Money-saving musings...

La_escocesa

Well hello there :wave:

I’m trying to keep my head clear and writing it down helps me muchly so here I am starting a diary. Hopefully it’ll help keep me on track and make it easier for me to see my own progress.

I’ve currently got about £2.6k on a credit card, which I’m hoping to clear by April next year (at the latest!). It was around £4k in Jan this year and I also had a massivo overdraft so I’m pleased with my progress so far. After I clear eggy weggy (Egg Card) I’m going to tackle the mortgage but to be honest, I can’t really think about that just now – makes my head hurt! (I got a NR Together mortgage in ’07 so the next big milestone will be clearing the unsecured loan of around £8k that went along with that…fun fun fun…) I also have another credit card, which I use as a spending card and clear over 1 or 2 paydays IYSWIM – wait till my bill is generated for one month, buy something, clear half of it on payday1, payment clears before next bill is generated…next bill is generated, pay the rest off at payday2.


Since the beginning of the year I’ve been getting more money-conscious and keeping myself focussed by:

• posting on the small things thread
• doing the save on work lunches challenge every month :money:
• making PADs to eggy weggy :money:
• meal planning :cool:
• trying desperately to keep up with the flylady thread
• keeping a spending diary :eek:
• trying to get as many NSDs as I can under my belt and generally being more conscious of when I ‘need’ things
• trying to keep up with my Debt-Free ASAP pledges :A

The other things I’ve done/am doing are:

• gave up my car
• selling things on ebay/Amazon
• not buying books – have got so many I still need to read and end up getting more for Christmas and birthdays every year. I also joined bookcrossing.com yesterday.
• saving my pennies for meals out with OH
• using Tesco vouchers for meals/days out
• using Pigsback, quidco, doing surveys etc.
• I also get retail vouchers through a salary sacrifice scheme at work, which helps me out with pressies and clothes shopping

I wish I’d become this money-conscious when I left uni and started earning six years ago but hey ho, at least I noticed before it got too out of hand. Onwards and upwards, as they say.

I’ve got extra motivation this year because I’m getting married in October so more than likely I’ll be wittering on about wedding planning bits and bobs too!

Woohoo, happy new diary to me!

La escocesa

jwil

Well done on your shiny new diary la escocesa!

You've done really well to get on top of things before they get out of hand, and for clearing what you've done so far.

I can relate to your book problem, I currently have 6 tall bookcases double stacked, and a pile of books on the floor in front of them. I'm lucky in that my DH sometimes brings them home for me from work, but I do have an unfortunate car boot sale habit where I can't resist the books! I do sell once I've read them, but the TBR pile is growing faster than I can read them

Good luck with the wedding plans, it's very exciting and stressful!

La_escocesa

Cheers j! :beer:

Just saw you PAD total already! That's so great! I've not kept track of mine. Originally said £2.50 for every working day that I take my lunch so it works out about £40 - £50 a month I guess. It's all the small things!

Wedding planning is on hold til payday at least We're lucky that we're getting help from both our parents but still scary how quickly money goes when you mention the wedding word! All good fun though.

La_escocesa

Really struggling with the NSD challenge. First time I’m really trying it this month, but don’t know if it’s for me… There always seems to be something cropping up and then once I spend something I think “oh well, that’s me blown it; may as well spend a bit more!” Arghh. Looking at my calendar for June I spotted the following days as potential NSDs so that’d give me 17 this month in total (aiming for 16 so 1 to play with…). I think this is the extreme list but lets see how I get on…

Sun 6th
Tues 8th
Weds 9th
Thurs 10th
Sat 12th
Sun 13th Paid hotel from joint a/c, no personal spends...
Mon 14th
Tues 15th Another collection at work...
Weds 16th
Thurs 17th
Fri 18th
Sat 19th
Sun 20th
Mon 21st £5 sponsorship for someone from work. Can't begrudge it - it's for cancer research - but had to take another £10 out the bank...
Tues 22nd
Weds 23rd Just some stamps that I'll get reimbursed
Thurs 24th
Friday 25th Lots of things to buy for the weekend away
Sat 26th At a wedding
Sun 27th Probably not but we'll see...
Mon 28th Leaving do after work
Tues 29th That's the plan, anyway...
Weds 30th Day 15 (hopefully)

The spends I include are only personal spends, no household spends – they’re from the joint a/c with OH and are budgeted for separately. That makes it even easier, right?! This has gotta be the start of a new regime. I must I must I must. I won’t try the same full-on NSDness next month but I felt like I had to kickstart it like this to stop my crazy spending patterns!


Potential triggers are:

• Meeting OH for a coffee – joint a/c spend?!
• Buying toiletries – Lush is my vice! Must keep my eye on the £5 beauty thread and only buy when I run out, not just when I want to try something new…
• Spends that crop up at work – world cup sweepstake, charity days/donations, collections for someone for something or other…Don’t really see a way of getting out of this one unfortunately

Looking at my diary for this month there aren’t that many spends coming up, but the ones that are coming up are biggies – 2 weddings with ‘spensive hotel stays. Travel is already covered so at least that’s out of the way, pressies are bought and outfits are sorted – bridesmaid for one and something from my spring-summer ’04 collection for the other – I knew that ‘timeless’ dress would come in handy

La_escocesa

• Books – text books, dictionaries & grammar books
• CDs – but don’t really get a lot for those…
• Clothes – jeans that don’t fit me (is there any point thinking I will get back into them?!), dress for work I’ve not worn since I started here (bought it for old job), scarves (have far too many), old jackets
• Shoes – shall check but know I don’t wear them all
• DS games
• Old mp3 player (does it even work?!)

La_escocesa

• Selling loadsa stuff!
• Surveys
• [STRIKE]Mystery shopping, but don’t know if it’s worth the hassle[/STRIKE] not worth the hassle
• Changing the foreign currency I have lying around into useful GBPs!
• Pigsback clicks for vouchers for pressies
• Using Quidco

La_escocesa

• Races w/e away – trains booked, staying with friends [STRIKE]and think I’ll wear something I’ve already got[/STRIKE] oops! Did get a dress with 50% off...
• Dad’s birthday – 3 paydays till then – Will start putting away £30 a month – that’ll be plenty for a pressie and travel to see him
• Wedding & Honeymoon! Need to pay off the honeymoon in August but our gift list is vouchers so hopefully it’ll even itself out iyswim
• Christmas :eek: – vouchers from work and Pigsback will help me out – just need to sort out how much I’ve got for everyone. I guess if I’ve been putting around £200 toward the wedding every month then I can put the same away in Oct/Nov and that should more than cover it
• Known 2011 spends so far – 2 x weddings, lots of friends’ 30ths, yoga teacher training and selling the flat!
• Known 2012 spends so far - trip to SA!!

:eek: :eek:

La_escocesa

La_escocesa wrote: »

• Selling loadsa stuff!
• Surveys
• Mystery shopping, but don’t know if it’s worth the hassle
• Changing the foreign currency I have lying around into useful GBPs!
• Pigsback clicks for vouchers for pressies
• Using Quidco

• still no ebay bids on my shoes...
• 10p on surveys
• no MS available
• £43 in foreign currency
• 75 pigpoints or a free ariel sample...couldn't quite figure out what I was clicking for!

jwil

Well done on what you've been doing! You might find with your ebay stuff that you don't get bids until the last minute, so fingers crossed!

I've decided that my PAD total will include normal payments as well as overpayments, so that is why it is so high I thought about it before I did it, but I figured it would be a motivator for me, and also it would bring it home to me exactly how much I am spending on debt each month!

I've signed up for NSD this month for the first time, I was aiming for 10, but I think I am going to struggle with that! I'm still going to give it a shot though, as it does focus me a little bit more.

Have you tried Bingoport and Dooyoo? Bingoport takes some effort but I can usually get a £5 amazon voucher every fortnight if I'm lucky.

I've just started doing Dooyoo as well, but that seems to be a good way of getting vouchers or cash as well. I do loads of surveys too, and cash those in for amazon vouchers. You can just add them to your amazon account and use them whenever (they do have an expiry, but it's quite a long one and they don't last that long for me!)

La_escocesa

Uh thanks so much for all the ideas jwil!

I'll definitely have a look into those, esp if I can log onto those sites from work - give me something productive to do on my lunch breaks :T

La_escocesa

So, I pay my mortgage, money to household joint a/c, and a few personal direct debits/bills (mobile phone, yoga class, insurance). Out of my salary comes the usual gubbins: pension contribution, sharesave, GAYE and some salary sacrifice payments – additional holiday (honeymoon!) & discounted retail vouchers (all clothes and pressies). Everything else I have – around £800 a month – is mine and mine alone…but where does this go???

These days, it’s like this:

• £200 wedding expenses
• £400 to debts
• £200 ‘pocket money’

My pocket money can sometimes buy stuff for the wedding and any additional PADs to eggy weggy are from this, but on the whole I spend it as explained by my spending diary… Loads of travel, too much on toiletries, quite a bit on booze and quite enough on meals out…Shall report back with June's totals soon!