Learning to Live on Less!

White_Iris

Quick rant about DH and his lack of money sense! As my car is still out of action, I got him to stop at Mr T's on his way home last night, told him to withdraw the £50 grocery money for the week and told him to use it to buy about a dozen things to get us through the rest of the week. I estimated that it would cost about £20 max. - what a surprise I got when he rolls up with much more than I asked for, having spent nearly £35! Store brand baked beans!!! Chocolate flavour cereal, so he can snack on it in the evenings!!! Fancy razor blades when he knows I have Boots vouchers to spend (the price of razor blades is worth a rant on it's own). His one saving grace was that he did buy value cereal but I'm going to be much, much more specific if I ever send him shopping again.

debtfreewannabe321

:rotfl: to the rant about razon blade prices :rotfl: only because I had a huge moan at my DH and DS1 (who's recently started shaving) I told them I was happy to shave my legs with whatever and they should be happy to do the same! They've both since taken to spending their pocket money on nice ones and i've been left with all the horrid ones and tbh I can see why they moaned as i've never cut myself so much in all my life:rotfl: but i'm too stubborn to admit to them being right

My dh is the same with the shopping. When I write the shopping list it looks like this now:

Brocolli (LOOSE not the expensive pre-packed one)
Beans (white and red label the one NEXT to heinz)
Cereal (STORE own brand NOT kellogs)
and so on :rotfl:

P.s thanks for the advice on the moving situation, i think you're right and once I get through this year the last 6 months will go quickly enough as i'll be looking for a new house (hopefully to buy, if not rent..!) de-cluttering and seeing DS1 through his GCSEs as well as looking for new schools and colleges. Just need to look at the bigger picture

sweetpea26

HI WI

Men what can you say. Hope this is a good week for you. Take care.

White_Iris

Trying to reconcile my internal battles of spending vs. saving vs. debt-busting.

A few thoughts about our credit card debt -
Is it unmanageable? No, we can afford the minimum and then some.
Are we still spending on it? No, we haven't used it since before Christmas.
Why do we need it paid off? Aside from the obvious (it's not our money!), it would help us get a new mortgage.
When do we need it paid off? We won't be getting a new mortgage for at least another 2 or 3 years, so paying it back doesn't need to happen straight away.

A few thoughts about our savings -
Do we have any emergency savings? Some but not enough.
Do we need to save for anything important? Yes, we might need to sell our house next year, possibly at break-even figures and may need to cover selling costs.

So we need to save rather than debt-bust and worry about the credit card later, I think.

debtfreewannabe321

White_Iris wrote: »

Trying to reconcile my internal battles of spending vs. saving vs. debt-busting.

A few thoughts about our credit card debt -
Is it unmanageable? No, we can afford the minimum and then some.
Are we still spending on it? No, we haven't used it since before Christmas.
Why do we need it paid off? Aside from the obvious (it's not our money!), it would help us get a new mortgage.
When do we need it paid off? We won't be getting a new mortgage for at least another 2 or 3 years, so paying it back doesn't need to happen straight away.

A few thoughts about our savings -
Do we have any emergency savings? Some but not enough.
Do we need to save for anything important? Yes, we might need to sell our house next year, possibly at break-even figures and may need to cover selling costs.

So we need to save rather than debt-bust and worry about the credit card later, I think.

Are you on 0% deals on all the credit cards? If so great plans (and well done for forward thinking on the house sale etc!) I think emergency funds are essential when wanting to get out of the cycle of debt so good luck getting them up and running

White_Iris

debtfreewannabe321 wrote: »

Are you on 0% deals on all the credit cards? If so great plans (and well done for forward thinking on the house sale etc!) I think emergency funds are essential when wanting to get out of the cycle of debt so good luck getting them up and running

It's only one card but the balance is made up of odds and ends of various balance transfers and spending, so some is on 0%, some is gaining interest. The interest for last month was less than £10. DH has good credit and earns a decent wage so we could tart the lot across to a 0% card but I'd need to crunch the numbers as to whether the transfer fee would outweigh the interest savings based on our repayment plans. I think I'll talk to DH about it tonight.

So the plans for the rest of the day involve vacuuming and (maybe) washing floors, menu planning for the week and writing thank you notes for the childrens Christmas presents (I know, Christmas was weeks ago, should have got that done by now ). I also need to organise the mountain of paperwork that's piled up in the kitchen - file, shred or action.

Whether I get any of the above done remains to be seen. I'm still not quite feeling right, after last weeks anxiety roller-coaster. I feel so tired because I'm not eating properly (positive side-effect of my anxiety flare-ups is that I generally loose a few pounds!), so I'm trying to eat but don't have much appetite, so I'm resorting to many cups of coffee and sugary snacks, meaning my blood-sugar is all over the place.

What I really feel like doing is wrapping myself in a blanket and not moving from the sofa until bed-time but DH deserves to come home to a clean, organised house and it certainly wouldn't be fair to expect him to make tea tonight just because I can't be bothered. He's still in the early days of his new job and although he's enjoying it, it's a lot of work so I need to make things at home as peaceful as possible. So, 10 minutes more sitting down then time for a tidy-up and get the hoover out.

White_Iris

Kitchen clean and tidy, dishwasher emptied, paperwork conquered. Still to do the menu plan and hoover/clean floors but I have got the vacuum cleaner out and placed it prominently, so I can't "forget" to do it. Cup of tea now though.

debtfreewannabe321

White_Iris wrote: »

Kitchen clean and tidy, dishwasher emptied, paperwork conquered. Still to do the menu plan and hoover/clean floors but I have got the vacuum cleaner out and placed it prominently, so I can't "forget" to do it. Cup of tea now though.

Your day sounds much like mine. I also need to walk the dog and just can't be bothered ....hate this weather it makes me miserable and I just want to hide

White_Iris

Some good news yesterday, the dentist appointment DH was due to have had been mysteriously rearranged for March - apparently someone phoned to reschedule it months ago but neither of us can remember doing it! So that's some money saved! We have £13.74 spending money left for the month (without dipping in to savings or the bills account) and I need £14.70 for my phone bill, £20 that we owe MIL and £6.07 for my eBay fees (£40.77 - although the money for MIL could wait until next month). I didn't get around to listing anything on eBay last week, so I might try again later today if I remember but whatever else I do, I have GOT to get the thank you notes done today!

White_Iris

Finally got the thank you notes organised and I'll post the first two (to the people who will be the most likely to notice if they don't get one) in a few minutes, when I go and collect the children. The rest can go tomorrow, once the children have scrawled something resembling their name on them.

Didn't clean the bathroom or bedrooms, which was todays house-wifey job, but I did do two loads of laundry and do a quick top-up shop at Mr T's. I have managed to complete some paperwork for our third party lender, just need to phone them and pay the admin fee and then we have permission to let the house out for another year. I also need to phone the sewerage people about our bill and sort out our landlords insurance renewal - better get on with it while the house is quiet!