Learning to Live on Less!

White_Iris

Well we managed to get a tree and wreath for a combined total of £47 and very nice they look too! :xmastree:Unfortunately we managed to spend the remaining £13 on I-don't-know-what, so my spare cash jar was looking quite empty until yesterday when I managed to underspend on this weeks groceries by £10, and that included a few bits for Christmas (I'm determined not to spend any money on groceries over the Christmas week, so I'm stocking up now).

No change to the credit card but I seem to have more money left in the bills account than I expected (what have I forgotten? ), so I may be able to bring it down to £900 by the end of the year.

I managed to track down the missing PayPal withdrawal and that's now safely in my account. It had been diverted to another of my ING saving pots, under a strange deposit code which is why I hadn't been able to find it earlier. I've now closed down all but one of my ING accounts (which is empty but I need to phone them to close) and moved all my savings to e-savers with my current account provider - all my eggs in one basket! If I ever reach the £80k (or whatever it is) compensation limit I'll start to worry but for now it should make things easier to track.

The emergency pot is still completely empty after paying for repairs at our rental property but hopefully in January we can start using the money that was spent on fuel for DHs commute to build that back up again, as well as pay down the credit card. We should easily have £200 a month for this, so we can either throw it all at the credit card and get that paid off by April/May or split it 50:50, so we have a contingency fund as well. Either way by this time next year I'm aiming for no credit cards and £1000 in emergency savings.

sweetpea26

Hi Whiteiris

A few days ago I typed in a reply to you and lost it !!!! Never got the chance to respond again as we have illness in the family and I am at the hospital quite a bit.

trying to juggle earning money as well.

The tree and wreath were a good bargain. Keep going even when it feels like you are taking a few steps back. You are doing well.

White_Iris

sweetpea26 wrote: »

Hi Whiteiris

A few days ago I typed in a reply to you and lost it !!!! Never got the chance to respond again as we have illness in the family and I am at the hospital quite a bit.

trying to juggle earning money as well.

The tree and wreath were a good bargain. Keep going even when it feels like you are taking a few steps back. You are doing well.

Thanks for stopping by Sweetpea, I hope the family illness improves and you don't have to head to hospital over Christmas (I bet the parking charges aren't cheap!). I'm in awe of anyone who manages to juggle a job and family commitments, I'm sure I'd never get anything home/family- related done if I had to work as well. Merry Christmas. :rudolf:

White_Iris

DH went on his work Christmas meal last night but only managed to spend £10 (on top of the £15 for the meal - pretty reasonable for three courses I think). Annoyingly, as he was driving, I suspect this was mostly spent on drinks for other people. Still fairly MSE though. :money:

The real challenge will be on Saturday, when he has a night out for someones birthday - it'll either go horribly wrong and he'll spend a fortune and have a raging hangover the next day or it'll be another frugal and sober one because he's remembered the huge pile of marking he has to get done before Christmas!

I'm going to have to head to the shops again tomorrow, as a miniature post box has appeared outside the door at pre-school, so I need to pick up some cheap Christmas cards for the children to send to the rest of the group. Do other mums just instinctively know this kind of stuff happens or do I miss out on all the memos? I also missed the sign-up sheet to bring in food for the pre-school Christmas party, so all the cheap and easy stuff has gone. :mad: I'm left with expensive biscuits or choc-spread sandwiches, both of which I'd need to go buy. Decided having an open jar of chocolate spread in the house was too much of a temptation, so I've gone for the biscuits instead.

White_Iris

Not a good day for the credit card, the car needed two new tyres and after my super-expensive MOT last month we didn't have anything in the pot to pay for them, so on to the card they went. I hope that will be the last we need to put on the credit card but I think we're going to end the year with a balance of over £1000.

On a brighter note I've just re-done the budget for our bills account and we should have just over £100 a month left in there now we're no longer paying for dog stuff. This can all get diverted to the credit card come January and get it paid off asap. As we should also be able to save £200 a month in the emergency pot, we shouldn't have any need to use it again (famous last words :cool:).

When we rented our house out in February we had to apply for permission let from both our mortgage provider (who were very accommodating and haven't set any time limits or other restrictions) and the third party lender, who we took out an equity loan with when we bought the place (in 2007 when prices were at their highest and a few months before the market crashed :mad:). The third party lender agreed to let us let the place for a period of 12 months and we got a letter from them the other day telling us to make preparations to either move back or pay off the loan as the permission to let is ending soon. Obviously, now DH has a new job locally and we don't have £30k in the bank (or in equity as the housing market is still fairly stagnant in our area), we can do neither of those things and so we have explained this politely and asked for a further 12 months permission. I'm fairly confident they'll let us do that without too many objections but it has worried me a little. I'm determined to save as much money as we can next year, so that if we are forced to stop renting and sell the house for a break-even price, we are able to do so as we will have the necessary funds in place to cover selling costs. I estimate we'll need around £5,000 - we have £2,000 in the children's savings accounts (which can only be used in absolute dire emergencies), so I'm aiming for a minimum of £3,000 in the bank which is only £250 a month. As we already intend to save £200, we only need to find another £50 which I should be able to do from eBay sales and careful grocery shopping.

We have a plan. :money:

White_Iris

It's been a truly exhausting week and I can't believe it's still only Thursday. If I had to list everything I've achieved this week I would probably find I've done more than I think but it seems like I've achieved nothing yet haven't stopped. I thought I had Christmas finished but no, I keep remembering little niggly jobs which have cost me time, energy and money, lots and lots of money.

My plans for having petrol money saved for our trip away at the weekend have gone out the window and I've managed to spend next weeks grocery budget already (fortunately we're well stocked for food basics and will be eating out for several meals next week). I don't know where I'm going to get the money from to get the last minute fresh stuff I wanted for Christmas - they are mostly luxuries like fancy cheese, dips etc. which we could do without but I'm so disheartened that I haven't been able to budget for it all like I wanted to.

I have managed to get DH to agree to chop up the credit card when we get back from our trip away, next week. We've also agreed to put as much of the spare cash as we can, from his new salary, in to savings/paying off the credit card - we're going to try very, very hard not to feel rich (even though we should be about £400 a month better off) and continue to live as we are.

Might not get a chance to post again before Christmas, so I wish you all a very happy, peaceful and money saving holiday. :santa2:

Iris .x.

debtfreewannabe321

hello Iris, I am the same as you and have spent way too much this xmas i've also had unexpected bills which have nearly wiped out my savings pots for the car and my rental house. Not impressed.

I hope you have a lovely christmas and that you get a chance to relax and enjoy the family time xx

retromother

Me too on the Christmas front. Kids of course!

Well done on your food bill amount! What's your secret? I can't seem to get below the £200 mark

White_Iris

retromother wrote: »

Me too on the Christmas front. Kids of course!

Well done on your food bill amount! What's your secret? I can't seem to get below the £200 mark

I struggled for ages to get it below about £80 a week but since we've moved and I now have access to shops like Aldi things have improved massively. I don't buy much snack food or any brand names and I try to plan what we're having for tea each night at the start of each week, then write a shopping list , which I try to stick to. For me, it's now more fun to try and have grocery money left at the end of each week than it is to buy extras or food for a treat. It also helps that the children are little and don't eat much at the moment, if they were teenagers things might be more tricky.

Hope this helps and thanks for reading.
Iris.

White_Iris

Happy Christmas everyone, hope you all got what you wanted! We had a lovely time and got a decent amount of money as gifts too, which is always welcome! What wasn't so nice was the emergency car repairs we had to get done at the begining of the week - over £300, all on the credit card of course. But we have a plan and once we get a final total for December I can plot out exactly how to pay it off.