Champagne Lifestyle Lemonade Budget (My attempts to get debt free by April 2010)

Sun_Addict

Good afternoon everyone

I have had a brilliant idea. I have realised that I'm not putting enough effort into getting debt free so have come up with a new budget/plan. When I get paid, after all bills have been paid, whatever is left over is going towards paying off debt. Most months this should be around £288. If I do this I will be debt free in 6½ months - well before my target date.

OH's wages, as they fluctuate so wildly, will be divided into four categories:

1. Diesel, OH's mobile top ups (mainly used for work) and any other bits that he needs to buy in the course of his job (ie tools). He is also allowed his beer out of this pot as he reckons it's an essential requirement for someone in the building trade!

2. Grocery shopping - going to aim for a budget of £300 per month.

3. Winter holiday fund - aiming to have completely paid for March holiday by Christmas, spending money and everything.

4. Spending fund - stuff for house, personal spending money for me and OH, emergency fund savings, etc.

Of course this all depends on OH working on a regular basis. Hopefully he will. If he can make it to the end of the year without too much time off it will be great.

Anything left over out of all the above will be put towards debt. If everything goes to plan there is a real possibility I could be debt free by the end of the year. Going to try my hardest to spend as little as possible between now and Christmas and make a real effort to get debt free.

I would also like to lose 7lbs in the next 8 weeks. I feel I could do with being 7lbs lighter. I feel a bit flabby and sluggish at the moment even though I'm only 3lbs over my WeightWatchers goal weight. I really prefer to be 5lbs under.

This new budget/plan starts as of NOW!

Sun_Addict

Had a tot up today of where I am so far this month with the new budget. Obviously I know how much I'm being paid next Tuesday so I know I have enough to pay for all the bills and the debt repayment. OH still has one more payday (amount unknown as always) so at the moment it looks like this:

1. Bills money all accounted for for September.
2. Will be able to pay off around £300 off debt.
3. OH's work expenses all paid for.
4. September's grocery budget sorted - £300.
5. OH and my personal spending money sorted - £100.
6. Currently have £43.71 in holiday fund. Still got £208.29 to find.

Still need to find the money for the emergency fund, household spending fund and the rest of the holiday money. Hopefully OH's wages next week will cover it but at least the important things are taken care of.

Sun_Addict

Good morning everyone!

Not posted for a few days as have been taking a few days leave from work for my birthday (which was on Sunday). Can you believe since the first day of my break I have been ill!! Started with sore throat and aching on Friday (first day off) and now on my last day off I'm full of cold and still feel rough. What a way to spend my birthday! We managed to get out on Sunday for my birthday lunch but didn't feel too good. No doubt I will be back to normal tomorrow morning when I go back to work! :rolleyes: DD very kindly gave me a £50 Debenhams voucher for my birthday so am hoping to muster up the energy to go into town this morning and have a look to see if there's anything to spend it on. Not spending it for the sake of it though I'd rather wait until there's something I really need. OH bought me some earrings and some Molton Brown toiletries and DS got me some wine (this is all DS ever thinks of to buy and I get it for every occasion!).

Payday today and have paid £275 off debt. When the mininum payment of £25 comes out on Thursday I will have paid £300 off this month!! My debt total now stands at £1599 :j If I carry on paying £300 a month until Christmas I will be down to £399. However, I am going to try and pay as much over £300 as I can so I can get rid of it by Christmas. I will be over the moon if I can do this so I am going to try very hard.

Just waiting for Thursday when OH's last paycheck for the month goes in the bank and I can tot up the rest of the finances. Oh I just love the end of the month! :beer:

Sun_Addict

Good afternoon everyone! Nearly Friday!

OH got his last pay of the month today so I can finally work out what's going where. I've managed to save the £252 I wanted to for our winter holiday, I've got £150 in my September spending pot (this is for stuff for the house, christmas presents, etc and hopefully it won't all get spent) and £50 towards my £1000 emergency fund. :j

As well as being debt free by Christmas I would also like to have paid for everything to do with the winter holiday, including spending money. I don't want much do I? I'm just keeping my fingers crossed OH has plenty of work until then. January is traditionally a slack time for him, partly due to the weather, so it would be wonderful if everything could be paid off by then.

September's main goals are to get debt down to £1200 and save another £252 for the holiday - and not spend as little as possible of course! Off to update my signature now.

Swinstie73

Hi SA,

Just been catching up with your diary - only 2 days til I'm home and depressed already about how much I've overspent. Will need to get back on track like you, sounds like a brill plan to get the debt cleared by Christmas, have every faith you will do it xx

Sun_Addict

Hi everyone - shiny new month starts today!

Thanks for your comments Swinstie and your faith in me - I'm determined to do it as it's only four months away.

Every penny I have left is going towards the debt so far I have accumulated an extra £17.17 to add to the £294.06 I know I will be able to pay off on payday so only (only :eek:) got another £87.77 to go to make my target of £399. However, not been very good this bank holiday weekend and OH and I have made a very large hole in this month's spending budget already. Between us we have spent £90.08 out of £150 so we really need to be careful over the rest of the month. Ideally I would like to put the remaining £59.92 towards the debt but have a sneaky feeling it's not going to happen. I have also ordered some clothes from the M&S sale online (which still haven't arrived after a week!). I don't know where I think I'll be getting the money to pay for these from but I seem to be under the impression that my annual rebate from Atlantic Gas & Electric due in September will more than cover this :rolleyes:. But really this extra money should be going in the paying off debt fund if I am serious about paying it off by Christmas. I really need to rein myself in again as I'm getting out of hand!

Sun_Addict

Hello everyone!

M&S parcel finally arrived yesterday and at least one of the items will have to be returned as it is a t shirt which is completely see through! So that's £9 less anyway. Everything else is lovely but am undecided about a zebra stripe-type cardigan but it does look nice on so will probably keep it.

I'm a bit cross with myself as I totted up all my receipts for stuff I bought out of spending fund and now we only have £27 left to last until the end of September. We really did go on a spree didn't we! It's amazing how the odd £10 here and £5 there add up! No more spending now. Hopefully nothing else will come up.

I'm off to Aldi today at lunchtime to grab those Super 6 bargains. It's a long walk there and back but it's all good exercise and worth it for the savings. It's the last day of the week's £50 grocery budget and only have £8-ish left so don't think much will be going into the debt pot this week. Nice new weekly budget starts tomorrow so hopefully I'll be able to accumulate something next week. I have so many home-made meals in my freezer that I can quite feasibly go for the next 2/3 weeks without making anything else - they really are taking over the freezer so hopefully won't have to spend too much on food over the next 2 weeks. Any money left over (no matter how little) will go into the debt fund.

OH's first payday of the month today and this week's money is going towards covering his work expenses (diesel, tools, work clothes, mobile and of course his beer fund!). This "pot" can come to anything up to £500 depending on how far he's travelled and what he's had to buy (and if there are any good beer offers on that he simply has to stock up on :rolleyes:). I always say it costs him nearly as much to go to work as he earns, especially at the moment with work being slack. Hopefully next week's money will finish off the work pot and start going into the grocery pot, although he's had two days off this week due to bank holiday and nothing to do yesterday, but thankfully he's back now and has work for the next month or two lined up so far. This is one reason I want to pay off this debt ASAP then we can relax a bit about money. Once I'm debt free the money I've been putting towards debt will hopefully become savings so the sooner I can do it the better.

Have a great day everyone - roll on Friday!

Sun_Addict

Quick update to report that after my trip to Aldi I have £2.15 left from last week's grocery budget and so am adding that to my debt repayment. This means I will now be able to pay off £313.38 so far. Only £85.62 more to go to hit target repayment of £399!!

Sun_Addict

Happy Monday everyone!

Managed to get through the weekend having not spent much - only bought some milk from Iceland (only £1 for 4 pints at the moment) and a few other grocery bits. Even went to Costa Coffee in Tesco and only bought the cup of coffee I went in for. OH and me usually visit Tesco's Costa Coffee at the weekend and end up walking around Tesco and buying loads of stuff - not this weekend! :T Trying so hard to last until the end of the month without spending what's left in the spending fund so it can go towards debt. I just keep telling myself that being debt free by Christmas really is achievable with just a bit of effort.

Received a £10 Boots voucher from Valued Opinions on Saturday and the £45 I earned with them doing the music survey has now cleared so have sent for £40 of M&S vouchers. I will probably put these vouchers towards a new winter coat.

I've got to take the day off work tomorrow to wait in for British Gas to repair our boiler. Luckily we have the Homecare agreement with them so won't cost a penny (phew).

Have a good day everyone.

Sun_Addict

Just a quick update to say today was one of those very rare days when almost everything I needed to buy in Sainsburys this lunchtime was either reduced or on offer! Got a bag full of stuff and only spent £7.85! Wish I could have more days like this.