Hello from a newbie!

Spricklenickers

Morning everyone!:hello:

Well this is officially my first post and it's scary :eek:
I have been lurking and reading for a few months now and have been so inspired by your tips, motivation and positivity to be more frugal and debt free that I have taken the leap and put some of those into place already :j

A bit about me, I bought my first house at 19 and as a cosequence have never been able to save. 5 years into living there split with my partner and went from 2 salaries to just mine and really struggled so ran up some debt to help keep the house and my head above water.
I Have tried to remain sensible with my money but ultimately whenever cars went wrong/needed replacing or holidays came up I lived on credit out of neccessity but then met my now husband and things took a turn for the better. :T

We have scrimpt and saved for 2 years to ensure our wedding was paid for ahead of the day and we didn't need to borrow (we even rejected our friends and family helping us) and have spent the last 10 months of being newly weds pushing what was 'wedding money' to overpay our debts and as of next week we will be debt free (apart from our overdrafts) :beer:

I am so worried that we will be tempted to squander this new found money that I have used Martin's budget planner and have taken a scary leap to set myself a realistic budget which allows us to pay the bills, overpay the mortgage by almost double and finally start saving.
It feels so good to feel like we have a 'handle' on our money and ultimately our future. I have never been one to look ahead and only worry about the here and now but it's dawned on me from reading your posts that we would be silly to assume it will be ok and live on hope and faith alone!

Anyway sorry about my ramblings but i'm just so excited to be starting a new financially secure chapter in my life that I just had to post and say hello

Hope to make lots of lovely new friends on here and who knows maybe in time I will be wide enough to start passing on tips to other newbies x

Barbeduk

Hi! Am also newly debt free apart from the mortgage. Have you been on to the mortgage free wannabe board? You can set up your own diary on there and chart your progress. Sounds like you will be able to knock years off your mortgage term if you are about to double your payments.

Really pleased your life has turned around. I find budgeting really hard but I'm trying to squirrel away money into a savings account so that when those annual bills pop up I'm not reaching for the card like before. I just wish I had done all this before I hit my forties!!

The grocery challenge on old style is a great way to keep yourself in check as is the NSD challenge on here.

Good luck, I am sure you'll never go back to your former ways! Enjoy the freedom.:D

Spricklenickers

Hi Barbeduk,

Thanks for the advise, grocery shopping is one thing I have down to a T. We sit down on a Saturday morning with a cuppa and plan our meals for the week using a recipe book, check the required ingredients against what we have in the cupboard then write a list with what we need.
The list then comes to the shops and we add up the cost as we go round. If its not on the list then it doesn't go in the trolley and we have consistently spent under £30 per week for the last 3 years!

We then have no wastage of food a week as it's all planned and portioned, we have a list with the meals on and the page number in the book and it means when one of us gets home we look at the list and start cooking. No 'what can we have for tea' and more importantly no more trips to Mr T to get pulled in by special offers!!

fantastiyk

Hi Spricklenickers
sorry had to copy and paste your name as kept getting it wrong.
I like your post:
"grocery shopping is one thing I have down to a T. We sit down on a Saturday morning with a cuppa and plan our meals for the week using a recipe book, check the required ingredients against what we have in the cupboard then write a list with what we need.
The list then comes to the shops and we add up the cost as we go round. If its not on the list then it doesn't go in the trolley and we have consistently spent under £30 per week for the last 3 years!

We then have no wastage of food a week as it's all planned and portioned, we have a list with the meals on and the page number in the book and it means when one of us gets home we look at the list and start cooking. No 'what can we have for tea' and more importantly no more trips to Mr T to get pulled in by special offers!!"

Can I ask you what kind of recipes you use? I'm trying to budget for 6 and think I spend far too much on food yet the kids are complaining there's never anything good to eat. I'm open to new meal suggestions.

Spricklenickers

fantastiyk wrote: »

Hi Spricklenickers
sorry had to copy and paste your name as kept getting it wrong.
I like your post:
"grocery shopping is one thing I have down to a T. We sit down on a Saturday morning with a cuppa and plan our meals for the week using a recipe book, check the required ingredients against what we have in the cupboard then write a list with what we need.
The list then comes to the shops and we add up the cost as we go round. If its not on the list then it doesn't go in the trolley and we have consistently spent under £30 per week for the last 3 years!

We then have no wastage of food a week as it's all planned and portioned, we have a list with the meals on and the page number in the book and it means when one of us gets home we look at the list and start cooking. No 'what can we have for tea' and more importantly no more trips to Mr T to get pulled in by special offers!!"

Can I ask you what kind of recipes you use? I'm trying to budget for 6 and think I spend far too much on food yet the kids are complaining there's never anything good to eat. I'm open to new meal suggestions.

Hi Fantastiyk, I am in a slightly different situation in that I only have to plan meals for 2 people but you just scale it up I guess.
I am on a diet so I have cookbooks from this particular diet and pick the meals that we have the most existing ingredients for. For example we have a leftover of filo pastry this week so I made sure 2 of this weeks recipes would use it up. Any veg we have left over we blitz into soup and eat that for lunches during the week = No wastage, perfectly healthy and FREE!

Batch cooking is good as it doesn't often cost double to make double so we do this also and freeze the extra but try not to let the freezer get too full, you can have week of free eating by using the contents of the freezer...I hope this helps

Time_to_face_the_music

Hi Spricklenickers - that name makes me giggle :rotfl:

Wow you have done really well and am so glad you came out of lurking as I think your story will be inspiring to others :T

Come this Saturday morning, I will be copying your idea, cookbooks out and list made for the week. That is so simple but brilliant