Our road to recovery-Part 2

ltm07

One of OH's workmate's wants to cut her hours from full time to part time which will free up a full time vacancy. OH has said that she would like to go full time,which will make us £150-£200 a month better off! It has just got to be sorted out between the two of them & their manager so hopefully she will be full time within the next couple of months. She was going to start a part time cleaning job in a couple of months but will probably give this a miss now,as she will be working four nights a week should she go full time.

ltm07

:hello: again! Well starting to feel like we are making good progress & OH has been offered the full time hours which takes the pressure off big time:j ! Had to pay out £16 for DD's dance show on Saturday as we are taking our niece with us too. Was going to pay last week but she wasn't sure whether she would be in the afternoon show or evening so have paid on Wednesday. Can't do an accurate update as Nationwide website is down,so will put down total now & edit it when the website is working again. Here is our new update & this includes money taken out for holiday so quite pleased with it! Thanks for reading!!

Debt at LBM(July 1st 07)-£33,744.48
Debt Today(April 25th 08)-£30,835.56

ltm07

Well edited the total but still quite pleased as we should stay below £31k by the end of the month!

ltm07

Hi all,well we would have been way below £31k by the end of the month,but British Gas decided to take every penny we owe them(over £500) in one go as we have switched suppliers to e-on:mad: . So mad that they did it without telling us. Luckily our overdraft covers it or we would have rang up & complained. Also can't do a debt update as the whatsthecost website is still down ! Our debt now is around £31,500 as mortgage,council tax & one of our loans has goe out,but I have also been paid today. Will update as soon as the website is up & running again.

ltm07

Well the snowball calculator is finally working again,so we can do our weekly update. OH received Barclaycard this morning with a LOB APR of 6.5% with no BT fee,so going to transfer our overdraft onto 12.9% Mint Card & then OH is going to BT the Mint card onto Barclaycard if she can BT a card in my name onto a card in her's. If so all of our APR's will be below 10%:j ! Anyway this is our new update,it has gone up quite a bit as British Gas decided to take over £500 out of our account in one go & we have also paid mortgage & council tax this week! Thanks for reading!

Debt at LBM(July 1st 07)-£33,744.48
Debt Today(May 3rd 08)-£31,570.58

ltm07

Balance transfer has gone through so everything apart from a few £100 will soon be below 10%:j :j !!

ltm07

:hello: all! Well been a little too slack of late to be honest, mainly because we had a bit of a blowout over the Bank Holiday Weekend. I've bought some new shoes from M& M Direct through Quidco with money budgetted for clothes as it's free delivery on orders over £30+ will get 3% back through Quidco. Decided to change the way we budget for things s instead of working out what we have for food & petrol weekly,we have decided to budget monthly. We put this money into 2 seperate accounts so we know exactly how much we have. At the moment if we go over our weekly budget we tend to lose track of any overspending so by budgetting monthly we should be able to keep track for the whole month + we can buy more items in bulk & also fill the car up at cheaper petrol stations instead of running out halfway through the week & having to go to the nearest petrol station. This is why our new debt total is alot higher than it should be but hopefully over the rest of the month it should start to look alot better. Not much overtime at work at the moment & I think this is how it will be all the time,but if I'm totally honest I feel much better for not doing so much overtime as it's improving our quality of life at home & I have more energy & time to help more around the house & will also find more time to find more ways of seeing where we can cut back. Treating DD & Nephew to a McDonalds later out of the £20 I have to myself a week & we're having a BBQ tomorrow so looking forward to that! Thanks for reading & here is our new update.

Debt at LBM(July 1st 07)-£33,744.48
Debt Today(May 9th 08)-£31,817.88

ltm07

Went to work this moning to find out that we are getting another £400 pre tax bonus at the end of this month:j ! This was completely out of the blue so was a massive surprise! Again this is linked to the new flexible way of working & Royal Mail's annual profit for the last financial year. As I said previously it looks like the overtime is going to be cut down considerably,but this bonus is a Godsend to be honest & through coming on here we have learned to live within our means so won't have to rely on the overtime so much. The last £300 or so that I cleared after tax went towards paying for our hols & we have £170 spending money saved up so could put this money towards this too. So that's the spending money sorted & the money that we would have tried to save towards the spending money can go towards our debts instead!

lisabell

Hi

Hope you dont mind me dropping in have read all of your posts and have been inspired you are doing so well congratulations on the bonus and hope you have a lovely holiday.
Lisa

ltm07

Thanks Lisabell. Don't mind you dropping in at all,in fact it's nice to get a reply now & then! We have done this diary as a way of staying motivated & whilst we appreciate that there's hundreds of other diaries on here, it is nice that people take the time to read ours! People reading it & also replying makes it all the more worthwhile & it really is great to be an inspiration,as others on here & of course Martin are also an inspiration to us. Do you have a diary? If so it would be nice for us to check it out too if you don't mind! Not going away til August but it is the first holiday that we have managed to save every single penny for for years & we are really looking forward to it. Had some great holidays over the years but they have always been tainted by the fact that we ended up having to use CC's or dipping deeper into our overdraft. This is hopefully going to be a brilliant holiday for the simple fact that we won't have any worries about having to add to our debts whilst we are there. Thanks again for reading & replying,all the best!