IA's Debt/Life/Little bit of Everything Diary...

chevalier

Fingers crossed for the op today. Glad the troll has gone away. Don't come back troll another day. Or we'll all come out to play (on your head.....)
chev

immoral_angeluk

got a big job today. I need to look at our finances again. The £10 drop in tax credits is making things really tight. and there's no certainty with my argos job as I was supposed to finish at the end of Jan but they haven't told me if they're keeping me on long term or not.. We've gotten used to having the extra money and it's been nice to be able to relax and treat ourselves with it but living off the tax credits is getting hard now so I need to look at it and come up with something.

So this was the score before the tax credits dropped.

Tax credits £92.47
£50 food budget
£20 petrol budget
£8 band practice
£10 Ste spending/lunches
£4 Sar Bodytone
= £0.47 left over

Tax credits now £81
£50 food budget
£20 petrol
£8 band practice
£10 Ste spending/lunches
£4 sar bodytone
= £11 over budget...


I'm considering changing the way we do the food shop.. doing smaller 'top up' shops for essentials but doing the main food shop when Ste gets paid.. but TBH I don't know. I don't want to give up the band or bodytone as these are LITERALLY the only things I do outside the house. We use minimum £20 petrol every week what with the band practice, bodytone, stes work and argos.. so that can't be cut down as we live in a rural village and it'd cost more on the bus! Ste's spending/lunches is literally the only money he gets so don't want to cut that down as that's his lunch money as well for the odd occasion he doesn't take sandwiches. So looks like the food budget is the way to go. Will take an 'inventory' of the freezer later and do a strict meal plan based on that for the coming week. Will only buy the total essentials and see how we go I think. If I can cut the food budget down by half that would give us a bit of leeway and less stress. We'll see how it goes.

OliveOyl_2

Love the new sig I-A:rotfl:

If I had to cut my food bill, that wouldn't be less stress, but more stress. I thought you'd pared it down to the minimum???

immoral_angeluk

OliveOyl wrote: »

Love the new sig I-A:rotfl:

If I had to cut my food bill, that wouldn't be less stress, but more stress. I thought you'd pared it down to the minimum???

I haven't tried 100% strict meal planning yet... got stuck in a routine of buying what I was used to so hopefully should be able to cut down a bit.. if not then I'll have to think of something else.... I know aiming for cutting down the food bill to half is probably a bit ambitious though..

Bunnyinthelights

Sar,
What about looking for a permanent weekend job?

immoral_angeluk

Bunnyinthelights wrote: »

Sar,
What about looking for a permanent weekend job?

I might do... trouble is I want to hear back from the CAB before commiting to anything as I'll need to know whether the girls have to go to nursery or not!

Toto

To be honest sar, I would try to cut the food budget a little, look to see what you have in and be creative. But other than that do you have anything to ebay in the short term? You need maybe up to £100 to see you through the next few weeks before you can make any work decisions, up-ing the income a little is the way to go I think but as you say you need to find out what's happening with argos and CAB before you can decide anything, so look short term at seeing yourselves through.

barnaby-bear

immoral_angeluk wrote: »

I might do... trouble is I want to hear back from the CAB before commiting to anything as I'll need to know whether the girls have to go to nursery or not!

What about offering beginners guitar lessons - an hour or two would top it up - could do it in the evening at their homes and a lot of parents would like the nursery nurse, police checked, female teacher aspect rather than some grubby 50 year old organist in a mac. My colleagues kid's cost £20 a hour. Don't know how that would interact with tax credits though.

(Land_of)_Maz

morning IA... hope all goes well with Ste's dad, he's in good hands i'm sure.

Re the shortfall, i reckon you probably have enough in the cupboards to make do for a few weeks if you shopped for fresh stuff only. kid yourself on you only have £30 in your purse, shop for that £30 and if you go slightly over you have your remaining £20 in reserve....

Or as you suggest, doing a big shop on payday, i bet you wouldn't spend £200 a month if it was all at once. Why not set yourself a £120 monthly big shop and £15-£20 a week for milk/essentials etc.... that'll come in at £200 for the month but free up some money in the weekly income. Depending on if you have scope in ste's wages, or are they all allocated? Maybe now Egg has gone, you should be okay to use his wages for food?

You're so right, you don't want to cut back on band practice or bodytone as they are keeping you sane.

(Land_of)_Maz

barnaby-bear wrote: »

What about offering beginners guitar lessons - an hour or two would top it up - could do it in the evening at their homes and a lot of parents would like the nursery nurse, police checked, female teacher aspect rather than some grubby 50 year old organist in a mac. My colleagues kid's cost £20 a hour. Don't know how that would interact with tax credits though.

WOW!!! WHAT A FAB IDEA!!!!!!!