Sass' 2008 DFW ramble thread

Sassamac

argh! not a good start to the week. According to my online banking, taking into account uncleared funds (£19 worth of groceries on Friday) we have £86 to last til 29th.
In that time we have an elec bill (£70) and a CC minimum payment (£48), which doesnt add up. Thankfully I dont think we have any general living expenses til next month.
Ive transfered £50 over from the savings which is designed to balance out the wages over the 5 weeks. So that now leaves us about £15 to live off, but Im determined that £50 will get put back as Im fed of being skint when the 'no pay Friday' comes around.

Just realised I havent paid for DS school lunches for this half term, so I will have to go in and sort that today (his one day off) otherwise he wont get fed tomorrow. They have been asking for the forms and money two weeks at a time, but this time theyve asked for 6 weeks worth in one go. Im going to have to be cheeky and split it between 2 chqs I think as even £24 is pushing it atm.

Aim for the day - sort out whats going on with the interest on my HSBC CC. It appears as though by doing a BT onto it of £300 at 3.9%, the existing the £2100 odd seems to have lost its 7.9% and gone up to about 15%.
Just thought actually when I did the BT the interest got added on straight away (I thought it would be accounted for out of the minimum payment). I noticed online and straight away paid the £15 or so to bring it back under limit. Oops, it hadnt occured to me thats why. In which case Ive c0cked up and theres no way theyre going to redeem it.
Going to have to start looking into doing a BT off both the HSBC CC's as they're costing us a fortune atm. Might go back to Abbey as I had a card with them up until a few months ago when I did the BT onto the HSBC. Mind you DH is still having grief with his and they wont clear the balance. He keeps having to do a 25 mile round trip to the nearest branch to sort it, they refund the charges, clear the card, and same happens again the following month.

Sassamac

Oh forgot to mention my sig. I updated it last night to include my total debt at LBM and total debt now. My spreadsheet keeps track so that I have the totals every month, as at midnight on the last day of the month / first day of the month, depending on which way you look at it.

I previously had only taken into account the actual debts and OD's, which showed us to be £50 more in debt the second month. But actually taking into account the money we had syphoned into savings (i.e. a fair bit the first month, almost none the second month) its actually more like about £385 more debt - which is not good!
Having done and estimation, based on what I know to be going in and out before the end of the month, it seems as though we have clawed most of that back this month. I think we'll be £120 off the original figure, but that means we've cleared about £265 worth of debt this month. Our minimum debt repayments plus OD interest cost £225 per month (of course what you pay, and what your debts reduce by aren't the same) and this is the first time we've managed to not add to the debt / arrears / OD for months! This is fantastic considering during Feb, we've spent £150 repairing the motorbike, £50 on DIY (everything broke this month) and lost a days pay (£72).

Sassamac

Ooh just done some maths. I have enough space on my Barclaycard to clear all bar £150 of my HSBC CC (well lets say £200 so I dont make the same mistake of going over limit again).
If I can get the same 6.9% LOB deal I just used for my BC and we're really frugal during March, (even if it makes us more OD the OD interest rate is the same as the CC now) we can clear the HSBC CC completely. Which then leaves us open to them sending an offer to win my custom back. Which we can then use to shift about two thirds of DH's HSBC CC.

Ooh I love it when a plan comes together. Even if BC dont offer the same LOB deal, their standard rate I think is about the same as HSBC and it still allows us to clear an entire CC which gives us more power to play the system.

Sassamac

Wow, we've had a really up and down couple of days.

(in part c&p from my rant on here last night)..
DH's job just disappeared into thin air!
He works for a recruitment agency and has been doing the same job for 7 months now, really just waiting for someone else to leave so the company would take him on directly, rather than via the agency (the result being a hefty pay rise). But the business can no longer run and he got the call to say thats that. They may be back in business in the summer, they may not! He gets paid for 4 days work on Friday and then thats it.

So we had a rather stressful day yesterday not knowing whether we were coming or going and where the next pay chq is coming from. But things have picked up today.

I suggested DH go into town after dropping DS off and speak to the agencies he signed up with last time. I went to toddler group and left him to it, about 10am I got a text saying he had been offered 3 days work starting now. He doesnt know what hes doing but its only about 4 miles away which is a bonus (compared to about 50 m round trip where has been working). Such a relief because it means that he will at least get paid something next Friday, even if its only £100 (not sure how many hours '3 days' constitutes, given that today is presumably not a full day) so its a start.

Also I was speaking to one of the staff at toddler group and she has recommended the place where her hubby works as they are often looking for staff. Its really close to where his last job was so I will get him to drop by for an application form when he goes in on Friday to clear out his locker etc.

I just nipped to Tesco and spent under a fiver. It seemsed silly that were running seriously low on bread, milk, bananas and other such necessities, so I sort of used £5 from the non-food budget to buy food. Were still under budget overall with about a quid to play with which will get us some more bread or milk if needs be on Thu.

Keeping_Positive

Hi Sassamac

Sorry to hear your luck has taken a turn for the worse. Fingers and toes crossed your hubby gets a job soon.

In the meantime ((((hugs)))).

How old are your kids? I know your "baby" is 17 months! Do you have any others?

Sassamac

Hi Wendy, Im hoping the last job ending is a blessing in disguise and a better opportunity will arise from it. I feel like we're due a turn of good luck so heres hoping.

Yep I have two kids. The little man is 3 1/2 and yep the walking talking madam is nearly 1 1/2.

Sassamac

DH got a call last night to say the job he is doing at the mo probably wont need him on Thu so it looks like its just going to be 2 days work and about £80 pay next Friday. Still at least it gives him another day to job hunt. He only actually got to one agency yesterday as they offered work on the spot, so another couple to investigate still. And theres a message on the answerphone from the agency he is currently with that sounds promising, but we;ll have to see.

I think we'll be raiding the other OD to pay the mortgage this month, theres about £400 in there before we max out, so could be worse.

Im seeing the tax credits advisor tomorrow afternoon at toddler group, so hopefully that will give us a clearer picture of whats going on, what we're actually owed etc.

Im going to be good and walk the pre-school pick up today as the weather is so nice, saves the odd mile or two on petrol. DS' new school is actually a bit nearer than where is now, and the parking is even worse, so I will definitely be making the effort to walk more then.

Sassamac

Sassamac wrote: »

DH got a call last night to say the job he is doing at the mo probably wont need him on Thu so it looks like its just going to be 2 days work and about £80 pay next Friday. Still at least it gives him another day to job hunt.

Woohoo, he managed to persuade them they need him tomorrow! So we should get about £120 in next weeks pay packet now, all of which will into the mortgage fund.

I have gone back to my shopping list for Friday and juggled it accordingly. Im going to do the £50 shop this week when we get a normal pay packet, then just a £10 top up next week when we're scraping the OD. Then I can use the 5p petrol voucher to get a tankful and stretch £50 worth fuel throughout March.

Sassamac

Woohoo, its the last day of the budget month. Not that that is a good thing in itself, but the fact that we've survived after frankly a shocking month, is quite an achievement. Plus I always like the satisfaction of having kept to budgets etc. Then tomorrow I will know exactly how much we have paid off our debts. Bring on March!

Just a quick update as I need to go and dig out all the tax credits bumpf for this afternoons meeting.

Sassamac

oops!
Just had another look at the TC statement. The £325 / 4 wks figure that I thought we were getting (well its slightly different payments for a couple of months then settles to that for next tax year) is only the CTC element. I missed the WTC element which is another £70 odd. So in fact it looks like we'll be getting almost £400 which is only slightly less than the £440 we were shown on the website.

Even better news is the next payment is due in a weeks time, so theres almost £400 coming our way, and then the next day will be payday for the 3 days work DH has done this week. So theres me wondering how the hell we can afford to live of £120 next week when thats entirely allocated for the mortgage, when in fact we'll be fine! HOORAH! I shall have to transfer it all the syphoned savings account, then transfer an allocated hundred quid into the current acc every week, so it doesnt get spent all at once.