Road To Financial Recovery

FootyFanDan

Sunshine_girl2 said:

Another one heading South today to Essex . Enjoy your weekend in London . 

Thank you 🙂
hope you have a great weekend 

FootyFanDan

Another west end weekend done for a while. What an amazing weekend spent with amazing ppl, little one and her group smashed the performance. We did manage to stay pretty much within budget despite how crazy expensive London is, we did have to add £30 unplanned from our buffer funds, we decided to cover lunch for my bro and sis in law. They always go above and beyond for us, so felt nice to just thank them for coming to see little one perform it made her weekend. We managed to do a fair few steps, visited the natural history musuem and had a really good weekend

Budget wise, I need to sit and go through what we currently have, YNAB looks messy...(yup again 🫣). I dunno, it really really helped us get a grip on stuff but trying to remember to update it over spendy weekends always fails. I also need to see where the £150 or so a month we have been paying into this savings goes, so I will think about that.

Work week is totally mental so will be chucking in some extra hours / late nights over next few days to keep up. I am on leave next week with one major job happening.

Hope everyone is doing well

FootyFanDan

Evening DiaryLand

Hope everyone had a good weekend, and a good Monday.

Weekend spending and activities were very low key, me and missus went and had a coffee date and we just sat and relaxed and chatted. I think after last weekend in London, we were just content to not be walking. We racked up 35,000 steps over the Saturday and Sunday so deffo more than usual. 

This week I am off work, not really got too much planned, other than trying to avoid logging into my work stuff! I needed a bit of a chill time to reset a little. The last few months have been pretty intense work wise, the plan is to try enjoy some family time and sort the remaining parts of the spare room. 

We have paid extra to the school residential, as well as a bit extra to the holiday. We have also paid extra £50 to the CC. We get income pretty much every two weeks, so we have managed to get into a good routine of putting away the usual groceries/ petrol and school stuff. This coupled with splitting up savings every two weeks is working well, this is stopping the money just been sat there doing nowt and been rolled to end of month, which usually results in it getting spent. Our savings are now put into an account that we rarely look at so out of sight out of mind.

We are slowly building up a little safety net, it is taking time but with each passing month we are getting there.

Credit Card Balance is now at £544, we are so close. I am desperate to get this paid off. I think by the end of September I want this gone. So maybe cut back on the extra holiday payments and chuck every spare bit at this card. Once this is paid I can then shift focus to fully saving with no debt. 

Tomorrow to do 

- Gym
- Take some clothes to charity shop
- Sort more boxes

We have done the food shop so should be no more spending this week. I have promised the little one we will go to a local cat cafe in the holidays as she really wants to go....not my idea of fun but hey keeps the child quiet. We also will be planning on a few days out through holidays, hopefully so cheap days out chucked in there too.

FootyFanDan

And just like that, my week off is over 😭. I have for the most part managed to avoid work completely, whether that was a smart choice will be determined by my day tomorrow ha. I hope everyone has had a good weekend, I have spent it pretty lowkey and sorting out stuff in the spare room. I am determined to try get our house into a state that we feel content with. Our local tip now requires a permit to be applied for, so this is my task for tonight. 

YNAB has been updated, I have simplified it to be honest. I think having so many different categories and also trying to account for every little category has just made it so much more complex than it needs to be. It is a little similar with the savings, whilst we know some of what is coming up, me trying to save for every eventuality and having it separated is just not required. So for now I am just going to try my best to keep it simple.

I have updated spreadsheet to reflect our new goals, payday will be Wednesday and due to the way we have structured the budget all the funds from through the month is saved into an account out of the way and when I get paid I can budget the full month.

This week goals

- Get to Gym 3 times.
- Get through the work week, it will be pretty crazy as it seems in my absence I have been donated more work. 
- Finish decluttering on evening.

I need to be more consistent with getting back on track with stuff, this last few months I have found motivation hard, and been a bit tougher on myself. 

rachmac3

I think it's important that we do what we need to when we need to on this debt busting journey, but as we learn and adapt our plans and processes need to adapt too. I'm on the opposite end of the journey, making more separations and making more pots to try and figure out where bits of money mysteriously disappears to!
I still enjoy seeing where everyone else is in their journey though, it gives me something to look forward to

FootyFanDan

rachmac3 said:

I think it's important that we do what we need to when we need to on this debt busting journey, but as we learn and adapt our plans and processes need to adapt too. I'm on the opposite end of the journey, making more separations and making more pots to try and figure out where bits of money mysteriously disappears to!
I still enjoy seeing where everyone else is in their journey though, it gives me something to look forward to

I think you're right, sometimes it may mean changing the direction but it is about what works for you and keeps you on the straight and narrow. At the beginning I would track everything and have pots for so much and it worked. 

I have figured most of our 'spare' money ends up being spent on the top up shops, or coffee dates so now we factor those in so its a bit clearer.

alt80

All sounds good mate, you don't need to overcomplicate things if what you're doing works for you, that's all that matters.

FootyFanDan

alt80 said:

All sounds good mate, you don't need to overcomplicate things if what you're doing works for you, that's all that matters.

Cheer mate, hope you and the family are doing good.
to be honest I seem to do it with everything like make things drastically more complex than they need to be, I do same with work stuff and tasks so yeah I need to learn to simplify things. 

FootyFanDan

Ugh, feeling very ill today I am praying it isn't covid...struggled so much for sleep these last two nights with a total of about 3 hours.

Finally reached the end of this pay cycle. There has been a little taken out of the budget I hadn't accounted for as little one and other half went away for a few days and she paid for train tickets out of her fun money (not acceptable messing with my budget 🤣 ) so joint funds have now re-paid that. Petrol is enough to cover me until Friday, and despite the rushing around on morning I have managed to not spend on food for lunch.

In finance news, I am getting offers now to do 0% balance transfer for 6 months, it isn't something I am really informed about and wondering whether this is even worth it for the small balance I have remaining, but something to consider.

I have managed to get back into the work grove but by god that unread email number on Monday morning was not a pretty sight haha.

Edit: I also managed to get the recycling permit, although really not sure why they have gone this route. It was a simple enough process and took only 24 hours to come through...cue trips to the place where I spend some of my Sunday mornings 😂

rachmac3

I just got a 12month 0% balance transfer card from NatWest, with no transfer fees. My credit score is not great, so you should be able to get one too if you do decide to go down that route.  
I hope you're feeling better soon.