MinkyBoo's Debtfree Diary

MinkyBoo

I've decided to start a diary as I've read a few and find them really inspiring and I think writing one of my own might make me more accountable and finally get on with getting rid of this debt, it's not getting any bigger but it's not been going down either.

We've been living to a budget for nearly a year now which is working wonders in not overspending, there's just not much room for debtbusting unless we make more money. So starting with my budget for me, my OH and our teenage son.

Income

237.50 OH basic wages - can earn more from overtime
76.15 My wages
30.28 Child tax credits and child benefit
343.93 Total weekly income

Outgoings

103.85 Rent 450 monthly pretty cheap for our city
22.39 Council tax 100 monthly
3.32 Water 15.25 monthly
16.38 Gas & Elec 71 monthly -need to look at this
2.78 TV Licence 36.14 quarterly
45.00 Food, toiletries etc
5.77 Landline & broadband talk talk less than 25
5.77 Mobiles x3 just above 25
3.46 Car Insurance - just paid 197 for year but 40 back from quidco
2.54 Car tax 66 6 monthly
30.00 Petrol
1.15 Home Insuance was about 50 last year
2.50 Pescriptions and dental treatments - we're private at dentist
5.00 Hair cuts
5.00 Home reps etc
20.00 Birthday and christmas presents
10.00 Clothes
10.00 Eating out, cinema, having fun
6.44 Holiday - booked for Aug 09
1.85 PC World in case laptop breaks 7.99 monthly
20.00 My weekly spends - mines goes on lunches mostly
20.00 OH weekly spends - his goes on hobbies
343.20 Total weekly outgoings

Debts
138.43 Overdraft #1 0%
629.48 Overdraft #2 19.9%
757.08 Barclaycard 19.9% - min payment £12 ish per month
1524.99

It's pretty tight and we're not living lavishly but then we're not being super frugal either. The only wa to get these debts shifted is for OH to work overtime and me to do more MSE stuff and get the budget down, then we can start saving for a new car and hopefully a house deposit.

The frst thing I want to do is get rid of the little overdraft just cos I think it will give me confidence to get it knocked out. So I've got some clothes I need to take back to the shop tomorrow for a full refund which should start me off with £25.

I'd love some suggestions that might help.
Minky x

Primula

MinkyBoo wrote: »

Income

237.50 OH basic wages - can earn more from overtime
76.15 My wages can you not increase your hours?
30.28 Child tax credits and child benefit
343.93 Total weekly income

Outgoings

103.85 Rent 450 monthly pretty cheap for our city
22.39 Council tax 100 monthly
3.32 Water 15.25 monthly
16.38 Gas & Elec 71 monthly -need to look at this
2.78 TV Licence 36.14 quarterly
45.00 Food, toiletries etc I need lessons from you - this looks really good to me
5.77 Landline & broadband talk talk less than 25
5.77 Mobiles x3 just above 25
3.46 Car Insurance - just paid 197 for year but 40 back from quidco
2.54 Car tax 66 6 monthly
30.00 Petrol
1.15 Home Insuance was about 50 last year
2.50 Pescriptions and dental treatments - we're private at dentist
5.00 Hair cuts
5.00 Home reps etc What's this?
20.00 Birthday and christmas presents Seems very high - over £1,000 per year?
10.00 Clothes Maybe cut out meantime?
10.00 Eating out, cinema, having fun
6.44 Holiday - booked for Aug 09
1.85 PC World in case laptop breaks 7.99 monthly
20.00 My weekly spends - mines goes on lunches mostly You could save this and make your own
20.00 OH weekly spends - his goes on hobbies
343.20 Total weekly outgoings

Debts
138.43 Overdraft #1 0%
629.48 Overdraft #2 19.9%
757.08 Barclaycard 19.9% - min payment £12 ish per month
1524.99

It's pretty tight and we're not living lavishly but then we're not being super frugal either. The only wa to get these debts shifted is for OH to work overtime and me to do more MSE stuff and get the budget down, then we can start saving for a new car and hopefully a house deposit.

The frst thing I want to do is get rid of the little overdraft just cos I think it will give me confidence to get it knocked out. So I've got some clothes I need to take back to the shop tomorrow for a full refund which should start me off with £25.

I'd love some suggestions that might help.
Minky x

Hiya
didn't want to read and run, but I am no expert, but just a few ideas in pink, hope you don't mind. do you do the free scrathcards etc? Or is there any way you could up your income, even do Avon or something and throw any extra income at the debt? Good luck.
But wow, your shopping at £45 per week is good. I struggle with that bit!
P

Fire_Fox

Welcome to diary-land!

£80 a month on gifts plus £80 a month each on absolutely nothing seems an awful lot (£2900 a year!), bearing in mind you have accounted for a holiday, social life, clothes, haircuts and toiletries separately.

moo2moo

Paying car tax 6 monthly works out more expensive in the long run. Can you save enough to buy a years worth? Between you you spend £40 a week on whatever you feel like. A month of not spending your pocket money would be this covered after that saving £10 a month would go a long way toawards it.

What hobbies does OH have that cost £80 per month?

Does your teenage son get pocket money or have a paper round?

Does £20 a month to home reps imply that you spend tha on Avon, Bettaware etc? Just say no. No thanks, no I don't need it and more importantly you can't afford it.

I suggest you take a good hard look at your Barclaycard statement. Are you sure £12 is the minimum payment? According to the Snowball calculator your monthly interest is more than that. Your Barclaycard balance is actually increasing each month regardless of whether or not you spend more on the card. At the rate you're currently paying by May 2022 it will have exceeded £1000. By January 2087 it will be a whopping £98,493,825.12

Laptop - how new is it. Would you be better off saving £7.99 a month to replace it when it wears out rather than giving PC World £80 a year in case it develops a fault.

MinkyBoo

Thank you for your replies, this budget is not squeezed as much as it should but it has stopped us from getting into more debt for now (except for a recently added fridge).

I used to work full time but it didn't work well with DS, at the moment I can keep him on the straight and narrow if I'm at home more. I do think I should about getting weekend work in the future.

we work really hard to keep the food budget at £45 per week but it's getting harder and harder as the prices keep going up. We shop around a bit for bargains (OH is amazing at this) and stock up and then do a main shop at asda where we but quite a bit of smartprice stuff. There is frequently none of the £45 left midweek and often we bits from our weekly £20.

The £5 per week on home reps is something we added recentlyto our budget as we had to buy a new fridge freezer. The old one was dying and we had no luck on freecycle. This had to go on the barclaycard as we had no provision for it. But I think this money would probably be better used to pay off debt. So the remaining balance should go the debts.

£20 a week for birthdays is quite high I know, we both have big familys and I doubt this will cover christmas. We don't buy anthing for each other only DS. I find I spend less if I plan ahead and buy a month or two in advance. There always seems to be something that crops up. It's fathers day next so I'm hoping to make cards (DS too) and get a bar of choc for OH from DS (I did say we didn't get presents!). I need to think about how to cut this but you guys are right it needs to come down.

My clothes pot has about £30 in at the moment and unfortunatly DS's high school had this great idea that they would bring in a new school uniform in September, most of which needs to be bought from them. They say they are going to subsidise it to make it cheaper for this year only but I doubt they will be cheaper than asda. When I know the total cost I'll save that amount and start putting the rest towards the debt.

I need to make my own luches, I need to plan more! I plan to dig out a notebook and start keeping tabs on exactly what I spend my weekly £20 on as I know theres never any left at the end of the week. OH goes racing which is quite expensive and this is what his £20 a week goes on. He really doesn't spend money on anything else.

Our barclaycard minimum payment will have gone up, we have only just recently added £200+ to it for the new fridge which is what has made me realise we can't keep just plodding along as the debt isn't going anywhere.

Our laptop is about 4 years old and when it breaks we really don't know what to do. It has been fixed over the phone numerous times and also sent off to be fixed and have parts replaced. I have no idea how much repairs would cost and what the likely hoodof it needing repairs. Is £7.99 worth it for a 4 year old laptop, I just don't know. It is speedy and we've not had any problems for a good 6mths, touch wood.

As for car tax I totally agree 12 months cartax is better value but I don't want to put my budgeted amount up so i think we'll save the same amount weekly and when it's due for renewal try and scrape the rest together to buy 12 months if that makes sense.

Thank you everyone theres quite a bit I need to do. Today I took some clothes back that I bought a couple of weeks ago so I've got £38 winging its way to my overdraft. I also took some others back to next but as I'd had them for over a month I had to have refund card. This will come in handy as we have been invited to a few weddings over the summer and DS needs some smart trousers and a shirt. Or I might try ebay for his clothes and use the refund card for gifts.

I have been doing the scratch cards and I use quidco where I can. I have a few things listed on amazon and I have a ton of stuff I could ebay. I'd love to try matched betting sometome soon too but I think it's probably best to wait for the football season to start again.

Minky x

Fire_Fox

Rather than working more hours if you don't feel comfortable with that, perhaps look at ways you can make working part-time work better for you? Certainly taking your own lunches would make a difference without altering your quality of life. I think you ought to relax your food budget slightly rather than having to top up out of your 'pocket money' - then make a bit of extra dinner and spirit some away for your lunches.

Also do you do mystery shopping or surveys? A lot of MSE regulars use the purchases or vouchers for Christmas (or save for a new laptop!), and it would make your internet connection pay for itself. Would it be possible to agree with your families that you all buy gifts for children only? Things are tight all round at the moment, they may be very relieved! :money:

I have bought some lovely presents for little ones in Asda, pound shops, Home Bargains, Wilko and market stalls for next to nothing! Last Xmas my cousin's daughter was given a pair of lipstick pink fluffy bunny ears with flashing lights. She refused to take them off and her little brother cried when he couldn't have them! They are the sort of kids who have the best of everything, but still love a bit of tat.

MinkyBoo

Thanks for your post Fire Fox, I need to sit down with mt OH and talk about all the gifts we buy, there are few member of the family where we just buy for the children.

I've not tried mystery shopping yet, it's on my list of things to look into. I do a few survey sites and actually have some vouchers saved, we've been quite lucky at winning a few competitions on pigsback too. I'm debating whether to continue with Toluna or not as I just seem bombarded my surveys that don't seem to be worth very much. Global test market seems to pay well as does p!necone (why do people never type the name in full?).

Today I took my own lunch into work. Took a gift set back to Next but managed to get a full refund so thats £10. I found 20p at the bottom of my handbag and a receipt from when I bought coffee for work which was reimbursed this morning for £1.50. Then I decided as we went out as a family for a meal at Frankie and bennys (:eek: it wasn't cheap) a week or two ago and added it to the overdraft, then the money in our eating out pot should really go towards paying off the overdraft and added £20 to help pay it off. So in the last two days I've managed to pay off £69.70:j

Tomorrow I plan to make my own lunch again. I will do a meal plan for the week which includes packed lunches for everyone and see how expensive that is when I go shopping. OH gets paid too so I will start tracking where my weekly £20 goes. If I don't spend anything in the next few minutes I might even have some of this weeks left.

Minky x

MinkyBoo

So today was OH's payday and he earned an extra £3.97, so this is going towards to the overdraft. I made my own lunch and I've done a lightspeed survey (I had a go at a few others but it was only one that I qualified for). I have the grand total of £1.42 left from last weeks weekly spending money :j and I intend to pay that into the bank to pay off the debt as well.

This week I fully intend to track exactly where my £20 weekly spends go, nothing spent so far:j. I know I'm going to have to get a wateringcan, hopefully a cheapy one from wilkos and some greenfly killer. This is to keep my tomato and stawberry plants happy.

Off to create a signature to track my progress.

Minky x

MinkyBoo

It's been a busy weekend, our shopping came in slightly over budget by £1.61 but OH paid for this. I needed to buy some make up as I have run out so I went to boots and managed to get 3 items for £5 from their natural collection and then saw the false nails I normally buy when I'm going to a wedding in the clearance section, we've been invited to several weddings this summer. So I bought everything with my points so I will take the equivilent money out of my weekly spending money, an extra £9.88 towards the debt.

MinkyBoo

I had my hair done yesterday, I had budgeted for it though and have £15 left over, which has gone straight onto paying the overdraft. I'm hoping that I won't need it doing for a good while.

Yesterday I won £5 on the scratchcards which means after today I'm 10p off being able to withdraw £10. :j

Today I bought lunch, I spent £2.08. It's not as bad as I used to be but it is still uneccessary and I'm cross with myself.:mad:

Apart form that I do feel like things are going well, I just hope I can keep it up.

MinkyBoo

I've just withdrawn £10 from one of my scratch cards, I won't be counting it until goes into the bank though. We're so close to having paid off the first overdraft.:j