Getting to know you........

Miss_Marple_5

Hello everybody:wave:


Well I decided to join MSe only yesterday and I am amazed at how quickly I feel part of a lovely community.

I am in my 40s (but only just:o ) and live in the North West on my own after deciding to go it alone! I used to think I was quite good with money (no real debts apart from the mortgage and a car loan) but having spend a long time going through this site I now realise how lapse I am and I am nearly ready to put my budget together and start to do some serious saving. I am very keen to do the grocery challenge as I am now shocked at how much I am spending compared to some of you with families. I do work in sales for a very small company and am very lucky to have a very good boss who I thoroughly enjoy working with and who is very good to me.
Since yesterday I have dragged out my slow cooker, started to dream about a breadmaker and set myself some goals for my financial planning and that seems a good days work to me!

My hobbies are reading, knitting and keeping in touch with my friends. Thank you for listening :j

voodoozoe

I am 29, live with Undischarged Bankrupt OH above our shop with very limited facilities (microwave and deep fat fryer only!!! Cringe) while our lovely house 75 miles away stands empty waiting for the Trustees to allow the sale to go through :mad: (we could no longer afford to commute with fuel prices going up).
Things are a bit tough at the moment and mostly I am absorbing info. from the MSE site to use when we are installed in our new house (fingers crossed).

We are seriously looking towards getting shut of our shop and starting some kind of home based internet business where you don't have to face arsey customers!!! Unfortunately our business (tattoo and body piercing studio) attracts some real lowlifes and horrible people (as well as some gems...) and also earns us a very erratic income. Its impossible to do any budgeting when we don't actually have a set income from one month to the next!!!

The forums on MSE are so great and I'm so impressed that a large % of MSE-ers are cat lovers too (we got 3...also livin above shop poor beggars)

All I can say is thank god we weren't married before bankruptcy set in or we would have lost EVERYTHING!!!!!!

sallypurple

Hello everybody,

I am 35 with three daughters (10,7,2), an OH who is 40 and still doesn't know what he wants to do when he grows up :rotfl:

I have one psycho dog, 2 cats and a pair of red bellied newts!

I has always led an OS lifestyle, and was so pleased to find this website. We both went bankrupt 6 years ago and since then I don't do credit cards or catalogues or anything like that anymore. This is fine most of the time but occasionally I would love to order my Tesco shop from the comfort of my living room!

I'm already getting really excited about christmas and have made lots of goodies ready for hampers - I sampled the Sloe Gin last night, I'll have to hide it from myself or it won't last until Christmas.

I love all the OS threads but my fave at the moment is the Hot Chocolate one. :beer: Can we have a new smilie with brown frothy stuff in please?

Tondella

Hello
I've been lurking about here for a while now, chiefly on the debt free wannabe part of the chat board. I'm here because my boyfriend and I decided earlier this year to make things official and get engaged, now with a future between us I've taken over managing his credit card debts (from now on I'll call them our debts because they were run up whilst he was dating me, before I had a good idea of what his budget was! and so I'm sure I benefitted from the overspend along the way!). We live apart, myself in London, he in Portsmouth as he is in the military. I work in academia, have recently finished my PhD and am forging a post-doctoral career for myself. We're rather fortunate relative to many others here as we are able to meet our minimum repayments each month, however my goal is to have the debts paid off before I am 30, as that is when i would like to go home up North and think about having children.
So far I've managed to shift our credit card debts down to low APRs (from an original 14.9%!!) and have drawn up a budget for each of us, making some savings on our regular DDs. Now, having played around with the snowball calculator, I'm keen to find as much money to put towards the debt as possible, so I'm here on the old school thread to make the most of my budget. At the moment I have budgeted £50 per week for me during the week and both of us at the weekend. I know it can go lower than this so I'll be hunting around for tips to introduce over the coming months. I'm off now to make some bread, look in my store cupboard and see what's lurking in there and to start some menu planning. I'm going to have to be creative as I have no freezer. Wish me luck!

june1970_2

Hi I'm a registered childminder with three boys of my own ages are 11,13,16, i also try and make a little bit extra on ebay selling things we don't need anymore. I have just found this site and so far i think it is great.

katieowl_2

I'm a SAHM and hard core frugalite (for the past nearly 16 years!) We live in South East London.

My Kids are 13, 15 and 19 now, One doing GCSE's this year and the eldest at Uni. We have a dog, and two ratties.... plus a giant catfish.

I am site Secretary (since January this year) for the allotment we have two 10 rod plots on - we have had allotments for about 5 years now, which helps with the food bill a lot - all of our kids like vegetables, this year we had a bumper crop of big potatoes, this is the Year of the Jacket Potato

My OH is a self employed cabinet maker, I do his books and paperworkie stuff too. I have just become Reiki Master, and am working through the process of setting up self employment myself to start teaching Reiki in the new year.

We live on a VERY low income, but I think on the whole we have an excellent quality of life. (My DD's friends think we are loaded because I stay at home.) We make EVERYTHING we can ourselves, re-cycle, freecycle, charity shop, BOGOF and bargain shop. The word SALE makes my pulse beat a little faster. Years ago we would have run away to a smallholding, but they always stayed just out of financial reach, so we do the best we can in London.

Regards

Kate

funky-footprints

hello, Im a stay at home mum with 2 kiddies aged 5 & 3. Im here because hubby changed his job in February of this year, and from an extremely comfortable lifestyle with fabby holidays and nice cars, he is now a trainee and we are not breaking even, we knew it was coming and have budgetted and put by some dosh to help the short fall, we thought that was enough but after a few visits to this site, have realised it takes much more than that. Also now realise that savings dont last forever !!! Ive never worried about money and now I find Im forever looking at ways of cutting the £. the only thing this site has failed to do for me so far is reduce our car insurance. Im now going to sell my car and get a less powerful model in the hope my car insurance will half, my husband however insists on keeping his !!

We probably have 2 tough years ahead of us, so I will be on this site an awful lot during that time ! I also plan to go back to work next september (am on job hunt now however just incase fab job is there) when my youngest starts pre-school 5 mornings, have a large battle on my hands at minute trying to locate suitable childcare.

addicted already !

charley24

Hello there I am new to the forum, just found it today and wanted to jump in !

Have been finding so much great info already and my housework needs to be done but I am enjoying all the posts !

I am Charley, aged 30, married to Neil and we have 2 girls aged almost 6 and 18 months. We live in the north east.

I came accross the site as finances haven't been good, quick info: my parents divorced when I was 16 and I lived alone, had no idea about budget/money/running a house. Obtained a lot of credit over the last 14 years (32k) and now Hubby and I finding things very hard.

We are beginning a DMP and they have allowed us a good budget to work wwith, however after bills/housekeeping etc etc we just have £160 each month for emergencies etc, and we would for the first time in our lives like to try to manage and keep a little for a rainy day.

So I have to admit I USED to spend spend spend, put whatever I wanted in trolley and that was that.

However things are changing and I am keen to learn what I should have learnt many years ago, how to save, budget and look after my family RESPONSIBLY !!!

So I am just hoping I can delve right in, looking for money saving tips especially, and cooking, I am crap at cooking and I buy all ready meals Very ashamed, but hoping to learn how to cooknice meals for my family and save a FORTUNE !

Love Charleyx

cozzie

Hello all.:wave:

I haven't been here for that long or been that much of a contributor, but, I just wanted to have my peep too with this one.

Since finding MSE, my life has changed sooooo much, (sounds corny I know). Our finances have improved so much, my families diet has become much healthier and I love to brag about how much money I save with coupons and special offers. In fact just yesterday someone commented on it and I quote,

"Whatever it is that you have been doing for that past few months, keep it up, because I have never seen you looking so healthy, happy and confident."

After thinking about it I realised that the majority of it is down to this site, (especially the OS section). It really has given me the confidence to take charge of the day to day running of my household rather than just "muddling through", (as my Mum used to say she did) and that has overspilled into the rest of my life.

So, I would just like to take this chance to thank all the regular and not so regular OSers and welcome all newbies and wish them all the best.:T

Becles

Just wanted to say hi from another North Eastener! I grew up in Washington, and now live in a village near Durham.

I second finding an organic box scheme. The one I use only covers the Durham area though. I've got two boys aged 6 and 8, and both really look forward to Thursdays to see what's in the box! They've both since started eating more fruit and veg than they did, and are keen to look for recipes to use the stuff in the box. Both understand healthy eating and will now pick a healthy option over junk food. On the scheme I use, no packaging is used. You just get everything in a cardboard box, which they take away the following week and reuse, so it's good for the environment too!

They both enjoy my HM bread more than shop bought now. Once you've bought the machine and learn the basic recipe by heart, it takes less than 10 mins to chuck the ingredients in the machine, and a few hours later you have a nice frsh crusty loaf - mmmmm!