My new debt free diary :)

Middle_Aged_Guy

That's amazing that the help to save scheme is still running! I completely messed mine up by constantly pulling the money out before it had time to pay a bonus.

Pleasssseee don't do what i did. Let it mature and make full use of the free money being offered.

I just wish id had my lightbulb moment before opening it. 

Wow that curry sounds delicious! Im sure the turkey will work, let us know

GolfR

I’d never heard of it! I would have normally had a quick scan over Martin’s emails in the past but now I make it a point to read them fully, and I’m so glad I did I’ll do my best to keep it all in! I still have the £1000 in emergency savings so I should be ok I hope.

Apologises for no update for a few days, I’ve felt rubbish with this cold. I’m wondering if it’s covid as I’m still unwell four or so days later and I can normally shake a cold in 2/3 days. I need to make sure I update daily as I’m forgetting where I am with talking about my spending/budgets i do have a budget book that I update daily so it’s all in there and I’ve switched to using the Moneyhub app now instead of Emma. I’m on a 6 month free trial with it and it’s only £14.99 a year after that and I really like it so far so I’ll likely stick with it.

It was a no spend day on Wednesday, yesterday we needed milk and my daughter wanted hairspray which was £1.65 in Lidl and also got £5.39 in food - two 4pt’s of milk (they didn’t have any 6 pinters left), a watermelon as it was on an amazing price of 59p a kg and a pasta bake sauce jar which was free with my spend over x amount coupon. I’ve sold five things on Vinted the last few days and I sent the last one today. All small amounts, it’ll be £15 in total once all payments come in.

I took my son for his last school immunisations today, he missed it when they came to the school, not quite sure why. We dropped my daughter off on the way for another sleepover and aside from a bit of driving around to find a Yodel parcel shop where the machine was actually working, it’s been a no spend day. Seems to be a thing lately where Yodel machines aren’t working so I’ve decided to take it off my postage options on Vinted. It’s not worth me driving a couple of miles up the road when the item is only selling for £2/£3. InPost is the best for me as the lockers are 24/7 and aside from once where the machine was broken and the guy was working on it as I arrived, there’s never any issues.

Had my child support of £234 in today from my ex. £40 has gone into the gifts pot, £50 I kept back in my current account for bills as I used that account to pay into the help to save account the other day. Instead of putting £100 into the car & home insurance pot and £60 into the car maintenance pot, I’ve put it into my Lloyds monthly saver where it’s giving 6.25% interest on £400 a month max deposit. I’m keeping a record of what’s going in there from those two pots so I know how much I’m able to take out if/when the time arises. May as well make whatever money I have work for me! I had £800 in my monthly saver last month and £205 in another savings of around 3% (which together make up my emergency savings) so I’ve taken that £205 out to go into the monthly saver and added £35 to it as well (that I’ll mention in a sec) as well as the £160 pot money so that I’ve been able to max that out with £400 this month. I won’t be able to next month but that’s ok  

I’ve also opened a digital saver with NatWest which is 5.5% I think, I put in £185 which is what I’m keeping to go towards my Virgin BT when it’s due towards the end of October but it spat £35 back into my C/A - I didn’t realise it was £150 max per month so this is where the other £35 came from for my monthly saver. I guess I’ll have to do this monthly until my Virgin BT is paid. It all sounds very confusing but I think I know what I’m doing thankfully