Debt free before baby.

sazzle81

Hi
Well like alot of people I'm going to start a diary as it's a new year and a new decade. I'm very much a novice about posting a diary or anything like that.
A little bit of background, am in debt from the usual suspects, uni, spending beyond my needs (I'm very impatient and always want things now!) and emergencies that always seem to crop up.
Roughly a year ago my boyfriend and I pooled our debts together and it was a hideous experience. We've managed to pay a little off but the balances just don't seem to be getting any smaller. We currently stand at
Tesco – 2200
Football – 915
Alliance – 2320
Mint - 2019
Virgin- 2800
so a grand total of
£10254

Before we pooled our debt I wasn't aware of how much debt my boyfriend was in (blaming male pride for that one) and so we ended up getting several loans to improve things around our house. Luckily, two of these end this month :T so I'm hoping this will help us to start making a dent in the rest.

We are getting married in August and are in the very lucky position of having great parents who are giving us most of the balance. We need to contribue roughly £2000. Which I'm ashamed to say we haven't even thought about yet.
I also don't want to be in debt before we start a family, hence the diary name. As a bare minimum that gives us 18 months to sort everything out.

I am in awe of the people taking part in the challenges such as £10k in a year etc. Unfortunately neither of our jobs pays overtime (I'm a teacher so overtime is just the norm!) and neither of us can get a second job (for me it is "discouraged" by the school governors and as we are yet again looking at redundancy don't want to upset them. My OH is oncall one day in 8 and works long hours as it is.)

So it looks as though we are going to have to do it by cutting back etc.
At present I am doing Pinecone, Dooyoo, Onepoll, Yougov and Pureprofile. I'm a little warey of these Bingo Britain and scratch card sites, although if anyone wants to convince me otherwise I'm open to suggestion! We are also doing 15 NSD a month and I am going to tackle my addiction to shiny magazines. I've currently not bought a wedding magazine in months so just the glossy monthlies to go now!
Unfortunately we don't have much left to ebay and Greenmetropolis has been very quiet recently.

If anyone has any ideas on how I could go about boosting my income, please let me know!
Not sure which is the best way to look at it. People on here seem to look at trying to make a certain amount a day or to have a debt free date. Not sure where to even start with this sort of thing! Will go and have a think about a selection of targets to try and make.

boredofbeingathome

I am a teacher too, and there are plenty of ways to boost your income.

Sign up for marking, and there is an opportunity for extra work through one to one teaching the details are on the tda website, as some of those are after school and at weekends.

Mystery shopping.

Don't buy any mags- look for free in library or use Tesco clubcard, or quidco for small subscriptions.
Be ruthless with your budget and see how you can maximise it for best effect.

I don't like the bingo sites and BB are now closing the loophole so is a good thing really.

Have a look on the snowball calculator at https://www.whatsthecost.com that will help motivate you it does me.
Err other ways, well you can sell the glossies on e bay, have a look and see what mags go for what prices.
Same goes for budgeting for wedding and flowers etc.

There are threads devoted to it on here. Someone bought their rings by maximising use of Tesco vouchers.
Martin's e mail also has a wedding feature too.

Good luck with your journey.

Bob x

sazzle81

Thanks for your advice Bob!
I've thought about SATs marking before but applied two years ago and was put off a little! I shall look again, likewise with the mystery shopping. I've just seen that I can get 2 years for the cost of 1 through NatMag which looks great and would be something to look forward to coming through the post for once!!

Having sat down with OH we are going to be ruthless with food shopping, we seem to be single handedly keeping Sainsburys going. We would shop at cheaper stores but we have none near to us and we can walk to Sainsburys. I cleaned our fridge out just before New Year and it was a disgrace the amount we threw out!
We've also thought about taking our budget for food shopping out of the joint account at the beginning of the month - I find it very easy to use the debit card on a daily basis!

Snowmoredebt

Hi Sazzle and good luck

I am getting married August 14th its getting close and we have £7000 to find lol

Can you do tutoring without informing the head or do you have to disclose. I have found some really useful tips on the wedding and anniversary thread.

LexieLou

Hi Sazzle81,

Happy New Year. I've started my diary too and it's actually really theraputic, in a very hard to describe way. My daughter gets tutored once a wk and the guy charges £30 per hr. Maybe you could do that with neighbours kids, most parents don't want anyone to know that their kids are being tutored.

I've started to sell items on ebay, at the min it's beauty products that friends have given me and I've never used.

I do like your diary title, I want more kids and want to be debt free too.

Catch up soon.

Lots of Love,

LL xx

boredofbeingathome

Hi Sazzle,

I have found it useful to have an inventory of cupboards and meal plan from that first of all.

I am ashamed to say that when i first started that- there were items in my cupboards which had very dubious dates on them..*cough*

Decide on your meals afterwards and then take a shopping list and just buy what you need. Oldstyle is great for meal ideas. I now bulk cook and put leftovers in freezer in a bid to get the bills down. I pre make and freeze sandwiches take them out in the morning and they are defrosted by lunch time.

So you have eight months until August, and you need to save £2000- which is roughly £250 a month. I bet with some ruthless cutting back you can easily do that.As it is £62.50 per week.

Why not set a goal to perhaps...to raise a third through budget, a third through ebaying etc and a third through MSE extras-such as your surveys, Mystery shopping etc.

Tutoring would easily bring in a third of that.

sazzle81

Wow!
Thanks for everyone and their support, it’s amazing how people spend the time to boost people on this forum!
I’ve tried tutoring before, went through a company and only ever got one job from it. The parents got charged £20 an hour of which I got £15. I think I’ll look at putting flyers etc in the local post office etc. Will have to look at tax and things though – not very business minded!!
So far have had a great start to the year. Ebay things doing well with lots of watchers and have done a few dooyoo reviews. Yesterday only spent £1.00 and today has been a NSD, not had any surveys to fill in on Pureprofile or Onepoll and the Toluna and Valued Opinions ones I got an email for I didn’t meet the criteria. Hoping that they all pick up a bit once the New Year starts proper tomorrow.
Had lunch at future parents in law so unlikely we’ll need a big tea and haven’t done any food shopping yet. Although we’ll probably have to do it tomorrow.
Back to work tomorrow but thinking of busing it as doesn’t look like I’ll get the car off the estate! Luckily it’s just a training day so won’t have anything to carry or be in as early. Find it really annoying how much it costs in petrol to get to work but to get the bus to get in the time I need to it’s a 30 min walk then two buses, taking 2 and a half hours. :mad:

Snowmoredebt – we’re get married on August 6th, definitely not far away now. We’ve had it booked for 18 months now so it felt a little odd saying that we were getting married this year (trying to ignore the slightly embarrassing feeling that we should have tackled the savings before now! :rolleyes:)
LexieLou – I am finding it therapeutic as well, it also seems to be keeping me on track as well (fingers crossed it lasts)
Boredofbeingathome – thank you for your suggestion of splitting the targets into thirds. It makes it seem so much more realistic than giving a overarching raised £2k by August and much more doable! Liking the freezing of sandwiches. This may sound like a very very basic question but can you freeze cheese?
Thanks to everyone who has mentioned the various boards, this website is an absolute minefield!! Will be spending the rest of today checking them out. Ahem, sorry planning!

sazzle81

Hi everyone
like most people it was my first day back at work. Luckily it was a training day so eased in gently!
Decided due to the weather I would get the bus. It started off well with an invigorating 20 mins walk to the correct stop. From this point it all went downhill. Stood for 30 mins waiting for a bus and despite 3 layers of socks my toes felt like ice, then the heating on the bus wasn't working :mad:. Luckily I got the next bus quickly but it still took me 2 hours to get to work. Oh and cost me £5! Despite having a return ticket a colleague who I didn't think was in gave me a lift home
Made £2.20 from various opinion sites today which has been the best all holidays. Also logged onto internet banking and our last loan payment went out today which I'm over the moon about!

Plan for the rest of the evening

dooyoo review
MUST DO SOME PLANNING!!
big shop
investigate this daily click malarky
collapse in front of television
find some time to eat tea at some point.

Phew!

sazzle81

Ooops must add my petrol costs me just under £5 a day hence my shock at the cost of the bus!

sashybo

Hi Sazzle, sorry didn't realise you had your own diary.

I'm on Dooyoo as well, what name do you use there? I will look out for your reviews. I'm registered under mogdred - yes a weird name that I borrowed from my OH before realising it was actually a character's name in the kids programme Knightmare. Are you on ciao.co.uk as well? I cross post my reviews on both sites to make a bit more money.

The bus sounds a nightmare! I don't use them much anymore since I started driving and my OH refuses to set foot on one - he hates them cos they are apparently "dirty and full of chavs!" Well, I don't think they're that bad! :rolleyes: He's not judgemental...honest...:rotfl:

sazzle81

Hi Sashybo
I'm sazzle81 on dooyoo. Don't think I'm on the other one although I did sign up for loads a while ago. Still not entirely sure what's going on with them but learning slowly!! I'll look out for you on dooyou
Unfortunately I forgot to mention the hords of school kids whose secondary school was shut last minute and who got on the bus in a very celebratory mood. For most of my journey I think I would have agreed with your OH!!