£15,000 to 0

Thanks EH and enthusiasticsaver.

Realistically I know it's something I needn't be worried about, but the fact that it's there annoys me. The fact that if I'd gone to uni a couple of decades earlier, or been fortunate enough to live in Scotland, I wouldn't have it at all...that makes me go :mad:

Anyway, a quick life update.

I have moved to London (sorry EH - bl00dy incomers!) and am greatly enjoying the increased social life, and shorter commute.

Only thing is my expenses have accordingly increased massively...rent...food...and I'm still earning the same meagre wage.

Trying hard to keep food on budget but have come across another problem - my sister! She is very good at eating food but I seem to do all the cooking and grocery shopping...bit of a disparity there seeing as she takes home more than 3x what I do in a month, whinge whinge whinge moan moan moan Going to have to put my foot down there I think.

I did as planned and bought a 1 year travel card. Financially more sensible in the long run, but in the short term it's put me in the bottom of my overdraft. I also borrowed a further £500 from my parents short-term (paid back next month) for the overdraft.

Parental loan is looking a bit funny at the moment. I had given my sister £750 when she was buying her house, and my parents had said that I could "credit" it as paying back the loan from them, as they would just get the money directly from my sister. Well my mum has now helpfully decided she doesn't want to do that, so it now stands as follows:

Debts
Parental Loan 1: £12,500
Parental Loan 2: £500
Overdraft: more or less £1,700

Owed to me
Sister: £750 (repayment to be discussed)
OH: £850 (repayment in £150 chunks starting January 2018)

Sadly I have now cleared out both my Nationwide and Help to Buy ISAs to pay for the move, furniture, travelcard and other associated expenses, so those accounts are £0.

My sister is annoyed at the stamp duty change in today's Budget and has decided that I'm to buy a house. Not sure how to break it to her that I couldn't afford a shoelace, let alone a shoebox, let alone a house :rotfl:

Well, thanks to a catastrophic failure in budgeting and a not-so-unexpected interest charge on my overdraft, I now have £956 which needs to last me until the end of January and includes my rent and loan repayment.

This is because I got charged interest on part of my overdraft and went :eek: and immediately paid off £1,000 of it again, and tomorrow I will call them to reduce it to its interest-free amount only again.

This means I have £306 to last me until 26th Jan, and I have a holiday to Portugal from 10-17th January.

Phone bill and AA together will be £40. I don't even have a car anymore but my dad needs AA and it costs the same to have us both on it :rotfl: unfortunately he needs the top coverage on AA which is £20 a month now. I tried haggling but they won't budge!

So I have £266 to cover groceries, christmas travel, any last minute xmas bits and spending money for holiday and I won't be able to put any additional money away in January like I usually do.

Sister and boyf still owe me £800 and £940 respectively but neither can start paying me back until Feb/March.

I would estimate I'm going to spend £60 on christmas travel (back home and up north to visit BF's fam) and I will eat down my tiny stores in January. I was going to do veganuary anyway so this will help me along the way

Since I'm away for one week in January anyway I'm going to aim for my grocery budget in January to be £50 for myself, so £100 between me and my sis as we share all our food anyway. I think this is doable, especially since we have a lot of basics such as rice and frozen bread, quinoa and couscous. Vegetables are really cheap at the moment too so I will stock up. I'm planning to buy some cauliflower and broccoli (20p each at my local), chop em up and freeze them as it works out cheaper than buying bags of frozen veg.

I will take £100 spending money on my holiday and hope to come back with some of it left. I do still need to pay for a transfer from the accommodation to the airport.

This leaves me £56 account fodder and unexpected expenses! Wish me luck!

Thanks EH.

My sister is a bit baffling to me. My parents are still convinced she’s much better with money than I am but I don’t think that’s the case.

Anyway. I know she will definitely pay me back but it’s just a question of when.

An update on today...

£5.90(ish) spent today at the fast food place beginning with an M. I accidentally left my lunchbox at work yesterday so no lunch taken in today, I’m not too annoyed as I’ve brought lunch in every single day this month besides today so I’m taking it at a Christmas treat.

Bit tipsy writing this as we were taken out for drinks as the end of year celebration and I ended up having three glasses of wine on an empty stomach!

Looking forward to Christmas but I know it’s gonna be tough holding off on the jan sales!

Hope everyone has a happy Xmas

And to kick me whilst I’m down... our 3 hour car journey has lasted 5 and a half hours with another 2 hours to go, my OH has food poisoning and we got caught by a speed camera going at 70 (variable limit 60) whilst trying desperately to get off the motorway to a safe place so that we could stop for him to be sick. The fine will be about £100 and neither of us can afford it at all. Goes to show how important an emergency fund is.:(

Thank you redofromstart for your kind words. They mean a lot and are much appreciated.

Fortunately OH is feeling much better now, and an email has been sent to the institution responsible for said food poisoning.

Having thought about it for far too long we realised that we were actually not properly over the speed limit - OH’s speedo showed that we were over by about 1 or 2 mph but his speedo is 4mph fast so we are hoping that it was someone else who got flashed, not us. OH is miffed as he has never ever had a single fine or ticket of any sort in his over a decade’s worth of driving.

Somehow I don’t think the excuse of food poisoning will fly if we were to try to appeal it :cool:

Drama with Mum mostly sorted out, she seems to have realised that she was being unreasonable. Still, I am going to prioritise this debt from now on as it is my largest debt and I’d like it to p1ss off anyway

Today I’m popping into town to exchange an item that poor OH got me but I don’t like... and I’m no good at hiding when I don’t like things so he knew straight away and silently presented me with the receipt to return or exchange it, bless him.

MSE wise, I finally cancelled my AA membership yesterday, catalysed by a rude phone operator who told me the only way I could get what I wanted was to cancel my membership. I took him up on it straight away. That’s another £20 saved per month, although they’ve just taken out a payment from me so I have cover until the middle of Feb. I couldn’t be bothered to try to claw back that £20 so I’m just going to call it a win.