Teetering on the brink

DrunklMunkee

Oh, I KNOW!

Just Eat are terrible for it!!

My friend stayed with me a while ago and wanted to treat me to a chinese meal as a thank you for staying. I suggested a certain take away place that is just a few minutes walk away. However - she looked at the prices on Just Eat and said that it was very pricey. So at the time - I thought that was strange! normally I would be the first person to notice the value for money of a take away place. Anyway - the prices in person / or by telephone order was exactly the same as I was used to. It was Just Eat that had put the (huge) mark-up on the prices. and then still charge you bagging fee and delivery.

We walked to the chinese

EatingBeans

Ok, second day running Aldi has told me they have surplus food on TooGoodToGo, taken the payment and then refunded it hours later. Seriously? What gives? Maybe I am misunderstanding how this system is supposed to work? 

dawnybabes

It’s annoying but they don’t kno till late in the day if they will actually have food left.  I’ve had Aldo’s bags cancelled but also had some too.

BestnamesRgone

Apologies if it’s already been suggested but have you checked out Olio? It’s a free app designed to prevent food waste. Volunteers generally start listing the food they’ve collected from Tesc0, B00ts etc at around 8.30ish in the evening. 

EatingBeans

dd1 came home with a box of brownies and some yellow sticker Oreos this evening. She scoffed half the brownies and then gave what was left to me and dd2 to divie up. 😁 dd2 went for the oreos, so I get to enjoy some yummy brownies tomorrow! Yay!

I can’t decide what I like more though, the fact that she brought us treats, or the fact that she bothered to look for yellow stickers to get a good deal on the treats.

Even more amusing to me was dd1’s excited dash back down the stairs at bed time so she could grab the laptop. Turns out she’s getting paid tomorrow and now she has her pay slip she wants to quickly reassess her Feb budget to see if she can shave enough off to put a £1000 in her savings this month! The contrast amuses me no end. I mean, I too am super excited for budget day tomorrow but for a whole other reason. 🤣

EatingBeans

Ahhh, what is wrong with me?!!

So I pinged away at 5:30am this morning, eager to get reconciling my spreadsheet and come up with a final figure for the month. After an embarrassing number of back and forth transfers in my bank because I am clearly incapable of typing correctly that early in the morning, I finally got everything to add up. 🎉

£688.41 better off overall 🎉
£495.26 being paid off debt
£100.00 moved to become a buffer in my spending account (The anxiety of spending to zero on an account with no overdraft is no joke)
£93.15 left to increase balance of my current account so that it matches my expected basic income for next month (This way, no matter when I get paid in the month I know I will have enough so long as I stick to the budget-again an anti-anxiety measure, aka “Bank of Beans”😉)

All super duper fantastic I thought! Right?! 

And I felt like that for most of the morning, but as time went by, I guess I felt a bit of a comedown. What, no fanfare? No, big reveal? All this work for just a number on a spreadsheet?! I mean logically I know it is a massive turnaround and I should feel super proud, but instead I felt deflated. So, what did I do? Ah well, I should treat myself I thought, that would make me feel better, right? 😱🤦‍♀️

tbc, I have to just into a meeting now. For now, let’s just say it could have been worse. Brb

dawnybabes

£495 paid off the debt is a massive achievement - you should feel proud, instead I think you feel as a lot of us do that it’s money wasted (past and future).  Be kind to yourself.

EatingBeans

Thanks for the moral support @dawnybabes
Trust me, I do think £495 off the debt is a massive achievement, in fact to me I am more celebrating the £688.41 figure as realistically I could have paid all that off debt, I am just choosing to allocate it somewhere else this time around. It is big, I know that, I really do.

I can’t really explain why I felt so meh😞, it didn’t feel like wasted money to me. More I felt that I deserved something for the big achievement, because it IS such a big achievement.

Clearly, my default when I feel like celebrating like this is to spend! 😱 Conscious that I still have a long way to go I still wanted to do it on the cheap, so I went to check out TopCashback for deals. The ridiculous thing is I didn’t even know what I wanted to buy, I just wanted to BUY something! Talk about emotional spending! It was ridiculous, and the more ridiculous thing was, I knew it was ridiculous and still wanted to do it!

So, since I saw that I could get extra cashback if I spent over £5 through TopCashback by the end of the day, I decided to find something useful I would buy next month anyway, and buy that. I checked out dog and guinea pig food through ebay, but they were both annoyingly more than just purchased through Amazon. What else am I planning to buy next month? Er, nothing so that’s not helpful! Ok, so what about some new pants? Surely they can be see as essential, right? After much browsing I finally caved and accepted that since I don't actually NEED more pants, I really do just want to buy anything. 

Finally I found something to buy. A new phone plan. I literally only changed provider at the start of the month but since this plan is just £2.50 and my current plan is £10, I decided the switch was a good thing. I thought since it was a £5 plan but with a half price voucher that I wouldn’t be eligible for the extra cash back, but Topcashback have already registered £4.25 cash back from Librara and the extra £2 cash back for buying it today. Bit odd if you ask me. Spend £2.50, get £6.25 in cash back?🤔 Maybe someone else did the maths a bit too early in the morning when they worked that one out. 🤷‍♀️ Dunno. 

All I know is I should feel really chuffed about it but I don’t because now I have spent money I didn’t intend to spend this month! Go figure!

Seriously, has this seriously strict budgeting  killed my love of spending that much?! Now I’ll have to find some other way to perk myself up or even worse, I will have to actually DEAL with the feelings! 😩

Sorry guys. I know today should have been an awesome uplifting celebratory day and I couldn’t be further from it. Hope you are all feeling much better about your progress. x

DrunklMunkee

Well hello & good afternoon @EatingBeans

Firstly - absolutely brilliant work by you and the baby beans. £688.41 - that is fantastic - well done. *woop woop* - there's a party goin' on right here, a celebration to last throughout the year and we're gonna celebrate & party with you   - what is it with me & ear worms??

Secondly, I know where you are coming from on the deflated feeling. It can sometimes feel a little like an anti-climax.

Buuuuu-uuuutttttt - let us look at your "celebratory splurge" - correct me if I am wrong - but has your splurge not just ensured you save even more money going forward?? coupled with TCB paying you for the privilege..  Beans 1 - 0 The Debt Cycle

Also - £688.41, which is the figure I am counting. If that had all been applied solely to your overdraft at 39.9%. If I just use simple interest rates (because I know the banks charge daily / bill monthly) - then that will be saving you practically £200 a year (£16.50 a month). You have just given yourself a £200 pay rise.... after tax. Beans 2 - 0 The Debt Cycle

Also - you now know how you are going to feel on February 28th - So, why don't you compile a little list of "wants" throughout the month. Things you would like to treat yourself to if all the debt was paid, like a little table for the bathroom jungle foliage (keep it small & manageable) . Throughout the month you can mentally reward yourself for walking past a Starbucks - here; or talking yourself out of a JustEat order - there, by reminding yourself it will be rewarded after the spreadsheet showdown and a small dopamine rush of retail therapy. .....They think it's all over! It is now.... Beans 3 - 0 The Debt Cycle. 

I was thinking about the title of your diary, and d'ya know what came to my mind??? 

I do hope you have seen the film - The Italian Job with Michael Caine? I am going to work on the basis that everyone in the world has watched The Italian Job - so make no apology for the huge spoiler that is about to come..

Right at the end of the film, when the bus is "Teetering on the brink" of the cliff. I see the gold (Beans' money) at one end of the bus; Us - your DFW compatriots at the other end of the bus; and you @EatingBeans in the middle of the bus.

You turned your head to us and said, with your bestest Michael Caine impression, "Hang on diarists, I fink I've got an idea". 

And look at you now - you have moved 688 gold bars & a bit of gold dust over to your side of the bus. There is still a teeter - but it is 688 times more stable than when you first thought of your diary title

Go Beans; Go Beans; Go Beans


 

EatingBeans

Haha @DrunklMunkee you do make me laugh. Thank you for giving me a lift. I really needed it today. No idea why it has been so hard but my gosh I have spent the day battling with myself in my head. Justifying why one little takeaway would be totally ok, then reminding myself that it was a 12month commitment, all exceptions already agreed. If I cave now how can I fend off the dd in her moments of weakness? I have to stay strong!

So, on the way back from dropping dd1 to work I promised myself that as soon as I got home I would heat a tin of soup and eat it with bread. My thinking was if I get something in my tummy asap, at least the actual hunger will be gone and I can fight the rest of it off on a better footing. Even better though, I got in to discover dd2 was in the process of whipping up a spag bol and with a bit of negotiating over ingredients she offered to cook some for me too. Much better than soup for satisfying the hunger. 👍

Hunger aside, I do think the urge to buy stuff on the last day of the month is genetic, because it turns out dd2 has been spending the last of her monthly budget on vinted today! She did pretty well tbf as she got 4 things to wear on her DofE expeditions (wants not needs), altogether coming to just £10. Bargain!