Back to Black - XSpender's 6 Year Plan

XSpender

Hi JC

Nice to hear from you.

Excellent results on the Ebaying. Well done you!:T

XS

XSpender

I really enjoyed my first weekend away in the caravan inspite of the the torrential rain. Our pitch was right next to the river and I was afraid I would wake up and find us floating to the north sea!

MSE wise we didnt eat much of the food I took and had fish and chips on the saturday night:o OH decided he would like some bacon, even though I had asked him if I should get some before we went, so spent £6 in sainsburys on beer and bacon for OH and some milk as I hadn't taken enough.

Good job I got the bacon as BIL came up to see us (we were only 30 miles from home) and had a bacon buttie or he would have had to go hungry!

The only downside is we realised we def need to get a stabaliser and a battery for the caravan, costing £150 or so which will clear out the savings. We did buy a piece of second hand pipe for £1 which has saved us the £40 for a new waste water carrier!

Our big camping holiday is 4 weeks today so we need to tighten our belts between now and then. The carboot sale has become a necessity and we are planning to do it on Sunday. Fingers crossed for the weather;)

XSpender

I have been reviewing the finances for August when we are on holiday and things are looking soooo tight. We have a bill to pay of £76 ( a one off) and we need a couple of bits for the caravan as well as our diesel and spending money for the hols. This will come to about £700 in total.

I am hoping we make a bit at the car boot this weekend, at least £65 to hit my £10/day challenge but would really like to make £140 to cover the caravan bits needed.

The GC has been well and truly blown this month, however, I have included every single food, drink, alcohol, toiletry item we have bought this month. This includes every ice cream, snack, lunch and takeaway we have bought outside the home as well. I now have a realistic figure of what we are spending. It works out t £7.26/day, £1 for the dogs and £6.26 for us 2. That is a really high figure!:eek: How can two people who hardly eat outside the home and are trying to be frugal spend over 6 quid a day on food and toiletries?

I do know how I suppose. I have not been cooking a lot from scratch as I don't know what to cook in this weather and have been really busy at work. I have never once hit my GC budget since I started doing it last October. I suppose if I look at what I was spending (and wasting) it has reduced but I never hit my target.

Working the daily figure has given me a kick up the bot though and I feel able to tackle August budget with a lot more enthusiasm. I am going to try and reduce the human spend to £5/day to include a max of £1/day for toiletries and household and £4/day for food so £6/day in total including the dogs.

I am going to meal plan as I have before but look closer at the costs of the meals. I seem to be popping to the shop more often as I am not organised and spending a fiver here and there so the planning will cut this out as well.

There are 21 days from pay day to hols so that is £126 until we go on holiday and £60 for food on hols (we are camping for 10 days).

Th car boot sale is def on this Sunday. :T I need to give OH a kick to sort his car insurance renewal out and I want to have a look into changing energy suppliers but this may have to wait until I am on holiday as I don't have the time at the moment.

The laptop at home is still not fixed and it will have to stay broken as we haven't got the money to fix it.:eek:

XSpender

I had another look at the grocery figures last night and we are spending £8.37/day on the humans and houselhold so it is even worse than I thought!:eek::eek:

Next month, as we are on holiday for almost 2 weeks, I am going to try and split this spend into different categories for dogs, household, entertainment (for ice creams and coffee and hols) and food for humans although I will still be trying to reduce the spend overall by at least £2/day.

We sold the last of the camping gear last night for another £20 and I have had £5 back on my expenses for next month so that is a fiver less than I thought they would cost!

I tried to read up on doo yoo last night and I might try and start doing some reviews to earn a bit more money. Will need to read through the thread when I have more time.

If we don't make a start on clearing the loft tonight we won't have anything to car boot on Sunday. The medicine I am on for the IVF is making me so tired that I don't have much energy on a night to get cracking with it. It might be worth delaying it until next Sunday as I will have more time next week to get the stuff sorted.

XS

XSpender

I must find my own diary sooooo boring, I read everyone elses and all the other threads before looking at mine:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

Didn't make it to the car boot but have made £275 this month from other sources so pleased with that. That means I can try for another £10/day next month as well.

Started the healthy eating regime again today and made it to the gym last night too:T Trying Salsa aerobics tonight for the first time. Won't be a ble to go again if I like it as cant do any bouncy exercise when i start the second stage of the IVF meds at the weekend.

Made HM soup at the weekend and hoping to make a batch of chilli and some HM nread using a receipe i found on here. We seem to be eating rolls rather than sliced at the min so the BM is collecting dust.

Will pop back either tonight or tomorrow with a summary of my goals for July and some new ones for August.

XS

Raini

Hello :hello:

Salsa aerobics sounds fun!! :rolleyes: Second stage of IVA meds sounds ... *thinking of right word* ... promising? x

XSpender

Hi Raini - Salsa aerobics got cancelled so went for a run instead. Got to do what I can to stop the post marathon belly returning!;)

Been up since 6.30 and we have been trying to catch up on the housework. My kitchen table has been on the patio (it is actually a tile topped patio table that I use in the kitchen) for weeks and OH has agreed to put it in the kitchen again as it is not getting much use outside. :T as I hate eating dinner of my knee.

Working home today so should be a NSD.

I have missed some BOGOFS and freebies off my £10/day challenge so have another £19.59 to add on. Al most hit my target without doing the car boot. Woo Hoo :T

XSpender

XSpender wrote: »

1. [STRIKE]Save £100 from salaries[/STRIKE] Spent this on caravan though
2. [STRIKE]Save £120 from salaries for contingency and annual bills[/STRIKE] Borrowed £60 of this for caravan
3. [STRIKE]Save/Earn an additional £310 - £10/day - from car boot, ebay, £2/week pot excluding sale of diving gear [/STRIKE] Achieved £311.50 with car boot and diving gear still to do:T
4. [STRIKE]Agree £120 entertainement budget with DH for both of us this month[/STRIKE] Came in just under:T
5. £150 grocery budget:eek: Spending diary shows I need to be more organised about lunches, snacks outside the home - No way near, daft target me thinks
6. [STRIKE] Start a 20p sealed pot in addition to loose change sealed pot[/STRIKE] Saved £6.80
7. Look into changing energy supplier - WIIFM? Nope
8. Achieve 8 NSDs - Nope achieved 6
9. Get the laptop repaired so I can get access to my lovely spreadsheets again but in the meantime keep a paper one going -spent £60 but didn't fix it, undecided wether to repair or replace now
10. [STRIKE] Keep the spending diary going - it makes very interesting reading (well, only for me cos I am a saddo:o)[/STRIKE] No silly spending this month but have done a lot of small grocery shops which has helped blow the GC budget

August Goals

1. £10/day challenge = £310 and we are on holiday for 11 days:eek:
2. £250 GC to include holiday food but not holiday treats and 2 meals out
3. £500 holiday budget for all spends and diesel
4. Keep up spending diary even on hols as £30/day budget when away
5. Batch cook for feezer
6. Prepare stock up shopping list for end of August pay
7. 8 NSDs

Just a few for this month as holidays and IVF cycle to contend with

XSpender

I think I have been giving my self a hard time on the GC. I set a budget of £220 month and am running at an average of £231/month and now include everything we spend on food, drinks, alchol, meals out and take aways, the dogs, toiletries and house hold so I am not doing as bad as I thought.

OH says he thinks we are doing really well and so do I but I would like to have more of a cushion ( or even some cushion!) in the savings account.

We have tried to get a good deal on car insurance using comparison websies but none are cheaper than what we have got and that has gone up slightly so no saving to be had there.

The men are here pumping my walls full of free insulation which will hopefully bring my fuel bills down.

In some ways we are doing well wih our debt free journey; we are sticking to our budget and are finding it easier than before we did the IVA, we have some money in the account and savings at the end of each month and no longer have the urge to spend as we once did.

I do find it hard to save though, if I had to use the money to pay for something and it was spent each month, like making overpayments to credit it would feel like we could get debt free quicker but this is not possbile on the IVA.

The savings would have been quite healthy this month if we had not bought the caravan but this is an investment and will be used for holidays and weekends away for the next 5 years.

XS

XSpender

It was my birthday yesterday and I was very MSE.:money: would have been proud! OH bought me a lovely dressing gown, I needed one but would not have bought myself one and it was well within the present budget I had set. I now have £65 birthday money and cannot bring myself to spend it. Clothes just seem like a wast of money (:eek: I used to be such a follower of fashion, well my barclaycard was!). The only things I want are cooking stuff from lakeland and aint using my birthday money for them.

I bought 2 bottles of beer for me and 4 cans for OH for a grand total of £7.94 as a birthday treat. I've got 1 bottle left and OH has 1 can. With trying to get up the duff fo so long I hardly drink now so 1 bottle puts me to sleep. It was nice though, Badger's Fursty Ferret I think it was called. It will be our last drink until the IVF cycle is complete, or until next year for me if it works! Dinner was out of the freezer!!

Got some good bargains at Sainsburys yesterday; 4 packs of rolls down to 20p each and 6 pack of crisps in a ripped multipack wrapper for 80p. I seem to have sussed when the bakery stuff is reduced.

Getting a little worried we won't have enough spends for our hols but apart from the Eden centre and a few ice creams and a bit of shopping for fresh stuff we don't have much to pay for. We are taking our NT membership cards and will make the most of this as we only rejoined recently on the proviso we would ensure we got our monies worth.

Have been reading Hypno's diary and I am really inspired at how she does the Dooyoo reviews. I am on a lap top all day and a big part of my job is being creative with words so I should be able to do reviews daily. I just need to make a start.

XS