My start to getting out of debt

lynseydee

Been good and bad this month with my monthly spend. Yesterday bought a birthday card for my mum (was £2.50 but felt the other cheaper cards weren't as nice), feel bad I can't afford a present though and was naughty and used some of it to buy myself a sandwich as I hadn't made myself any lunch and didn't fancy one of my soups. Wouldn't have been so bad if the sandwich wasn't soggy so wasted £1.70 there.

lynzpower

You are thinking of 50 a week- is that for you alone?
we do about 25 a week, between 2 - and Purple princess adn black saturn do WAY better than me, so theres plenty of movement

lynseydee

Hi Lynzpower - that's £50.00 a week for 2. Thought it best to cut back gradually so as not to miss having the money to spend on buying for the sake of buying. Thought £100.00 was a good amount to aim for saving to begin with to see how we get on. Only going to take £50.00 out of the bank instead of the whole amount for the month. Told OH that if we only have £50.00 in my purse we won't be tempted to try and spend more than we have got. Will be going through the freezer and cupboards this weekend and see how many weeks meals I can do with what we have already got. That should help. Main trouble for me is that OH is very fussy with his food. Main things he doesn't do are fruit and veg so meal times can be hard to know what to cook for dinner.

lynzpower

I think its not a bad plan if your a baby steps kinda person. Im an all of nothing person so I started on 20 a week, which wasnt really possible, but 25 is fine.

He doenst eat ANY fruit or veg?? Nothing? Mind you, My OH would only eat cucumber when I met him ( and chips, but not sure they count :rolleyes:) now he will, purely cos if he doesnt he knows he is going to die ( has super high cholestrol) and he does enjoy it. I dont eat fruit at all ( aside from strawbs & rasperries, and apple in crumble) but we are quite heavy on the veg! Does he eat beans?

lynseydee

If you mean baked beans, then yes but only a couple of spoonfuls if he got his way and I didn't spoon a couple more on. He also does potatoes, actually loves potatoes so get to do jacket spuds, mash, chips and we even used to have potato bake until Homepride stopped doing their potato bakes. Haven't found another potato bake that is as nice so have stopped eating this.

Think it is best to cut down gradually until we (actually I mean me) get used to not buying things because they're on special offer or think we might eat it. Have found doing the meal plans really easy so hopefully it won't take too long to cut down on the shopping either.

lynseydee

After reading about putting things on ebay/Amazon I decided I would see what books I could put on Amazon. I read on the site that you can see roughly what other people are asking for the same books as you want to sell to see what kind of prices you can ask for. After looking for the title and author of my book I have managed to find every copy other than the copy I want to sell. My book has a different cover to the others and I even tried looking for it under the ISDN number as it suggests but it doesn't accept the number. I want to know what I might be doing wrong so I can rectify it and try and make some money from my books etc.

lynseydee

Yesterday was the start of trying not to spend more than £50.00 for the week on groceries. Unfortunately, we didn't do too well as we ended up spending £54.69. I did, however, manage to get a lot of items reduced including 3 x pack of 6 rolls for 10p and a pack of 12 rolls for 15p which can be put in the freezer and 1 big box of persil washing powder for £2.74 and 1 big box of aeriel for £4.16. Both boxes were half price and the persil is nearly the same price as the small box of washing powder I buy. Didn't buy anything that wasn't on my list apart from the reduced items so for me that is an achievement as I am prone to buying things just because they are on special offer regardless of whether we need them or not.

Have done my meal planner for the second week running and haven't found it difficult to do. Also I find it easier planning our dinners as now I know what to cook without getting home and thinking "what are we going to have for dinner tonight".

Hopefully better spending next week.

lynseydee

Have just spoken to Powergen as I wanted to be able to see if I could view our bills online. Whilst on the phone I said about if there was any chance our monthly payments could come down. She said about reducing it down to £55.00 per month but as we haven't had a proper winter with them I didn't want to risk our account owing them so have asked for it to be reduced down to £70.00. We decided we would then look at it again this time next year. I know £70.00 is still probably a lot of money but over the year that will be £100.00 to put towards one of the debts. I know it's not a lot but at the moment I'm just thinking every little helps whilst trying to adjust to this money saving.

lynseydee

Managed to get one of my credit cards cancelled yesterday. That's one down and two to go. Once I've paid off the small balance on my Egg card I will be cancelling that one too. That just leaves my 0% Halifax card which finishes in October so will be looking at getting another 0% in September. The balance left on my cc is £1,400.00 at the moment. Unfortunately I don't have any spare cash to throw at it at the moment as I am going to concentrate on my egg loan at the moment. Feels like I'm taking a step in the right direction despite having a debt of nearly £7,500.00 and that doesn't include our joint loan but hopefully if I budget better with our grocery shopping we have decided to throw any extra at that one and we should hopefully be able to get that paid off nine months early. Here's hoping.

Feels so much better putting everything down on paper so to speak even if my debts feel high. Saying what I am trying to do to bring them down feels like I'm achieving more than I am.

*Sparkle*_3

Well done!!