my mindset around this so that we can have a mix of enjoying ourselves, whilst also taking care of future us and safeguarding some funds to be used if needed. I wouldn't say we have become reckless and we are very aware of how quickly it can change, but deffo not doing what we did when we were struggling, so certainly needs to be a reset of some kind