Starting my Journey

Ashamed_2

We've just made our last payment for £823 at our nursery.
We now get 15 hours free per week as per the childcare scheme so our futer payments are a much reduced £642.50.

Also I've just applied for childcare vouchers so that will save an additional £148 a month on tax and NI.

Just waiting to get Christmas out of the way and we will be battling hard on getting these debts reduced as much as possible.

pennywisepoundstupid

Fantastic about the childcare savings.

Ashamed_2

Yeah it's great news.

I'm trying to work out what other ways we can save money.
I think the biggest challenge for us is to get our food budget down a fair bit. We were spending about £600 a month on Food but are now down to about £400 which i thnk is still a little too much for 2 adults and one toddler.

How did you get your debt free date down by over a year !!! very well done. I'll have to catch up on your thread to learn your secrets.

Ashamed_2

Been reading a few diaries this morning and compared to mine they are so interesting.

I think mines more like a monthly update than a diary. It seems to me that we are just plodding along without trying to do something everyday to help become debt free.

I'm not sure which is the right way to do it?.

At present I'm doing a) but I thing a fair few people are doing b).

a) Make a plan and stick to it, record progress and aim for the debt free date.
b) Do something everyday to reduce spending to make the debt free date come closer.

I think if I tried to do b) I'd end up getting a divorce as I can get a little too obsessed with it all . So I think we'll have to find somewhere in the middle.

It's very quiet in the ofice today so if I get time I'll go over some milestones and see if I can get them down over the coming months.

Ashamed_2

Well that's interesting.

I've just gone over all the figures and entered the information into my very complex Spreadsheet (it's not that complex but I'm really happy with it ).

Funny thing is that although we did really bad a few months back and then this month we bought plane tickets and lots of christmas stuff. We come back with the same debt free date of October 2014 (added to signature).

The interesting thing is that I think that October 2014 is going to be the latest possible date that all our credit cards and loans will be paid off.

We are going to aim to pull this date forward as much as possible without getting too uncomfortable.

Happy Wife = Happy Life

Kepp

Hi Ash,

Think you definitely could do something with the food budget - we spend £100 a month for 2 adults.

Doing little things every day really does help - even if it's just firing an extra £1 payment off towards the debt or aiming for a NSD.

Well done on getting all the child care costs sorted! :T That should really help you out

Ashamed_2

£100 a month !!!!. How do you manage that ?. Is that including things like washing powder / toilet tissue, kitchen roll, dish washer tablets etc etc.

When I say monthly food budget, what I mean is what we spend in tesco / Asda or Sainsburys (not including petrol).

Ashamed_2

ok so I'm gonna crack this one.

I've registered with Tesco online. I've reviewed i.e. found the best priced brands and so far added the following to my basket:

Milk (2 x red 4 pts for the wife, 2 x green for me, 2 x blue for the daughter)
Eggs (24 x large)
Bread (2 x 400g loaf)
Yogurts (12 x muller crunch, 4 x weightwatchers, 12 x muller light)
Fruit (12 apples, 6 pears, 6 oranges, 12 satsumas, 5 bananas)

£35 so far and that's without any propper food. I really can't see how you guys are doing it. I'll crack on and try and add a whole months worth to the basket and see what I come up with.

Kepp

That includes all cleaning products loo roll etc - but doesn't include our takeaway money which is around £30 a month.

We will spend around £80 a month in Tesco then around £20 topping up milk and fresh bits as we go along.

We do it by checking the cupboards before we go and working out what we need to use up and plan meals around that. Adjust the plan slightly as you go round depending what's on special offer.

Cook most things from scratch - although that's not as bad as it sounds when you can knock out things like pasta sauces in the time the pasta boils!

Don't eat lots of meat as it's too expensive, maybe once or twice a week, but we do eat (reasonably!) healthily.

Have you checked out the OS board? They can do a healthy family of four for £100 a month, now that I couldn't do!!!

Kepp

Eggs - the mixed pack of 15 (still free range but not all the same size) is normally the cheapest!

How sad am I?!