Debt free in ten years-my new, more realistic challenge.

poohbear59

I went to town today with DB and didn't spend a single penny 6NSDs for me now.
We have had an accountants bill unpaid for a few of months but because we have been so careful for the last two weeks I have the money to pay it off. It isn't in my signature as I had forgotten about it.:o

We are working on decluttering too and I have listed some clothes on ebay. They have been listed in the past so it was easy to relist. I am wondering about selling music items e.g. badges, posters and LPs and singles. Not sure what I am saving them for and I am sure when I am gone my family won't want them. It is amazing what tat we have in our house when we start to look for things to recycle or sell.

HappyNow

Well that was interesting! I noticed you hadn't been on your diary for a couple of days so I stalked you to check you were OK, and that led me to the Flylady thread. Wow, I love it!! I'm going to put it on my 'visit every day' list and just maybe it will encourage me to declutter and clean. I think I'd actually heard the thread mentioned somewhere else but never got round to looking at it. What a great idea! Especially the bit about eating frogs because I am the WORST procrastinator.

poohbear59

Happy, my house has never been so clean, tidy and organised. I joined the fly ladies years ago and it is addictive too. Sometimes I have a break for a few months but standards slide and I have to go back. eating frogs is a great idea as it does make you focus on things that have been put off for months!

I have been for a much needed hair cut today, money for it came from my birthday and Christmas fund which has £50 every month going into it. I had only £50 in there as I used it to pay some much needed bills after Christmas.

Yesterday was my brother's birthday and he said he didn't want any fuss.

I made a chicken curry and a vegetable dahl. DS1 made some onion bahjis and we had a bottle of prosecco left over from Christmas. We had some blank greetings cards so I wrote one for him and his pressie from me was a phone call to his daughter in Oz using one of the codes on here. We had seven for dinner and as it was already in my plan cost nothing extra. I am proud of my frugal celebration and everyone enjoyed it too.

beanielou

Sounds a fab frugal celebration :j

poohbear59

I am reverting back to my original plan for greeting guests in the holiday cottage. I started well last year and made twink's hobnobs for the guests arrival. But recently, last four months, I have become lazy and DH has been going to thwe wholefood shop and buying biscuits at £2.50 a packet.

The new me has made a batch of biscuits for the family and a batch for ther cottage and saved some dough to freeze ready for next week. here is the recipe, they are scrummy http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?p=5392570#post5392570

HappyNow

Well done with the biccies. I read your post, looked at the recipe, and realised I don't have ANY of those ingredients apart from the sugar and hot water. Not even flour! I've started cooking meals from scratch now so I am building up my store cupboard stock, but I still buy biscuits. We've cut right back on them, and I now have a maximum spend of 50p per packet. Mr Happy really thinks I'm spoiling him because he much prefers plain (and co-incidentally cheap) biscuits to the fancy chocolate ones I used to buy! Different for you of course, you can't really present your guests with a 45p packet of Tesco Ginger Nuts!

poohbear59

HappyNow wrote: »

Well done with the biccies. I read your post, looked at the recipe, and realised I don't have ANY of those ingredients apart from the sugar and hot water. Not even flour! I've started cooking meals from scratch now so I am building up my store cupboard stock, but I still buy biscuits. We've cut right back on them, and I now have a maximum spend of 50p per packet. Mr Happy really thinks I'm spoiling him because he much prefers plain (and co-incidentally cheap) biscuits to the fancy chocolate ones I used to buy! Different for you of course, you can't really present your guests with a 45p packet of Tesco Ginger Nuts!

The thought of the ginger nuts made me laugh. I was a bit tight on time yesterday and the biscuits had only been out of the oven 5 minutes when the guests arrived. I took them round and they were still warm. They loved them. Except the mum who said her kids had never had home made biscuits and she hoped she would never have to make them. And now I may have started something

I might pop the recipe in later.

It has started me thinking that maybe I could make soup or something else simple and offer it to customers. Someone suggested I bake bread but my oven is so temperamental more of the bread I make ends up as fuel on the fire than is eaten.

poohbear59

The amount we owe has just gone up again as the three loans have added interest. It has gone down from the original amount owed but not much despite all the payments

I am going to chnage my signature to show the amount owed now so I can see it going down.

poohbear59

Today I am going to poach the carcass of the chicken we had yesterday and Sunday so I can make a tasty stew and lots of soup for the freezer. I bought a second hand freezer just after Christmas so I can make more meals in bulk and freeze the portions for days when I don't feel up to cooking. The men cook but they are all working now (the ones who live at home here are working). In the past if I felt I couldn't cook they may have gone and bought something from the co-op. If I can make savings on meals again it is more money to pay off debts.

I am also going to ask the joiners to price up the fitting of my three porch doors. We need to keep the draughts out of this house. If we are continuing to heat with wood. When I see how hard DH works on a weekend cutting and splitting wood it makes me want to keep the heat produced in the house. When we were using oil it was easy to flick a switch and not think of the wasted heat.

poohbear59

Today I am going to list lots of items on ebay, phone the bank re PPI payments and make a payment to the garage!!

I have been watching some old books selling on ebay and they were going for around £10. If I can get that for each of mine it could pay off a bit more of garage debt.

It is a bit disheartening as things are being paid off so slowly.