Teetering on the brink

EatingBeans

Lunch today was 100% Olio supplied. Basically a bag of salad leaves, a pot of hummus, a good handful of cherry tomatoes and carrot sticks all with a rather tasty if a bit hot, salad sauce thing. The guinea pigs complained bitterly when they realised I was going to eat the salad leaves myself rather than give the bag to them - the squeaking very much reached new highs, to the point that you’d have thought someone was murdering them for all the noise they were making! 🤣

ellenvan

It would probably be more motivating to count the £5 when earned instead of when paid. How ever it all counts.
Looking on the upside,
You have saved some food from being wasted and decluttering slowly but surely.

in_need_of_direction

Sorry but I’d stick with how things are.  I don’t really trust money until it’s in my hand

EatingBeans

And there in lies the dilemma! I don’t trust money until it is actually in my hand either but the lag between the effort and money actually reaching the bank makes the £5’s feel like an inaccurate reflection of the effort put in in that month so less motivating. 😕

Maybe i can try counting both ways? That way I get the motivating factor but I also get to keep the focus on getting the cash into the bank asap. I think I shall tinker with the spreadsheet and see if I can come up with an easy way to track both without making it too complicated given what it is attempting to do. 

EatingBeans

Target:	£100	20	£5's
Extra income earned:			Extra income received:
£5's			£5's
£	99.48		£	28.94
From:			From:
0.36	Prolific		2.50	eBay
2.75	Prolific		11.64	Prolific
2.50	Prolific		5.00	NatWest Rewards
0.62	Prolific		6.00	eBay
1.70	Prolific		3.80	Solitaire
2.40	Prolific
0.75	Prolific
0.15	Prolific
0.25	YouGov
0.50	YouGov
0.50	YouGov
0.50	YouGov
0.50	YouGov
6.00	eBay
2.26	eBay
2.50	eBay
1.00	NatWest Rewards
4.00	NatWest Rewards
3.80	Solitaire
0.50	testerup
0.60	testerup
0.40	testerup
0.50	testerup
0.20	testerup
0.30	testerup
0.30	testerup
0.40	testerup
0.50	testerup
0.50	testerup
1.80	testerup
0.70	testerup
1.00	testerup
1.30	testerup
0.10	testerup
0.20	testerup
0.10	testerup
0.30	testerup
0.30	testerup
1.01	testerup
0.30	testerup
0.40	testerup
4.00	testerup
0.60	testerup
2.00	Topcashback
0.13	Topcashback
1.50	Vinted
3.00	Vinted
43.50	Exam remark

EatingBeans

Ok well just going through that process has made me feel a whole lot more accountable! 😳
Realistically, I really should have put more effort into Prolific and posting on eBay than I have been doing! I know it has been a busy few weeks but still, excuses are not going to get the debt paid down. So, to keep focus, I definitely think I will keep a running track like this going forward. It already makes me want to follow up on why the money from the college has not been received! Plus I now want to add in a few other things to this tracker sheet, like a count of how many things I have listed on eBay (to give me a nudge along when I haven’t listed in a while), and some kind of track of how much Olio has saved me, so when it’s dark/cold/windy and I don’t want to go out, I can have something that converts the effort into cash terms - I can feel a dashboard coming on! 🤣

Part of me thinks I am just creating something to distract me from looking at the actual budget and scary debt figure (definitely something in this I fear), but I also think this focus on the small stuff will actually help the bigger picture, because it is much easier to chase £5’s than £43k+ figure! Look after the pennies right? At least that’s how I am justifying it! 

So the next obvious question is how to convert Olio in cash? 🤔 Just totting up the value of items received is not going to work because a lot of the items are more expensive than the alternatives I would have otherwise purchased. So I think the best course of action is to set my food budget money aside and whatever I haven’t spent by the end of the week, I use to pay off my credit card, and treat this as the Olio amount received. So basically my food spend will always exactly match my budget and Olio will be the difference between budget and actual spend. Hopefully that makes sense? How it will work in practice is anyones guess, but you know what, in true Agile fashion (I just can’t escape it 🤣), let’s give it a go then iterate! 🤦‍♀️

Now, the good news is that by setting my food budget aside to calculate Olio, that stops me doing what I did this month and that is using my food budget savings to buy takeaways! 🫣 I justified it by considering that takeaways are also food but even i know that was just a fib I told myself. Food money should NOT be spent on takeaways! Am I hearing that?! lol I am literally telling myself off now - I am not crazy, honest. 😬 Anyway, this will prevent me doing that so that has to be a good thing. The issue now is, what do I set the food budget at? 🤔 Currently it is set at £30 a week but I am not sure that is realistic since I always tend to go over and rob the money from somewhere else, plus I apparently still actually eat way more takeaways than i think I do so I’d need to buy in food to cover those meals instead of takeaways. If I set it too high/low, then it will not give a fair Olio figure. Hmm. Perhaps I just keep it at £30 for now and see what Olio figure that gives me to start with? The £30 is just to cover me btw, the girl’s food and pet stuff is separate, but it does cover all household cleaning stuff and toiletries, so it’s not just food. Any thoughts on if £30 seems about right? 

EatingBeans

Right, I have decided to budget £40pw for my food, Olio making up the difference of anything I don’t spend. And I am creating a separate pot of £50 for all non essential spending. So uni open day spending money and any absolute desperate takeaways comes out of that (although I am aiming for zero I am trying to also be realistic). I am also setting a listing target of the equivalent of one item a day. I don’t expect that I will actually list a single item each day - that will annoy me - but my target is to always have listed at least as many items that month as there are days in the month. So if I don’t want to list everyday then I have to list more in advance. We’ll see how that goes too. 

I am basically feeling very determined today (despite feeling ill with whatever the girl’s have passed on to me), and I am trying to set up little mini targets for me to keep aiming at because a month always feels like a long time to have to wait to measure progress. 

ellenvan

The above sounds good.
Just a thought for consideration, maybe the takeaway budget could be what you sell on eBay, or similar.
Is the £50 a monthly or weekly spend on extras? Hopefully monthly.

flamingo22

I feel your frustration, I currently pay £650 per month just on interest 🤮🤮 many of mine are loans so they do have an end date but credit cards are just ridiculous.
I've just downloaded curious cat (survey app) and I've withdrawn £5 already today for a lot less time than I've spent on other survey sites, this may give you a little boost.
I enjoy takeaways too and I hate even more justifying it myself, we work hard and can't even treat ourselves without feeling guilty, but it won't always be like this.
Im like you, I can't bare the thought of a DMP, I want to move house in a couple of years too, it's just so hard at times and constantly scrimping and scraping is just depressing.
Are all your cards ending 0% interest now? Would your brother consider allowing you to pay half so that you can get on with paying more off your cc's? Although I know from past experiences, I hate owing family money and would rather pay them off first. 

flamingo22

Also have a look at Angel fish, it's market research and some pays cash, others pay vouchers, I've had £60 so far in Amazon vouchers