My SOA

It seems to me that you know what you need to cut back on so I wish you all the best.
Have a think of those needs and wants. I'm presuming your OH is on board with this too. Personally, I would be loathe to cut any extra curricular activities for your children. As a teacher, I think it's important that children get access to plenty of activities. Not just for the physical aspect but also the values of perseverance, developing attributes, working as a team etc. also, why should they have to suffer for the financial mistakes you have made?
It's the pesky £5 you spend here and there really which you don't realise adds up.
Some people recommend YNAB however I follow a 50/20/30 diet. If you google '50/20/30 career girl' you'll find a page telling you about it. It's simplistic and I can follow it easily. This is how I cut costs on M&S, Costa, Uber etc.
But anyway, you don't seem like a 'one time poster' who posts and doesn't come back so good luck with it all!

Some great ideas here that will give you some hope.

I just wanted to add a couple of suggestions that might help also:

Shopping - Lidl, Aldi, Farmfoods, BM, Home bargains - these are my favourite shops. FF is great for bulk buying and you can sign up for a mothly e-mail where they send you vouchers for 10% off - we've got our entire spend down to £200 a month for food, toiletries, cleaning, dog and cat food - small things like realising that bleach is bleach 35p or £2 it's the same chemical formula, same for things like over the counter medicines paracetamol is paracetamol £2.50 for paracetamol just because it has caffeine in it is insane (swallow it down with a cup of coffee if you must but buy the 19p stuff - PS I'm a paramedic, I can assure you paying for branded stuff is a big waste of money lol). Aldi has won major awards for their baby range too! In short, look for saving on the small things as well as the big things - look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves and all that.

Use your local library - give the pictures or softplay a miss and loan out a DVD or some books, also many libraries have accounts for e-magazines etc. this coul help curb the need to spend when you are out.

I noticed as well that you mentioned coffee - my husband is a coffee fiend - he could have had shares in Costa at one point. So I bought him a coffee maker. Currently he has one that cost £35 and has saves us a small fortune - he got barista training for his christmas and he gets a costa gift voucher from my DSis & BIL every birthday and christmas which he uses when out and about.

Re piggybanking/jam jar accounting - I am a massive advocate. Many would disagree - but they are probably alot more disciplined than me and DH with their money. Currently, DH and I have the following:

1 x each - current accounts (IN: wages (approx £1600 each: OUT: mobile phone bill and SO's to the following: )

- 1 x joint - bills account (currently santander 123 (£750 each), gives us cash back and approx £300 left after bills - £250 of which is going towards early repayment of debt)
- 1 x joint - fuel/shopping/birthdays/socialising (currently Clydesdale £300 each - however spending is a little messy so I proposed jam jarring this down further)
- 1 x each spending accounts, RBS,DH uses £150, I use £100.

I also have another account for a rental property, but that takes care of itself with a little profit each month, so I don't touch that, incase of emergency, repair, tax, vacancy etc.)

I was planning on opening another 3 joint accounts so that the fuel/shopping/birthdays and christmas/socialising each have their own spend amounts. (Obviously not all at once don't want the credit rating damaged).

So I would have:

1 x joint - fuel account - £80 each
1 x joint - shopping account - £115 each
1 x joint - christmas/birthday - £75 each
1 x joint - socialising - £40 each

Once we have paid off out debts we might open up another for holidays and use our savings account for saving up for big purchases such as cars (determined once we are debt free, it will mean debt free for everything except the mortgage).

You obviously don't need to have so many accounts and most importantly DON'T OPEN MORE THAN ONE AT A TIME as you will wreck your credit file and likely get refused some of them if you don't wait between opening each one..

But I love that I know where my money goes, I KNOW everything is getting paid and their is enough money for things and I'm not siphoning from other budgets each month to match a shortfall

Anyway, well done again.

HTH

Good shout Bob, I love £shops, but just remember, it's not always cheapest!

MrsLWW wrote: »

Good shout Bob, I love £shops, but just remember, it's not always cheapest!

Its the same with Farmfoods and B&M, could be cheaper but need to keep a track of prices elsewhere, easy to do this with a smart phone and use mysupermarket.