The 9 year plan...hold onto your hats and here we go!

EssexHebridean

ROFL - yep, scatterbrained about sums it up!!!

Tips....that's a bit of a tricky one if I'm honest. I guess I had two dramatic LBM's - the first when I realised we had been paying someone elses water rates for 18 months without realising it.....it was three payments to a totally different water company to the one that covers our area, and the second when I read the electric meter and realised that both the day and night readings were completely wrong - we'd underpaid by a fortune on the day rate and overpaid (by even more, thankfully!) on the night one. Ended up dropping the DD from about £80 per month to £57..it will fall again a little yet...and getting a nice payment back. We were lucky - the things that "woke me up" were in our favour, but it could have oh so easily been the other way round, and that scared me.

I did a budget sheet first off, and worked out quite how much money we ought to have spare each month. I had a thread on MFW at that point too which is probably the best step-by-step to how and what we did. Needless to say, at that point we didn't have anything like that amount spare so that was the first thing to be targetted. One thing we both agreed on from the start was that we were not prepared to compromise our principles regarding food. We feel strongly about animal welfare in the food chain - buy meat from Farmers Markets, buy British produce as far as possible, free range eggs and organic dairy, support a local veg box scheme.....those thigs weren't going to change, and haven't. I waste far, far less food now than I used to then, and the OS board has been brilliant for tips and advice on bulking out meals without losing flavour. Next stage was getting back into the black on the bank accounts - we'd routinely run in the red for so long and when I came to analyse the figures I couldn't understnad why or how! It was all authorised imited, but even allowing for that we must have thrown away a few hundred pounds over the years just on that....crazy. Above all, I think that familiarising myself with the bank accounts has been the most productive thing - I now check weekly and shift money to savings as and when there is some spare. As much as anything else I think the longer you do it, the more habit forming it is,and the better you get at keeping things under control. Does that make sense?

Lemon_Tree

i agree with you EH it's only by doing things each week or day that you get into a habit, that's why i make myself check my bank accounts every sunday even if i've checked them daily in the mean time.
I'm thinking of adding monitoring the electic to my list of obsessions. at the end of the winter quarter we owed £200 which had me paniced that they will increase the DD. We've just had the spring quarter and we've only clawed back 50 quid. Heaven know's where it's going, only last year when i was having a barney with Scottish Power they agreed i only used £8 a month in summer. I really hope that we go back to £8 this summer. I mean the heating doesn't go on till Nov, goes off in March and we don't have hot water as everything heats from cold, so the tank just kept reheating itself.

EssexHebridean

Kissjen - thanks for that re the IBAN numbers, I might ring my bank and ask them to talk me through it then!

LT - I do our electric readings weekly - it's the first thing I do on a Sunday morning. We don't worry to much about the gas as a) they usually manage to actually read that one (We've only seen two meter readers for the electric in the past five years!) and b) we hardly use any of it - well under £5 per month, as we only use it for cooking.

Re electric useage - have you changed all possibly regular light bulbs for low energy, remembered to turn things off rather than leaving them on standby, got into the habit of only boiling the amount of water you actually need in the kettle, and turning lights off when you leave rooms? All these things help, along with using the cheap rate electric overnight if you're on Economy7 and can run appliances OK at that time.

Two small things today - a £19.95 cheque from Comet to refund the delivery from the washing machine, and I spotted on our gas bill that the Direct debit discount had vanished....now on our teeny weeny gas bills this makes preckious little difference - averages at about 60p per quarter - but it's my 60p per quarter and I want it back, thanks!! Rang BG and an extremely helpful lady is getting it investigated and backdated onto the previous bill(s). She has also removed us from paperless billing (I didn't ask to be changed onto it and I'd rather wait until some financial incentive is offered!).

Jo_R_2

Thanks for that EH... I'm getting there slowly but I am beginning to realise I am terribly impatient, it really is quite addictive working towards being debt-free.

Also we are just about to move house and we both wish we could be buying our own place, so that is a real incentive as well, I don't want to be renting my whole life.

Lemon_Tree

EssexHebridean wrote: »

LT - I do our electric readings weekly - it's the first thing I do on a Sunday morning. We don't worry to much about the gas as a) they usually manage to actually read that one (We've only seen two meter readers for the electric in the past five years!) and b) we hardly use any of it - well under £5 per month, as we only use it for cooking.

Re electric useage - have you changed all possibly regular light bulbs for low energy, remembered to turn things off rather than leaving them on standby, got into the habit of only boiling the amount of water you actually need in the kettle, and turning lights off when you leave rooms? All these things help, along with using the cheap rate electric overnight if you're on Economy7 and can run appliances OK at that time.

Two small things today - a £19.95 cheque from Comet to refund the delivery from the washing machine, and I spotted on our gas bill that the Direct debit discount had vanished....now on our teeny weeny gas bills this makes preckious little difference - averages at about 60p per quarter - but it's my 60p per quarter and I want it back, thanks!! Rang BG and an extremely helpful lady is getting it investigated and backdated onto the previous bill(s). She has also removed us from paperless billing (I didn't ask to be changed onto it and I'd rather wait until some financial incentive is offered!).

I'm obsessive about electric, we don't even have hot water as it's just heating the same old water as everything we use heats from cold. We turn everything off, nothing is on standby, all energy saving bulbs, i've even got an owl and hunt around to find out what is turned on. We run as much on timers overnight as possible and last night i rammed into OH's head about the difference in cost of charging things overnight rather than during the day.
I'm with you on chasing up things like your 60p, i have to admit i recently rang the bank (obviously freephone) as they wanted to charge me 4p for being o/drawn when i haven't been o/drawn since before Xmas. It as the principle of the thing! :rolleyes:

mooomin

Lemon_Tree wrote: »

I'm obsessive about electric, we don't even have hot water as it's just heating the same old water as everything we use heats from cold. We turn everything off, nothing is on standby, all energy saving bulbs, i've even got an owl and hunt around to find out what is turned on.

I may be being the dumbest person ever, but what do you mean you have an owl? Like Hedwig in Harry Potter?

*confused*

Piquant_2

flying_fresian wrote: »

I may be being the dumbest person ever, but what do you mean you have an owl? Like Hedwig in Harry Potter?

*confused*

Don't worry FF, you're not alone, I'm not sure what sort of owl is being used here either. Although an electricity searching owl could be useful I suppose....

EssexHebridean

It's an electricity use meter - my parents have one and it measures your useage both as an average and as a "momentary" reading too - you can see how things like turning a light on affect your useage. Quite clever.

Lemon_Tree

unfortunately EH is right, it's not as pretty or as cute as a Hedwig which i'd love but does make you obsessively turn things off and watch it to see how much it's costing on a minute/day/monthly basis. I've realised i obsess about too many things in my life at the moment and not many of them are fun and it certainly doesn't include my trying to lose weight

mooomin

Ooh, not as cool as Hedwig but very useful.

Where do you get one of these Electric Owls?