Learning to Live on Less!

White_Iris

Well I managed to get the house clean and tidy again but that was about all I managed - no menu plan or food inventory and no buying washing powder, so the laundry mountain didn't decrease. I have been out this morning though, with MIL and children, and managed to get a little bit of shopping en route.

Somehow, I've ended up with £70 left in this weeks grocery budget instead of the usual £50 (:huh:), so I spent £5 on shopping, £5 on coffee, cakes and squash, squirrelled away a £5 note in to my spare cash pot and I've now got £55 left for grocery spends until Monday when my child benefit arrives and the four week cycle starts over again. I need to check through the store cupboards and get my menu plan done, then I can get to the supermarket tomorrow when the children are back at pre-school. Definitely shouldn't need much, so should be able to put away £20/£30 I think! :j

I've topped up the emergency fund, using the surplus from our rental income (after paying the mortgage we're left with the princely sum of £45!) and hopefully I can add a bit more from the bills account, once everything has been paid at the end of the month. I'm still not 100% confident we've got enough in there to cover everything (nevermind have extra to add to the emergency fund) but I'm going to check it daily and re-assess how much needs to be paid in at the end of the month.

Hmm, just had a call from DH - he's arranged a log delivery for tomorrow evening (love! love! love! the wood stove ), so we need £55 in cash to pay for it. Do I use my cash pot or try and find it from elsewhere?

White_Iris

£2071.30 - the current credit card balance :eek:

I don't think this months interest has been added yet either! Should be paying off £240 once DHs loan is approved by the credit union and once my car has it's MOT next week, anything left in the car pot can be thrown at it as well.

sweetpea26

Hi White Iris

I pop out of lurkdom to say hello. I followed your diary from the beginning and love to read your updates.

Can I suggest you use your house savings to reduce your credit card as you are paying interest on it. I know it would set you back savings wise but it would save you money in the long run.

I like where you live now your neighbours sound lovely.

All the best

White_Iris

sweetpea26 wrote: »

Hi White Iris

I pop out of lurkdom to say hello. I followed your diary from the beginning and love to read your updates.

Can I suggest you use your house savings to reduce your credit card as you are paying interest on it. I know it would set you back savings wise but it would save you money in the long run.

I like where you live now your neighbours sound lovely.

All the best

Hi Sweetpea, thanks for de-lurking! You're right about the house savings, it would absolutely be the most sensible thing to do but I just can't bring myself to do it. I argue (usually with myself) that we don't have a big enough contingency pot saved in case something goes wrong with our house, because if we can't afford to pay for repairs then we could loose our tenants. I think I need to come to an internal agreement, that when we have saved £500 in our emergency savings then I'll use the house pot to pay of the credit card. We do have landlords insurance after all, which should cover most catastrophes!

In fact that sounds like a very good plan and if I could implement it early in the new year then I could spend the rest of 2014 concentrating on saving.

White_Iris

I ended up spending way more than I predicted (£45) but in my defence £10 was spent on stuff for Christmas, so actually I'm no that far out. I've decided to use the cash pot to pay for the logs, so that's now got a balance of ten whole pounds! Never mind, plenty of time to top it up again before Christmas, especially now that all the Christmas present shopping (with the exception of DH) is done!

White_Iris

Got DH a few bits for Christmas yesterday but that's it until next month as spending money is running a bit low. I've got some things on eBay and lots more to list, so that should generate a bit of extra cash for the month but I just need to rein it in a bit for now.

I've been getting all Christmassy and looking at all the yuletide threads on here. We're doing Christmas this year and it's also the first year that the children really get what's going on, so I want it to be special. I'de like to get some new decorations as we have some big window ledges to fill but they are so expensive, so I've been looking at some pre-cut MDF shapes on eBay that I can paint myself but again, I need to wait until I've got a bit more cash to buy anything.

My plan over the next few weeks is to start buying food for the time from Christmas Eve until the end of that week. If I can get enough in (with the exception of fresh) then I can have a week off grocery shopping and save myself £50. I'm thinking of them using that money to stock up on non-perishables like washing powder, cleaning things, tinned food etc. I've got an awkward alcove-y cupboard in the kitchen, which we filled with odds and ends when we first moved in, which I've just cleared out to use for Christmas food, so after Christmas I'm going to aim to build up a well stocked store cupboard and try to get my weekly grocery spends down a bit more.

I've just put a spag. bol. in the slow cooker for tea on Saturday (the mince needed cooking today, I'm not that organised!) and had a relaxing morning doing beauty things and generally chilling out (after walking the dog across some very muddy fields) but the plan for the rest of the day is:

Drag myself away from here and go and dry my hair before I need to collect the children from pre-school
Baking - biscuits and maybe some fairy cakes
Make a fruit loaf in the bread maker
Vacuum and dust
Take some pictures of a few new items for eBay
Ironing

but first of all finish my coffee :coffee: Have a nice day everyone.

White_Iris

White_Iris wrote: »

...the plan for the rest of the day is:

Drag myself away from here and go and dry my hair before I need to collect the children from pre-school DONE
Baking - biscuits and maybe some fairy cakes
Make a fruit loaf in the bread maker DONE
Vacuum and dust
Take some pictures of a few new items for eBay DONE
Ironing

but first of all finish my coffee :coffee:. DONE

Just finished lunch, now to drag myself and the hoover around the downstairs, flick a duster around, then get baking. Ironing can wait until later.

White_Iris

All done bar the ironing, which I'll tackle once the children are in bed. Managed to get five items listed on eBay, with another seven to list tonight when I've got some peace and quiet.

Still haven't managed to find the missing piece of DSs toy which I wanted to sell - bet I put it somewhere 'safe' >:-(

White_Iris

Didn't manage to get the other things listed on eBay but I did get my ironing done while catching up on Downton, after the children had gone to bed.

I was planning a lazy relaxing morning but our logs have been delivered, so I spent a while stacking those. There are still loads left outside but there is now a respectable pile next to the fire so I'll leave the rest for DH.

I've been thinking a lot about the comment sweetpea26 made a little while ago about paying off the credit card with the house savings and I'm now really excited by the idea. The thought of having a low or zero credit card balance is much more appealing than having the money saved and doing nothing. I know we would still have the two loans to pay off but it would feel like we were properly on the road to becoming debt free. I need to talk to DH and decide whether to use the lot or top up the emergency fund and then pay off the rest but no point in hanging around, lets get it done tonight!

I posted off the credit union loan forms on Wednesday so they should have them and be processing them now. The money will hopefully be in the account sometime in the next two weeks, so that will be another £240 to come off and as long as my car passes it's MOT on saturday then I can pay off £100 towards the recent car repairs we had.

That should bring the total down to £1730, if I use all of the house savings then the balance will be £630 or if I top up the emergency savings to £500, it will be £930 (too close to £1000 for my liking!).

sweetpea26

Hi White Iris

You will be glad to see the debt go and then you can really concentrate on savings. Hope your car goes through MOT ok. We had ours last week too. All money sometimes isn't it!!