![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
private, public, state
Feb. 26th, 2005 02:56 pmI realise that I've forgotten to keep people up-to-date on the secondary school question. You may remember that I have been angsting and obsessing about this for the last six months. I went to six Open Evenings and then, for the past two months, t'h has been systematically training t'son in maths, English and things called verbal and non-verbal reasoning in preparation for the entrance exams to the private school down the road. You may also remember my rantings about class ideology and the British education system. Well, t'son passed his exams. So now the ball's in our court again. I am, of course, tremendously pleased and proud for him, and also somewhat shamefaced at having doubted that he was capable of it. Three of the four boys in his school who sat for this exam also got in. He is now tremendously keen to go. The psychology is clear: that which one has struggled for seems more precious, rightly or wrongly, than that which one is just handed for free.
Next week we find out which of the state schools he got into it. Our local catchment school is beyond the pale so we will be on a waiting list for anything else. If we get the local dump, then the decision has been made for us. Ten thousand pounds per annum!!! I am torn, torn, torn. And worried. And t'h is worried. And t'son dare not say what he really feels because he can sense we're worried. But I can tell he would really, really like to go to this private school.
Anyhow. That's the update. We have to decide by March 7.
However, on a cheerier note. Taking FlyLady's financial advice to heart (and having bought, on Flythingie's rec, a Suze Orman financial self-help book while in Atlanta), I decided to write down my current bank balance on all my accounts and look my dreadful debts square in the eye. (Thinking all the while, 'omg, 10,000 pounds'.) So, yes, my debts to bank and credit card was, unfortunately, 1,000 pounds more than I had been admitting to myself. But stashed away in savings accounts that I had not been looking at for over two years was enough money to cover my debts almost completely!!! I was amazed!!! The StepfordBabe does it again! First you shine your sink, then you do cleaning-missions on your car and find (under a pile of gooey jurassic sweets and twigs and leaves and gunk) t'h's penknife wot u gave him for xmas and t'son's wrist watch which was given him for his communion by his grandparents three years ago and has been lost ever since! And the next thing you know you're finding untold funds in your bank!
Anyway, these funds are sort of tied up, and a thousand is needed to pay off the builders. But it makes me feel so much better just knowing I had this money there and that if I chose to, I could pay off my debts. So I'm choosing not to do that and instead pay the debt off bit by bit but I've got a nest egg!!! *squees like a robin who's found a cuckoo in his nest*
I also saved money by a) returning a faulty toy bought for Christmas and getting mulah back, and b) resisting the temptation to buy Perez-Reverte's Fencing Master (recced by you lot) in Waterstone's yesterday and then being rewarded by finding a library notification in my email: I had forgotten that I had reserved that book and it had now arrived!
I'm reading it now and I really, really like it so far. Whenever I deviate from my world literature list, I have been sadly disappointed of late: David Lodge's Author,Author: laboured and I'm not past page 20; Alexander McCall Smith's 2 1/2 Pillars of Wisdom: knowing and cloying and cold.
Okay, so how many 'rules of LJ comment-soliciting have I broken??' *pokes out tongue at purveyors of LJ recipes for 'success' which remind me of nothing so much as those dating queens of New York who tell women to let the guy ring them and make him wait and polish their fingernails in order to land a man*
Next week we find out which of the state schools he got into it. Our local catchment school is beyond the pale so we will be on a waiting list for anything else. If we get the local dump, then the decision has been made for us. Ten thousand pounds per annum!!! I am torn, torn, torn. And worried. And t'h is worried. And t'son dare not say what he really feels because he can sense we're worried. But I can tell he would really, really like to go to this private school.
Anyhow. That's the update. We have to decide by March 7.
However, on a cheerier note. Taking FlyLady's financial advice to heart (and having bought, on Flythingie's rec, a Suze Orman financial self-help book while in Atlanta), I decided to write down my current bank balance on all my accounts and look my dreadful debts square in the eye. (Thinking all the while, 'omg, 10,000 pounds'.) So, yes, my debts to bank and credit card was, unfortunately, 1,000 pounds more than I had been admitting to myself. But stashed away in savings accounts that I had not been looking at for over two years was enough money to cover my debts almost completely!!! I was amazed!!! The StepfordBabe does it again! First you shine your sink, then you do cleaning-missions on your car and find (under a pile of gooey jurassic sweets and twigs and leaves and gunk) t'h's penknife wot u gave him for xmas and t'son's wrist watch which was given him for his communion by his grandparents three years ago and has been lost ever since! And the next thing you know you're finding untold funds in your bank!
Anyway, these funds are sort of tied up, and a thousand is needed to pay off the builders. But it makes me feel so much better just knowing I had this money there and that if I chose to, I could pay off my debts. So I'm choosing not to do that and instead pay the debt off bit by bit but I've got a nest egg!!! *squees like a robin who's found a cuckoo in his nest*
I also saved money by a) returning a faulty toy bought for Christmas and getting mulah back, and b) resisting the temptation to buy Perez-Reverte's Fencing Master (recced by you lot) in Waterstone's yesterday and then being rewarded by finding a library notification in my email: I had forgotten that I had reserved that book and it had now arrived!
I'm reading it now and I really, really like it so far. Whenever I deviate from my world literature list, I have been sadly disappointed of late: David Lodge's Author,Author: laboured and I'm not past page 20; Alexander McCall Smith's 2 1/2 Pillars of Wisdom: knowing and cloying and cold.
Okay, so how many 'rules of LJ comment-soliciting have I broken??' *pokes out tongue at purveyors of LJ recipes for 'success' which remind me of nothing so much as those dating queens of New York who tell women to let the guy ring them and make him wait and polish their fingernails in order to land a man*