My new 'no spending/get myself organised' diary

pixiechick99

sidnee wrote: »

Pretty impressed by your SOA, looks like you are doing great! A couple of questions...

Telephone (land line)................... 20
Mobile phone............................ 35
Prob a bit high for both really.... you should look into ways to cut these down individually. I've only just started contracts with both of these - land line with BT in June (12month) and mobile in May, which I really wish I'd not done now;)

Council tax............................. 101
Is this with the single person discount?It is yes, but its spread over 7months as didn't get direct debit set up in time in july/Aug. So next yr will be about £90 a month.

Groceries etc. ......................... 200
I see you are onto this expense already! Keep track of what you spend and give yourself a target to cut it down to... I think you can do £150 easily.

£0 for haircuts? For you and your girls?Well I've not been to the hairdresser since Jan, nor has eldest and I cut youngest myself a couple of weeks ago!! But we will need to go soon - about £30 for the pair of us maybe. Also, see if you can set a bit more aside for brithday/xmas, just so it's one less thing to worry about when it comes round. Good idea - I have been stashing my Amazon/ebay sales so thats mounting up, could be my Xmas fund.The savings you make from ideas given in this thread should help!

I'd be inclined to get rid of the Littlewoods card ASAP... you should have enough to pay if off... or could you transfer to the Egg card?The Egg card has as much on it as I could put on, but I do have the money in savings acc that could pay off Littlewoods. So will get onto that next week.


Thank you for taking the time to help:p

Keep it up lady!

Thank you, I will keep at it!

pixiechick99

Had a really lovely weekend - Friday was a fab day with my girls and nieces at a theme park type place, they loved it! It was £18.99 each, unlimited rides. I used £20 of clubcard deals so I spent £37 to get in. All I spent during the day was 90p on a coffee! We had a great picnic and the kids were so busy that no-one asked for drinks or ice creams during the day!
I left my 2 at my Mum's on Saturday and came home. Went out on the town in the evening with my sis and brother in law, which was a good night. Was rather tired yesterday though, so didn'#t do anything!

Today I've just pottered about, tidied up etc. The girls are at the park with friends, due back soon. I've listed a couple more things on Amazon, not much left of any value sadly! We went to the PO to post ebay/Amazon sales and we walked! Girls went on roller skates/scooter so bit of exercise for us all! I just didnt want to waste any petrol!

Tomorrow we're going swimming with the girls' friends. Well, they swim while i wath with the friend's mum. So won't spend very much - park+ride, coffee, then probably a pizza slice/sausage roll for girls when they come out.

I've joined the August Grocery challenge, £200 at the most. Haven't done any shopping as yet - will g on Wednesday I think. Only spent £9 so far - tring to use food from freezer as I have a fair bit I think. Girls are away at their dad's this weekend too so won't need anything much then!

Right, now I really need to get started on my college work again, I keep putting it off but need it done my September, or at least almost done. So I need a HUGE kick up the backside! I see the pile of work sitting here and I go find something else to do!!!!:rotfl:

pixiechick99

Cheek of it - 90p from Consumer Lifestyles declined on Quidco!!!!:p

pixiechick99

Ok just a quick note of today's spends....
£4.20 girls swimming
£2.50 park andride(cheaper than carpark intown)
£2 2coffees for friend and I while girls swam
£4.50 pizzaslices/pasty for girls lunch after swimming

So total of £13.20.
Went to Tesco afterwards, with list and only spent £27- very pleased!!
I've messedup the space bar on my laptop, it only works if i bash it - not happy!And monitor on main pc blew,so driving toweston tomorrow to borrow one mysis doesn't use! £120 the cheapest one in argos!!grrrrrrr:eek:

pixiechick99

Cheap enough day yesterday - took packed lunch for girls so just bought them a drink and cake in town. Didn't buy much at the shops - slippers for them in a cheap shop, half price bikini for G, thats about it! And was tempted to go to KFC or McDs for food on the way home but we didnt - came back and had stuff from home.

Not doing much today. SO far here's what I've done...

• Stripped my bed, sheets on line at the mo, looking dull though grrrr:mad:
• Made butternut squash soup for me, will freeze some.
• Wrapped some parcels from ebay/Amazon sales to send later
• Looked at my college work (and I mean just looked at the books, didn't open them!!) - MUST DO SOME WORK LATER!!!

That's all for now. I entered quite a few competitions last night, must get into the habit of doing that more.
Had a couple of sales on ebay/Amzon yesterday to add to the totals - £10.70 on ebay and about £5 on Amazon. Also listed 2 more things, will try do more later on.

nicnacnoo

your doing pretty well, i might go and have a try at the competitions myself, probably a good idea to set up another email addy so mine doesnt get too full of junk!
Nic

pixiechick99

Oooooh I've just been on whatsthecost.com and snowballed my debts, which was interesting, I'm hoping to get a bit of motivation as seem to be lacking it right now!
I dug out details of how much I owed to the few catalogues I forget I have! One more that wasn't on my SOA - Littlewoods direct. The balance is only £174 and I only pay about £11 a month so I often forget - see how useless I can be? I had no idea what the interest was - found a statement, 35.7%!!!! And an old card I have that I only pay £5 on, balance is only £105, but interest 28.3%!! So I looked at my bank balance, looking good, and slapped £100 on the 1st card.
According to the snowball if I pay £250 to my debts I will be debt free in July 2010.Seeing as thats only about a hundred more than I pay now in minimum payments I should be able to do it.

Thing is, I was thinking about it last night - all the extra I've made on ebay and extra at the end of the month from not spending so much, I've just been putting it in a savings account and enjoying watching it go up! The intention was to slap it on cards and pay off the debt but I'm stupidly just enjoying having some saved for once - and know that I can pay for Christmas and for extras we need for winter (like a coat for 2 of us!!!!) I must get it into my head that I have debts to pay off too....:eek: :eek:
Anyway, sunny day here today, girls just up and wanting breakfast. Think we'll stay at home, maybe nip to little town nearby for a wander and try find Emily a lunchbox. Only one ebay parcel to sell - at a cost of about £10 eeek. But they've paid that, just feels a lot to shell out for me!!

My college work is out and has been started, so will keep it out at the table so I can't ignore it;)

benbenandme

How much have you got saved up now Milly? Could you put half towards the debts and half towards xmas/coats? I got ds a lovely winter coat in tescos (16.00) and was part of the 3 for 2 on school uniforms, so I got a coat and 6 school shirts (the non-iron easycare ones, not the value ones) for 21.00 :beer:

pixiechick99

Well I have 2 savings accounts - one has the leftover house sale money, which was earmarked for a car but that's on hold! The other account has ebay/Amazon money and the money I got back from Ace cards, so altogether there's nearly £900 in that. That's a good idea, I'll compromise and put a few hundred to the debts.
As for coats, well G had to have a school one (she's starting secondary next month), so I need to get her one for outside school. She's seen a v nice one in Next, £32. And me, I desperately need one - last years was too big as I lost weight after ex left. So I will need a new one too, was skint last year but not organised enough to do anything about it!
Must do more ebaying today - lots of my [strike]tat[/strike] goodies have bids on which is inspiring!!!

mummum2

Milly,

Just read your whole post and pretty impressive, I must say. Well done, you sound very level headed. Only comment I would make is agree, pay half of your savings towards debts, or at least pay off a couple of the lesser debts off completely.

Good luck, and well done!

MM2x