Monday 31 October 2011

My Frugal journey

Today i have been trying to find out how much a new tank will cost, with not much luck DH is going to phone a couple of people up to get a rough idea of a/ how much and b/ how urgent a replacement is needed,I currently have a big baking tin catching the drips alright for the short term.
.DD is out on her driving lesson so whilst its just the 2 of us home we are sat in near darkness just a candle burning, its not cold so heating off as well, it will save us a few pennies on our utilities.
 One of the bloggs i read belongs to Frugal Queen and she has a battery operated light, i have only found torches so would love to know where i can get hold of one that runs on AA batteries as i have a solar charger.
Tea tonight is going to be homemade pizza so i best get off here and start making it.
Another job for this evening is to package up a couple of items that ive sold on ebay,every little helps.

Sunday 30 October 2011

Luck

A bit about myself,married 3 children only one at home.2 grandchildren and a dog.
We as a couple have never been brilliant with money,never had loads and have probably spent more than we should.DH is self employed and this has been the cause of most of our problems,he goes for long periods of time bringing no money in and then it comes and has to go out twice as fast.So budgeting is difficult.
At the beginning of this year i had my lightbulb moment decided enough was enough and i wanted to be debt free and eventually mortgage free.We have been married 25 years this year and we are in a worse financial situation now then we have ever been.This is the 3rd recession we have been through and this one seems to be the toughest.
My debt free journey has consided of trying to cut back on everything so more can be ploughed into repaying debts. Grocery budgets slashed i seem to be able to get by on about £200 a month.
Don't have any credit cards ,have 2 loans for vehicles.
Well my journey started off great i could see my debts going down and could have these loans paid off in just over 300 days...then the inland revenue knocked at our door!!!! wanted a 5 figure amount immediately or else.After speaking to some wonderful people we managed to get a stay of execution (i joke not) the figure came down to a 4 figure some and arrangements made to pay this off as quickly as possible.I managed to reclaim ppi and £4500 was going to be winging our way so at least we had this to use, still a couple more thousands to pay but it was achievable.After all this worry and the worry my dh would relapse( he has depression) We had said to each other that the next thing would be an investigation because in the drop in earnings and guess what they want to visit him to discuss his tax.
We have had a rotten few years, we were flooded and lost lots and loads of damage done and were moved out for a year. On Friday 13 th dh van caught fire and was totally destroyed. Today i have found out i need a new hot water cylinder as mine is leaking.
I always thought you made your own luck but now I'm not so sure.I don't mind the frugal life rather enjoy it but i just wish the buggers would stop stepping on my fingers when I'm nearly out of the hole.

What do you think? ( i might be talking to myself but I'm used to that )
xx