Spend Nowt, Buy Nowt, Owe Nowt

XSpender · 18 October 2017 at 7:48AM

Back from a work trip last night and working from home for the next couple of days.

I am going to have to cancel my gym class tonight as I forgot I am picking DS up after an event at school this evening. Thank goodness for the face book page set up by the Mums in his year or I wouldn't have a clue what was going on!

DH and I have made sure we have filled up both our cars at Sains for the nectar points. Not that it makes much difference each fill up but £7000 p.a. on fuel should give us a few points for next Christmas.

I haven't shopped at Tesco for ages and received some vouchers in the post yesterday. £15 off £100 and 2 x £10 off £100 :eek: How do they work these things out? I was hoping for £7 off £50! DH has suggested we use the £15 for Christmas gifts/food and stocking up. I will need to plan it and go on my own as if we go together DH will shove all sorts of extras in the trolley. I have £13 of club card vouchers too. We are buying DS an I-pod for Christmas so we may use it towards this instead if I can convert my shop n scan vouchers to be used in Tesco.

I am keeping the food spend much lower than usual but will struggle to stay within my super low (for us) budget of £350.

There is not much in the bank account but I feel much more in control of our money this month. We have spent on the CC but this was planned spends on the flooring, DH fuel, Christmas Eve event and some more work shirts for DH.

DH gets paid in 10 days and gets his payslip in 9 days, we are excited to see what he will get paid. I can't really do any accurate budget planning until I know what he will be coming out with. His car scheme is different so I don't know how this impacts his tax and I don't know how his bonus scheme will work. He may get bonus for last month even though he only started this month.

Things to get done today:

Complete big piece of work
Change our bedding
Dust and vac our bedroom
Make something SW friendly for tea
Make a ginger cake as requested by DH
Make something cakey/biscuity for DS lunchbox
Cancel gym class
Do a post on debt balances
Don't forget to pick DS up at 5.15!
DS spelling practice

apple_muncher · 18 October 2017 at 5:20PM

Those tesco vouchers don't seem worth it! (But we struggle to spend £40 in sainz...) Our recent sainz ones are 6 off 40, and we have to work hard to use more than 2 of them in a month. We do only use sainz for gf/df foods for dd though.

XSpender · 18 October 2017 at 9:10PM

I will probably not use the Tesco vouchers. I can use my nectar points and shop n scan vouchers at Argos to buy DS I-pod and I don't think I will get value for money doing the food shop there as I normally shop at Aldi or Asda for my GF bits.

The piece of work I had to do today is much bigger than expected and has to be finished by tomorrow :eek: That meant I didn't get anything else done except cancel the gym, pick DS up and practice his spelling.

I did feed us all but it was freezer food!

I've added up the debt and checked all the interest rates and when the offers end. I've also applied for and been accepted for a new CC which I have transferred all but £3k of the interest bearing CC debt to. I have updated the debt pay off spreadsheet and adjusted down DH expected bonuses. DFD will be end of April 2020, just before I am 50.

I am still too embarrassed to post my new balances as they are significantly higher than when I started this diary in May

I do know where it has been spent and it isn't frivolous spending but still a long way in the wrong direction!

Hiddenidenity · 18 October 2017 at 10:07PM

Don't be embarrassed, there's bumps in every journey and you've not gone and booked an holiday and expensive shopping sprees and even if you had we are here to give support and encouragement.

As for wages, I can see mine on my tax account before work give wage slips

Yes I am obsessed with checking :rotfl:

Treadingonplaymobil · 19 October 2017 at 6:16AM

Really don't be embarrassed - sometimes things don't go to plan. You can admire me as a demonstration of this

. The point is you're still here and still posting and still working at it, and the progress will come. I'm sure your DH getting paid will be a turning point too, as you'll have a better handle on the figures.

Cherryfudge · 20 October 2017 at 11:35PM

Just think how it could have been if you hadn't decided to change! That won't show up in reading the figures but if you made a graph of actual spending vs 'what we would have spent if not money-saving'. I'm sure you'd see a huge difference.

smallholdingsister · 21 October 2017 at 5:36AM

Hope you got your work project finished.

XSpender · 21 October 2017 at 7:41AM

smallholdingsister wrote: »

Hope you got your work project finished.

I've just finished it now after the boss asked for another bit adding on! :eek: For once I was happy the dog woke me up at 5.30am and I could get cracking with it before DS was up.

Thanks for all your lovely encouraging words. I have added up the total and we have added about £7k to the debt, I was expecting it to be £8k.

I had done a plan to clear the debt by early 2020 which would be fabulous as it would be before we were 50 but I am not sure how realistic this will be. I think it is better if we leave some space for 'life' in our budget. It is likely that DH income will rise another £10k in this time and I may change jobs so we may still come in under age 50.

I've asked DH again to sit down and agree our budget and our financial goals over the next couple of years or we are not going to achieve anything with all this extra money we have coming in. We now know how his bonus works and he will get it monthly :j so he has agreed to do this next week.

We haven't used the extra debt to cover normal living expenses even though in the same period DH income has been about £6k lower than in previous years. A lot of it has been on work in our house, a new tent and a completely new work wardrobe for DH from the underpants up for the job he started this month.;)

This month has been super tight with DH final wage been so short and mine been lower than usual after paying our holiday fuel bill but we have actually spent a lot less than normal. Our food bill has reduced by a huge amount so I will be aiming to keep this up going forward as we haven't been starved or felt deprived at all

We will be using the CC again before the end of the year for 3 items of clothing and to make over our bedroom including a new carpet and a stair carpet. Christmas is coming our of our wages as is the floor fitter for the wooden hall floor and the loft insulation.

We were not going to decorate our bedroom for a while but DH is having problems with his asthma which seems to come on in our bedroom. We believe the previous owners had a long haired dog which DH has a bad allergy to so we are going to replace the carpet, the curtains (which have been washed but are very faded as the room is south facing) and paint the walls and fitted furniture with F&B eggshell. We really need a new bed and mattress as well. The walls have neutral, lightly textured wallpaper which I am going to paint over which DH is not pleased about but I do not want to take it off and then plaster the walls and it needs to be done quickly.

DS needs a new bed too as his is so uncomfortable he tends to sleep in the guest room

We are also hoping to fill our mini emergency fund by the end of Jan.

Spendy day today as DH is out this afternoon/early evening (his personal spending money), he has a haircut booked and I need to do a food shop.

enthusiasticsaver · 21 October 2017 at 11:48AM

I think you need to be careful adding non essentials on to the credit card especially with a mortgage as large as yours is and noises of interest rates rising. The large unsecured debt will hinder your chances of getting a good deal when your fixed rate finishes unless you have fixed for the life of the mortgage?

XSpender · 21 October 2017 at 12:54PM

enthusiasticsaver wrote: »

I think you need to be careful adding non essentials on to the credit card especially with a mortgage as large as yours is and noises of interest rates rising. The large unsecured debt will hinder your chances of getting a good deal when your fixed rate finishes unless you have fixed for the life of the mortgage?

I agree in not adding non essentials to the CC but I believe that the items of clothing (a dress, a jumper and a pair of jeans between both of us to cover 2 joint events and 2 individual events), the stair carpet and the bedroom carpet are essential to us. It's no fun been woken up by a wheezing husband and certainly no fun for him. The bedroom paint etc will be covered from salary which I can see I didn't make clear in my post and wont be done straight away.

Our mortgage broker calculates 5% for all CC balances so we are aware we need to reduce these significantly to secure a new mortgage in June 2018.

Once we have DH first full wage and monthly bonus at the end of November we will be in a better place to work out our repayment schedule and proper budget. We estimate DH take home pay is double what it was in his last job and he is on a much more tax efficient company car scheme.

Spend Nowt, Buy Nowt, Owe Nowt

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