Hello!! I would really appreciate some help / advice on our ever increasing debts...

lizzywig

I completely understand where you are coming from about Sky!! I also get where the others are coming from, how much more miserable would you be without the TV. Hubby and I did a test a while ago and got rid of Sky and during that couple of months we went out more, thus negating the reason for getting rid of Sky to start with. If it keeps you in the house and gives you something to do which overall costs less then do it. Have you thought about combining your TV/Internet/Phone though? At our last house we were with Virgin and BT and once added together it cost £92 a month!! Now we’re will Sky for everything and have a basic package but happy with what we have and it costs £40 a month.

Food is where you can very easily cut down, visit the old style board, it’s given me so much inspiration. I now meal plan and for two of us spend approx £240 a month on a very healthy diet. We now have a baby on the way so I’m going to start doing lots of old fashioned cooking to get our monthly food cost down to £200 a month. You CAN do it. Buy the book ‘The Takeaway Secret’, it tells you how to make takeaways from scratch, I love doing it on a Saturday, 1) gives me something to do 2) I don’t (really) notice the difference between that and Takeaway. YUM!

Yes cut down on alcohol but also stop buying the expensive stuff....not that I’m presuming that you are. I recently discovered that B&M’s do the nice brands like Wolf Blass, Jacobs Creek for about £4 a bottle, well the one near me does. Every town has a local area which is a bit more....to put it nicely chavy (sorry don’t want to offend anyone). Go there! There will be loads of £1 shops and places with cheaper prices. Start shopping in Aldi and Lidl for your store cupboard essentials, buy meat from the butchers (if you build up a good relationship they will do you offers, we have a great one with ours who supplied us with BBQ meat last week for 16 ppl, only cost us £30 and included steak and ribs!) and only buy fresh for the supermarket. Use Tesco clubcard vouchers and triple them up for xmas.

As one of the other posters said switch your bills to come out after you’ve been paid. Hubby and I have a joint account, he gets paid on 6th of the month, I get paid on the last day of the month, bills come out on the 1st. We have a spreadsheet that lists all of our outgoings, we divide it by 2 and on our paydays we transfer the money to the joint account. We NEVER spend from that account EVER. Therefore any money we are left with is ours. Now usually our joint account is just for household bills and we pay for mobile phone etc from our own accounts but when baby comes that will change.

I live by my spreadsheets.....even my husband has his own now. When we met he was in sooooo much debt and I helped him get debt free by showing him how to keep track of his finances. Another trick of mine is using my spreadsheet, say I have £300 that month disposable but I know I have a party coming up and a leaving dinner. I give myself limit (say £30 for each) and then I know I only have £240 left for the month. I live within my means. Another trick is to put money aside, say £10 a month for birthdays and £30 a month for xmas. This means that when the time comes if I don’t have enough money I have a little savings fund.

They’re just my simple tricks, they might not work for you or be appropriate at this point in time. Best of luck, keep reading these forums they’re great inspiration.

alcee12

what about freeview that will save you money thats what i did