Debt free the Fly lady way - anyone?

Tondella

If you are anything like me then you might find that the food and spending journals converge!

Don't worry about getting a fancy new diary for your spending, just start writing it on scrap paper, the important thing is to start doing it every time you spend - we can work on organising it all together later.

moozie_2

Hey Tondella

I think this is a wonderful idea :T I've always been intrigued by the Fly lady concept over on the OS but never been brave enough to join in.

I'll watch this one with interest at the moment and hope everyone does really well. For what it's worth, I think a spending diary is an excellent start! :T

katierose

Hi,Do you write just the amount you spend or each individual item.

Tondella

moozie wrote:

Hey Tondella

I think this is a wonderful idea :T I've always been intrigued by the Fly lady concept over on the OS but never been brave enough to join in.

I'll watch this one with interest at the moment and hope everyone does really well. For what it's worth, I think a spending diary is an excellent start! :T

Thanks moozie - your "what have you spent today" threads are also an excellent way of keeping track of spending. Fly lady can be intimidating and a bit full on at times but I think the important thing is to take the gist of it (ie building habits up one by one) and to join in where you can, taking one step at a time.

mrs_bellamy

is it too late for me to join???

i am a newbie really, and second the overwhelming idea. I am trying to go through so many excellent suggestions, but it can be really confusing. I have been doing the spending diary religiously this month. Quite an eye opener.

mrs b x

Louiseuk25

Snaggles wrote:

I was just going to ask the same thing - I love that film! It's a picture from the bit inside the glass bubble isn't it. We have a family tradition of watching it every Xmas.

Count me in too please, I need to keep myself on track as suffering from PRUSTS (pregnancy related unnecessary shopping trips syndrome)!

It sure is! Love the film too-can't pinpoint exactly where from the film it is...might just have to watch it again to find out for sure :beer:

What film is your avatar from Snaggles

Tondella

mrs_bellamy wrote:

is it too late for me to join???

i am a newbie really, and second the overwhelming idea. I am trying to go through so many excellent suggestions, but it can be really confusing. I have been doing the spending diary religiously this month. Quite an eye opener.

mrs b x

Anyone can join in at any time, just take it one step at a time, start off by writing down everything you spend, just start now, from the next thing you buy.

FYI I'm not including bills or other regular payments in my spending list, I'm using my list to find out where my "expendable" income is going - ie the bit that i can spend however i choose. for me that includes food, clothes, travel, socialising, and other odds and bits. But if it helps people to include regular payments too then put those down as well!

mrs_bellamy

At the moment i have been putting down EVERY penny that is spent. But then it as also helping me keep track of exactly how much i spend on bills, rather than just 'rounding' them up/down as i did in my soa (also realised there was a hell of a lot more going out than i realised, so soa is not that accurate).

I am quite excited to get to the next step now.

fablad75

Believe it or not, I've been doing this since April! I use a big spiral bound book, and at the end of every day, I jot down everything that I've spent, divided into cash and credit card. It feels very, very good knowing where every penny's gone - and it makes a great diary as well, when you need to recall the exact date you bought something.

BTW by far and away my biggest group of purchases is in Tesco :-) I shop there too much!

Tondella

Day 3: ok, we are writing down everything we spend as we spend it, and keeping those bits of paper somewhere safe.

Today I want you to find a little book or make a spreadsheet to record your spendings over the month. On the first page of the book or spreadsheet write down this month and then draw up some columns that represent where you think you are spending your money. Mine has the following columns

food, entertainment, travel, clothing, miscellaneous

but you can put whatever you like, for instance you might want to divide food into lunches, supermarket shopping and eating out, add in columns for petrol, school trips, mobile phone top-ups, exercise classes, whatever you think you spend money on.

We are not going to add in any amounts today, we are just going to draw up the columns nice and ready. Don't spend more than 15 minutes on it.