the maccas Debt Free Diary - 20K to pay in 18 months

System

Hi the maccas, brilliant progress you have made. A fine example to us all. Lenny

themaccas

Thanks, yes we've just passed the 'paid off 25k mark' and that feels great I think when we see our debt total below 10K I'll cry! It's a real slog at the moment and we're budgeting very penny so different from the spendthrift days in New York last month:o

At the moment we are budgeting £150 per week and in the last 4 weeks we have gone over that 3/4 times. Our week goes from Sat - Fri and so far this week we have spent the following:

Petrol £10
Food £90.11
DVD's (2) and CD (1) £24
Cash £20

= £144.11 and we've still got 5 days to go!! I have £5 left in cash on me. Food was really high this week as it's half term but all the rubbishy foods - biscuits/crisps/squash are all value stuff we usually spend £50 per week so this week was a bit of a shock though we did buy a lot of special offer things (washing liquid etc ) so won't have to buy those big items for a while. I will have to buy petrol again this week though so we'll go overbudget again hopefully by no more than £20.

So I'm not sure if we should put our weekly budget up and be a bit more realistic?

themaccas

I've just read the my last post and although I have all my spending written on my whiteboard in the kitchen I've just given myself a good kick.

£24 unneccessary spending on cd's/dvd's
£20 cash (spent £17 of that) taking the family out for a crappy fastfood meal on saturday

No wonder we're never in budget with rubbish spending like this:mad:

Another thing DS wants to learn to drive for his birthday, should he or we pay for his provisional driving licence (£45)? He hasn't got a part time job to pay for it cos he's at boarding school but does have a very small amoun of savings. We have agreed to pay for lessons for his birthday - up to a set amount.

beanielou

Why dont you pay half each for the provisional?
You are doing well, when do you think you will be under £10,000 then?

hypno06

I think if I remember back that far, my Mum worked out how much the excess would be increased to by putting me on the car insurance, and she insisted that I had that amount put by, out of my own money in case I crashed the car!

I think that if you are paying for the lessons then it will do him no harm to pay the £45 - bit of a token payment but showing him that he has to take responsibility for the things he wants to do, but at the same time you are making allowances for the boarding school thing (which we also had - my sister was away at school so no opportunity to earn, whereas I was at school locally so could get a Sat job and paper round to earn the money to fund my insurance excess).

themaccas

Hopefully we'll be under 10K by the end of July although we still need to clear the last bit of the o/d.

As far as the prov. licence is concerned I think half and half is an excellent idea - we'll go wih that one.

Thanks

Verbatim

keep on keeping on themaccas!

It's a long slog and it sounds as if this is turning out to be a difficult week with half term. You're so nearly at the psychologically important sub £10k point. I hope it gives you a real boost once you're there.

themaccas

Just managed to pay a bit more off the O/D so now it's down to £583 from £2190. We have also paid another £630 off various debts and hopefully next week we'll be back on track to pay another £745 off the Sainsbury's cc. It feels ages since I last cleared a debt - September last year in fact and I really need the moral boost that gives right now.

taxi73

Hi there...wow....that magic number is so close....you are really doing well and proved the spending diary really does work..so no you don't have to up your budget...well done...

themaccas

Had a bit of a spending day yesterday. OH had his degree graduation day and it was a really great family day - beautiful weather. We resisted the urge to buy a small punnet of strawberries and cream for £2 each and champagne (well it was Cava really) for £12 a bottle but he did buy some official photos which were £40 and that was the cheapest selection, and another £60 on university souvenirs (tat). The ceremony finished a lot later thatn expected and on the way home we got a takeaway £13. So the day cost us £113, much more than we had budgeted for but he'll not have another day like that again and I was really proud of him.