Squeaky spreadsheet diary

Tiglath

Made various payments to bills (taking my % debt paid off to 28.2%), but Oyster top-up is causing me a headache. I haven't used it in 3 years since I always had a travelcard to include the Tube since then until now. Apparently I can set up auto-top-up online but must do my first journey within 8 days to activate it or it'll fail. Not planning on using it until the 5th (only 2 Tube return Tube journeys planned for December) so will just have to do it online the night before, or see if my local train station has a top-up machine.

Dinner last night was a grand success - added peas and substituted some leftover Philly for the grated Cheddar. Taking the remains for lunch today (lost half of last night's portion to DH) and am already looking forward to it; they can keep whatever team lunch they pay out for. Given that I used to spend at least £25-30/week on food at work, I'd say £1.70 on stuff brought from home this week as toast-toppers is a big difference. Impressed with myself - going to do the same every week until Christmas

Anyway that's this morning's excitement.

Tiglath

Getting a bit boggled-eyed at the thought of focusing on nearly 2 years for the long haul to clear my personal debt, so I'm going to break it down into the following manageable targets for 7 debts:

- Next - pay off completely 19th December 2012;
- Simply Be - pay off completely 24th December 2012;
- Overdraft - pay off completely by non-use by payday 25th June 2013;
- Natwest cc - pay off completely by statement date 3rd July 2013;
- Mint cc - pay off completely by statement date 3rd June 2014;
- Barclaycard cc - pay off completely by statement date 10th September 2014;
- Amex cc - pay off completely by payday 25th October 2014, and that'll be my personal debt gone.

So that's 2 to be cleared in 2012 (and I'll close both of those store cards), 2 to be cleared in 2013, and 3 to be cleared in 2014. That'll leave us DH's personal debts (approx £32k), a joint secured loan (currently approx £45k, running till 2025), and the mortgage (approx £126k, running till 2028). It's scary to think we currently owe £231k in total! We earn very good money but even so that's absolutely shocking, and it's not even as if we have much of anything to show for it.

All I can do for now is focus on my personal debts - I don't want to annoy DH by trying to control what he does with his bank account and debt, and that wouldn't be doing him any favours anyway - he has to figure that out for himself. He does seem in a more relaxed mood these past 2 weeks as I've been focusing on financial stuff. I will gently suggest that as his 2 loans finish in 2014 and 2016 he pretends he doesn't have that extra money each month and ramps up the repayments to his sole credit card. I don't think he's on board (yet) with the idea of systematically reducing his overdraft by non-use each month, but I will clamp down hard on any suggestions of consolidating anything into a further loan. No new credit for us.

My spreadsheet is so tightly set out that the only discretionary area where I can make further savings is in the monthly grocery spend, and I reserve the right to adjust that in terms of spending habits and food prices etc. I'm allowing myself £10/week personal spending but actually aiming not to use that as much as possible and pay off more towards debt. Foodwise I can live incredibly frugally - I'd happily eat beans on toast for 2 years if it'd get me debtfree more quickly - but DH insists on a proper cooked meal each night, so my own mini-challenge is to create 'proper' decent meals as cheaply as possible. Fortunately I'm a pretty competent cook. Can't believe how much I used to waste on dinner parties.

For now, I've fixed Natwest, Mint, Barclaycard and Amex as £10 above the minimum payment on each while I focus on the Natwest overdraft.

I think the first part of 2013 will be the hardest because I want the overdraft gone ASAP - it scares me that they might suddenly take it away without warning. Once it's paid, I will keep a buffer zone of £50 in credit at all times during the month so I don't go overdrawn again. Whatever's left the day before payday can go as an extra payment to a card, so I start each month on payday with a clean slate. I've changed the payment dates on everything to go out within 10 days of my payday. That way I'll know that when all the DDs etc go out early in the month, what's left is what's left for the month. I've factored in all birthdays and Christmas and taking in cakes for my birthday.

Can't wait till we're in a position to start building up savings, which I will manage in our joint names so I know it'll actually get done. By June 2016, we should have 3 months of living expenses under our belt and I'll be aiming for 6 months for safety. This is assuming our jobs continue as normal and no big household items or the car go wrong in the meantime.

I'm just keen to see daily progress on all this. I counted my coin pot last night and have £28 to pay back into the bank to chip away at the overdraft. I'm someone who needs to be 'doing' all the time. I'll get there in the end - I'm just impatient

never_too_old

Morning
Just wanted to say good luck on your journey.Patience is something i lack when it comes to debt busting i just want them gone.Our od was taken away from us in 2010 (June) £3000 it was hellish at the time but im so glad i dont have one now.:)

Tiglath

DH is on board with eating set meals every week, as long as they're filling:

Monday - Omelette (because I'm always knackered on a Monday night)
Tuesday - Chicken & veg
Wednesday - Mushroom/veg risotto
Thursday - Pork chop & veg
Friday - DH out so egg or beans on toast for me
Saturday - Spag bol/lasagne or chilli over rice
Sunday - Chicken & chip or wedges, or small version of a roast with trimmings

His lunch is always the same, and mine will be minimal each week, so this way I can set a proper food budget. We tend not to keep biscuits etc in the house and I can always whizz up a cake, but I'll allow a few quid a week on treats. No take-aways. Definitely need to do a stock-take of freezers and pantry to see what we already have.

Tiglath

We had a family buffet today, and someone brought along some amazing roquefort and pear spread from either Harrods or Borough market, so I'm on a mission to recreate it tomorrow. Blue cheese, dried or tinned pears, glug of port, whizzed in the food processor and sealed with a layer of melted butter in a pot once chilled. An old butter tub will do. That's work lunches next week on toast for about £3 - the trick will be making it last more than one day.

In a couple of weeks, teams from the office are volunteering on a farm for the day as part of our community involvement. I'm already planning my sandwiches and thermos of coffee instead of spending money in the onsite cafeteria - I'm becoming very cheap indeed, and long may it continue

Tiglath

Completely scrummy toast topper made - 200g Sainsburys Basic blue cheese (£1.70), 213g tin of pear quarters (59p), about 2 oz of butter, splosh of sherry, and whizzed in the food processor until smoothish. Now in an old take-away tub firming up in the fridge. Next time I won't add all the juice from the tin, but that's lunch sorted for 46p/day next week.

Tiglath

Oh the joyous sound of 10x my normal payment winging its way to a storecard instead of blowing it on Christmas rubbish ... never has a spreadsheet been as lovingly tended as mine. If it were a cat, I'd be stroking it all the time

Meals planned through to next Monday and food stocktake done (at 4am this morning because I'm that sad). These next two months will be quite abstemious as I'm running supplies down, but from the end of January the cupboards will be bare so it'll be back to buying meat etc again. The blue cheese & pear spread was very nice on toast today, but I couldn't tempt any of my colleagues to try it because the pear juice curdled the cheese and it looked unhappily like pavement pizza. Never mind - all the more for me.

Tiglath

More faffing with the spreadsheet - the cats are overfed because they're leaving food after breakfast so reducing that. I also think I can feed the two of us for £30/week; there are plenty of resources on here that I can and will use for meal-planning. The overdraft will be paid off on 25th May next year (7 months away - yay), I'll have reduced it by £500 by the end of January even accounting for Christmas, and my DFD is looking like 25th August 2014 (2 months earlier than I thought). That's assuming nothing weird happens to my salary or tax code in the meantime. Taking frugality to the extreme here.

Tilly_MFW_in_6_YRS

Morning Tiglath, it'll be worth the frugality and your life is changing every week as you adapt. Someone has posted that Tesc@ has 25% off pet food from Thursday, so I am off to fill up for a few months.

Bet wishes Tilly

Tiglath

I insisted that they take my name out of the huge Secret Santa pot today on the grounds that I'm grumpy and don't see why I should spend £10 on someone I don't know, AND I'm not trekking across London to the Christmas drinks where all the presents will be handed out and people will get silly and expensively drunk. I don't feel remotely guilty or concerned about being a miserable old sod, in fact I enjoy it I shall ditch the small team dinner as well if it turns out we're expected to pay for ourselves. If the boss won't put it on his expenses account, I shall ignore it all and have beans on toast at home. I really really hate the enforced jollity of Christmas ...