Getting clarity on my finances

fantastiyk

Finally :j I'm getting somewhere!!

mamato3

Hi - had a read through your diary and just wanted to stop by .. I think you're from NI (like myself) and wanted to mention we switched electricity supplier almost a year ago and it has worked out soooo much cheaper! I'm also a little OCD about turning everything off that we don't use, it seems to be working! I also come from a large family and we spend a fortune on gift giving (hence I'm now trying to keep a limit of £500 for the year) it's tough saying no but sometimes you just have to.

Just wanted to wish you luck on your journey and I'll subscribe if you don't mind.

fantastiyk

Thanks mamato3,
Yea I'm from NI. Was tempted by the new electricity supplier offers last year but then got into an 18 month phone contract that had a few hiccups along the way and was afraid to dip my toes in again. If there's a power cut do your new provider sort it out? As the main supplier had a monopoly for so long and installed all the lines I'm not sure where we'd stand if there was a power cut.
I like your idea of the limit for the gifts. I have gone almost cold turkey on them for a while, the last month was too much, wedding presents are costly. Have a family event soon and my contribution was to be £90 - that's the total shared out among us. Haven't been able to gather any of it yet with the hectic May and early June expenses in our house.
Daughter had a present to buy for a friend but managed to cut it down to £8 where her last present for a friend was £14.
By your signature I see you're doing really well.
Don't think we'll stretch to holidays this year either, but it will be good to get these debts down. Last family holiday abroad was 2005. Since that we might spend a night or 2 with family around Ireland, but the last 3 years there's been none of that either, things have been so tight.
Am looking forward to paying debt off to get back into holidays again.
Thanks again for stopping by.

debtfreewannabe321

my last holiday abroad was 2006 too long ago for my liking! My dad offered to pay for some tickets in summer to go with him to visit family (funnily enough in NI!) but i feel like i'm sponging and at 33 years old i should be able to pay my own way so may just make up an excuse i think until things are more stable !

If my ds1 wants to buy his friends gifts i give him a £10 limit and he's not allowed to spend over it. And if he manages to get money off or it's in the sale i let him keep the change (think it encourages him to hunt out the bargains this way ) the younger two though when they have parties my limit is £5 and usually it comes out of my gift box of random things from the january sales

meow5678

Well done on all the planning! Once you get the system/plan of attack in order it's a bit easier, you just have the joy/pain of sticking to it!

I'll be keeping an eye
*subscribes*

fantastiyk

Yesterday I joined the payment a week plan, thinking that will keep me motivated. Today I logged on and found the 1 debt vs 100 days. I'd been following chapter 8 for a while, thinking I wish I had that motivation. As soon as I start to get serious about upping the ante, what do ya know, they start a new one.

I'd been toying with a plan of making a payment every week and instead of making it round off to the nearest £10 or £5, I thought I'd squeeze a little bit more out to take it down a bit so in the long run every debt would be going down even more.
e.g the £111 payment, hubby gave me the £90 he got, I had £10 budgeted to pay off this week, squeezed another £10 from my grocery money (hindsight will tell if that was a good or bad idea) and dipped into the jar of pennies, 2ps and 5ps for the £1.

My debt had already started to lower from making a payment last week that's not accounted for in the extra payment challenge.

When I saw the 1 debt vs 100 days chapter 9, it hit me that if I could get £4.60 a day for the next 100 days I'd have it sorted!
It seems so doable, yet on my budget at present I'm being more than optimistic.

Am thinking it would be great to have the 2 challenges cover 2 debts but that has been my stumbling block in the past, trying to focus on paying a bit here and a bit there.
Maybe I only needed to join one challenge. Oh well, I'll get on with taking down the one debt and see how far I get.

Still need to manifest £90 for family event - have 6 weeks to do it in. Sister has paid it already, so its her I owe the money to, any time. The event is in 6 weeks so I was making that my deadline. Had been hoping to save it all up and pay her in one go as she doesn't live nearby.

Part of my plan was to sell stuff to help make up the extra debt reduction payments but now it would be better to put them to this payment.

Still more work to do on my plan of action.

HeadAboveWater

fantastiyk wrote: »

If I were to keep making the minimum repayment on CC1 it would take me 17 years and 10 months and £2,145 of interest :eek:

:eek:

That's an incentive to get on the ball for sure!!

fantastiyk wrote: »

I'm at the beginning of putting a plan together that will get me out of this debt.I have noticed in the past few weeks that some groceries are shooting up in price. In our local supermarket a head of broccoli was 89p, yesterday it was £1.29 :eek:

Always check out the reduced fruit/veg section. We got a family pack stir fry last night for 20p in Tesco's Means too you get a bit of veg variety as it's not always the same stuff on offer.

Bread and chilled items too makes a huge difference in the reduced section. We've 5 in our house and easily go through 1 loaf per day because of packed lunches etc. Easily could be nearly £10 a week at normal price, but reduced we could get away with £1-£1.50 per week


Oh. And we're on NIE PAYG swipe card. £50 gets us through the month - and that's with 3 teenage girls going mad with showers/hair straighteners etc! lol

fantastiyk

Hi Kathy,
I keep an eye on the reduced section also, though only in Ts once a week, and have yet to get a bargain. In my nearest one they seem to have salmon at about 50p reduced, and prepacked dinners for 1 or 2. My budget still doesn't stretch that far. Have gotten good offers from their non reduced sections though like bacon for £2, then I buy loads, but there's no way I'll buy 2 pieces of salmon reduced to £4 to feed 6.
We're with NIE direct debit and the OWL monitor that I bought is bringing our spend down. Our kids use the internet a lot and the immersion takes longer to heat the water than it used to - hmm must talk to hubby about getting it looked at. Also we try to light the fire most evenings to heat the water for the showers and the dishes.
I get bread in Lidl for 69p for a loaf although only get there about twice a week. It sometimes works out cheaper to buy a loaf locally at £1 than be driving the 15miles to the larger towns.
DD2 has started baking bread, wheaten, now that she's on school holidays.

On a more motivated note - I joined 1 debt versus 100 days last week. Realised that my total of £460 divided by 100 days works out at £4.60 a day - doesn't sound much when you say it like that, but with things so tight I hadn't got anything gathered up yet. Today I worked out that for a week that would be £32.20 which I'd done nothing about.
Then dd1 walked in a handed me £30 that she owed me from quite a while back :T
Don't you just love children!!!
Went over to the thread to post that I had £30 so far and would pay it off on wednesday when next in town and realised it only started today so I'm ahead!!!
I haven't posted there yet as I'll wait now til I make the payment.
Have decided not to get to hard on myself as some weeks I realistically may have difficulty raising the £4.60 for the week - but there is nothing like a challenge to get you/ me going.

Had also joined an extra payment a week the day before I joined the above challenge. And have found somewhere to direct this money to. I owe my sis £90, so will add that to my signature and pay it via the extra payment a week until it's done - will save it in a different account and post it off to her when I get it gathered up.
When that's paid I'll continue putting it away until my 100 day challenge is up and then use what I've put away to bring down another debt.
That's the plan for it anyway.

fantastiyk

Plan
Debt 1:
Join 100 days v 1 debt challenge
Take total debt and break it down into more do-able chunks ie. How much a day would that be?
Aim for paying that, making payment once a week.

Try to bring in extra cash by:
Ebaying or gumtree for items we don’t need: clothes, cds dvds, etc
Bringing unused / unsold clothes to cash for clothing
Selling unsold cds and dvds on music magpie
Any old jewellery to sell
Any other currency to exchange
When debt 1 is cleared:
Debt 2:
Contact bank to set a fixed monthly payment of £150
Aim: to make other monthly payments of at least £50 bringing the repayments to £200 but leaving some room for leeway if it’s a tight month

Extra Payments: try to squeeze every last drop to make them go further, ie. Pay an extra £ or £10 or if the pence balance is 23p pay off 24p + This always brings the balance down that little bit extra

Work: try to bring in customers –
Put Fee from 1 appointment a week towards debt repayment
Shopping:
Shop alone ! and in the evening– kids keep asking for things
Meal plan – for breakfast, lunch, dinner & snacks
Get kids to bake, keeps them busy, and teaches them skills
Enjoy FREE days out – forest parks, beach – bring own food

fantastiyk

My cc1 statement arrived in today's post -
it's reduced by £100 - last month it was reduced by about £45 and I can't believe it with all the times I've been on here but I had forgotten to update my signature - so it was a brilliant surprise. :T

I'm paying the minimum on it though, until cc2 is cleared.