Cowabunga

Turtle_Power

Hi all. I've been lurking around here for a while and thought that I'd finally start my own little diary to give me motivation to really knuckle down and control my spending. I've been trying to do it alone, but I seem to have a devil on my shoulder lately that's always saying "ooh, isn't that shiny? We need one of those..." So I thought I'd come on here and make note of my spending where I could get told off if I let the 'devil' do naughty things? If you all don't mind, that is?

A bit about me...I'm twenty-*coughcough*...and a full time student, so my income and current earning potential are limited at the moment. I work 3 jobs, one of which I get paid for but the other two are voluntary as I need for experience for potential career. I have no current debts (other than my student loan) as I paid off my last stupendous credit card in May and cancelled it. I swore I would not get back into debt again, but the last few months I have noticed an increase in my spending that I don't think was entirely down to Christmas.

Income:
I work part-time in an hotel, had a lot of hours over the summer, but my hours are limited lately so I'm only earning about £30pw which doesn't really cover my weekly expenses so I MUST cut down my daily expenditure, otherwise I'll end up deep into the overdraft sooner rather than later.

Outgoings:
This isn't all bad, however. I go to a local uni so I still live with my mum and pay her a token "rent/board" each week (£20), as well as half of the grocery shopping (which I budget, plan and buy every week as I'm the main cook...no more than £30 ever) and the Cable/Internet bill every month (£30).
I also have a cheap car I share with my OH; we pay the insurance and tax upfront at the start of the year (I'm currently covered until August and October respectively) as it works out cheaper. Petrol is usually about £10-20pw, depending on usage which again is split.


I've decided that today is the day to do something about this as my student loan came through this morning and once the overdraft was cleared, I have only £400 in my bank left until April. I leave uni in May and would like to have a bit of money set aside so I can put down a deposit on a place of my own and maybe buy a bit of furniture. It's also to cushion me after leaving uni, as I don't know when/if I'll be able to get a job after I leave the way things currently are I thought £3000

The good news is that when I cleared my credit card, I started a savings account before things all went wrong again that I haven't touched There's currently £1609.62 in there, and I was hoping (though it probably won't be possible) to reach £3000 by 31/05/2010. I would also like to still be out of my overdraft when I leave university as it's currently interest free, but that will soon end and incur high charges, methinks.

I think it's time to begin a spending diary and plan for NSD's to reign myself in a little. I think 1 a week would be a start for now but I'll obviously try for more.

Oh! That was a long one, sorry for waffling on to anybody who made it to the end...thanks

I'm off to make a signature...only £1390.38 to go

Turtle

Midnight_Skye

Hi Turtle...good luck with your diary. I too have one of those devils that hangs around whispering in my ear about shiny things so I can totally relate to that.

You seem to be pretty motivated and I'm well impressed that you've been able to save over £1600, and yes, there's lots of ways you can make extra money. Have you tried selling stuff on ebay, amazon and all the rest? The good thing about these devils sitting on your shoulder is that you're bound to have lots of unwanted stuff that can be turned back into cash.:rotfl:

Best of luck. I'm going to subscribe to your diary and I look forward to following it.

Midnight x

taxi73

Hi and welcome..waking upto these things before you get into big debt is good so well done you.
If you have a look around the boards there is a thread called up your income that may give you some useful ideas.Also the £10 a day challenge ususally has stuff like that on it.
People mystery shop/do surveys etc etc.

Turtle_Power

Thanks Midnight & Taxi73 for replying... Midnight you're right, I do have a few things that I could get rid of via ebay/amazon; I'll have to see about borrowing OH's digital camera and getting things listed soon for the extra income.

Thanks for poining me towards the up your income boards too Taxi, I'll have to have a good look there later. I don't really have the time to fit in things like mystery shopping at the moment, but I have signed up to yougov and have recently used Quidco to renew H&C insurance so that should be a nice chunk of cashback soon :T

Update on the spending...I've been grocery shopping today and the total came in at £28.20 for the week. Bit high, I think, but it did include a lot of cleaning products and some stationery I need for uni. Hopefully the rest of the day will be a no spend day as I've got an assignment I need to write so should be confined to my desk until bed time :A

Turtle.

Turtle_Power

Forgot to add earlier that I got paid today (I get paid weekly). I got paid more than I expected, which was good. Then I got told that I don't have any shifts this week so won't get paid for at least another two weeks :mad:

I have, roughly, £100 in cash on me at the moment and I think I'm going to see if I can budget this and not resort to using my debit card at all in the next two weeks. This will be quite a challenge for me, especially as £40 of that £100 will be for my 'rent' and another £30 (max) will be for groceries. Petrol in the car is also running fairly low....oh dear. I think I'll have to get my walking shoes on to save money.

I think I'll also have to remove temptation and hand over the £70 in one go tomorrow to my Mum...after all I can't spend what I don't have, right?

Turtle

Turtle_Power

Just thought I'd update to state that yesterday I had my first NSD since starting this diary :j

Unfortunately, I was running late this morning for Uni and didn't get time to make my lunch so today's plan for a NSD has been ruined by me spending £4.39 in the university cafe on a sandwich and a drink.

I really don't feel all that motivated at the moment and think I need more targets to spur me on with my money saving plan. At the moment I need £1390.38 before 31st May to reach my own target for my moving house fund but I think I need smaller targets to reach that amount to keep myself motivated. The only upside since starting this diary, is that I haven't particularly felt the need to go out and buy anything so I'm getting (slightly) better.

I've been having a look around some other people's diaries, particularly the amazing Dinah93's diary (been [STRIKE]stalking[/STRIKE] lurking around there since part 2, but too scared to join in ). I like her idea of having "medals" as ways to mark achievement, so thought I may take the idea and modify it a little. I'm going to set myself a target of reaching Bronze, Silver, and Gold medals to help me towards my target date.

Bronze = £2000 saved, which should be easily achieved, I think
Silver = £3000 saved, which I think will be quite difficult for me esp. with my erratic income
Gold = Managing to stay out of my overdraft from now until 31st May!

Hopefully I'll be able to attain each of these "medals" with a bit of hard work, but I've been constantly in and out of my overdraft in the past 3 years so Gold will prove the hardest medal to achieve. I'll have to think of a suitable reward system (MSE style, naturally) for when I reach each target. Any suggestions?

On the brightside, I got an email today from Ebay saying this Sunday is a free listing day, so I can get my [STRIKE]clutter[/STRIKE] valuable precious items listed then :rotfl:

Toodles for now,
Turtle.

Turtle_Power

Pleased to update that yesterday I had my 2nd NSD since starting this diary :j Have my lunch all prepared at home for free and spent most of the day studying so no need to spend.

Also spent a couple of hours yesterday creating a beautiful excel spreadsheet of all of my expected incomings/outgoings for the next six months, so I can track how much money I'll (hopefully) have at any one point so I'll be able to avoid my overdraft, in theory. So long as I don't buy too many unnecessary things of course.

I also took pictures of my stuff with OH's borrowed digital camera so I can get it all on Ebay tomorrow for their free listing day. I've also borrowed the DVD boxset of a TV series from a friend that I was (pre MSE) planning on buying so that's another £30 that I've (sort of) saved myself. I might go and transfer the money I would have spent on it into my savings account...my spreadsheet tells me this won't send me into my overdraft

Turtle_Power

Oh dear, I appear to be slipping at this already. I've had a really busy week this week...spent most of the week with my head buried in books trying to catch up with assignments that I'm falling behind with courtesy of the three jobs and real life constantly interrupting me.

I forgot to list my stuff on Ebay on Sunday as I spent the day with a friend who's Mum has (suddenly) recently died so I wasn't really thinking about Ebay much. On the same day as the funeral this week, I also found out that an Aunt of mine died that day, also really suddenly. They were both only in their early 40's...I really hope this isn't one of those things that come in threes

Anyway, on the money-saving front I went and did the weekly shopping again on Monday which came to a grand total of £14.14 courtesy of meal planning and strict budgeting on my part. Unfortunately the petrol light came on in the car so all of my good work was undone by a £25 petrol spend. I also transferred £25 into my savings account on Monday so I'm closer to my £3000 target and still not in my overdraft. I also still have £10 cash on me to last until Monday which should be manageable I think, especially as my Mother promised to pay me back £10 on Saturday that I loaned her just after New Year (and promptly forgot about) so bonus money :cool:

Thanks to being desk-bound most of the week, I can report that Sunday, Tuesday, and Wednesday were NSD's which now brings my total to 5 :j

Turtle_Power

Well I must make a confession today. A friend I haven't seen for months called me yesterday and we went out to catch up. We ended up going out for food, then watched a film together and I actually had a really good night, barely stopped laughing for 6 hours. The downside is that I added up my spends at the end of the night and it came to £18.74. Oh dear. Now I don't really have any cash left on me to last until monday so I may need to make a cash machine withdrawal...something I haven't done since 22nd October, according to my online banking

I did show a tiny bit of restraint at the last minute yesterday though when we went into a shop and I was going to buy three DVD's for £10...I was on my way to the till when I thought "What am I doing? Do I really need these? No." And put them back on the shelf.

I only wish I had the same restraint when it comes to chocolate, I think I ate my body weight in the stuff last night :EasterBun

Turtle_Power

Well I had a good weekend...quite productive in terms of Uni work that I managed to get done; also went shopping for a birthday card and gift for OH's mum and managed to pay for it from money I had on me/money I was owed so I still haven't withdrawn any money from the cash point.

Friday was also a NSD so another of those to add to the tally...I'm still only making baby steps but I don't feel as though I'm doing too badly. I was far more motivated this time last year when I had the credit card to clear...I had cleared a balance of £2000+ in less than six months when in debt and the same income...why can't I tackle savings with this kind of gusto? I suppose I should at least think it's something that I'm not planning on what to buy with what I have saved? :think:

Turtle_Power

Had a good day today. Went food shopping today and managed to keep the shopping under budget again for the second week in a row...came to a grand total of £20.23 for two of us and I have a full list of meals for the week.

I also got paid today and got slightly more than I thought I was going to get...enough to cover my parking today at Uni anyway. I'm a little miffed that I was running late so my usual "free" parking space was already parked in...which resulted in me parking in the town centre multi-storey twenty minutes away from the uni and being even later, but hey-hum.

Have transferred another £25 to the savings today too