Shellgirl's Smart-price Value No Frills budget

shell_girl

Hi all,

If I do this in public then I can't back out...
The basic story is that myself and OH have far too much month left at the end of the money. We have debts that were run up by us not knowing when to stop spending, and generally having far too much fun for our budget. We've been tackling these for about two years now, but in all honesty have been a bit lacklustre about it and there's been no real movement. Recent events mean that this has to stop- and we've put together what we hope is a realistic plan to get us out of debt.

I'll pull together a SOA soon, but wanted to explain the background for it as it may look a bit odd. We are paying a mortgage on the house that is in my name only (as far as I'm concerned it's ours- I bought it before meeting my OH but a lot of his debt was run up on making the house into a home for us). We're also paying rent on the flat we live in during the week, as my OH was transferred to work 200 miles away last summer. His wage went up, but him moving jobs gave me the impetus to get out of my soul destroying job and move with him. I'm now working in a job where I'm much much happier, but paid much much less. We're pulling in pretty much what we were before, but obviously we now have the new outgoings of our 'work' flat... :eek:we've been doing this now for three months and so far we're JUST keeping our heads above water.

Having sat down with all the figures we've decided that we will try and live on a cash only budget of £300 per month. From this will come all food, petrol and extra little spends that creep up throughout the month. Our petrol can vary depending on if we stay in our work flat for a weekend, and our food can vary depending on how motivated we are for meal planning etc.

If we can stick to our £300 budget for everything, we should be able to make good overpayments on the debts and make some real headway.

Thanks for reading this far, and I'll put up a SOA for you to tear apart soon :rotfl:

Pooky

Good luck with your diary - shall look forward to reading it.

:beer:

ClootiesMum

Oooh - shiny new diary
And you're right - once it's in writing you feel you have to keep adding to it -

Good luck

CM

shell_girl

Statement of Affairs and Personal Balance Sheet
Household Information
Number of adults in household........... 2
Number of children in household......... 0
Number of cars owned.................... 1
Monthly Income Details
Monthly income after tax................ 1000
Partners monthly income after tax....... 1260
Benefits................................ 0
Other income............................ 200
Total monthly income.................... 2460
Monthly Expense Details
Mortgage................................ 250
Secured/HP loan repayments.............. 0
Rent.................................... 330
Management charge (leasehold property).. 0
Council tax............................. 117
Electricity............................. 100
Gas..................................... 100
Oil..................................... 0
Water rates............................. 32
Telephone (land line)................... 0
Mobile phone............................ 68
TV Licence.............................. 12
Satellite/Cable TV...................... 0
Internet Services....................... 10
Groceries etc. ......................... 150
Clothing................................ 10
Petrol/diesel........................... 120
Road tax................................ 10
Car Insurance........................... 31
Car maintenance (including MOT)......... 5
Car parking............................. 0
Other travel............................ 0
Childcare/nursery....................... 0
Other child related expenses............ 0
Medical (prescriptions, dentist etc).... 0
Pet insurance/vet bills................. 0
Buildings insurance..................... 6
Contents insurance...................... 6
Life assurance ......................... 10
Other insurance......................... 0
Presents (birthday, christmas etc)...... 10
Haircuts................................ 0
Entertainment........................... 35
Holiday................................. 0
Emergency fund.......................... 0
Total monthly expenses.................. 1412

Assets
Cash.................................... 0
House value (Gross)..................... 102000
Shares and bonds........................ 0
Car(s).................................. 1500
Other assets............................ 0
Total Assets............................ 103500

Secured & HP Debts
Description....................Debt......Monthly...APR
Mortgage...................... 42000....(250)......0
Total secured & HP debts...... 42000.....-.........-
Unsecured Debts
Description....................Debt......Monthly...APR
Mint...........................5200......112.......0
Amex...........................3000......90........0
Egg............................2250......80........0
Overdraft......................750.......250.......0
Loan 2 ........................0.........147.......0
Loan 1.........................0.........291.......0
Total unsecured debts..........11200.....970.......-

Monthly Budget Summary
Total monthly income.................... 2,460
Expenses (including HP & secured debts). 1,412
Available for debt repayments........... 1,048
Monthly UNsecured debt repayments....... 970
Amount left after debt repayments....... 78
Personal Balance Sheet Summary
Total assets (things you own)........... 103,500
Total HP & Secured debt................. -42,000
Total Unsecured debt.................... -11,200
Net Assets.............................. 50,300
Created using the SOA calculator at www.makesenseofcards.com.
Reproduced on Moneysavingexpert with permission, using IE browser.


And there it is- I know no diary is complete without a SOA. I've included clothes and haircuts but I tend not to spend anything on haircuts- very occasionally my OH will have a £10 haircut, perhaps 3 times a year?!

The figures will look healthier come August- my OD is being withdrawn then and so it needs £250 per month to bring it down. The payments we make on Egg and Amex are above the minimum- they're the set amount we send them each month. Loans are the killer- but the first (smaller) one finishes in Feb :j Can't wait!

shell_girl

I haven't got figures handy for the APR's on the cards or the exact amount outstanding on the loans- Bad Shellgirl <slaps self on wrist> emoticon...
I know the figures we pay each month are correct though... they're etched on my soul :rolleyes:

kissjenn

Hi, silly question time.

Do you rent out the house if you're living 200 miles away? That could pay off a significant chunk of you cards each month while you're working away.

Once you've done that for a year or two re-assess. If you're never going home then the house will have increased in value and will act as a deposit for a new home where you're now living. If you do go home you've a house waiting. If it goes wrong where you are now in the interim, you have a house you can easily claim back and live in so no danger of being homeless.

Seems a possible solution if you can separate head and heart (never easy).

shell_girl

Hi KJ thanks for reading. The £200 we've got coming in is from a mate who rents out a room from us- we do it at that price because he looks after my animals etc during the week... and doesn't mind that the house is very much an 'ongoing project' :rotfl:

We've discussed renting out the whole house, or renting out our bedroom, but at the moment it's a bit too much of a wrench. We are planning to start going home alternate weekends instead of every weekend to save some cash, and tbh we love going back to our house. It's not much but it's ours lol. We like having it as a base (as it's close to family and friends) down here we only really know eachother and our work colleagues. But once we're a bit more secure down here, and if our mate ever decides to move out, then we would probably have to look at renting the whole thing out. Can't wait to see the look on our mams faces when we say we need to be put up on alternate weekends!!:eek:

shell_girl

Yesterday was a reasonably good day- total spend £5 on diesel to make sure I could get into work today and Monday. It's gonna be an interesting weekend. The new £300 cash budget plan kicks in on Tuesday when I get paid. From Tuesday it's gonna be a meal plannin' batch cookin' moneysavin' frenzy in our little flat. Until Tuesday we just need to survive on the £12 I have in my purse. Going to be a fun weekend!!
I have mince, frozen lamb, frozen fish and a couple of frozen pizzas in, so if I pick up some veg and bread tonight we won't starve.
This could be my first wine- free weekend in about five years :eek:
Confession time... I smoke I've switched to roll ups and spend about £6 or £7 per week. One day I will give up, but an entire weekend with no wine and no money isn't the sort of incentive that's going to help I'm afraid. So £3 of the £12 will be going on tobacco. I'm honest if nothing else :rotfl:

Luckily OH and I are entertained quite cheaply- we're fans of online gaming so we won't be climbing the walls with nothing to do in our new frugal lifestyle. The online gaming costs us approx £10 per month and comes from our entertainment money in the SOA. For that we play at least four nights a week, and have a really good laugh. It sounds very sad I know, but we do it together and class it as a 'shared interest'. Apparently couples need those... and I suppose it's cheaper than having a shared interest in going out and getting lashed which was all we did when we first got together (and I wonder where the debt came from...:rolleyes:).

I've just realised I've described our plan as our 'new' frugal lifestyle... not sure how new it is as we seem to have been skint forever! I think the changes we're making will mean that we're not so much feast or famine, and that it will be a controlled budget rather than a blind panic. Hmmm- we'll see...

shell_girl

Ok went to Lidl on the way home and topped up the food- spent £4, so not bad at all. Can easy do enough meals until Tuesday on that. Feel strangely daunted by a weekend not drinking... which is probably a whole other problem

Looking forward to Tuesday and not just cos it's payday... looking forward to finally starting to feel in control again, and seeing if we can make our budget stretch. I'll be going to the cashpoint and withdrawing £300- then neither of us will be touching our cards again until I get paid in July, when I'll do the same again. We worked out that OH's DD's pretty much equal his wages, so we need to not use his account at all. When he gets overtime, which is pretty regular, the extra can go towards savings. Probably should be looking at overpaying more, but to be honest one of the reasons our debt hasn't shifted that much is it seems that every time we clear a few hundred off the cards, the car decides to need something doing, or some other disaster happens. If we build up a few hundred in savings then it's rainy day money, and once it reaches above, say, £400, any extra can go on an overpayment.

I'm predicting that the £300 will go the following way...
£25 each on 'allowance' money that we can spend however we want.
Approx £100 on petrol- but will try and keep this to a minimum- no unnecessary journeys and only two trips home instead of four.
Approx £120 on food- if I can't feed two of us on £30 a week then I shouldn't be anywhere near these boards lol.
£30 'room' for extras, eg cleaning stuff (will have to start buying bloody star drops I know!!) and toiletries etc that we need during the month.

We've agreed to keep a record of every penny of the £300, and hold onto receipts so that at the end of the month the pennies left and receipts should add up to exactly £300. If I find an IOU in there from OH I'll kill him

Enough rambling for now, off to make a cottage pie that'll do tea and hopefully lunch tomorrow.

shell_girl

Well- made quite an odd cottage pie in that I chucked all the veggies that were languishing in the bottom of the fridge into it. Was supposed to do lunch today as well... but OH wanted seconds so have frozen the little bit that was left to take to work on monday for lunch.

Ended up going to bed really early- if I'd been drinking would've probably been up most of the night so it's quite nice to be awake on a sat morning with no hangover

Plan for today - spend nothing!!
Try and find out about free scratchcards... I've read about them on Hypno's diary so I'm going to investigate that some more
If I stay up late enough tonight, play through OH's bonus money on a certain bingo site that sounds like a one eyed blink... or just buy tickets in advance...
Clean the flat
Stick to the meal plan - despite OH's appetite lol... have said he can eat unlimited 10p noodles if he doesn't think I'm feeding him enough lol.

shell_girl

Doing quite well making the money stretch- good practice for the future. My mum is coming to stay with us for a few nights as she'll be working here for a few days:j can't wait to see her. One brilliant thing as well is that as she's not staying in a hotel her employers give her an allowance to spend on the person putting her up, so she's said she's going to buy our food for this week from it :j which puts us ahead on our budget already woohoo. Lucky really, as we've just realised we're committed to being at home for 3 of the next 4 weekends, so the petrol budget will be seriously squeezed.

I'm going away for ten days at the end of July- whic is coming up alarmingly quickly. It hasn't cost me anything as I'm doing support work (how MSE is that- bagging a holiday) but I do need to take basic spends. Food and drink is included but I don't want to be in foreign countries withno cash... so will have a rejig of the budget a bit closer the time. I will not be buying new clothes to wear- I will beg borrow and steal from my friends. It's quite a posh holiday- I'll be expected to 'dress for dinner' etc, but I will make do with what's in my wardrobe already. And I'm sure I've got enough suncream lying around the house to manage... if not I'll beg borrow and steal that also!! Hope everyone is having a good weekend and not spending too much:T