dfw the fly-lady way - 31 days

Tondella

Day 11 – Pack up your troubles
So far we are
Writing our spends
‘fessing them up
Minimising mobiles
Opening the bills
Keeping our shopping lists

OK, you might have put your feet up yesterday but there’s still plenty to be done. I’ll bet my bottom dollar that, like me, your weekly spends are all about food. Well fly babies, I promised you that last week’s spends would be the worst that you would face, and I meant it. We’re already shopping to a list, and so avoiding the temptations of a quick pop to the shops. Now we’re going to take it one step further and make a packed lunch all ready for tomorrow.

I’m no harsh taskmaster so we’re going to go into this as gently as possible. Have a mooch around your fridge and see what’s in there, cheese? A nice chutney? Ham? Tuna? cold pizza? Leftover curry? How about the cupboards? Supernoodles? A tin of soup? I bet you’ve got some carrots and potatoes, maybe some raisins, a couple of bananas or other pieces of fruit hanging around?

Well here’s the deal. If you’re up for the full monty then pack yourself a sandwich or some tasty leftovers. If it’s more than you can face then pack just one thing that will help you spend less on your lunch. So, for example, some days a packed lunch is just not happening for me. In that case I try and take something, so that I can spend as little as possible. So I might take a plain baked potato and buy some topping (or to mix it up, take the topping (tuna mayo, grated cheese, tin of beans) and buy the potato – crazy huh?). Or if I’m really struggling I’ll take in some fruit, or carrot sticks, or nuts and raisins so at least I don’t creep out and buy a Danish at 11am. See what you can manage and watch your daily spends come crashing down!

Tondella

Day 12 - Dear diary
So far we are:
Writing our spends
‘fessing them up
Minimising mobiles
Opening the bills
Keeping our shopping lists
Packing a lunch

Never let it be said that it is all work, work, work, over here on the debt free fly lady thread. This week we’ve been tackling some pretty radical challenges, starting a shopping list, packing up lunches, etc. So today I’m mixing it up with a simple challenge. You’ve already got your spending diary on the go, be it a simple pad of paper or a whiz-bang electronic spreadsheet. Today we are going to find a journal which will be home to some of our other money saving bits and bobs over the coming weeks. Mine’s a rather dashing spiral bound A5 notebook, which means that I can rip pages out if I make a mess of them (rather often). But you could use a ring binder, notebook, anything you want. Find it, claim it as your own and then put it somewhere safe.

Tondella

Day 13 – Banish your brands
So far we are:
Writing our spends
‘fessing them up
Minimising mobiles
Opening the bills
Keeping our shopping lists
Packing a lunch

Ok, after yesterday’s easy-peasy challenge we’ve all caught our breath back and it’s time to take the plunge again. Today we are going to follow an excellent piece of advice from Martin, and one that is fully embraced by money savers – ditching the brands. A brand is nothing more than a promise, a promise that something will taste better, or make you healthier, or that buying it will make you appear more sophisticated or discerning. However, these promises are usually hollow, and often the only thing that differs between a branded item and an unbranded one is the price!

Check out this long-running thread if you don’t believe it! http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=23002&highlight=disguised

Here’s how to do it – I’m going to set three levels of challenge, depending on where you are at:

Challenge A – if you buy brands (Heinz, Baxters, Kenco, Persil, etc) try substituting as many things as you can for the supermarket own brand. For example, I have bought Persil Aloe Vera since it came out on the market, but switched to Sainsburys non-bio and get exactly the same results at 40C washes

Challenge B – if you buy mostly supermarket own brand, try substituting as many things as you can for supermarket value brand. I find that Sainsbury’s value tinned peeled tomatoes (around 16p) are as good as other Sainsburys brands and compare pretty well to Napolina

Challenge C – if you buy mainly supermarket value brand try substituting some items for value supermarket items (i.e. Lidl, Aldi) or go to the local market for your fruit and veg

Then come back and post what brands you have switched, how they taste/perform and how much you have saved.

Tondella

Day 14
So far we are:
Writing our spends
‘fessing them up
Minimising mobiles
Opening the bills
Keeping our shopping lists
Packing a lunch
Banishing brands

Fly babies we are two weeks old. Most of us are finding it more and more natural to write down something as soon as we spend it, think twice before using the mobile, starting to shop from a list, packing a lunch, and ditching brands that offer false promises.

Today we are going to enter our second week of daily spends into our spending diary then go out and give ourselves a (money saving) treat. Take a walk in the park, do something free and fun with the kids, have a cup of tea with a friend, bake a cake, watch some telly. Whatever takes your fancy. The little steps you have taken each day mean that things are starting to take control of themselves, so you have time to put your feet up and grin broadly at the thought of everything you have achieved.

Tondella

Day 15 – take care of the pennies …
So far we are:
Writing our spends
‘fessing them up
Minimising mobiles
Opening the bills
Keeping to our shopping lists
Packing a lunch
Banishing brands

Ok flybabies, here’s something to test you. We’ve been writing down our spends for two weeks now and so have a pretty good idea of how much we are spending week on week. So today I want you to set yourself a reasonable budget to get through the week ahead, draw out the money in cash and then only spend what you have in your purse/wallet. The idea here is that, by seeing the money disappearing before our eyes as we spend it, we’ll be a bit more hesitant to throw it away on needless things. This isn’t the spendaholics cold turkey challenge (where you see if you can get by on as little as possible), but I for one am going to be a little stricter with myself than usual, and withdraw an amount that is enough to get by on, but won’t support frivolous spending.

Don’t panic though, as the rest of this week’s challenges are going to help you make the most of those precious notes and coins. Hold onto your horses for the third week of debt-free the fly lady way!

Tondella

Day 16 – our cup(board) runneth over
So far we are:
Writing our spends
‘fessing them up
Minimising mobiles
Opening the bills
Keeping to our shopping lists
Packing a lunch
Banishing brands
Taking care of our pennies

Storecupboard challenge! This is an old-style money saving classic. Tonight we are going to make a meal out of only what we have in our storecupboards, fridge-freezers and pantries. If you’re anything like me you’ll have a stash of tins and staples sitting neatly on a shelf that are crying out to be used up in tasty meals. Think of the number of times you have opened the cupboard door to be greeted with their eager little faces/labels only to dismissively say “there’s nothing in to eat”. Well today is when we give these stalwarts of the kitchen their moment. Let your creative juices flow and conjure up something that makes the most of what you already have, rather than sending your sorry self down to the supermarket/local shop to get something in. If you’re really stuck for ideas then head over to the old-style board and post your list of ingredients – they’re always happy to help (hint: anything scrambled with eggs is always a last resort!)

Tondella

Day 17 – find your inner scrooge
So far we are:
Writing our spends
‘fessing them up
Minimising mobiles
Opening the bills
Keeping to our shopping lists
Packing a lunch
Banishing brands
Taking care of our pennies

Today we are finding our inner scrooge and will not be spending a penny (except euphemistically, y’know). Even us fledgling fly babies, by now well versed in money saving ways, get into spending habits, where we don’t question little daily spends that add up into massive monthly cash blackholes. By challenging ourselves to not spend anything for one day we are confronting the leaks in our otherwise immaculate spending diaries and plugging them up for good. Let us break free from our consumer chains, even if it is only for 24 hours. And if you feel your resolve weakening then shout out your mantra at the nearest shop assistant I AM FLY BABY, HEAR ME ROAR!

Tondella

Day 18 – working nine to file
So far we are:
Writing our spends
‘fessing them up
Minimising mobiles
Opening the bills
Keeping to our shopping lists
Packing a lunch
Banishing brands
Taking care of our pennies

Fly babies you’ve been doing so well with all these spending-related challenges that today I am going to give you a rest and instead tap into our inner organisers to file away all those opened bills that we’ve been collecting. I use ring binder files to store my bills, utilities and household things in one, bank statements in a second, credit cards in a third (I have a lot a credit cards at the moment). Within each file I put all the same type of bill together, so all mobile bills together, all credit card A bills together etc etc. Every time I get a bill I put it to the front of its brethren, that way whenever I flick through the file my most recent statements are right on top, ready for me to check.

It might seem menial, it might seem petty, but knowledge is power to us debt-free wannabes and we can only make the best money-saving decisions with the full facts in front of us. Armed with your well filed bills, you will never again query your APRs, never again wonder just exactly how much is left on loan X. Cos I’m going to let you into a secret, next week this little baby is going to help us prepare our SOA (statement of affairs), the ultimate accessory for any debt-free wannabe. But all that is yet to come, for the moment all we need to do is file.

Tondella

Day 19 – frozen waste-nots
So far we are:
Writing our spends
‘fessing them up
Minimising mobiles
Keeping to our shopping lists
Packing a lunch
Banishing brands
Taking care of our pennies
Filing our bills

Today, as we try and eek out our weekly budget to the end of the week we are venturing deep into the frozen wastes of our freezers. Lurking deep within we will find such treasures as frozen meat, bought two-for-one a few months ago, leftovers, frozen stock, frozen herbs, frozen veggies. All grist to our new money-saving ethic mill.

Here’s what to do. Delve into your freezer and keep whatever you can still identify. Make a list of its contents, this will help you when you write out your shopping list this week. Then go crazy with storecupboard recipe ideas with all your reclaimed food. Let’s turn the frozen wastes of our freezers into waste-nots!

Tondella

Day 20 – it’s my affair
So far we are:
Writing our spends
‘fessing them up
Minimising mobiles
Keeping to our shopping lists
Packing a lunch
Banishing brands
Taking care of our pennies
Filing our bills

Ladies and gentleman, brace yourselves for a momentous day. Today we will be preparing the first part of our statement of affairs (SOA). The SOA is de rigueur for any debt-free wannabe and is the gateway to getting loads of tailor made advice from been-there done-that DFW-ers. I like to see the SOA as consisting of three parts:

your incomings (earnings, tax credits, and anything else that can be regularly relied upon),
your regular outgoings (rent/mortgage, bills, food etc),
and finally, your debts (amount, APR, minimum/monthly payment)

For many a newbie DFW getting together everything to make an SOA is a mammoth task, however we are fly babies and we have been diligently opening and filing away our bills, and keeping our spending diaries, all the time mumbling the mantra "knowledge is power" under our breath. Even so, all we have to do today is dig out our financial diaries and write down our regular outgoings. Don't worry about the debts and the incomings yet.

Post it on the chat board, if you are feeling up to it.