Nanny's "reigning in the spiralling debts" diary

Nanny.Ogg_3

Hi everyone,

I've just got to the end of the first week of supersaving, and noticed this forum. I've decided to jump in with both feet to give myself some accountability!!

Currently my debts stand as follows:
- £1000 Overdraft to halifax
- £ 480 Overdraft to Barclays
- £1300 debt to my boyfriend
- £1640 student debts to my mum

My ultimate goal is to have at least £1000 in my savings account as a rainy day fund, and to clear my overdraft.

I currently earn £1400/month, and have worked out that over the past year my expenditure has been £1800/month. Not good.

I've done a REALLY generous weekly budget, which gets my outgoings down to £1300/month. Each week I'm going to try to beat this, and I'm going to report on here how I do.

This week's report:

This week, to reduce my outgoings, I have

called Orange to reduce my mobile phone bill by £5/month

reduced my gas/electric by £13/month

applied for an evening job helping with the census (15 hours/week for three weeks at £8/hr + £40 bonus for finishing all weeks) (FINGERS CROSSED!!)

scouted round the house for loose coins and lost notes to put in my bank account. I'll do this in the week and let you know how much I reduce my bank account. I'm guessing I have about £200 in my coin jar.

Convinced my friends to pay £5 each a week to go for a curry round each other's houses, rather than spend approx £20 a week down the pub.

Normally on a "bills week" (ie. first week of the month, I am in a deficit of £205.

Overall, this week, I'm actually in credit against my earnings by £60, which I have put into my overdraft. Remember council tax hasn't come out, so on a normal "bills week" I'd be at -£90. That's still a LOT better than previous bills week, which was -£205 against my earnings

Will report in next Saturday to let you know how I've done for w/b 07/02/11! Wish me luck!

beanielou

Baby steps are good.
Keep posting!

ehallett

Sounds like you are making good progress already. Just keep looking around this site and I'm sure you will find some other ways to save some money.

Good luck

Emily xx

Nanny.Ogg_3

Thanks for the encouragement ehallett and beanielou. It means a lot

07/02/11 : Very small (well, long and rambling) mini update!!

Had a really good and really bad money day today. First, the bad : I finally managed to get on to do my self assessment tax return after being jerked around by Revenue + Customs (boo hiss!) and had to pay £60 tax. Looks like they're going to charge me for being late (£100!!!:mad:) but I'm going to fight it because its their fault. Will let you know how that one turns out. I'm not holding my breath!!

The good however was REALLY good. First I made £40 selling a "smartbox meal for two" on ebay. Its been sitting on my shelf for a year, I won it for filling in a review but I don't live close enough to any of the restaurants for it to be worth my while, so I'm happy with that. The other good news was that scrounging around for odd coins and forgotten notes netted me a cool £235!!! :eek:

The other thing that I'm really pleased with was that I've long thought I've been overpaying for Virgin. We need some of the services we have (broadband, phone) for the businesses, so that's non negotiable. I phoned up today quoting my friend who "has the same as me and pays £20 less" (who may or may not exist...:cool:), and got offered a £10/month discount *AND* a free upgrade to their top TV package, including a lot of juicy HD goodness. My boyfriend is currently worshipping the ground I walk on. :rotfl:

I'm also proud to announce that I found a way to stop myself buying rubbish when I went into town to put the £££ in the bank. Instead of driving to the closest car park to town (and paying through the nose for it), I parked in the bit-further-away "free for two hours" car park AND took the dog in with me so I couldn't go in the indoor shopping bit where all the good shops are. I'm pleased to announce it worked!!

The final thing I've done is that I've signed up for about 20 online survey sites. I'm a bit sceptical about them actually being profitable, but what's the worst that could happen??

Wow, that's a long mini update huh? Oh well, catch you all soon, and hope you have a great week!!

ehallett

Nanny.Ogg wrote: »

Thanks for the encouragement ehallett and beanielou. It means a lot

07/02/11 : Very small (well, long and rambling) mini update!!

Had a really good and really bad money day today. First, the bad : I finally managed to get on to do my self assessment tax return after being jerked around by Revenue + Customs (boo hiss!) and had to pay £60 tax. Looks like they're going to charge me for being late (£100!!!:mad:) but I'm going to fight it because its their fault. Will let you know how that one turns out. I'm not holding my breath!!

The good however was REALLY good. First I made £40 selling a "smartbox meal for two" on ebay. Its been sitting on my shelf for a year, I won it for filling in a review but I don't live close enough to any of the restaurants for it to be worth my while, so I'm happy with that. The other good news was that scrounging around for odd coins and forgotten notes netted me a cool £235!!! :eek:

The other thing that I'm really pleased with was that I've long thought I've been overpaying for Virgin. We need some of the services we have (broadband, phone) for the businesses, so that's non negotiable. I phoned up today quoting my friend who "has the same as me and pays £20 less" (who may or may not exist...:cool:), and got offered a £10/month discount *AND* a free upgrade to their top TV package, including a lot of juicy HD goodness. My boyfriend is currently worshipping the ground I walk on. :rotfl:

I'm also proud to announce that I found a way to stop myself buying rubbish when I went into town to put the £££ in the bank. Instead of driving to the closest car park to town (and paying through the nose for it), I parked in the bit-further-away "free for two hours" car park AND took the dog in with me so I couldn't go in the indoor shopping bit where all the good shops are. I'm pleased to announce it worked!!

The final thing I've done is that I've signed up for about 20 online survey sites. I'm a bit sceptical about them actually being profitable, but what's the worst that could happen??

Wow, that's a long mini update huh? Oh well, catch you all soon, and hope you have a great week!!

Wow!! Go you!! That sounds like excellent progress :T.

Good luck on fighting the charges for the £100. You stick to your guns .

Emily xx

Nanny.Ogg_3

Bloody dog had to go to the vets today, little sod cost me £60 for a few eye drops, ear medication, a wormer and a general check up. Not too impressed, but also had a surprise booking for £80 this week, so so far I've saved £260 this week!!! :T Will have to fill up the petrol tank, am going out tomorrow night and have uni on saturday, but going to try to keep all that under <£60. Will mean my overdraft gets down to around -£600, which I've not seen in a long long while.

Nanny.Ogg_3

Weekly Update: 13-02-11 :(:(

Wow, not a particularly good week this week, and I'm a bit bummed.

I did end the week spending £25 less than what I earned, which is something, but I had the following expenses come out which annihilated my budget completely:

- Dog to the vets £60
- National Insurance bill £58.25
- Car Tax £115 (not actually due til the end of the month, but thought I'd do it now to try to even out payments and get it away from the dreaded "bills week".

I also overspent on petrol by £5.

Feeling really rubbish about it now, but I guess £45 is better than a kick in the teeth.

So Overall:

Projected Spend: £262
Actual Spend: £402:mad:
Deficit: £140

Real Terms: £25 thrown at the overdraft this week.

Better luck next week I guess. I'm trying to look at the positives, I did save SOME money, and if I hadn't of had to pay all of those unexpected bills I would have saved LOADS of money. Still, its very disheartening.

BTW - Wish me luck tomorrow, I've got a phone interview for the census jobs thing!!

beanielou

Keep plodding & hope the phone interview goes well for you.

BEAT_THE_DEBT

Lovely thread i am enjoying it.x

ebayqueen_2

Hi there
really enjoying your posts. Hope all goes well with the interview.

Nanny.Ogg_3

Thanks very much Ebay Queen and Beat The Debt.

The interview went very well, although the interviewer seemed a bit weird and was asking way too much about dogs/animals rather than, well, interviewing me, but whatever. Apparently I should hear in 2-3 weeks.

Also, yay for a NO SPEND DAY! WE LIKEY!!