oh my life...... Light Bulb moment.

Magpie100 · 19 October 2017 at 1:49PM

Hello Mimi,

Well, I was hoping you would have been busy with overtime! So that is good news. It sounds like you have been busy.

Re the volunteering trip, how much is the outstanding balance? I am worried you are going to go ahead and do this even though it isn't budgeted for anywhere. Is there an option to cancel it entirely (even if you lose say the £150?)? I know it sounds awful to do so, but it concerns me that this is now in the equation. Are you going to feel like you need new clothes etc for it? Travel to airports, car parking? Could it be postponed until you have got under £30K, as a reward to yourself? I can tell you want to do it (and it is something I would love to do in the future), but you must help YOURSELF first. Really.

Re the food - yes, you need to watch this closely. It's one area where it is easy to overspend, and yet one where a bit of cutting back is nearly always available. Where do you shop? I am a total Aldi convert and really it is SO much cheaper than anywhere else, I find. How much did you overspend by? What do you think your food-buying weaknesses are? Too little time so buying 'convenience' foods (even if they are posh, non-processed ones)? Treating yourself to small 'luxuries'? Buying branded goods? Simple off-list impulse purchases? If you tell us, we might be able to help with suggestions.

It sounds like you are doing well on the planning for Christmas front and the savings pots. Oh - and not frittering on small spends! Give yourself three pats on the back for this.

Hanging on by a thread is ok - in fact, far better than throwing up your hands in despair and running away from it all. Unfortunately, as you know, you need to be ever vigilant in all of this. I know it is exhausting, but any further overspending will only add further exhaustion later down the road.

Just so you don't think I am some moralising preacher on my high-horse, I have been a financial black hole this month. I had to spend £60 on my half of an emergency vet trip for the cat (infected abscess on his paw!), £380 on my half of replacing a pump in an en suite bathroom (SUCH a dull waste of money but it had to be done; I am so annoyed about this I keep spending more money to 'make up for it':wall:); then I spent £180 in TKMaxx on clothes and £170 in Homes sense starting the christmas shopping. I have had some freelance work which will cover some of this (already paid, yippee) and some more I can invoice for next week. I am being good about small day-to-day spends but why I think my budget can deal with £450 of extra expenses before I even got to the clothes and presents bit I do not know.

Sorry for hijacking your thread! but I want you to know I am not a spending :A and we all have our issues. I am looking forward to the challenge of cutting back for the rest of the month in some ways, but whether I completely lose the plot or not waits to be seen...

Talk to us more about this volunteering trip and your supermarket challenges and we'll see what we can do. And, I keep saying it every time you post, but I mean it: you sound more in control every time. I know it is exhausting, I know it is hard, but YOU ARE DOING IT.

XMags100X

foxgloves · 19 October 2017 at 2:41PM

Hi Mimi,
Well, you say you are 'hanging on by a thread', but you ARE hanging on, & that's the important thing, isn't it?
Now, about grocery budgets/food spending. I feel I have a bit of knowledge here, as mr f & I would definitely describe ourselves as 'foodies' but have managed a complete turnaround in terms of our monthly food spend. Back before the LBM, food spending was a major downfall for us. Our 'budget' was £320 a month but we over-topped that pretty much every month & also popped out for top-ups, treats, a quality take-away most weeks, I'm sure that it was pretty much £400 a month & occasionally more.
I've never been too fussy about brands. We cook everything from scratch & pretty much always have, but the savings have been made by meal planning religiously & writing a good shopping list. While I do like a nice full pantry, I've stopped adding items to the list 'just in case'. I know if something is going to run out because I've done a meal plan so will know how many meals that particular ingredient is required for. We still shop around but do it with a view to keeping costs down. Our main shop is done at Aldi, with occasional visits to the Co-op for particular items of theirs that we like....usually local products & their own label ground coffee. We usually go to Waitrose for items we are unable to get at Aldi. Cat food is from wherever has cat's brand of choice for the best price....currently Wilko's & we use the local market for a lot of our fresh fruit & veg. The market can be incredible value. It's not unusual for us to come away with 2 bag for life size bags absolutely full of lovely stuff (often reasonably locally grown too) for around £10. And I visit the village butcher, deli, health shop, etc, too, when I know they have what I want at a good price or I see that they have a good deal. We eat very little convenience or ready made food. If we are having cake or biscuits, I bake these. I also bake about 75% of our bread & make jam, chutney, sauces, etc. We do grow some produce too, but we don't have an allotment, so it's only what we can grow from a veg plot at the end of our garden plus in the summer, tomatoes, peppers, chillies, grapes, etc, from our greenhouse.
Budget-wise, we allow £50 a week for grocery shopping. Some months have 5 'shopping weeks' in them, most have 4, so we spend between £200 & £250 a month. That's for two of us (my husband is a brick outhouse with a big appetite!) & a large greedy cat. It also includes all our householdy cleaning stuff like washing-up liquid, loo rolls, 'Stardrops', soap, detergent, etc.
Over the summer, we were finding that our spend was just starting to creep up, but we have tightened up by simply doing better meal plans which make best use of what we already have in, before buying more, then taking just a little bit longer over preparing our shopping lists. This has done the trick & we are back on track.
We do still have some flexibility. i.e This month was a '4-week shop' so I would normally allow £200, but I knew the Grimsby fish man was due, so I budgeted an additional £50 to enable us to stock up the freezer with fresh fish, all portioned up by me, so done economically.
I suppose what I am saying in a roundabout way (& I am aware I am trying hard to put off going to do the ironing!) is that even if our circumstances worsened (which I am not ruling out with the horrors of a Brexit 'no-deal' scenario), & I had to reduce our grocery budget, I would still think of myself as a 'foodie'. I think this is as much to do with a love of good natural ingredients, home baking, preserving & cooking from scratch, as it is about buying expensive products.
They are my food shopping thoughts, anyway.......& it's great you are still holding on! Shame that volunteering opportunity can't be postponed until you can afford it, but you may find a way round it.
And now I really must go & say 'Hello' to the ironing pile......
Best wishes,
F x

HairyHandofDartmoor · 21 October 2017 at 7:51PM

Good advice from magpie and foxgloves. I would suggest, in addition, going to the supermarket with a set amount of cash and leaving your debit and credit cards at home. Knowing that you CANNOT overspend really focuses the mind

I am definitely not perfect mimi, it is much easier to spend than not spend, but every victory takes you closer to your goals.

We all feel overwhelmed sometimes at times, but it is worth it to see that pesky debt come down. Hang in there

katiepoppycat · 22 October 2017 at 8:55AM

I also budget £50 per week for food shopping for two greedy people including all household cleaning and stuff. I mostly shop at Tesco because I like the clubcard points(bought our wedding rings with them) but I also like the shop and scan because it keeps a running total for me. It's a lot less tempting to throw multiple packs of poncy pasta in the trolley when you can see the impact on the total right there! And if I end up over I can choose to take something off before I get to the checkout. Each week I work out my total spend and write the under/over on the bottom of next weeks shopping list so I know where I'm up to. At the end of the month, anything left goes in a saving pot, but an overspend comes out of the savings pot. As well as the £50 per week I also withdraw an additional £50 cash for the month for bits and pieces - lately I've shopping around the likes of B&M and poundworld for whatever I can find off my shopping list and I'm definitely feeling the benefit of it. I'm very lucky that my job takes me to supermarkets and shopping precincts so I can write my shopping list at weekend, do a sweep of the discounters and then hit Tesco for what's left on the list. Tesco had an offer this week for spend £60 and get 10p a litre off fuel and I actually struggled to get to £60! Bought some meat for the freezer in the end. It sounds like this volunteering thing is important to you - would your family like to help you? By that I mean that you could maybe look at the distance you are flying and divide the outstanding balance by it. Then let people know that for Christmas you'd like some volunteer miles. Plentry of people ask for sponsorship to go and volunteer - part of VSO I think is that you have to fundraise. Maybe look at focussing some of your savings effort into fundraising effort. I forgot to mention, do you do surveys? I know they can be a pain but I fund my amazon habit almost entirely off surveys. If you can do them whilst watching tv or listening to the radio of an evening they soon rack up. I like amazon but you can trade them in for other things too, including supermarket vouchers. Good luck! xx

foxgloves · 22 October 2017 at 10:21AM

Katie poppycat - sounds like we have a similar approach to grocery shopping. Sometimes good deals pop up in unusual places. I popped into our local small Co-op yesterday for a particular item & noticed they had a bay of very cheaply priced household stuff, including things like multipacks of toothbrushes for £1. They looked fine....& as my dentist says, it's not what you use, it's how well you use it. Anyway, I will return to have a better look at this section as I would get Co-op dividend points on any purchases, which obviously I don't at pound shops.
Re surveys.....yep, agree. Useful cash. I only do them when I feel like it & they can be tedious but it's useful extra money for gifts, etc. I track my annual survey earnings in my signature. Sometimes a survey leads on to being recruited into an online focus group for a brand, which has resulted in regular monthly Amazon vouchers, & I recently did one which paid me £28 simply for visiting my usual supermarket, taking & uploading 1 photo & saying what I like & dislike about shopping there. I used that to buy 3 Christmas presents.
I have made compromises since learning to live within my means. For instance, I'm quite 'green' & used to buy the more expensive environmentally friendly household products, etc, but the reality is that I can't afford them, esp not back when we had so much debt, so I now approach it by buying as few cleaning products as possible & that in itself is cutting down plastic waste & chemicals going into our waterways. Pet food is another one. I would dearly love to feed our cat an upmarket cereal free organic brand but it is not affordable for us at the present time. We always adopt big adult ex-street cats from rescue charities. My feeling is that it is better to offer a stray a good home & feed mainstream cat food than not have a cat until we can feed it expensive organics. If we had more money & no debt, I'm sure it'd be all 'Method' cleaners & 'Lily's kitchen's here! One of the hardest things initially was learning that how much available monthly cash informs choice of grocery purchases.....all other choices have to fall within that big one.
I sometimes can't believe how much our attitude has changed, but we are definitely happier as we were simply haemorrhaging money on grocery shopping back in the bad old days.
F x

MiMi66 · 26 October 2017 at 8:37PM

Right, first things first.

I utterly love you guys..... how wonderful to turn on the computer and read the last four posts..... I promise I had not gone AWOL but have been away in London for my son's open day at uni and a few days on there, then back on Monday but did overtime every evening....tired now but happy that the cash from all this overtime will be with me in 5 weeks time...just have to breath slowly til then.

Magpie - you can high-jack my thread anytime - I value your critical friend style so much - I actually red your post on the weekend and have been mulling it over since then, in a thoughtful 'what do i really think' way.

Foxgloves and Katie Poppy cat - we might well be siblings divided at birth - I can eco shop with the best of the debtors!

Hairy hands - admire your resilence and focus and the amazing fact that you have got your debt down so much...what a star you must be to have got there - I want to be like that.

So I need to talk about food shopping, the volunteering and also the fact that I have just looked at my payslip and I have been underpaid....... Arghhhhh.

This underpayment is due to the overtime that I was counting on has not been paid, and now won't be until next month - very frustrating but I have too manage another even tighter month.

Good news is that I have continued to scrimp and sell and have now got about £450 in back up, so I can turn to that if need be. I have received my Monzo card and have £100 on it and once all other things paid I will have about £30 - so 30 +100 + savings (a little bit of it) + if utterly have to - £250 overdraft fee free. Fuel (as I drive a lot in my job) will have to go on using CC, and any Christmas shopping, BUT the OK thing about this is that it will be paid all back end of November as I will have a significantly high overtime payment - nearly £800 I think. It hasn't killed me doing the extra hours and my health is doing OK, but I am tired. Looking forward to the weekend. I am taking a days leave tomorrow but working overtime in it. Needs must.

Been thinking about the idea of being grateful - as dark thoughts always hiding around the corner for me - I am grateful for the possibility of the overtime and my focus on my work. I don't resent being there - get a bit grumbling about the NHS, but I do like both the patients and staff I work with (mind you there was one nurse this week I could happily have throttled).

My son has stayed up in London this week - I have spent the grand total of £5.38 while he has been away... feeding one is cheap. Haven't really needed to get anything in all honesty.

But the down side now - London was expensive - getting about, meals. I didn't buy anything other than a magazine while I was there. And ate.

I paid a daughters friend to house sit for me and feed the dastardly cats - £25

This month (these reasons why I know that I can't work within the small amount of cash I have) trip to Oxford for open day at uni there - have already paid for hotel in cash, and work trip to London - I will have to pay up front and claim back, and a trip at the end of the month another trip to London for my follow up with surgeon - already booked bus and got cheap deal - very cheap - I think off memory it was about £6 return! But its the getting around London and food that quickly racks up. i'll stay at my daughter overnight for that and as it is close to her birthday we will go for a meal out but will be sensible about it.

I have done my figures and checked and while I have to do some slight of hand tricks it is going to come in on balance for my end of Nov pay. Hanging by a thread, hanging by a thread, hanging by a thread. Please Bank of England DO NOT PUT UP THOSE BLOODY INTEREST RATES. I feel for savers - I truly do, but the impact on them is nothing in comparison as it is to us who have to get ourselves out of some self inflicted and some circumstantial inflicted debt.

Going to have to go - phone call from kids and needed for a bit - instalment two later about groceries and volunteering.....

Oh funny thing first though - I just said to my son - I need to start shopping in Aldi, but I don't know where one is, so he went into an elaborate details about where the Aldi is and I was 'are you sure, never noticed on there (by McDonalds' 'apparently'??) anyway - his sister listening in on loudspeaker said - there's no Aldi there, and my son's say yes there is - they sell the really nice cars........ Arghhhh how he thought I could do budget shopping in an AUDI retailer I do not know....
It seems we do not have an Aldi - but we have two Lidl's!

So more in a bit.....

HairyHandofDartmoor · 26 October 2017 at 10:43PM

Aldi and Audi, that's hilarious mimi :rotfl::rotfl:

I too am worried about interest rates as our mortgage will go up :eek: Hopefully not by much but still :eek: Are you worried that interest on your debt will go up? Or is it your mortgage that you're worried about?

London always feels like the most expensive place on earth to me :mad: but travelling there by Megabus and taking your own food, or eating in supermarket restaurants, or builders caffs, could save money, maybe

You are doing really well mimi and some months are so much harder than others. Just keep an eye on the overall trajectory and as long as the debts are going down, then that is what matters

MiMi66 · 27 October 2017 at 12:01AM

Yes Hairy Hands, London is a bit of a shocker for insidious little costs that add up into a too bigger figure very quickly. I've no idea how ordinary people manage in London - I love it but would only really be happy living there if I had a really good income. I saw there was a Harry Potter exhibition on while we where there - tickets at £15/20 each - we didn't go - same thing for the Annie Liebovitz talk - the really cool portrait photographer - shame , but you know all this evidences that in many ways my financial attitude is adapting - previously I would have just got the card out and said 'well, this won't be on again, so we 'have' to go now to see this, that or the other....' So good in that sense.

I would like to see the Book of Mormon though - meant to be very funny - save save save....

So a quick dash reply and not really doing this justice, but I have a 7 am shift (overtime - have taken a days annual leave to do it) tomorrow.

No news on my job front as yet - my post hasn't gone out to add as yet, so I have to be patient and prepared.... not really two of my most well known traits!!

Hey hey hey ....54 repayments turns into 53 tomorrow :-) No increasing to overall debt and it will be over £2000 paid off so far.

So food shopping - weak points - eco green ethical pretty wrapped food.... and Foxgloves - ditto the eco laundry and cleaning products. Must stop. I have researched....Co-op's own brand are all Bunny certified and stacks cheaper - Like 60% or more less.

The main p[problems is I buy too much of everything - I have the zombie apocalypse mentality. I think the limited cash only idea is good - can't buy it if I can't pay for it. And yes I like those handheld zapper things too - Waitrose has them too (of course they do). I am going to try Lidl's this month and see how that goes.

I am an organic fruit and veg person too.....sigh - that is going to be my biggest challenge as not buying organic challenges my values about the planet etc etc...but before anyone bites my head off, yes I know I have to compromise. I need to buy less, not waste and do a bit of research about what I can switch out that isn't too radiated with pestisides (did you know that routinely potatoes are sprayed with Roundup....)

Or as Foxgloves does, put my garden to use and grown things - never known for being green fingered but if I can do it more cheaply perhaps it worth the try and risk of death (to plants) - maybe just a few things to start with. Hmm wrong time of year though right now, so Lidl's it is.

Lists, cash limit, don't overbuy, and don't go shopping hungry, and consider own brands....research.

I ave been doing YouGov surveys this week - 600 points in so far.... £50 to be had for 5000 points. I haven't had very many Opiniun ones recently - they are very sporadic.

Any other good sites?

And Katie Poppycats idea about family gifting money for my trip - no family to speak of - half my problem I think - it is just me and my children, my mother is aged, and I do not have a great relationship with her. My brother in Australia - but we don't do gifts - or I send something for his daughter but that is it. So I am pretty solo. Hence I get a bit lonely and give dating a go (nothing to report on that front - feeling a bit to strapped to even show my face as a potential romantic option ... life hey. I need a partner, to love and to hold etc etc and to pay half the bills, but that isn't going to happen as I am too broke to really be considered a catch - I should put a sign outside 'I have a house!! No bank account, but a house!!' :-)

And the volunteering - building homes and toilets in Cambodia and Thailand - some sight seeing and a few days in an Elephant sanctuary.... Hmmmmmmm. I do stand by the fact that if I can't pay it in full on the due date, in cash, I will postpone it. If I cancel it I would lose the trip deposit of £200, and the flights I would lose half - about £275. so £475 wasted. If I postpone I think the flight rebooking is £150 fee. If I can't get the cash together (mad overtime) I will postpone. It will not go on to the CC - I utterly promise that. But I am not quite ready to pull the plug before I have too as yet.I have an overtime shift weekend after next, and if I could do a couple more this month it is all doable. Additional costs aren't high - I booked the bus to and from Heathrow a few months ago - got those crazy cheap £2.60 tickets each way.... so no parking. Am staying with my daughter the night before - so no hotel costs, and coming straight from airport home on my return. I will likely only have the NHS free vaccinations, and be cautious about contagions.I will need to have a DSB check - which I think is £35 - as there is a school in the village that I may work in as well.

So can I hold off being called out on that one just yet.... Magpie is right - realistically I should just cancel and not go and take the cost on the chin, but I am also wondering about my health - the what if's creep in, as in what if all the tumours are growing back, what if I can't do something like this in 5 years time, what if what if what if.... on that note not only do I have the check up in London this month but also the checkup for my knee surgery and the 100's (literally) of tumours they took out in May - MRI scan here I come.... hmmm... I can argue myself in both directions really well! Skill!

I do not want tumours, nor further joint surgery nor further pelvic surgery..... enough already. AND when I have surgery I go into mega compensation spending behaviour - Like Magpie and her pump - 'well if I have to have this I might as well have this...' So I can't afford surgery :-) I'd be going into the operating theatre covered in rose gold and Emma Bridgewater pottery (have I mentioned that before??? The EB online shop got me through my first operation - ridiculous....).

Anyway I am aware I am using humour to deflect scrutiny a bit and that is being a bit of a MSE cheat, but I do want you supporters and friends to know I am not kidding myself or not taking my debt seriously. I am very worried about the future and finances, and it may be that the worry does win the day.

Payment day tomorrow and next week - that is a good feeling. Watch out for updated totals then! I am managing this self imposed DMP so far. 53 sound a fine number.

I hope everyone else manages to make the payments they need to make as well. Right, dishes and bed (I ate an enormous amount of pasta tonight - zombie Apocalypse portions.... guilty.....)

katiepoppycat · 27 October 2017 at 7:38AM

I thnk you are right Mimi - we are separated at birth! My Mum was a terrible hoarder. If it was on offer she'd buy a dozen. She died in December last year and my dad still has yet to buy loo roll or soap. Not the best legacy but at least something to make us smile. I have tendencies that way too so I rein myself in with one to use and one to store( or 2 if they are a BOGOF!) Once I start on the storage one I start looking for a deal to replace it. In terms of survey sites I too like yougov, but I also use mysurvey, toluna and valuedopinions. ipsos and petspanel are quite good too. Also take a look at kantar worldpanel. They have a panel that replicates the UK and you scan your shopping so they can work out which washing powder is the nation;s favourite. With them I get £1 per week for shopping and also £1 per week for entering my petrol receipts. It's a case of them contacting you when they have a vacancy but definitely give it a try. Then there's also the product testing companies - I'm with bzzagent and the insiders. I've had some fun stuff to test from both of these and they usually just want you to stick something on social media about what they sent and whether you liked it. I'm not the most prolific facebooker but I get something probably every other month. Sorry to be insensitive about family. Am I right in thinking you are terribly clever and crafty? Maybe sell stuff to colleagues or on local buy and sell groups? I get slightly irritated when presented with yet another sponsor form for someone to cycle the length of America('Wait a minute, you want me to give you a fiver so you can go on a cycling holiday? Like you do every year anyway?')but when someone was selling cute little Christmas decs to fund their daughter's VSO I was right in there. Good luck buying cheap veg in Audi btw.

I actually prefer Lidl. I sometimes find Aldi a bit claustrophobic and busy and 'BUY IT NOW IT'S SO CHEAP' whereas the aisles in Lidl tend to be a bit wider and their attitude feels a bit more 'Oooh look at this lovely stuff and isn't it cheap?'

foxgloves · 27 October 2017 at 1:30PM

Hi Mimi,
I did initially find it difficult to swap the more eco ethical brands for cheap mainstream ones/supermarket own label products, but I don't have a problem with it now because I think simply consuming a lot less stuff is just as eco-friendly. If I just use one example of a product I used to buy - a well-known upmarket eco-brand of window-cleaning spray......the nice mint-scented blue coloured liquid....yes that one. Well, that costs £3.00 per bottle. I don't wash my windows very often so a bottle goes a long way BUT it's still £3.00, an extra plastic bottle going in the recycling bin (still a waste stream, probably shipped off to China or somewhere to sit in a mountain of such things) & of course the tube & hard plastic spray nozzle mechanism/handle isn't recyclable, so that's going to be added to landfill to join all the other pieces of plastic which have ever been bought & binned which will never, ever, go away. I've replaced this with the following: Run a bowl of hot water with a small squirt of washing-up liquid (Aldi, the silver bottle which has won awards & lasts for ages) & a little dash of vinegar (any vinegar, no need to go sourcing bottles of white vinegar from purveyors of eco household goods) or a squeeze of lemon, if you have half of one knocking around the fridge doing nothing. I use that with a washable microfibre cloth to wash the windows. They are then polished with big balls of old scrunched up newspaper, which brings them up to a lovely shine. It's difficult to put a cost on that, as washing-up liquid is always in use here anyway, the other things are microscopic amounts, the newspaper is simply what would go in the recycling bin so I'd say it honestly does work out at virtually nothing. Environmentally, I suppose you could say that I've put about half a teaspoon of washing-up liquid into the environment but I haven't added 2 types of additional plastic waste. Similarly, I'm not buying gorgeous expensive eco-handsoaps for the bathroom. Probably they have fewer environment-harming chemicals in them? But it's another regular plastic bottle, isn't it? So I have reverted back to nice bars of soap instead. No polluting plastic bottle/pump mechanism & if possible, I look for soaps packaged in cardboard instead of plasticized wrap which won't biodegrade. I don't deny that the lovely eco-type products are attractive to me, but while I can't afford to pay the premium price for them, I am happy still to call myself 'green-minded' simply because we now consume so much less as a household. I buy loo cleaner, washing-up liquid, Stardrops (which I dilute & use in an old spray bottle), Almat washing powder (I don't have stuff like muddy sports kit to wash so always use less than the recommended dose & I prefer that it comes in a cardboard box so it's degradeable, rather than all these plastic tubs) & the old fashioned soda crystals for tougher cleaning jobs, unblocking sinks, etc. That's about it, really. I might occasionally buy an oven cleaning product, but last time we cleaned our oven with soda crystals & it was fine.
I suppose what it's taken me a long time to say (!) is that you don't need to feel guilty if you don't shell out your hard cash on the most eco-looking brand on the market......there are lots of environmentally-friendly steps you can take which don't involve spending ....most actually involve the opposite, as the planet would be a whole lot less polluted (& the people on it a lot less endebted,) if we simply all consumed less.
But never think that I am squeaky-clean on the money front.......I saw a velvet dress in 'Monsoon' last night & freely admit that I have thought of little else but its loveliness ever since...........
Anyway Mimi, keep at it! As you say, that 54 months is nearly 53 & you are not all that far away from a number which starts with a '4' instead of a '5'.
F x

oh my life...... Light Bulb moment.

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