Spend Less Mummy's back on track 22 June 2011 at 10:14AM edited 29 June 2011 at 9:35AM in Mortgage-free wannabe 5 replies 954 views

spendlessmummy

I thought I would start a diary to keep track of my efforts to spend less and save more! I am mummy to one DD aged 7 months and currently on maternity leave. I plan to go back to work p/t in October. OH works full time and earns a decent wage but is under threat of redundancy by the end of the year. So we really need to get our spending under control (its not at the moment!) and stabilise our income. I have just started as a Phoenix Trader to try and get some extra income, and get cheaper cards for myself, so hopefully this will start to pay off too.

Our dream is to pay off the mortgage, but this is a long term dream. For the minute I work under the principle that every little helps.

Task for today - what is the best way to recycle HP ink cartridges? Think I saw something about exchanging them for Tesco points. Anyone know of any better offers?

mummyofonechild

Hello and Welcome

How about doing a statement of affairs to see where your expenditure goes and how much you could overpay each month?

This is a good one

http://www.makesenseofcards.com/soacalc.html

MOOC xx

Phelpsie001

Totally agree with the above.

What I'd also suggest is having a list of what comes out of your bank account each month, the amount, and the date that it comes out. This allows me to budget and also to see if any suspcious or irregular payments come out

spendlessmummy

I have quite a good budget already, but need to cut down my expenses to deal with our reduced income later in the year.
Here is our current SOA. My first tasks are to tackle our insurances and phone/broadband costs. Will also be keeping a much closer eye on grocery spending.

Statement of Affairs and Personal Balance Sheet

Monthly Expense Details
Mortgage................................ 766
Secured/HP loan repayments.............. 474
Council tax............................. 147
Electricity/gas.......................... 76
Water rates............................. 51
Telephone (land line)................... 13
Mobile phone............................ 36
TV Licence.............................. 12.37
Satellite/Cable TV...................... 21.5
Internet Services....................... 19.99
Groceries etc. ......................... 250
Clothing................................ 100
Petrol/diesel........................... 150
Other child related expenses............ 50
Buildings insurance..................... 31.19
Contents insurance...................... 31.88
Life assurance ......................... 100.64
Presents (birthday, christmas etc)...... 100
Haircuts................................ 55
Entertainment........................... 150
Holiday................................. 60
Emergency fund.......................... 100
Contact Lenses.......................... 25
Saving Account.......................... 10
Spending money.......................... 240
Total monthly expenses.................. 3070.57

Monthly Budget Summary
Total monthly income.................... 3,220
Expenses (including HP & secured debts). 3,070.57
Amount left ....... 149.43[/b]

Created using the SOA calculator at ww.makesenseofcards.com
Reproduced on Moneysavingexpert with permission, using other browser.

spendlessmummy

Hmm so having looking into the recycling of printer cartridges, it seems its best for me to wait for a few more as the payments are quite low. Hubby is going to see if there are any at work which need getting rid of too.

Have just been sorting through a junk drawer while baby is asleep and have found my old mobile phone. A quick check on Envirofone shows it could be worth £32.08 (but has some cosmetic damage so expecting them to offer less) so have requested a pack to post that off. Also £1 through Quico for the transaction!

Also found a couple of coupons for things on my supermarket shopping list for tomorrow (am terrible at stashing coupons and only finding them when they have expired) so pleased about that too!

Yesterday I met up with a friend and her baby and we decided to go to the park as the weather was so nice. I took a packed lunch for baby so no cost there. Would have been a NSD except for the 50p I paid for baby group in the morning.

I'm spending some time today working on a meal plan for the next few weeks to eat up some of the content of my bulging freezer. Have also joined the grocery challenge for July so hoping that will help too.

spendlessmummy

Well we have all been poorly with colds for a few days so that was a great opportunity to do some money saving! Good news with the mobile phone - envirofone offered the full £32 despite the damage so that is on it's way to us now!

We also decided to make some changes to our phone/tv/broadband. We were paying around £55 per month to sky, bt and Demon which was way too much really! So now we have cancelled Sky and Demon broadband and gone with a great package from BT for £29.99 per month which will be a great saving! The new service goes live next week. We will have less tv channels but still most of the ones we watch so not too worried about that. And the set up fee will be covered by the Quidco payment which is great too!