Road To Financial Recovery

FootyFanDan

Monday arrived far too quick for liking this weekend. Gutted with the football, despite it been expected. We watched it all as a family with some drinks and nibbles, the little one hasn't ever really got into football but she cried her eyes out last night the poor thing. As a Leeds fan and England fan meh, disappointment is all I deal in 😂

The weekend was a spendy one as expected, I spent most of the weekend decorating and its starting to look better. I do still have a a few areas to give a 2nd coat but deffo great to get rid of the plain old colour. It's amazing how a little bit of paint can change the feel. I haven't had the chance to get food shopping done yet for this week so I will do an order for collection tomorrow or Wednesday, we do still have a fair bit in so not too fussed yet. There is still plenty left in budget to cover us til the next payday which is good.

An extra payment as been made to the CC so balance is now back to pre added interest. I have set an amount that I feel can comfortably afford and based on that, my YNAB payoff calculator reckons it will be clear by December 2024. I plan to pay extra where I can but I am comfortable with that payoff date. It also allows me to increase the payment to Monzo to hopefully have this cleared by end of 2024 or early 2025 (crazy that is so close now)!. 

This week doesn't consist of as much travel so hopefully won't be as much petrol costs this week. Hope everyone has a good week ahead. 

alt80

@FootyFanDan Ha I know the feeling mate. My son took it a lot better than we expected in the end. We all said the best team won, they deserved it but it was still really !!!!!! disappointing. We had a similar evening, at home although we kept it alcohol free FIL thought it !!!!!! hilarious we had F&M sparkling tea to watch the football but we still wore our England shirts and my Mrs painted her face. She attempted to paint the three lions on our boy’s cheek failed miserably so washed it off and he refused to have her paint a flag lol. 

Good to hear you have got started on the house too.

Lonelygambler

Hey - Love the journey, I have re-read most of the posts. 

Have you read back? What amazing progress. 

FootyFanDan

Lonelygambler said:

Hey - Love the journey, I have re-read most of the posts. 

Have you read back? What amazing progress. 

Thanks, I haven't really read back but maybe i should.

I think I am making good progress, although I still do have my off days.

Really good to see you making positive progress in your journey too

FootyFanDan

Hope everyone has had a great weekend, really enjoyed the weather. I have not done too much other than sort out a little bit of the gardening. The girls are away for the week in Scotland visiting family, so no real plans other than work, gym and maybe doing a bit of decluttering this week. The weekly shop has been done and I imagine will come in within budget, petrol has been topped up to cover the week. 

10 days until my work payday and still got enough in the budget to cover the food shop and petrol, with a little extra for anything that pops up. The finances seem to be ticking along, I have made some real progress with the CC this month and I anticipate there might be a tiny amount left at the month end to make one final overpayment. If I can make that final overpayment, that would be £300ish knocked off the CC this month which would be impressive. I have decided I am going to allocate £250 to the CC (my statement min payment this month is £43 due to the overpayments). If I can set a budget of paying at least £250 and then £200 to the monzo, it will make it easier to account for rather than the little overpayments. At the end of the month anything that is left in main bank account will then be split between the CC & Monzo.

The living is finally decorated and whilst I still need to some of the furniture back into place it feels a lot better. We now need to start putting little bits aside to get some new furnishings. We are going to try do some free activities with the little one throughout the holidays but also missus is planning on a few coach day trips through the week.

Work week should be less travel intense again this week, although I suspect a few tough days/calls will need to be made. I also have my three month review - I am not sure how this will go down to be honest, I have a note in my notes app that is where I have put down all my thoughts and feelings of positive & negative things through the first three months and i suppose the reaction to that determines where we move forward. I am sure some of what I am feeling is perfectly normal but I also think their is some fundamental things that I have some reservations about. 

This week to do

- Make sure I stick to meal plan (no takeout lunches)
- Review of my current tasks and weekly review
- Review of YNAB (already completed)
- Declutter some old clothes
- Cut the grass
- Purchase some new work shoes - my current ones are on the way out.
- Sort my savings pots in banking app

I don't suspect there will be any unplanned spends this week with the girls been away but we will see how the week pans out. Hope everyone has a good week ahead

FootyFanDan

Forgot to add, I am currently in the process of exploring so additional online training outside of work. The course is something I planned on doing whilst I was in my old role, but never found the time - partially through been overworked or poor planning on my part (I have figured it was probably a combination of both). Now I have moved into the new role, I have set boundaries and there is very little times I would need to work outside my standard hours and this leaves me a perfect opportunity to take up the course. I need to work out how this gets funded whether this come from our joint budget or whether I allocate this from my personal spends. I feel a little unfair if it comes out of the joint budget as the course isn't a requirement and or even something that benefits my current role but is something I am keen to do.

FootyFanDan

alt80 said:

@FootyFanDan Ha I know the feeling mate. My son took it a lot better than we expected in the end. We all said the best team won, they deserved it but it was still really !!!!!! disappointing. We had a similar evening, at home although we kept it alcohol free FIL thought it !!!!!! hilarious we had F&M sparkling tea to watch the football but we still wore our England shirts and my Mrs painted her face. She attempted to paint the three lions on our boy’s cheek failed miserably so washed it off and he refused to have her paint a flag lol. 

Good to hear you have got started on the house too.

It was good to final start taking steps...although a small step into getting the living room started, we have looked at a few things we would like to add to the room to make it different and we will slowly work towards this. We are really keen to have a proper area we can eat together as a family and the living room is technically a living/dining room in one. We plan to split the room into such, the kitchen isn't big enough for a dining table so we need to make the best of it.

I am keen on trying to limit alcohol as well to be honest, it is something I have been thinking about for a while, and although I am not a big drinker I don't really enjoy it anymore. 

FootyFanDan

Evening All, 

Not really much to update this week, just ticking along.

I have managed to get the living room back into some sort of organised state following moving everything around to paint the room. 

This week I had my first review at work which went better than I thought it would do. I have been really anxious over certain things and stuff in general with the new job, but those fear it seems were not needed. The management seem quite happy with how I have settled in, so maybe its just me in my own head needing to just focus. We have agreed that I can move out of office a little more to get some experience of how the engineering team operate which we agree will benefit me in the long term (despite the few extra hours input needed to catch up on emails 😂 ). Overall I feel much better about things, so lets see how the next few months go. We discussed some of my concerns and how i felt about certain things and whilst some of these worried me, they seem to think I am doing perfectly fine and happy with progress.

Not much financial news other than making sure all my budget in YNAB is all updated, payday is Tuesday for me and hopefully there isn't anything that comes up

Saturday I am going to use some of my personal spends as me,bro & sis are going out for drinks and food. Whilst me & bro are pretty much never separated haha, its a rarity that all 3 of us are out together so looking forward to that. Also got the garden to cut if weather allows on Sunday before a little shopping trip and collecting the girls from train station.

- Make sure I stick to meal plan (no takeout lunches) 
- Review of my current tasks and weekly review
- Review of YNAB (already completed)
- Declutter some old clothes
- Cut the grass - failed on this due to laziness! Will do this weekend
- Purchase some new work shoes - my current ones are on the way out.
- Sort my savings pots in banking app

Managed to get some of list done, the rest will be done at weekend. 

FootyFanDan

One of my main aims is to try get myself in front with things. I want to ideally get a month ahead in my finances, I have worked through a plan of how this is achievable and hopefully it can be done by December (which is a while away) and it will need some real discipline to get there.

Hope everyone is having a good week.

alt80

All great to hear mate. I am glad the work review went well, you've got some family time organised and you have taken the steps to getting your living room how you would like it. 

Ikwyacf re alcohol, I meant to respond before now. I really limit drinking these days and I used to have a drink pretty much everyday. It was pure habit, like brushing my teeth tbh. When I started cutting out the drinking I learned quickly that it's only enjoyable when it is the right occasion. I am fortunate that I never was addicted to alcohol, it was easy to cut it. Tbf I always hated the sloppiness once a few beers are in your head and growing up in a pub environment was a warning if I ever needed one ha. If you are no longer enjoying it, a good place to start is by tracking what / when you are drinking for a couple of weeks and the kind of thoughts you had, was it a negative experience or did it enhance your experience. Be really mindful about it, it gives you your baseline and informs your own reasoning as to why you want to cut down as well as the occasions you do want to drink.