I'm New!

Mrs_Jojo

You seem to be living within your means, so throwing the excess at the cards one at a time should pay off quickly - you could pretty much clear one a month with some of the smaller balances!

Think about interest rates too though, maybe throwing the excess at a high interest rate would work since you would feel the benefit as you would save interest....

However you choose to do it, well done and good luck!

barbarawright

polegirl23 wrote: »

Hi Barbara!

Our grocery shop genuinely does come to between £15 - £20 a week. I'm on a diet where my breakfast and lunch for 7 days costs less than £2 (box of cereal, 15g per meal!), my husband takes a box of pasta and sauce to work and that lasts him the day and a big bag of own brand pasta costs about £4 and lasts the month. In the evenings we live off things like scrambled egg on toast and jacket potato with beans. We sometimes buy 'value' mince to make spaghetti bolognaise and chilli's.

We buy value cleaning products (and to be completely honest, my husbands nan does tend to pick up a lot of these sort of things for us when she's shopping as she knows we are struggling, same for loo roll and kitchen roll).

The dogs have a big (15kg I think) bag of dry food that costs about £11 and lasts the month.

We haven't had take-aways or 'convienience food' for about 4 months as I've been dieting anyway!

The reason I know what we spend on groceries is because my husband gets paid weekly on a Friday and we got to Asda on Friday evenings and make sure we don't spend more than £20! The only extra I buy is a pint of milk on a Monday morning (58p) to take to work to last me the week for my cereal!

Wow! I am very impressed indeed :A

polegirl23

Hi Mrs Jojo

Thanks, I think we are living within our means now, it's just trying to sort out the backlog that is stressing me out!! The cards are all cut up now so aren't being used, it's just trying to sort out the balances already on them!!

When I get pregnant, I will get 6 months full pay, then can have 3 month half pay and 3 months no pay and I'd like to be able to have this full year off. However, unless we get rid of our debts (so no monthly payments on those) and reduce all other bills as much as possible, we will not be able to get by without my full income. That's whats prompted all this now!!

With my extra job and husbands overtime, I'm hoping we can get together about an extra £800 - £1200 a month so we can pay things back, I just want to work out the best strategy to get things paid back as quick as possible so we don't have to delay having a family andy more than necessary! I'm so broody so that's my motivation haha! Also I won't be able to do my second job when I fall pregnant so need to do as much as I can now!

From my SOA it shows a surpluss of £279 a month, however because we have been paying an extra £100 on mortgage to correct a backlog, and £103 a month to Sky (I know, it's ridiculous, we just let it get that bad without realising it!!) we haven't been seeing that much of a surplus and that's why things have felt tight!

I feel a bit better now because I know we can live with no spending money and no luxuries and it'll be worth it when the only debt we have is the mortgage!! I just wish I could fast forward through the next few months!!

polegirl23

barbarawright wrote: »

Wow! I am very impressed indeed :A

Thank you!!

I hope my post didn't sound defensive, I didn't mean it to! It's the diet that has reduced the grocery spend so drastically, before I statred watching what I was eating we used to spend a fortune on rubbish food - at least one, regularly two, take aways each weekend, frozen pizzas, expensive jars of stuff, fizzy drinks etc. We ate massive portions and would eat a meal for four between the two of us. Now if I make a chilli or bolognaise, half gets seperated off to be frozen before I even dish up. I decided in April that I wanted to lose weight and since then we've been able to spend so much less on food and I've lost 2 dress sizes so it's a good result all round haha!!

dancingfairy

How about a car boot/ebaying session to get you on your way?
When you know the apr's it might be worth phoning up some of the cheaper cards and seeing if they will do you any balanced transfer rates - so you can get rid of some of the more expensive cards - i'm guessing some of them have really high apr's.
Good luck
df

Verbatim

Sorry if I sound like your Mum BUT are you eating your 5 portions of fruit and veg each day? Probably quite important for your long term health and even more so if you'll be pregnant soon.
Well done on the 2 dress sizes though. Very good going if you've managed that on your own without the support of a slimming club.

pennypusher

Hi, just a few ideas for you - cut down on gas and elec as much as possible, don't use the tumble drier unless wet weather! You could cut your mobile phones down to payg and save on them. You could get rid of Sky. If you have two cars you could try and just use one or maybe buy one or two cheap ones instead to save you depreciation and free up some cash to pay off your debts, it depends how much you need them. I just thought I'd give you some different ways of looking at your expenses so you can choose whether you would rather work extra hours or maybe cut down on your current bills. Try and find out your APRs and pay off the ones with the highest APR first. Hope these ideas are useful.

polegirl23

Hi Verbatim - haha don't worry about sounding like my mum, she's asked me the same thing!! I tend to snack on cherry tomatoes and grapes, drink lots of freshly squeezed fruit juices and smoothies (love my juicer!), and I always have salad with my evening meal, whatever it is, I fill half my plate with salad or veg and the other half with whatever I'm eating, be in scrambled egg, chili etc (my parents grow their own veg so we get free tomatoes/lettuce/cucumber) I think in general I do get my 5 a day, I try to anyway! There prob are some days when I don't quite make 5 but I do my best!

Hi Pennypusher - Thanks for the advice, we could def look at cutting down on the gas and electric we use, we do seem to use a lot in a house with just the two of us! I think I need to change my habits around things like turning lights off etc, and persuade my husband to do the same! We don't have a tumble drier or dishwasher (we thought about it when we got our house but it meant giving up a cupboard and I didn't want to do that!)

I think we're a bit stuck with the mobile phones as our contracts only started in May, mine is £20 a month and husbands is £30 a month, however as we both get free minutes we could prob look at getting rid of the house phone, or at least changing it to incoming calls only, if that's possible.

With the cars, the car loan that we pay is actually for a car my husband doesn't own anymore, it was costing him too much to run, but he's still got to pay the loan until it finishes in January next year. Both the cars we have now are owned outright, mine is used by me every day for work, my husbands is a 'farming' style truck which we use mainly for the dogs - 2 of our dogs are large and wouldn't fit in my car! We had thought about just having one car but the car I use has to be kept 'nice' for work and his truck is always lined with dog hair and smells doggy so I would be in trouble at work if I started using that (I did once when my car was in the garage and my boss wasn't impressed!) I don't think it would be fair on the dogs to get rid of his car and not be able to take them anywhere that wasn't walking distance from our house.

I tried to phone the working tax credits people last night but their line was constantly busy so I will try again today.

Thank you for all your advice, it def gives me thigns to think about and I feel less scared than when I first posted!

InDeepDebt

OK, other places to look at savings - not big ones but every little helps.

Is your water on a meter? That said, £23 is quite low anyhow - we pay £34 for two adults and two children on a meter. If you are on a meter, look at ways of reducing water - we're about to replace our toilet from a 10 litre flush to a 3/6 litre flush. Should pay for itself in just over a year.

How much do you use your BG homecare? That seems very steep. What does it cover? £380 a year is a lot - I know it's peace of mind but a service on your boiler is about £50 and how often does it go wrong. Does it also cover appliance car and plumbing/drains care? If you live in an old (pre 1937??) house and have shared drains with neighbours, repairs are covered by the water board anyhow (usually).

I'm assuming that your landline includes broadband - or do you get that through SKY? Our phone, broadband and calls come to about the same as yours (through talktalk) but I'm looking at changing to PlusNet. Cheaper service £12 approx rental and £6.50 calls and broadband - only thing putting me off is that I need home broadband for work and, whilst talktalk aren't brill - don't want the service to get worse.

Obviously shop around for gas and electric. We do and also change - even simply changing tariff within the same company saved us about 20% six months back. Whilst on about gas, how old's your house and how well insulated? Keep looking through the papers (if you get them) or online for the usual DIY stores for loft insulation. B&Q, homebase and focus tend to have really good offers from time to time. I got some of the large four foot wide rolls from homebase for £4 a roll.

Jim

Marisco

Hi polegirl, must say I am well impressed with your grocery bill!! First thing I'd get rid of is Sky and get Freeview. We pay £24pm for the phone and internet which includes line rental, an internet phone which is free calls all the time, inc international calls, and home phone which is free evenings and weekends. I agree with you about the cars though - there is nothing worse than the smell of wet dog and hairs all over your work clothes!!!:eek: