Teetering on the brink

Cherryfudge

It sounds really horrible and you absolutely had to take the day off - for a start, they don't want this lurgy going round the office, but also you need to get some rest to help you recover.

Nice bit of extra earning, though. It's brilliant to seeing you exceeding that £100 extra in September.

Good for your DD getting creative!

EatingBeans

Oh, so, so ill again. ☹️ I do wonder how much of my feeling like death is the thing I caught from the dd’s, and how much is because I am back on the tablets for the Trigeminal Neuralgia, because the same mysterious symptoms that kept me off work for months have now mysteriously reappeared! Since Friday is my non working day anyway, I have told work I am aiming to by back in on Monday. I have to go back on Monday. Unfortunately, the only way to test my theory about the tablets is to come off them and see, but the thought of just having to grin and bear the TN attacks scares the hell out of me. 🥺 I always knew I’d probably end up leaving the workforce before retirement age but this is way too soon so I am hoping it is just a covid induced blip. Now if I can just stay in isolation and not get catch covid ever again, life should be good! This really is no way to live. 😕

Anyway, to cheer myself up I have been looking at my money again! (Yes, it really does cheer me up because at least it is something I can do something about)

It is the 1st day of a brand new month, with a brand new plan! 🎉 I’m genuinely so excited! 😁 I have completed all my reconciling for September, and got half way through checking my fresh budget sheet was all working correctly, before my laptop battery died and I took that as a sign to go lay down for a bit as the fatigue has set it. 

I did manage to do a bit more work towards bringing in extra cash yesterday, drawing down some money from TopCashback, Vinted and ebay, plus chasing up a payment from dd1 for some cash I had lent to her (tbf that money isn’t recorded as extra cash as it was just a repayment, but it still helped my bank balance!) I also did another small Balance Transfer dance - again, it wont bring money in, but it will reduce the interest burden a tiny bit. What I really want to do is chase the exam remark money but for that I need dd2 and she’s not really up to it at the moment. Soon though.🤞Despite feeling ill, I also had a go at a few more super quick surveys and the end of the month ‘Extra Cash’ sheet looks like this…

This afternoon’s plan is to have a rest, cobble together some lunch, watch the new episode of the Martin Lewis Money Show on ITVX, then finish off the updates to my budget spreadsheet so I can share my progress with you all! I’m not going to lie, the progress is not huge but it is something, and I am actually pretty proud of all the efforts I’ve made this month. 😁

ellenvan

Well done on the small steps.
On Martin Lewis show last night and in the weekly email, there were new bank swap incentives and new balance transfer cards mentioned. Might be worth a look at least.
Keep going, you can do this!

EatingBeans

End of September figures:

End of	Dec-24	Mar-25	Jun-25	Sep-25
Brother	5,400.00	5,300.00	5,150.00	7,800.00
Overdraft owed	1,349.90	0.00	0.00	0.00
MBNA CC	10,534.20	11,292.77	11,990.56	11,481.53
Barclaycard CC	9,667.21	7,725.50	8,849.65	9,662.17
Fluid CC	0.00	752.50	722.50	1,046.44
NatWest CC	12,018.14	11,752.41	11,774.26	11,705.36
Aqua	0.00	0.00	0.00	1,127.94
Total debt	38,969.45	36,823.18	38,486.97	42,823.44
Paid off in the month		360.42	-585.91	211.33
Total paid off 2025		2,146.27	482.48	-3,853.99

£211.33 doesn't seem like a lot because when I take away the £150 for my brother that means the balance of my credit card debt only reduced by £61.33, but when you consider that my current account balance also rose by £236.01, that means I am in fact £447.34 better off than at the start of the month! To me that feels like a big achievement! 

The obvious question I can here you asking, is why, if my bank balance rose by another £200+ did I not pay that off the debt too? And the answer is that I currently have no emergency cash reserve (and only £250 potential emergency cash in the form of an overdraft) so I like a little buffer in my current account to be sure nothing ever bounces and I can cover random things that crop up if I have to. I used up all that emergency buffer with unforeseen costs around the time of buying the van (like having to pay the vehicle tax all upfront) so I wanted to replenish some of that cash as a priority.

ellenvan

Well done.
I agree you definitely need a small emergency fund in ready cash.

EatingBeans

Day 1 has been pretty successful!

Lunch turned out to be hummus and mangetout thanks to Olio. Google tells me that dogs can eat mangetout so I offered one to each of the pups (no hummus obviously as that has garlic in it). Big dog instantly chewed the mangetout enthusiastically, before quickly proceeding to spit it back at me with a look of sheer disgust as if I had tried to poison him. That was, until he turned to look at his sister and realised she had devoured hers and was looking for more, at which point he decided to gobble his back up and beg for seconds as if I was dishing out steak! 🤣 The joys of labradors. 

I thought the Martin Lewis show was good. However the idea that a degree is now 60% more expensive is just downright scary! I can see why so many are opting not to go to uni anymore. 

I was interested in the potential current account switch deal to Club Lloyds. I’ve not switched to them before so definitely a potential option, but the current account I’ve been setting up for switching has only had one of the three direct debits come out from it so far, so I need to wait a bit long until it is ready to go. Fingers crossed that deal sticks around though as I quite like the look of it. 🙂

Weigh-in today was looking good, 202.3lbs down from 204.2lbs yesterday (average of last week was 203.9lbs), so seems to still be going in the right direction. ✅

One challenge I did come across today was dd2 reminding me that we had agreed she would cook her roast this evening (instead of Sunday as that clashes with Olio). The only problem is that we failed to buy chicken and stuffing when we went shopping as I had completely forgotten all about it. Now, usually I would have run straight out and just purchased the missing (pretty core!) ingredients, but not this time! No way was I breaking my food budget on day 1, so, I suggested we simply cooked what we had and made do! 🤣 dd2 initially looked at me like I had lost the plot - I mean a roast chicken dinner with no stuffing and no chicken is just veg, roasties and yorkshire puddings covered in gravy - but she could see I had my ‘I am determined I am not breaking my budget’ face on, and just went with it. It did look a little sad on the plate but it was still delicious. 

The reason just a bit of chicken and stuffing would break my food budget on day one is for two reasons - the first being I realised last night that I needed to start each food budget week to coincide with Saturday Olio food runs. That would have been fine only I hadn’t planned for it so I hadn’t bought in food in preparation - we just need to make it till Sunday for the first food shop. The second reason is my annual Morrisons delivery pass runs out on Monday, making Sunday the last day I can get a free delivery - I am not renewing the subscription for the first time in over 5years! I will still be getting one Morrisons shop per month as I still want to buy the guinea’s hay from them, so to avoid paying delivery fees this month’s shop needs to be on Sunday. I have already planned the shop and there is very little change from £40 (guinea pig stuff excluded), so before I have even bought anything I am feeling the pressure of this fixed £40pw shopping budget! 😬

However, one good thing that I was super pleased about was Morrisons have just released the priority Christmas booking slots for their delivery pass customers and since I still ciurrently have a pass I was able to secure a delivery for the 23rd December! No trying to go food shopping in the week before Christmas for me! Yippee! 🎉

EatingBeans

Oh and I wanted to update on the new tracking spreadsheet too. 

I set the £5’s target at £150 this month. A bit of a stretch but I will be including the theoretical Olio figure in here because for me it is all about motivating me effort wise. I think the £150 should be doable so long as I actually put the effort in! It also makes for easy maths to tell if I am on track since it equates to pretty much £5 a day. Suddenly £5 seems a lot to find! 🤣 

But try I did, and with a bit of luck and an ebay sale, I made it all the way to £8.21 today! 

I did forget to list an item though so I will need to get on that tomorrow, but not bad for a first day! 

Oh and I also managed to get the contact details from dd2 for the person I need to chase about the remark refund! 😁

Not bad considering I have spent most of the day in bed feeling really quite ill - I guess you could say it has been a welcome distraction - the rest of the time I have just been asleep. 😴

missymoo81

Hi!

Phew I have just caught up! You’re doing so well, I love the way you break everything down money wise so you can see what’s going on, I also really like the £5 challenge. I think I might go back and try Olio now too! Keep going, we’re all rooting for you. 

themadvix

Great progress yesterday and well done on sticking to your guns re the food budget.

As a veggie, that sounds like a standard roast dinner - I do sometimes have a protein option, but quite often am happy with the veg and yorkies. Stuffing is easy to make if you have some basic ingredients - breadcrumbs (Olio 😉), half an onion, some sage (have you got a plant in the garden?) and an egg. The BBC GF website has a basic recipe - I never buy the packs anymore.

EatingBeans

Yippee! The exam remark money came through and it spurred me on. 

Lunch was more mangetout and hummus thanks to Olio (with a side helping of cherry tomatoes this time). 

I popped out and posted the workbooks I sold on ebay - so handy to have the Post Office so close! 

I played a few of the games on testerup but wasn’t really in the mood for them today, so opted for a few Prolific surveys instead. 

Oh, and I listed a few things on ebay too! I really wasn’t in the mood to list things so I only did 4 items, but now I have set myself a challenge of matching at least one item for each day of the month I figured that bought me a couple of days to get in the mood/feel better! 🤣 I know for a fact that if I hadn’t set myself that target there is no way I would have listed anything today, so I already count that as a success! 

So, this is how my running board is currently looking…

…you are all just going to have to imagine me doing my little happy dance! 🕺😁