Take it to the Mattresses!

Grand_Benders

A week and a half after our lightbulb moment, we've decided to start a diary. We know that so many others who've done the same or posted on various other threads here, have helped us get started, so we want to reciprocate.

Firstly, the explanation of our username is in our signature (but just in case I update it along the road somewhere, Grand Bend is a wee tourist town in Ontario where we hope to emigrate at the end of our debt-free journey.)

The title of our diary comes from The Godfather, but in our case, via Tom Hanks in 'You've Got Mail' (our favourite film). We're mounting a war on our debt, and we mean to Fight! Fight fight fight!
*Actually, we just watched the film again last night and the quote is 'Go to the Mattresses'. Oh well, too late to change it now!

There's just the two of us, me and my OH, and our two cats. We're in fairly well paid jobs, working for a great company, but our historic spending has left us with credit card debts that are now impossible to manage without help, so we're about to embark on a Debt Management Plan (DMP) with CCCS and get rid of it once and for all.

Bare bones:
Light Bulb Moment - 15th June 2012
Unsecured Debt at LBM - £55,326 (At start of DMP more accurately £55800.14)
Initial Monthly payment to DMP will be roughly £886 a month but we hope to increase that pretty soon, once we settle down to our new budgeting way of life. (Update: Now £825/month due to Fixed deal on mortgage ending just before we started the DMP)
Debt free in 5 years and 3 months according to CCCS calculations (again, hoping to bring this down a bit). (Update: 5yrs 9 months)

We're planning on downgrading our shopping from Tesco/Sainsbury's (mostly Sainsbury's) to Aldi. We popped in this week for a quick recce and were stunned at the difference in prices even for basics like bread and milk. Our first 'big shop' with them will be tonight after work and I'm actually looking forward to it

We're also trying to fit in at least 2 No Spend Days a week and we're going to bring lunch to work.

We have a 70-mile round trip to work so we have pretty hefty fuel bills each month, but we've discovered this week that by not leaving late and having to rush, we can actually squeeze another 40 miles out of a tank of petrol! :eek: We're now planning on leaving earlier every morning, which will help save this regularly AND stop us getting into trouble for timekeeping at work!

We've started selling stuff on ebay that we just don't need. We've been trying to de-clutter for years anyway, and a lot of stuff we have is in boxes, having moved to three different houses with us and at certain times we've even paid for storage units for it!! :mad: We've been in this house for nearly 5 years now, and the prospect of getting cash for some of this AND getting organised and decluttered is very appealing.

We had planned to cancel Sky as an unneccesary expense and decided we would switch broadband to BT to get a better deal, but when I called Sky last night to do that, we ended up getting an amazing deal that saves us over £20 a month, and although it costs us £2 more than we would have paid on the potential new BT BB deal, we haven't had to lose any of the TV channels that we watch, we won't have to spend money on iTunes for the programmes that we would have missed, and we're getting better functionality on our phone contract!

So, that's our start.

It's been a productive week and a half, and we're going to try hard to maintain the momentum we've gained so far. Just waiting for the package from CCCS for our DMP now, and bracing ourselves for the assault from our creditors when our DDs that we cancelled start registering with them as being missed payments. We're sending letters and token payments this month and probably next month too, before the DMP gets started, to give us a bit of an emergency fund. Sadly that gets dipped into this weekend for a service and repairs on the car totalling around £500! :eek:

Hope we don't bore you too much. Thanks for coming along with us on our journey.

Mrs and Mrs Grand Benders
x

grannyx2

Just wanted to pop in and say :hello: good luck on your journey, hope it goes well and fast.

Grannyx2 x

NewLeaf_2

welcome to the diaries

jwil

Good luck

Grand_Benders

(If you're following the DMP thread, sorry but I'm copying and pasting as I posted all this in there and THEN remembered I have my own diary) :doh:

I got the CCCS package by email yesterday - was expecting it by post so was pleasantly surprised. Called them this morning as I had a few specific questions about the timing of the start given that we haven't got our new bank account up and running.

I also asked about a loan that I have that finishes in three months. I want to clear that one off as it will free up another £154 a month for the DMP, which on a rough calculation will reduce our DFD from 5 yrs 3mths to 4yrs 5mths. She said as long as we've cleared it before the start date, they're happy for us to do that, so I'm quite pleased.

We've stopped all DDs to credit cards this month so will use some of that cash for clearing that one loan account. Sadly it won't leave us much scope for building up an emergency fund as service and repairs on the car due this week are over £500 :mad:

Spent my lunchtime today photocopying all the statements etc that I need to send off and just have one more that I forgot to take with us to work that I'll do Monday then it can all get sent back to them. Going to get my token payment cheques written this weekend and set up a spreadsheet with addresses so I can mail-merge the letters to go with them on Monday at work (lunchtimes have never been so productive :rotfl: )

Feeling REALLY positive after doing all this and we've even decided that, while previously we were all gloomy and thinking we couldn't manage a holiday, we're now planning an extended long weekend where we'll ride our scooters down the back roads from Scotland to Scarborough where my cousin lives, and stop overnight on the way down at a campsite. Spent £12.48 on a wee easy-up tent from Tescos today as a start on our holiday plan. With campsite fees at £6 a night, and scooters that do 100+ miles per gallon, and staying with my cousin for free once we're in Scarborough, I reckon we can get a nice wee 6-day holiday for £90 plus spending money (which of course we'll save for and use coupons and money-saving tips wherever we can). :T

Grand_Benders

My OH just sat and plugged our Aldi receipt from last night into My Supermarket (she got the link from MSE Forums, of course! ).

Interesting results. When we deducted the things that were 'out of stock' in the supermarket she chose (Asda by accident, but she's going to do it again with our local Sainsbury's to get a more accurate picture) and compared the total to the big stores, here's our result:

Aldi 49.13

Asda 57.51 (8.38 dearer)
Tesco 59.77 (10.64 dearer)
Ocado 68.64 (19.51 dearer but we don't have it here anyway)
Waitrose 69.67 (20.54 dearer but we would never use it anyway)
Sainsbury's 71.85 (22.72 dearer - OUR USUAL SUPERMARKET!!)

She chose own brands where they were available, so it'll be interesting to see this exercise again when she does it in Sainsbury's, picking the brands that we would normally buy (not often own-brands, to be honest). This should highlight our savings from also down-shifting our brand choices, since most of Aldi is unknown brand.

I'm shocked :eek: that the most expensive is our main supermarket of choice. We've been throwing money away for years, it seems :mad:

No more. We are reformed!!

Also, on that theme, nice to see my status is now Money Saving Convert. Safe to say I earned that one this week!

Grand_Benders

Today was supposed to be a No Spend Day but I forgot and was so excited to find a motorbike battery for £32 on ebay (new) instead of £96 from a regular on line store that I hit 'buy it now' before I realised :mad:

Since the day was lost, we then bought our £12 tent for our holiday and had a Friday treat from the vending machine on the way home since we've been quite good about bringing lunch from home this week 4 days out of 5.

I've spent tonight creating a budget spreadsheet on Google Docs that we can both plug ALL expenditure into, so it doubles as budget and spend diary and tells us how much is left under each heading. It's rather snazzy, but I AM a bit of a spreadsheet queen, tbh.:rotfl:

mum2one

Just popped by to wish you good luck, it sound slike your really well in top of everything, and good for you with the hols, sounds fab.
xx

Time_to_face_the_music

Hi Grand Benders

Have just jumped over from my usual haunt of the DMP support thread and my new second home of the payment a day challenge to say hi and well done on your new diary :T

Grand_Benders

Realised that there was a 3.99 item on our Aldi receipt that we didn't compare, which was a fly screen for the patio doors (we live in the country and it's a nightmare), so I've adjusted the 'MySupermarket' comparison 'savings' amounts in advance of the OH repeating the exercise on Sainsbury's with our normal brands, so we can see the benefit of our brand down-shift too.

Grand_Benders wrote: »

Aldi [STRIKE]49.13[/STRIKE]45.14

Asda 57.51 ([STRIKE]8.38[/STRIKE] dearer)12.37
Tesco 59.77 ([STRIKE]10.64[/STRIKE] dearer)14.63
Ocado 68.64 ([STRIKE]19.51[/STRIKE] dearer but we don't have it here anyway)23.50
Waitrose 69.67 ([STRIKE]20.54 [/STRIKE]dearer but we would never use it anyway)24.53
Sainsbury's 71.85 ([STRIKE]22.72[/STRIKE] dearer - OUR USUAL SUPERMARKET!!)26.71

Every time I look at that Sainsbury's figure I get :mad: so I imagine it's going to be even worse when we see the true picture.

Grand_Benders

My OH has been a busy wee bee while I've been catching up with the forums, and she has now done a full MySupermarket comparison on Sainsbury's where we normally shop, picking all the brands that we would normally choose when shopping, based on our Aldi till receipt. We deducted a few things that weren't in stock in Sainsbury's, so the totals are completely comparative.


Drumroll please....

Aldi 46.69
Sainsbury's 88.00 (41.31 dearer)

Asda 73.27 (26.58 dearer)
Tesco 82.65 (35.96 dearer)

Leaving off Ocado and Waitrose now as the reality is I would never shop there anyway. Tesco has always been our backup, or where I would go when I felt I needed to save a wee bit more. Appears I was right in assuming they were cheaper than Sainsbury's, but not by as much as I thought! Asda isn't anywhere near us so we've never used them that much, but on the few occasions I've gone off my route to go there, I've had a 'feeling' that they were much cheaper than the other two and again seems I was right.

But Aldi is our new home. I suspect now we'll probably 'upgrade' occasionally to Asda or Tesco when we want 'something special' :rotfl:

I can't see Sainsbury's getting a look-in ever again! :mad:

So, our move to Aldi combined with a brand down-shift (possibly more than just one level ) has saved us £41.31. Pretty sure we can stick to our shopping budget at these levels, AND have the odd few pennies to squirrel away or for the odd treat. Two shopping trips would pretty much save enough to pay for our entire holiday plans!!