New to the frugal life

cat47 · 27 August 2010 at 6:19AM

Hi this is my first post. I finally admitted my debts were out of control last year and decided to take action. When I added up I was horrified to find I was £48,000 in debt. I had taken three years off work after my son was born and had been using credit to pay bills and then borrowed more to pay back the credit so the debts just snowballed! DON'T DO IT!. The worst part of all was telling my husband, who had no idea but although he was very angry he's still here and we're grinding through this together!. At first we looked into getting an IVA but [EMAIL="couldn@t"]couldn't[/EMAIL] do it because we've got equity in our home so we then got a DMP. This has been up and runniong now for six months and seems to be going smoothly. Problem is I still struggle to budget properly so I never have any spare money for one offs. This month has been a nightmare, kids off on holiday, new uniforms to buy (thank god for Tesco vouchers!) and no money for treats! I must do better because I need to save something up as my eldest stepson is getting married next year and we need to go to the wedding.

Two9A · 27 August 2010 at 6:26AM

It might be worth doing yourself a spending diary: writing down every last penny that goes on shopping and sundries. If you can see it all written down, you can work out what's "sundries" and what's needed.

Mind you, I haven't started one myself yet...