Help us get tight!

ERICS_MUM

LeeSouthEast wrote: »

'tinkinering at the edges' can add up every month.

Pay £40 for Sky a month instead of £20 and you'll spend an extra £240 every year. Opt to get rid of it and go free to air/free view, you'll save £480 every year.

Do lots of tinkering with lots of edges, it's amazing how much money you really do waste. Starbucks a few times a week? At £3 a go, 3 times a week, that's £468/year as well. We've nearly 'saved' a grand and all we've done is get rid of Sky and stop buying coffee..

I agree. Cut out those 2/3 monthly glossy magazines that cost £3.50 a go, the Fri and Sat take-aways, the item of make up that you buy every week in Boots when you just pop in for aspirin etc.

EssexHebridean

Bottom line is though, you have to WANT to change your lifestyle.
You have to WANT to change your life - for the better I might add.
You have to WANT to not just paper over the cracks.

I have - ever since I got into trouble with a CC when I was 18 or so - always been pretty careful with credit cards. However, until just under two hyears ago going into overdraft each month was, to us, just what people did. This site, and these people, have changed our thinking on this - to the extent that this summer we bought OH a second hand car - paid cash for it, AND still had money in savings for emergencies. In two years time we will be replacing the other car with brand new, and that will be a cash purchase as well. Proud of ourselves? You bet. Good feeling? Yes, like nothing on earth. When I paid off the last car loan in 13 months rather than the 30 it should have taken, I felt - probably for the first time in my life - like a proper adult. It empowers you like nothing else - being able to feel that you have control of your finances and that whatever happens you will cope with it.

I hope you take the right decisions for you and your family - with the help of the folk on here you can get through this and come out stronger.