Why do we fall? To learn to pick ourselves back up. (£26K+ DEBT!)

Hmm had to throw £40 odd from my personal account into my business account because i still have some business costs coming out of that account which is otherwise exhausted. I still need to sort everything with my biz accountant, I'm seeing out the rest of the contract with them which ends very soon and want them to sort out my accounts up until right before our contract expires so i havent wasted money on them.

after which i may remove myself as self employed as i wont be making any money from my side hustle for a while whilst i focus on getting better at my craft.

luckily my accounts are pretty straight forward and in an online system, but there is a few costs still out there on my previous biz activities in terms of service subscriptions. i need to review all these, there's only a few i'm sure but still i dont want unexpected costs.

...

So here's a general summary of my wage and expenditure as of my first full pay cheque at the end of this month.

I did a budget obviously with my debt charity, and I want to try and actually make use of that budget as a guide. At first I was just trying to make their budget form make sense to my actual planned budget, but I think it is actually a good guide for focusing on the kinds of costs which are acceptable/important as opposed to costs that my lifestyle is used to.

I'm going to try find a happy middle ground. So here's a general overview/SOA of the buckets for different things, and some explanations in there, I welcome feedback:

INCOME £1636
Housing £688
- rent
Household £68
- mobile, medical cover (I plan to get a healthcare cashplan), gadget insurance
Transport £144
- oyster and travel back home once a month
Food/housekeeping £213
- food shops and food at work
Misc goods & services £55
- medicines, opticians, haircut, laundry
Personal and leisure £45
- clothing, entertainment
Sundries & emergencies £103
- emergency fund, school fees (current studies still money owed), friends & family repayments
--
Surplus £320 to pay towards debts

Looking back at this budget I think there's certainly some things higher than they may end up costing, and some places where I'd personally want to put more money like friends & family repayments.

It's tricky, though, because I want to be realistic with my charity and my creditors but there is clearly some difference in what is considered important vs what is not. What I actually spend my budget on is likely to be different from the above.. I just want to check myself a bit using the above to ask myself questions like "is it something i want, or something i need to spend on".

Thanks for input everyone.

Some interesting guardian properties coming up, like whole 1 bed flats for about a 30-40% saving on rent than what I pay now. But yknow, with that there comes concerns and potential problems. They can tell you to get out in 30 days randomly and you can't guarantee you'll find somewhere else to live. I'm staying on the lists to see what properties come up, biding my time and interest.

Day off today. Extra money came in from universal credit yesterday which will be the last amount I get from them, another £100 for spends this month, right now I have £185 left in my spending account and it's 3 full weeks today until payday. Just going to do my best each week, one day at a time.

Paid my priority bills, but have around £35 more coming at the end of this month likely before I get paid. Plus I have a biz bill i need to pay for around £13.. and my accountancy bill of £60 will be at the very end of this month. The latter I may just be able to change the debit date to the last day of the month, right before I cancel with them completely. So priority I need to find about £48 to cover other bills up til the end of this month.

BUT thinking about it there is £22 (after fees from ebay) in my paypal, this I can move back into my bills account where there is already £20 for safety, boom there is £42! I should be able to find the rest and some selling a few more bits on ebay, in particular still trying to sell a couple high value items i own to bring in some cash!

Just gotta stay focused. Make money, not spend it.