The Ultimate Incentive muddles along

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  • archersluck
    archersluck Posts: 624 Forumite
    Just saw Dinahs FB post about the house so popped on to see if there was any update, sounds an absolute nightmare.

    can't believe how big all the threadie babies are getting!

    I get married in 18 days arghhh!!

    Saving for a deposit: £11,621.15
    20/25lbs
  • Cinny91
    Cinny91 Posts: 6,022
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    18 days!! That's come up so fast, hope the weather picks up for you by then. How's all the planning going?

    I saw the post too. Absolutely dreadful how they seem to be being treated :( Hope she finds the time to come and post soon, do miss this thread when it's not around!
  • archersluck
    archersluck Posts: 624 Forumite
    Me too, always nice when it's busy on here :)

    Planning is going ok... there was a meltdown I'm not proud of regarding orders of service on Sunday but we're over that now... Also hoping it's a nice day as we're walking through the museum gardens in York to get between the church and reception. Or we were until some unstable masonry collapsed and blocked the path. Gah!

    Saving for a deposit: £11,621.15
    20/25lbs
  • Dinah93
    Dinah93 Posts: 11,463
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    edited 10 March 2017 at 11:45AM
    Maybe I shouldn't have complained that NIMs depression made the house difficult to live in, the day after my last post the house showed us just how difficult it could be to live in by partially collapsing! A week later my car decided life wasn't worth living in the countryside and the brakes failed while I was doing 50mph with Ben in the back... resulting in me being the first person to do a handbrake doughnut stop on the crossroads of the next tiny village along. Took nearly a month for the mechanic to decide the car was far too much to repair to be worthwhile. So we've had to fork out £1295 for a new car after the trade in of the old one two weeks ago.

    We've now been out of the house for two months, living with my parents. We're settling into a bit of a more comfortable routine, at first mum really struggled with the ammount of 'stuff' in the house. The insurers did offer a hotel - but we wouldn't have cooking facilities and it just seems a really unsettled place for kids to live for months on end. The repairs haven't even really begun, which kind of takes the mick. They've partially stripped out the house, but not finished, and now it's been handed over to a new claims manageement firm as it went over the original budget. Drying will take 6 weeks, and they're not in yet. Then there is the refit. They initially offered us a £1,300 settlement to do the works ourselves, which we refused as it looked like a really big job, latest report says the budget is £68,000. Of all our decisions in life this looks like one of the wisest!

    The only real way to be at the moment is out the house a lot. We stay one night a weekend most weeks with our best friends, or go on a long day out with them. We tend to be out the house most of the weekend, park, forest school, swimming, children's birthday parties, walks by the river, days out to anywhere we can find a good voucher for etc. So this is a bit more of a cost than usual, as we'd usually only do one day a weekend out all day, however we're being sent £900 a month in accomodation allowance, of which we're sending mum and dad £565, so a little is going on the extra costs (including extra fuel as school run is now a 20 minute drive rather than a 8 minute walk), but we do still have some bonus money to pay off the debt each month. Of course all our bills on the house still have to be paid, although long term electric and gas should be very low for these months when it's empty. Water, mortgage, council tax, home insurance, car insurance, phone line, broadband are all fixed costs, have cancelled the tv licence. If anyone can think of anything else I might be able to cancel please suggest it as pretty on it with money atm.

    You'd hate Grace's party Birdie - there are two classes of 20 children in her year at school - all 40 invited. As well as 9 from gymnastics, 6 from ballet and 6 from her afterschool club, as well as about 15 we actually know from outside school. Won't all come but still, bedlam. Having sent out the invites it turns out the venue (dad's work) is actually double booked... and we booked in second... so may have to track down all these people and say 'oops, it's now in xyz village hall... nightmare! Just needed something to go smoothly. Hopefully by next year she might want fewer children, but she's extremely sociable, when we went to parents evening her teacher described her as 'everybody's best friend' which is lovely until it comes to a birthday party.

    Back on the loose weight band wagon too. 6.8lbs lost this week, which sounds insane but actually my medication was changed for my stageringly high blood pressure and one of the new ones is a strong diuretic so some of this is no doubt fluid. Went down to London in February to see a specalist bp team about a possible clinical trial, however I decided not to go ahead with it as the long term side effects that are emerging would be life changing and not in a positive way. Plus they don't think it would be safe in pregnancy, and still not decided on if we're done or not yet.

    When I last posted I was buying some printing equipment to take over the Etsy business. I did this, but in the last two weeks I've sold it back, as while I love the design side of things the production takes so much time that it's just not viable for me at the moment, so I think I need to focus on just the yoga business for the time being. In thefuture I may return to it, possibly as a digital business, or possibly I will try to find a company to do the production and shipping, similar to what I did with dad. Longer term plan though.

    Teaching is going fairly well, running 6 classes a week at the moment. All on a different basis. Of my two private classes one is one place off full while the other currently is almost empty (cover the room cost with £3 left for my petrol to get there, so no wage) ... but I desperately need to advertise it as presently I've told no one. NIM is coming along though which is nice.

    NIM has had a new diagnosis of borderline personality disorder alongside the depression, it makes a lot of sense, and he's started the specific therapy. It's early days but actually the last 2 weeks he's been really good so I can only hope and pray this continues as we were at breaking point. But when he's good everything is lovely and I have no remote desire to leave.

    Sorry I probably missed a step, did you buy a house Cinny, is that where your debt came from? Last I was on you had massive savings. Shh don't say the baby days are boring, I miss them so much, my two whirlwinds never stop and I find myself drooling over strangers babies in cafe's. Although a friend had a baby 2 months ago, I was having a cuddle the other day and Ben came over and saw her and he hit the roof 'GET OFF HER THAT'S MY MAMA NOT YOUR MAMA GO BACK TO YOUR MAMA GO AWAY BABY!' - at which he tries to push the baby out of my arms, and when huddedly handed back crawls into my lap and stays there for the next hour, glowering at the baby.

    So, actual figures. Feb 1st- March 1st we reduced the debt by £1,734.73. Not too shabby for people who bought a car and who don't currently have a house to ebay :D Although honestly not ebaying much anymore, bit more into the Kon Marie concept of just getting it out the door and having a clear head to focus on something more positive. I do still have the lady doing a bit of ebay for me, I sorted 3 bags out for her before we moved out and put them in the garage.... but they're starting to go mouldy and she's not ready for them so might all end up in the bin.

    We were given a grant for a caravan from a charity for Grace (lungs holding up okay, no change on heart, 6 week eye checks still ongoing, sensory processing diagnosis looking likely, possible autism diagnosis also coming but she's on the milder end of the spectrum if so) so we're taking our best friends away as a thank you for having us so much in April. First time we've done a holiday with friends, fingers crossed it goes well.

    Also spent a bit on 'thank you' treats for mum and dad, a long weekend in the lake district in April, and then taking mum away with the kids and I for 5 days in May/June to Disneyland Paris, as Grace is so desperate to go back (although it is mostly the hotel we stayed in she wants to go to I think, not actually Disney!). She's very much in that typical little girl princess phase atm, her birthday party is all princesses (and pirates at my insistence since there are 20 boys coming), in the car I'd give my right arm to listen to anything that isn't Moana, she sits and eats her dinner in a Belle dress... it's endless.

    Also going away myself next weekend, just one night, my friends and I are going on an 'old lady mystery tour' - basically turn up at the bus station and be taken lord knows where for the night, with a couple of trips on each day. But for £49 it sounded fun and it's guaranteed to be a 4* hotel so can't be too miserable.

    We're currently giving very serious consideration to extending the house while we're out, as the insurers are paying for a new kitchen so seems ideal to get it put into the new space rather than in a few years. We've been told with a kitchen extension and replacement conservatory in solid brick we'd add abour 50-60k to the value of our house. NIMs uncle is a builder, if he can find time to come over and do it it would only cost around £18k so would make us massive money as the plan is to put the house on the market as soon as we're back in, clear the remaining debt and buy somewhere else to do up with a smaller mortgage as if we do this we should have around 90-100k in equity after paying everything off, moving fees etc.

    So, in no coherent order, that's our life as it is at present. Only planning to update debt totals on the first of each month, have a background spreadsheet for running totals.
    Debt January 1st 2018 £96,999.81
    Debt September 20th 2022 £2991.68- 96.92% paid off
    Met NIM 23/06/2008
  • Cinny91
    Cinny91 Posts: 6,022
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    Lovely to see you posting again! And I'm really glad to hear there's been a proper diagnosis for NIM. Hope things are on the up for you both now :)

    Does sound like things are coming together a bit better for you too! It all seems like a horrible start to the year but you do sound positive over it all. Afraid I can't think of any way to cut back on monthly costs, I know when my dad is renovating properties you can get a council tax break for a number of months? Have you done that? Gas you could potentially shut off completely which would just leave you with the daily standing charge, no idea if you can actually turn off the electric?!

    We still have our 20k savings (a bit more now with interest), the debt is a lovely number Rich threw at me last year that's a mixture of credit card debt built up from not wanting to say no to a pregnant woman/sleep deprived woman and then his car loan and student debt. We're on track to have it all paid off by October. Tried to talk to him about using our savings to pay it off but he's won't be swayed. So we're on a fairly frugal year!
  • tootallulah
    tootallulah Posts: 2,197 Forumite
    Great to hear from you Dinah, you sound very positive in what is clearly a very horrible time, good to hear Nim is improving too. Well done on the debt repayment.
  • Dinah93
    Dinah93 Posts: 11,463
    First Post First Anniversary Combo Breaker Bake Off Boss!
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    Tried to spend the evening getting back on the matched betting band wagon. Only actually managed one bet though as Grace seems to have an ear infection so hasn't really settled to sleep at all and keeps waking in tears poor thing.

    Finally got the payment through for accommodation from the Insurers from mid feb to mid April, our smallest credit card has just under £1k on it (literally just under, £996 or something similar) so we're going to pay that off. Also paid off the £150 or so that was owing to Next. After this our next smallest debt is about £2.5k, so will take a bit longer to clear.
    Debt January 1st 2018 £96,999.81
    Debt September 20th 2022 £2991.68- 96.92% paid off
    Met NIM 23/06/2008
  • Dinah93
    Dinah93 Posts: 11,463
    First Post First Anniversary Combo Breaker Bake Off Boss!
    Forumite
    £560 paid off the credit card that has £994 on it, couldn't push to the full balance without going into the overdraft, however NIM has nearly £80 in his wallet from some handymanning yesterday, we're owed £120 from Medicash,and hopefully this week I can sell the last of my baby wraps or at least get them up for sale.
    Debt January 1st 2018 £96,999.81
    Debt September 20th 2022 £2991.68- 96.92% paid off
    Met NIM 23/06/2008
  • After read through your recent events I was expecting to get to the end and find that you had massively added to your debt but "oh my days", you managed to pay some off. Only you, Super job. You never stop surprising me.
    Total debt Feb 2012 = £54354.11 😳
    😁Debt Free and you can do it too
  • Dinah93
    Dinah93 Posts: 11,463
    First Post First Anniversary Combo Breaker Bake Off Boss!
    Forumite
    Next account paid off, one less payment to deal with. Need to return many pairs of ballet shoes I ordered online as I've found the one pair to fit me (binned all my flats at the end of last summer as without exception they had holes in!) which will make the accounts a bit healthier again.

    3 appointment letters through for Grace today, MIL has thankfully now stopped the trades on me needing to get a job... maybe has accepted I have a job - as a yoga teacher and as a designer and as a mum. I just don't see how I could work for someone else unless they were very understanding and flexible.

    NIM impressed me last night by coming in and building his handyman fb page - bear him in mind please anyone local if you or a friend or family member need some help in the house.

    No progress on our house, no one even booked in to survey, as ever, very unimpressive.

    Busy start to the week, when I plan my lessons and do some design work, bit later in the week I make some money.

    Really need to draw up some invoices today so I actually get paid, proving myself very ineffective at the money side of things with the yoga business.
    Debt January 1st 2018 £96,999.81
    Debt September 20th 2022 £2991.68- 96.92% paid off
    Met NIM 23/06/2008
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