It's all gone a bit wrong..

Tinkabell25

Hi All,
I was well on the way to clearing my debt as 2008 came to a close, my soa was as low as i could get it and my fella and i even afforded xmas presents for each other.Then in the first week of Jan my kitchen was ruined by water and the insurers are being fussy about how much they will pay and what they will pay for. That is all in hand, but now we've had the news that our cars are on their way out. Basically until the inusrers pay out and my fella gets his compo from an accident before xmas we are likely to have an extra £20k debt.sob.
The silver lining to this is that we have a beautiful house, our lovely cats, each other and are not wanting for anything but i don't like having debt at all. I work full time on a shift pattern of day shifts. My fella is a shift worker who works some nights and he has a part time job as and when the hours are available. All in all our income is around £2500 per month now that i have taken a drop in salary after redundancy.
I have to curb any silly spending (major problem with us!) and to get any ideas to make extra money. I haven't been able to find part time work as yet although i am looking. Can anyone come up with any ideas? I am signed up to pigsback and do surveys etc.
Any advice would be appreciated greatly.
Thanks, Tink x

Horace

Tinkabell25 wrote: »

Hi All,
I was well on the way to clearing my debt as 2008 came to a close, my soa was as low as i could get it and my fella and i even afforded xmas presents for each other.Then in the first week of Jan my kitchen was ruined by water and the insurers are being fussy about how much they will pay and what they will pay for. That is all in hand, but now we've had the news that our cars are on their way out. Basically until the inusrers pay out and my fella gets his compo from an accident before xmas we are likely to have an extra £20k debt.sob.
The silver lining to this is that we have a beautiful house, our lovely cats, each other and are not wanting for anything but i don't like having debt at all. I work full time on a shift pattern of day shifts. My fella is a shift worker who works some nights and he has a part time job as and when the hours are available. All in all our income is around £2500 per month now that i have taken a drop in salary after redundancy.
I have to curb any silly spending (major problem with us!) and to get any ideas to make extra money. I haven't been able to find part time work as yet although i am looking. Can anyone come up with any ideas? I am signed up to pigsback and do surveys etc.
Any advice would be appreciated greatly.
Thanks, Tink x

Hi Tink

Cutting out silly spending is easy - keep a spending diary so that you can see where your money is going. Look on the Up your Income board as they have stuff over there on how to make extra money e.g. mystery shopping, also the Make £10 a day challenge elsewhere on DFW is full of tips on how to make free money.

Maybe you could post your SOA so that we know what is coming in and what is going out? https://www.makesenseofcards.com/soacalc.html. Click on the MSE button to format it for here then copy and paste it.

If both cars are on their way out, get rid and buy one car between you, as your situation improves you can buy another car.

HTH

Fire_Fox

Have a hard think about when and why you spend unnecessarily. Is it magazines at the garage or snacks from the work vending machine? Do you go into town for a single errand and nip into the clothes shops while you are there? Is it hunger, boredom, a little lift you are after?

Then starting planning your week. Start keeping a running shopping/ errands list so you only go to town when there are several essential jobs to do. Only take the exact amount of money out of the house that you really need, or only take your card when you know you need petrol. Take food to work, both fresh stuff for a meal and a stock of cereal bars/ fruit etc. for those snack attacks.

Karmacat

Totally agree with the posters above - Martin's step by step guide called Boost Your Income is great - mystery shopping, selling stuff, all sorts of things - The Old Style board on here is brilliant at finding ways to do things cheaply, and posting your soa is always a good way to find out if there's other ways of cutting down. And I can't recommend a spending diary too highly, its brill. You might only need to do it for a few weeks, and you'd be surprised at what you actually spend on.

Tinkabell25

Fire Fox-I believe ur stalking me, thats exactly where my money goes!!
So here's the update...Since my original post we have sorted out the cars but now have the loan to work around which i hink will be ok. We have to have two cars as we work 20 miles apart on different shiftpatterns but we are going to share the cheaper to run car on each others days off. We have also decided to take out a set amount of cash (£200) at the beginning of the month for groceries so we won't overspend as we spend £250 plus on silly things being included with groceries at the moment. but have recently discovered ways to cut it right down so any money left can go on my credit card or an over payment on the loan. My magazines have been sorted by people buying me subscriptions for my birthday in May and i read them at the library for now (or as i walk around tesco!!) I've also been checking out the old style board and food is going further and i have enough cleaning products to take me to 2011 so no more needed there! So hopefully i will be able to even save some money for emergencies at the end of a month too if i continue to remind myself of how nice it wold be to be debt free!!!

Tinkabell25

Ok so through watching what i spend and through buying a lot less on my weekly shop i have saved a fair bit. i still have money in my account (only 25 quid but its a start!) and we have a good amount put by for the water, gas/elec bill. I'm saving a fortune in fuel as i now have my new car and as its diesel my fuel is lasting me a lot longer and i'm driving it as economically as possible. I also may have got a 2nd job, have to wait a few days before i find out for sure but it will be a bit of extra cash where possible. Generally everything is starting to go according to plan. My Mum is going to do a car boot with all my stuff mixed in with hers at some point (she loves doing them-who am i to argue!) I've also asked for magazine subscriptions for my birthday which is where a lot of my empty money goes. So far, so good!!! If only my diet was the same...! Lol.