Life is a minestrone as the song says - my new diary

Ok, bit about my finances;

WORK

I've been self-employed for many years and have/had a patchwork of income. I stopped working when OH got his terminal diagnosis so lost all but 2 bits of my main patchwork work. I haven't really worked for more than a couple of months in the last 20 months as I've also had 2 lots of surgery and am still recovering from the last op and hope to be back to work in about 6-8 weeks. I'll need to build up my self employed work again as soon as I can but I know it will take time...

DEBT

I've been living off savings and credit cards. I do as many surveys as I can and sell online. I also get £100 a month bereavement allowance but that will stop in a few months. I now owe almost £3000 on 2 different 0% credit cards :eek::eek: and pay just over the minimum each month. I'm currently using them to buy my online shopping and pay things like vet bills. I do have enough money to pay them off, its in a Spanish bank current account and with interest and cashback I currently 'make' about £9 a month after the account fee. I also shuffle money between there and a H@lifax Reward Acct which now makes a more measly £2 a month. On top of what I owe on the CCs I have about £2000 in the Spanish Bank Account but that amount is going down each month as I pay household bills from there. I also have about £400 [but need to check the amount] in an old ISA. OH left me some shares which he inherited from his parents and I'm hanging onto them for the moment and hope they will help in my retirement.

PLANS and MUSINGS

I've been reading on KarmaCat and Cheery Daff's diaries about 'net worth' and think this is something I need to explore for my situation. I won't get my state pension for another 3.5 years so need to build up my self employed work again to support myself in the meantime. I'd like to start saving again at some point :A I'm very very pleased that we managed to be mortgage free before OH got ill :T
This house was going to be where OH and I grew old together but it was not to be and I feel its too big for me now so at some point I'd like to move somewhere smaller. I'm not in a rush and would need to get quite a lot of work done to make the place sellable. I have a little bit of a pension pot [< £20000] so I might need to cash that in to pay for the work to be done with the hope that I could recoup the money on selling and down sizing.

Although I like this house I don't want to spend all my state pension [when I get it] on servicing the house, somewhere smaller would work better for me.

So, well done if you are still reading this,:rotfl::rotfl: I'll leave it there for now.

Not managed a terribly productive day. Watched a few things I'd recorded off the TV and ate the last of the scotch broth I'd made. Must remember to soak some mix tonight to make more tomorrow.

Did a few surveys but didn't manage to get a place on quite a well paid Prolific one as the PC wouldn't connect to reserve a place then they were all gone. Haven't seen any more today.

Been a NSD, I did an Asd@ online shop for Mon but that doesn't count in my book as the £ won't come out till its delivered.

Also cashed in a Lakeland survey voucher for £20 :T I had quite a few points saved up [about £50 worth] which I'd planned to use for Christmas pressies BUT 'always read the small print' I found out too late that you can only redeem one voucher a month so I spent one £20 voucher at Christmas and can now cash in a second one so am spending it on myself . If I'm still collecting next Xmas I'll start redeeming them much earlier. You don't get loads for £20 at Lakeland but I fancy one of those baking tray liners that you can reuse again and again as I want to stop chucking baking parchment after I use it. Also need a new sieve as the handle came off my £shop one and I'm a bit nervous about scalding myself :eek::eek: I could do with a tea strainer as I had to use mine when the vet wanted a urine sample from the cat [don't ask] and after that I haven't fancied using it for tea :rotfl: and I've got a couple of packs of loose tea that I was given as pressies that need using up.

I've started to get the papers together for my tax return - will do more tomorrow. I guess I need to add in my survey earnings but not sure where to put it in the online return? Also do I count the ones that are redeemed as vouchers on Amazon or Lakeland I wonder - am guessing 'yes'?

Hopefully will be a bit more energetic tomorrow and do some cooking for the week ahead.