Teetering on the brink

DrunklMunkee

Good evening @EatingBeans;

I do hope you are well & the headache is no more.

I have been away this weekend, dog-sitting for a friend. The dog is as mad as a box of frogs, but ultra-affectionate - so I couldn't help but have a good time

I see you have been a busy little bee this weekend - what with  competitions / teenager/parent-trials / TopCashBack & cleaning up shards of glass. But, the one that made me laugh was your Aldi - TooGoodToGo arrival. I saw all those loaves & fish - and thought of the story about Jesus feeding the 5,000. 

I am not a religious person, by any stretch of the imagination, but, if that isn't a sign that there is a Higher Power looking out for you on your DFW journey - I don't know what is??

So anyhoo, Me & 4,999 of my fellow diarists are gonna be virtually popping by. hope you have enough food to go round. LOL 🤣 🤣 🤣

I did think what I would do with the contents of your delivery, though. As I don't have any guinea-pigs it would be carrot cake. bread & butter pudding & salmon fishcakes (bulked out with tins of tuna) with lightly fried spinach & new potatoes.  So - what time shall we all turn up???

Right - so I still have a few weekend chores to finish and get something to eat. this dog-walking lark does give you a healthy appetite. For now, I wish you, adieu.

janb5

EatingBeans said:

janb5 said:

Hi Eating Beans...well done on finding £ around the house.  Would you mind saying which bank allows you to take the £ as so many of them have stopped that now..is it a box that collects the money and gives you a receipt ?  Thank you.

Hi @janb5 no problem, it was a NatWest that accepted the £’s. I was using a big coin counting machine, a bit like the ones that you sometimes see in supermarkets that charge a fee, but this was inside the bank and was for customers only. It counted the money and provided a receipt which I then had to take to a cashier to pay in. I noticed on the was out that they also have a cash machine that lets you deposit notes and coins but that just seemed to have a box to drop the coins in, so I am not sure if that works differently. Hope that helps. 

Thank you.  I think Metro had a machine at one time but that seems to have stopped.  I looked up about Tesco`s surveys but these have stopped too apparently

EatingBeans

@DrunklMunkee Salmon fishcakes! Now why didn’t I think of that?! I even have breadcrumbs already made and new potatoes to use up! Doh! I know where to come now when I am struggling for ideas. 😉

I am sad to report that the headache didn’t get any better with the try to ignore it approach. In fact it got a lot worse and after the shortest trip possible to get the missing bits for the Sunday roast, my face joined in and dd2 could tell I was really struggling. She took the shopping off be and suggested I tried the lie down in a dark room approach instead. It didn’t take much persuasion. 

I didn’t even think I fell asleep but ‘a few minutes’ later she was calling me for dinner. Huh? Dinner? She had not only gone and cooked the roast for me again, but she had found the small pack of blueberries I had slipped into the bag while I was out and she’d turned them into more muffins! Bless her, she is like a little elf sometimes. 🥰

Not much progress on the debt front today but I did delete a game from my phone that I have been playing every day for almost two years. It is not easy to give up a running streak like that even if the game is completely pointless, but given that there are only so many hours in the day and I figured that if I am serious about tackling the debt then I need to prioritise my time. This leaves me with just one game I play solely for fun. That one is also ‘pointless’ in a sense, but since I am the sole leader of my alliance - something I built from scratch starting 3years ago - I am loathed to stop playing that one. I would either need to choose a successor and hand over control, or close it down and the players I have been playing with for years would have to find another team. Not the end of the world, I am sure they would live, but I don’t like letting people down so that’s not a decision to rush into. Baby steps.

EatingBeans

Oh, and don’t get me started on dog walking! @DrunklMunkee

This is something I long to get back to soon. As patient as my two pups are, I know they would benefit from returning to regular walks, as would I. I absolutely love long walks, (it’s one of the reasons I got dogs again in the first place), but being so ill/in pain over the past couple of months has really put a stop to that. One of the reasons I got labradors is their ultra flexibility in this regard. Last year big dog and I regularly hiked for 3/4hours together. Now, I am embarrassed to say I cannot recall the last time he went for a proper walk. 🙁 Don’t get me wrong, they are both still happy and stimulated, (we do lots of games in the house), and they don’t complain or ask to go out.  Big dog in particular seems to be able to sense when I am not doing well as he comes and lays on me with his head on my shoulder, giving me a hug. He even tells little dog off if she gets too boisterous near me when I am hurting and he puts his body in the way to make sure she doesn’t run into me. And no, it’s not possessiveness as he doesn’t do it when I am fine, he only protects me when I am not. He’s such a clever dog.

Anyway, hopefully the weather will warm up soon and we can go back to proper walks. For all our sakes I think they will need to be reintroduced gradually though. Big dog because he is likely to just go as long as I let him and could easily overdo it. Little dog because I’ve been so ill during her crucial socialisation phase she missed out on lots I would normally have done with her by now so better to start at the beginning again and build confidence. And for me it’s the obvious - too long out is likely to set me back again - I suspect that is already what is happening tbh. 😕

The good thing about dog walking though is it’s free! Or at least pretty cheap so long as you are careful where you go/where you park. So, if I can just make it out the door long enough, it is a budget friendly activity that I can still enjoy!😊

EatingBeans

Omg is it really morning already? 

Today is going to be tough. I dragged my !!!!!! out of bed just 20minutes before I was due to start work - thank god it’s another wfh day. Quickly got ready, fed and fussed the dogs and skidded to my desk, breakfast and coffee in hand. 

Just time to research and value the 50ps I held back (all were already nicely lined up on my desk as a reminder for me to do this), and as suspected, none were worth more than a couple of quid. I will list them later anyway as still better than 50p. 

Last gulp of coffee was accompanied by a quick e-mail to the dd’s college over a missing £40 payment associated with DofE from way back in November. Old me would have just let it go as it’s ‘only’ £40, but now my perspective has changed and I am like, that’s a whole £40 they owe me, I want it back! haha No idea it I will succeed but if they can’t help me I will contact the bank. 

One meeting down and I’m off to make another coffee. I know it is bad if I already feel like I need another one by this point but I’m at the ‘if I blink too long I might fall asleep’ stage. Not good.

On the plus side, my headache has finally passed! 😊

~FlowerPot~

Glad you headache has gone. 
I used to collect coins. I have up last year as I just don't get much cash in my purse anymore! And the fun has gone. I ended up spending most of them and have kept hold of any I really liked or know they have a higher value. Shame I haven't got any Kew garden 50ps!! That would be nice!! 

EatingBeans

Haha, @~FlowerPot~ yes a nice kew gardens 50p would be nice about now! Sadly, I know I never managed to get my hands on one of those but I am sure I had a larger collection than is currently sitting on my desk so I may yet come across a few good ones yet. Unfortunately, I have been through three house moves since I stopped collecting so they literally could be anywhere at this point.

EatingBeans

Lunchtime dash to the post office to post the item that sold on ebay - always feel better once the items are actually in the post. 

I made a few alterations to my ‘ebay station’ at home to make my life easier. I generally find I list (and therefore sell) more if I have everything organised and in one place, so hopefully this will be time well spent.

I also cancelled a direct debit payment being taken out of the wrong account. Naughty EDF have set up the DD on the ‘to be’ burner account but taken payment on the old one. I wouldn’t normally cancel a DD without at least a discussion with them but apparently they are always really busy on Mondays and I don’t have time to sit on the phone. And frankly it annoyed me so I just thought cancel and let them work it out! Yes, I could have just transferred the money from one account to the other to cover it, but in all honesty I was feeling tired and petty. 😬

Oh and my new Lebrara SIM has arrived! I can’t believe I didn’t change my mobile contract in over 20 (yes TWENTY) years, and now I will have changed it twice in as many months! I am just hoping this change is as easy and seamless as the move to Giffgaff was. 🤞

EatingBeans

Definitely feeling much better than at the weekend now! Phew 😁

Since lunchtime I have:

1, Listed one coin and photographed and decided on a listing price for the others so I can list them as I get a chance. 👍

2, Installed my new SIM and started the process for porting my old number. 👍

3, ‘Paid myself first’ by transferring money to all my different ‘pots’ and updated my spreadsheet and Fudget app so I am clear what I have and cash is all in the right place. 👍

4, Set up a new sheet on my spreadsheet to monitor progress against my ‘goal for the month’. This month is firmly aimed at the overdraft that incurs interest charges, which, as at the end of last month that was £503.45. To aim at the total overdraft owed (£1107.76) seemed to overwhelming, so, I am going for the smaller number first to give me something clear to aim at. The separate sheet means I can ignore any account movement due to changes in pot values - I will reconcile that all separately at the end of the month. 

Then, as per awesome previous suggestion😉, to make it feel even more manageable I am breaking the £503.45 down into 100 £5’s, and if by some miracle I manage to achieve that then there will be a final £3.45 required to find to wipe it completely. I am not expecting to be able to clear it all in a month but now I can just look at the next £5, then the next £5, and so on and so on, so every time I sell something on eBay for £2, instead of thinking, “😞, it’s just two pounds”, I can instead think, “that’s near half way to another £5!” Make sense?

So, as of now this new sheet holds four ‘transactions’:
£-28.07 - Interest, gee how to get off to a good start! 🤣
£40.00 - Budgeted basic payment to overdraft
£42.79 - Budgeted overpayment to overdraft
£2.00 - Ebay sale
So, total is currently £56.72 aka 11/100 £5’s down! Just 89 to go! 😃

Rule 1: Only cash that has made it into the account counts! ie. A sale is all well and good but sitting in my eBay account is not good enough. I must actually transfer it before I can log it against the £5’s. 

Rule 2:? I am sure I will come up with more rules as I go along! 🤣

Wish me luck! 

BadBookkeeper

Good plan!  My ocd would make me pay the £3:45 first to tidy it up 🙂