My SOA if anyone is feeling nosey and/or helpful!

david_hellier

frugallass wrote: »

Hi

I would consider cutting down the lottery spending to £1 a week, apart from that everything else looks reasonable (although it might be worth looking for quotes for cheaper insurance and power suppliers etc.)

Your OH spends £100 a month on fuel getting to the station? is it some distance away? or is it a thirsty car?

The concern is that the £451 at the end of the month is disappearing and a spending diary really is the way to go - you also need to prepare a budget for each week and stick to it.

Create a shopping list each week and stick to it - plan your meals if you can too.

Another way of using a spending diary is to allocate a weekly amount to yourself per week, from your budget after all essentials have been deducted. Using receipts, deduct as you spend through the week. Try to get to the end of the week leaving some over to carry forward to the next week. This has the effect of keeping your overdraft down and avoids overspend.

Katie-Kat-Kins

Ok so getting your OH on board is the crucial thing, I wouldn't just sugggest he reads this, you need to be more pro-active.

Use the demotivator tool to show him what you could buy if you stopped the lottery, or halved your car use or whatever. Show him what will happen if you don't make these changes (debt spiral).

Be quite tough about the fact that you need to either cut back or bring in more money so if he doesn't fancy cutting back he will have to either sell stuff or get a second job.

Then use challenges and "games" to make it fun, continue to allow some treats but M/S treats. If he is the techie type of guy get him working out things like the fuel economy of the car.

If he still isn't getting it you might need drastic tactics!!! Like hiding the car keys and his bank card!!!!

belfastgirl23

On the car front, it's worth seeing if you could make a tank of petrol do a month (depending on the size of your tank!). Ours takes about £50-£60 depending on the cost of petrol at any time and with a bit of care it will last the month, and that's city driving in an old and thirsty car. it does make you think twice about where you drive!

laura2481

Hi!

National Lottery........................ 20 :mad: we never win
Political Party Membership.............. 7

If you got rid of these two this amount over a year is £324. It would certainly chip away at your debt! What benefit do you get from paying £7 per month to the political party membership?

Petrol/diesel........................... 100 <--- OH drives to station

Definitely make OH do a bit of walking! It's good exercise too- tell him it's for his own benefit!

Water rates............................. 51

Seems a bit high... are you able to get a metre put in? or reduce DD?

just a few ideas.. I know they've mostly been covered before but I thought I'd chuck my twopenneth in..

oooh, and definitely do a spending diary if you don't know where that excess is going! Theres is a (free) online spending diary here. And it lets you do fancy stuff with pie charts to show what % of your spending goes on what...

How about finding a bunch of stuff to sell on ebay? (Pretty much everyone has always got stuff lying around they don't use that people will buy on ebay!) you could use the profits from that to chip away at your student overdraft, or a credit card or whatever!

laura2481

Just had a little play on the 'what's the cost' snowball calculator. If you pay £20 per month off of your flexi-loan it will take until Jan 2012 to clear it!! If you pay £27 per month that would clear it by April 2011 (better) and if you went nuts and upped it to £30 per month that would be Feb 2011 (I'm guessing a flexi loan lets you make over payments..) anyway it's amazing how such a small amount can save you months

Fire_Fox

PizzaLover wrote: »

You're right that the car isn't needed for work, but when I go back to university in September we'll need it to drop ds off at the childminders, as its not within walking distance and there's no public transport going that way unfortunately. We also use the car to visit family members, as none live very close to us. I guess if we were really really really desperate and had cut back on every other expense, the car would be one of the last things to go. I really can't imagine us living without a car (okay, I can imagine me living without a car, but not OH )

When back at university I use the train and get a discounted ticket, usually a monthly ticket that can be used at weekends too (as can Dh's). I'll try to investigate places we can go via train on the weekends as opposed to using the car.

Can't you cycle to the childminders? You could then cycle on to the station and lock it up there. You are talking about your OH like he is a a spoilt brat, and you are enabling this attitude. There are some great £1 bus and rail tickets for long distance journeys to see family on offer - work out the real annual cost of the car, divide by the number of times you visit family long-distance and I bet you will be horrified.

Tixy

I think with the handwashing/dishwasher thing if you rinse every item under a running tap after you have washed it in the bowl that can use a lot up, but if you wash every item and put them straight on the draining board, then when everything is washed you pour out the soapy water and half fill with tap water then you can rinse all the items in that half bowl full.

If you use a dishwasher only put it on when full rather than every night.

Also make sure you (and everyone) don't leave the tap running when you are cleaning your teeth or soaping your hands to wash them.

Alternatively have you checked there is no leak on you water meter? they give advice on how to check on this (basically turn everything off and watch to see if the dial is spinning on the meter).

frugallass

I've just recently abandoned the much loved dishwasher and vowed only to use it when we have visitors

It's amazing how much less electricity we have used (not sure about water but I am certain that's much less too)

Only problem is that my contact dermatitis has come back but it's nothing that the marigolds can't solve

laura2481

PizzaLover wrote: »

I sold something yesterday on ebay actually, it went for 1p :rotfl: so after postage I made a profit of about 12p i think well every little helps!

Quite right!
At an average of 12p profit you would need to sell 8333 items to clear your overdraft! You might not have much left in the house at that rate... :rotfl:

frugallass

you could cut your living room carpet up into squares for £1 each and claim that someone famous (Michael Jackson / Lembit Opik / Vanessa Feltz) once walked on it :rotfl: