Feeling mellonicoley about my debts

mellonicoley

Well, I finally had my LBM this weekend. Previously I'd had two pseudo-LBMs. The effects lasted a couple of weeks before I was back out spending too much and borrowing each month to pay for it. I think however that this time it's the real thing.

Last week, I found out that my mum (who lives overseas) needed to have surgery - thankfully the situation is not life-threatening otherwise I'd feel pretty sick right now - and wanted to borrow £500 to pay for half of it. Can you imagine how bad I felt having to say no? In fact, that same day, I had to borrow another £100 to get me through the rest of the month! :mad:

I'm not on a bad income. I'm just rubbish with money. Instead of going home and cooking, I buy takeaways. Instead of taking lunch into work, I always buy soups and stews and sandwiches from my favourite (fairly expensive) places. I bought an iPad off a friend and borrowed money to do it! I love my iPad lol, but looking back I can see what a stupid thing that was to do. And I dare not mention the specifics of why I have two mobile phone contracts, one of which is quite expensive! (£47 a month)

SO I am determined to cure my money-spending ways from here on. I want my mum to be able to rely on me when she needs help!

In total I owe £7,297.75 (approx because I don't have the exact figure for my HFC loan but I know it finishes in April! yay!). Out of this £7k, £522 includes a Wonga loan that I'm repaying at the end of the month and then

I SWEAR I'M NEVER BORROWING FROM ANYONE EVER AGAIN.

Once that loan's paid off, I'll have lots more money to throw at my other debts.

For the rest of this month, I have £50 a week to live on. I've already spent £7 of that today having lunch in Debenhams with my sister . Expensive but it was a honey roast pork carvery and very nice! Have not spent anything else today except on a chocolate bar.

Tomorrow I intend to go down to Lidl's and the market to get some food to last me the week and for my lunches of course. I've already made an extensive shopping list. Hoping they have some soya milk and gluten-free stuff as I'm rather severely lactose-intolerant and gluten doesn't agree with me either...:(

By the way, guess what I'm training to be? An accountant! Haha what's wrong with us number crunchers not being able to manage our own money???

March is going to be interesting too as I have to pay for my CIMA exam fees and wait for work to reimburse me. That could take 2-3 weeks if I'm really unlucky. So, in theory, I have £250 to spend in March (after all bills), but really it could be more like £100 for most of it

I really hope I can do this and stick to my guns because then in April I could easily start paying £700 towards my debts and maybe put a little in savings for a "rainy day".

See I didn't get into this situation for lack of money, I got into it because of a lack of money management. I've been spending too much since I graduated nearly 5 years ago (well, even before that really), and it's finally caught up with me. I'm SO lucky it's not worse than it is.

ANYWAY, I shall report back on my Lidl's shop tomorrow

mellonicoley

Did my Lidl shopping today and actually went slightly over budget - £23.13 instead of the £20 I wanted to spend. Oops!

I bought:

Onions
Garlic
Carrots
Spring onions
Sweet potatoes
Apples
Plums
Mango
Brie
Bacon
Turkey breasts
2 packs of sliced ham
Frozen paella
Frozen sausages (20 in a pack)
4 chicken pies
1 carton sieved tomatoes
2 jars Lloyd Grossman smoky bacon sauce

And a few other things.

Fortunately a lot of the stuff I bought will last longer than a week. I actually had to go to sainsbury's in the end to pick up some gluten-free stuff, but didn't spend anything in there because I had a ton of nectar points to get rid of.

I also went to Poundland to buy some extra plastic containers for leftovers and lunches.

Going to try to have an NSD tomorrow....

banwa

Well done mellonicoley, on your LBM and getting all organised:T. I find the diary has really helped to keep me focused, whenever I spend anything I am aware that I need to 'report back' and it keeps me on the straight and narrow.

I'll keep reading if you keep posting

Banwa:)

HappyNow

Hi Mellonicoley, welcome to Diaryland.

One look at my signature will, I'm sure, put you off taking any advice from me! However, I'm a reformed character now so I will give you my tuppence worth!

Well done for having your lightbulb moment before things get too out of hand. It must have been a real wake-up call to have to tell your mum that you weren't able to help her, and I hope she got the help she needed elsewhere and is OK .

Lidl is great. Aldi and Home Bargains are the other two shops that every money-saver should visit. A few weeks of shopping there will really make a difference - not just to your food bills, but to your mindset which is what really makes the difference. I can't imagine shopping at discount stores, eating leftovers and making my own lunch each day, then spending £7 on lunch in Debenhams! Your Lidl shop looks not only frugal but healthy too, so you win on two counts!

You seem to have a plan worked out, but I have found my own diary to be the best thing for keeping me focussed. Somehow, once you've written down your intentions in black and white, you feel more accountable for your actions and you DON'T want to write that you have failed.

If you want to, you could always complete a statement of affairs and lots of helpful people on here will look for ways to make extra savings which will help you get debt-free quicker and - more importantly - STAY debt-free.

Good luck with your DFW journey and I will keep popping in to see how you're doing x

FlacosFloozie

Well done for your LBM. I got into my debt for similar reasons. I think knowing that I had a good income so could pay things off over a few months meant I borrowed withut thinking twice but something else alway came up and I never quite paid back as much as I meant to. Having my income cut has meant I need to watch the pennies and actually its not so bad. Haven't had a takeaway in over 2 months and I haven't missed them. Good for my waistline and wallet

milann

Hope your Mum is ok - it may have done you a favour in a funny perculiar sort of way by enducing your LBM.

Good Luck with the lunches - it might help preparing them the evening before then if you are on the last minute in the morning you can just grab a box and go.

mellonicoley

banwa wrote: »

Well done mellonicoley, on your LBM and getting all organised:T. I find the diary has really helped to keep me focused, whenever I spend anything I am aware that I need to 'report back' and it keeps me on the straight and narrow.

I'll keep reading if you keep posting

Banwa:)

Thanks for your support , I'm hoping this diary will do the same thing for me as well as I've always lacked focus in the past and never really had anyone to push me to watch my spending. I live with my sister and whilst I love her loads, she's just as bad as me when it comes to money!

I will try very hard to keep posting and keep money-saving! All I have to do is think about my mum and it spurs me on and also reporting back to you guys... I don't want to fail!!!

mellonicoley

HappyNow wrote: »

Hi Mellonicoley, welcome to Diaryland.

One look at my signature will, I'm sure, put you off taking any advice from me! However, I'm a reformed character now so I will give you my tuppence worth!

Well done for having your lightbulb moment before things get too out of hand. It must have been a real wake-up call to have to tell your mum that you weren't able to help her, and I hope she got the help she needed elsewhere and is OK .

Lidl is great. Aldi and Home Bargains are the other two shops that every money-saver should visit. A few weeks of shopping there will really make a difference - not just to your food bills, but to your mindset which is what really makes the difference. I can't imagine shopping at discount stores, eating leftovers and making my own lunch each day, then spending £7 on lunch in Debenhams! Your Lidl shop looks not only frugal but healthy too, so you win on two counts!

You seem to have a plan worked out, but I have found my own diary to be the best thing for keeping me focussed. Somehow, once you've written down your intentions in black and white, you feel more accountable for your actions and you DON'T want to write that you have failed.

If you want to, you could always complete a statement of affairs and lots of helpful people on here will look for ways to make extra savings which will help you get debt-free quicker and - more importantly - STAY debt-free.

Good luck with your DFW journey and I will keep popping in to see how you're doing x

I will take your sig to mean you have good experience with this sort of thing, and therefore I should value your advice a great deal!

Unfortunately my mum isn't good at asking for help - no one in my family is really! - so she's putting off the surgery for a month instead so she can get the money together herself. Fortunately (though not really...), it's just surgery to remove a cataract. I had no idea she had a cataract either, she doesn't tell us anything

(She has other problems with her eyes though, just like her mother before her, so it doesn't bode well for me and my sis)

I do kind of regret that £7 lunch. It was really yummy but then I can't help thinking of all the other things I could've got with that. Will definitely go for a cheaper lunch next time or - better still - eat at home instead.

Thanks I'm quite pleased with my Lidl shop! I want to try making a sweet potato curry this week and some soups as well. Should be interesting as I've never actually made my own soup before! :eek:

I may post an SOA, but to be honest, apart from my debts, my bills aren't that high (my rent is ridiculously low, it has to be the lowest in the south east!). I'd love to be able to lower my mobile phone contracts (yes, I have two. So so ridiculous, I know), but one of them is actually on the lowest tariff already. I will look into downgrading the other one - that'll give me another £5 a month (almost as much as that lunch!). Our internet is free with O2 as well until March, our BT line is £3.50 each (between 4 of us), and other than that there's just the council tax (£50 a month), water (£90) and gas & electricity (latest bill £65 each for the last 7 weeks)

I don't even spend a lot on my hair either or on clothes... I always shop in Primark or New Look, and because I used to have my hair in braided extensions all the time, I spent about £90 every few months... Since having my hair out of braids, I've spent probably about £100 on products, but those are now going to last me a few more months at least. I trim my own hair too and do my own treatments so I shouldn't be spending much money on my hair from now on.

Other than that, I'd really love to stop paying for my travelcard... £191 a month :mad::eek:

Thank you for your support and advice, it really means a lot to me as I need all the help I can get!

mellonicoley

FlacosFloozie wrote: »

Well done for your LBM. I got into my debt for similar reasons. I think knowing that I had a good income so could pay things off over a few months meant I borrowed withut thinking twice but something else alway came up and I never quite paid back as much as I meant to. Having my income cut has meant I need to watch the pennies and actually its not so bad. Haven't had a takeaway in over 2 months and I haven't missed them. Good for my waistline and wallet

Yes I can see now that I was doing exactly the same thing! I remember borrowing the money for my ipad and saying to myself, oh it's okay, i'll pay it back next month and it'll be fine. Except I never did because I had to pay my CIMA fees, it took ages for work to reimburse me, and in the meantime I had to borrow some money to cover the CIMA fees, then Xmas came along....

I'm hopeful this will do things for my waistline as well

mellonicoley

milann wrote: »

Hope your Mum is ok - it may have done you a favour in a funny perculiar sort of way by enducing your LBM.

Good Luck with the lunches - it might help preparing them the evening before then if you are on the last minute in the morning you can just grab a box and go.

You're absolutely right but I wish I could've seen the light much sooner

She's okay, the surgery is for removing a cataract so she's able to wait a little longer before getting it done. She should have all the money herself in March (I hope, because I really can't see that i'll be able to help her before April )

Haha yes I should do this. I made lunch this morning and ended up making myself late for work lol. Only about 5 mins but it's annoying because I am trying to get near-perfect punctuality. I shouldn't beat myself up about it too much though because it's WAY better than it was this time last year!

mellonicoley

A quick lunchtime update:

I managed to avoid my daily morning cup of Caffe Nero hot chocolate today. I've actually gone off them a little bit in any case, as I recently realised that i'm actually quite lactose intolerant, and the first time I asked them for soya, they managed to give me the real thing instead. I was not pleased so have decided that gives me TWO good reasons to stay away from them now.

As well as bringing in lunch, I decided to bring in my bag of Lidl apples so that i have something to snack on later in the afternoon when i get bored and start counting the minutes until home time lol. This should also help me towards my goal of having an NSD

Luckily there are lots of free hot beverages and water at my workplace.

Tonight I've decided to attempt making my first sweet potato curry. With any luck, it won't poison me and i'll be able to bring some in for lunch tomorrow