18th - 20th June 2006
18th June 2006
Absolute
disaster day, today! Went out for Father's Day. We were supposed to be
going to Knowsley Safari Park, but it rained, so we went to the Blue
Planet Aquarium instead. We took a picnic to save some money on buying
food, but cos we were in a rush we had to stop off at Sainsbury's and
buy some soft drinks to go with it, (plus the sprog informed us she
needed a magazine with pictures of Tracy Beaker, animals and Bratz to
make a collage at school), (£8). So first off we used a fair
bit
of petrol, then we had to pay to get into the Aquarium,
(£34.90).
Then when we were nearing the end of our aquarium visit, the sprog
decided she wanted some tat from the gift shop, (£3). Then we
drove to Chester centre and went for a meal at EGO Mediterranean
Restaurant, which turned out well expensive for 4 of us, (especially as
the sprog only wanted a kids meal), at £80.80.
Then
when we got home, I had to stick some money in two envelopes for the
sprog's school dinner money, (£7.25), and a school trip to
Llandudno, (£14.50). Total spend for the day
£148.45!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Like I said, out and out disaster
of
collosal magnitude!!!!I've now overspent for the month by
£128.26
and have -£14.25 a day to live on for the rest of the
month!!!!!!!!!!
17th June 2006
Today,
I had to go to the supermarket again for some essentials like toilet
roll, food and the like. We were that short of essential stuff and
because I had to buy food for another picnic, because the missus and
sprog insist on taking me and my dad out for Father's Day tomorrow, I
ended up having to spend £58.63. Absolute disaster - I now
have................ wait for it..............£2.31 per day
to live on and we haven't even been on our Father's Day day out yet!!
16th June 2006
After yesterday's spending, I
now have the grand sum of £9.06
per day
to live on!!!! So far today, I've only spent 20p on a cup of coffee
from the brew machine! On the plus side, I completed an online survey
and earned 2 quid!! I've got my nice Rpoints banner ad at the bottom of
this page too! I've noticed you can get ads from
google
too, so I might look into that - the only problem so far is that I
haven't managed to get any web traffic yet. I've sent my url
to
google and alta vista, but so far nowt as far as I know - i suppose I
need to put a visit counter on the page.
Well,
I managed to put the counter on there but for some reason I had to get
rid of the Rpoints banner (I've put it on a separate page with a link,
so you can still go to it), as the webpage editor said I'd
reached the maximum number of clients for that page, whatever that
means - I'm no expert at this webpage design (as you may have
guessed already, due to the tremendous quality of the pages
I've
produced so far). Still, you have to try don't you!
On the negative side, my car tax is due at the end of the month, but on
the plus side, one of the things I've done recently to try to improve
my long term financial management is to open a savings account and
stash some money away in it for emergencies. What normally happened in
the past was even when I had a good month and didn't spend more than I
earned, every now and then, some unexpected large expense, (you know
the sort of thing Xmas, birthdays, car falling to bits,
etc!),
would come up and throw me into debt again. So I've started putting 50
quid a month into a savings account , so when I do get surprised, I've
already got some cash stashed away to cover it. I stuck my money in a
cahoot savings account cos they give you one of the best rates of
interest, your money's easy to get access to and they're online, so you
don't have to walk to the bank! Then I discovered ING Direct, who also
give a good rate of interest, but they're better still cos you can open
lots of little savings accounts and give them all different names, like
'car falling to bits', 'summer holiday', 'Xmas' and the like and then
stash away bits of cash so that when the big day comes, you've already
got a bit of a wedge there. So, the good news is, I can pay my car tax
and not affect the amount of cash I have to spend for the rest of the
month. This small event might not seem like much to most
people,
but when yuou've been as useless at financial management as I have, it
really is quite a triumph!
Anyway, as the day drew on things got worse - the missus had to buy a
birthday present for one of her work colleagues, so she asked a friend
to pick up the sprog from school. When she got to the friends house to
pick up the sprog, she found that the friend had given the sprog her
tea and bought 3 bottles of wine, to entertain us while we were round
at her house as a chance to return our hospitality when she came round
to our house a while back. So anyhow, time drags on, the wine gets
drunk and I go over the road to get some more wine and, because this
lovely woman is a single parent whose husband , rather sadly, died and
is even more skint than we are, I feel obliged not only to get enough
wine to finish off the evening, but to make sure she has a
bottle
in the fridge for herself the following night. And so it was that
another £15 quid bit the dust. Then because it was late, we
got a
takeaway, which I bought again because I didn't want to financially
burden our friend any furtherand thus was another 12 quid spent!!
Upshot of all this is I now have the princely sum of £6.82 per day
to live off for each of the 11 days remaining until I get paid.
15th June 2006
Well, I had to fill up the petrol tank £49.12, and I had to
buy
some more stuff from the supermarket £5.97, so I've now got
the
massive total of £9.54
per day to
live off - and I've run out of red wine!!!!!!!! I still haven't paid
for the sprog's trip and I've got to pay the car tax this month and the
phone bill just arrived!!!!! Yippee!!!!!!!!! Went back to supermarket
for more stuff on way home from work and spent another £15.22
- I
had to have some wine!!
14th June 2006
So far today, I've managed not to spend anything, but it is only
12:25pm at the moment.
On the plus side, I have already earned some money today -
£1.44
to be exact. I've done this by completing a survey for one of those
website survey type companies, which earned me a pound! Also I've been
on the
R-Points
website and clicked through to a few links
earning me 44 pence - not a lot I know, but every little helps! I try
to visit the R-Points site daily, but it's hard to keep the momentum
going. You can do likewise by registering with them using the link at
the bottom of the page. If you've not come across them
before,
you earn points by clicking through to other advertisers and in doing
so earn points which are redeemable for cash!!!!!!! Also if you
register with them using
this
link and then earn
enough points off
them, we both get 500 points (worth £5!), so you'll be
helping me
get out of debt!
Go on you know you want to!!!
I now have £12.79 per day
to spend until I get paid again on the 27th June, to
feed 2
adults and a child, pay for entertainment and put petrol in
the
car. The bad news is, it's Father's Day on Sunday , the sprog
has
a school trip on the 26th June and the school want £14.50 out
of
us to subsidise the trip and the petrol tank on the car is almost empty
again!!!!!!!!
13th
June 2006
Good day today, only spent £8.05 at the
supermarket and £3 on ice-creams for the kids!
12th
June 2006
Started the week
by having to fill an envelope with the sprog's dinner money, so that
was £7.25 straight down the swannee straight away! Spent that
much out of my current account, I had to transfer £5 from my
work
expenses account to cover it. After that, I went to the supermarket on
the way home from work and spent another £20.93 there!
