Sass' 2008 DFW ramble thread

Sassamac

well the hobnobs are going down well already!

Im hoping to do some more baking today but promised myself I would update my c.v. while DD is asleep, which she now is. So I'll see if theres time to bake anything when I have finished, or failing that, if she plays quietly when she wakes up. DS is in the mood to wind her up today though unfortunately.

We've had a bad week with household stuff this week. First the toaster broke, then the spotlight fitting broke, (im currently squinting at the keyboard), then the lounge door came off a hinge. The latter, DH appears to have fixed, the other two are kaputt, and til we find some money we are having to do without.

NSD today, we have barely left the house this w/e.

Right my c.v. is calling me.

Sassamac

Sassamac wrote: »

We've had a bad week with household stuff this week. First the toaster broke, then the spotlight fitting broke, (im currently squinting at the keyboard), then the lounge door came off a hinge. The latter, DH appears to have fixed, the other two are kaputt, and til we find some money we are having to do without.

well there was me thinking that these things come in 3's and we were done with broken things. Not so!
DH just came off his motorbike for this first time. One piece has broken off and something else has bent so something else that needs fixing. Fortunately DH bounced rather well and apart from some bruises that will no doubt turn purple tomorrow, he and hios gear have escaped unscathed. Fortunately his journey was social, and didnt happen on his commute, and he has a few days off to fix the bike so no loss of income to worry about.

Had the meeting with the debt advisor today. The good news is we're doing all we can already. The bad news is we're doing all we can already. In other words its great that we have the system sussed, but I was hoping they would be able to recommend something extra we can do.
There is the option of asking the creditors to freeze the interest, but this will show up as a default on our credit rating, which will most likely our ability to re-mortgage in 6 months time.
She is going to give us the number of some association whi can give us more independant financial advice on our mortgage.

We had a letter through from Tax Credits yesterday saying they were going to reduce our payments unless we update them with our current income. They had a figure of over 25k and having phoned and spoken to them, it transpires that our current level of payments (£95 every 4 weeks) is based on that figure. DH told them on the phone that his gross income is 16k, which it is, but as he was out of work / temping / earning minimum wage at the start of this tax year, I have worked it out (presuming he stays where he is til the end of the tax year) to be 13,700. So hopefully we should get our payments amended upwards and if we're really lucky we might get a back payment to the beginning of the tax year, or at least back to Aug / Sept when we started claiming.

Sassamac

Sassamac wrote: »

GROCERIES MISSION
Im aiming to do a weekly shop on Fridays (even if it involves two supermarkets and a market) and ban myself from spending more than a fiver any other day of the week (in other words, bread, milk and reduced stickered stuff only).

I have a big fat oops to declare. I spent £12 yesterdayin Mr T.
I did get some bargains, loads of fruit and veg and 90% discount and 2 loaves of bread at 75% discount, but it was the necessities of cat litter, cat food and dishwasher stuff that really added up.
I have decided to buy dishwasher powder rather than tablets, so as to be able to use less in each wash. I had been recomended to snap dishwasher tablets in half but this wasnt getting stuff clean. And the powder worked out the same price per wash as the value tablets if I bought the big bottle, so will actually work out cheaper per wash if I only use 3/4 of the recomended amount. Just worked out that if I can stretch a 75 wash bottle to 100 washes it will cost 4p per wash and last 3 months.

My overspend means that I have already spent most of Fridays budget and Im going to have less than £12 to spend between now and next Thu (14th).
Its a bit unfortunate that the shortest month of the year has 5 Fridays (weekly shop day) so I will have to postpone shopping on the last day of the month, til the 1st of March. This month is going to be tough, Im struggling already.

Sassamac

note to self. Phone Abbey and get the final mortgage arrears total in order to update my Feb SOA, which I can then post on here.
Hoping the CC BT will have cleared today so we can pay the arrears off.

Sassamac

Just looked at our bank statement and were really struggling this month.
We're about as OD as we ever get already (although there is more OD limit to use, being 3 figures OD is scary enough without entering the zone of being 4 figures OD). And that statement doesnt include the mortgage that we paid over the phone yesterday or last nights Mr T bill (or the impending motorbike bill, which hopefully will wait til payday on Friday). Its been a month since I got paid and I wont get paid this month as I didnt work in Jan. (I do a party plan job which was really successful Oct, Nov and Dec, but will be equally quiet in Jan, Feb, Mar.) Im really worried that we cant manage this month, as it'll take Tax Credits a while to adjust our payments, and if I get a 'proper' job it will be a while before I even start, let alone see the fruits of the labour. We're going to be kissing the ar5e of the OD limit this month.

MoneyGypsy

Hi,

sounds like you are doing really well.

I just wanted to ask a question about one of your Jan posts - you said that you were going to try to get the bank to freeze the CC's and focus on paying back the o/d's - will you still accumulate interest on them during the freeze or does it freeze that too? If it still accumulates interest it might work out more expensive in the end.

Also what are stardrops?

Lol.

Sassamac

Hi Money Gypsy,

stardrops is a cleaning fluid that is much raved about in the OS board (have a search on there for more info). it costs 75p for a bottle but is very concentrated so apparently lasts for ages and cleans just about everything.

re freezing interest, Im not too sure, as that was what the previous debt advisor suggested, but she refered us onto someone who is better able to help us (the first one seems to specialise in bankcrupty), and having spoken to the second advisor, she has suggested a different plan of action.
I did wonder myself, but I assume, the interest does get frozen, as otherwise like you say, there is no real benefit. The other thing is that we have just done a BT onto two of the CC's and got a 3.9% deal for 6 months, so if nothing else, that would have expired by then.
I think its a route we can't risk going down as the impact on our credit rating will have a much more adverse effect when we re-mortgage in 6 months time, than it will save us in minimum payments.

Sassamac

Sassamac wrote: »

Set a Grocery Challenge budget of £150 for Jan, having spent £225 in Dec and £210 in Nov.

I have just juggled my budget for the GC. I came in under budget at £148 for Jan which I was very pleased with, but as theres 5 Fridays in just 29 days in Feb, I have switched to 4 weekly budgets.
So for Feb my new target is £125; £102.50 for food and £22.50 for toiletries, cat stuff, nappies etc.
I have gone through to July using 4 weekly (or 5 weekly where appropriate) budgets and nudged it down to a £100 budget per 4 weeks which Im happy with.

Sassamac

I just had a play with the snowball calculator. I punched in all the debt details on the assumption of having £225 to pay the debts off with (according to our budget we actually have about £110, but the minimum payments are £220 so were going more OD each month). Anyway it came up with a DFD of Feb 2013. 60 months!

Then I went onto entitledto to work out what we should be getting in tax credits. We're currently receiving £95 every 4 weeks and according to the site we should be getting £440.40 every 4 weeks. So mashing that into a monthly figure means a shortfall of £375 pcm. So using the £110 that we have allocated to debt payments plus the £375 we should be getting, our new DFD is Feb 2010. 24 payments! Im amazed that due to a govt eff up our DFD was 3 yrs longer than it should have been!

Also if they give us a back payment to when dd turned 1 or when we originally put the claim in (just before her birthday) then thats around 2k, which would pay off all of both OD's and save us £350 per year in interest. So that would knock even more months off our DFD.

£375 extra per month would make such a difference, I am stunned, but we would feel rich on an income of £1575 per month instead of £1200. I cant beieve how much stress and tears and anxiety our money problems have caused, when we shouldnt have had any money problems at all.

Sassamac

well mission for today is to make HM chocolate spread. Ive just used the last of the shop bought jar on my brekkie this morning, so the jar is soaking and when its clean I will start creating. Its my birthday on Sun so may make my own birthday cake this w/e and use the HM choc cpread to glue it together.

aiming for NSD today as theres nothing I need. DH is currently spending money on buying bits to repair his motorbike, but at least hes buying them second hand and fitting them himself, rather than sending it to a garage to do the job. Then when its fixed it needs and MOT so yest more expense, but hopefully the last of it. I have to keep reminding myself its very cheap compared to my car.