Mighty Titan Overdraft will crumble!

hohum

Just to keep me honest...Spending money this month for me teetering dangerously close to my £100 limit. With an outing end of week to attend to. I have been to see too much theatre. Some is claimable but some is not. Must focus. I like seeing that balance sat there for hols and finally after years the overdraft is coming down. That's the main focus. not bloomin coffees!

Continuing adjustment ruffles with boyfriend. He is trying, god love him but sometimes it is a slog. He says he's trying to deal with it because he wants to be a better kind of person instead of a loafer, but it's also hard and he hates the budget. I suppose if he wants to feel it's being 'done' to him, that's how he wants to do it. Personally I prefer to think I've chosen something but he keeps going back to the idea that he 'has to'. I see it on the boards sometimes too. Whatever gets you there, I suppose but I don't get it. I do feel for him though, it's clearly not easy for him but I love that he's doing it anyway.

Another family member has dropped a small gift into my account (aren't they grand) so I have allocated that mostly between debt repayments and hols. All bills and debt repayments now covered for the month, so anything coming in now will be to travel, food and (if boyfriend gets paid on time) the car repairs...

We may have more debt than I think, boyfriend is confused by what he owes in NI. We need to dig statements out as I have to say statement is somewhat confusing...OTH, it could be that we're perfectly up to date. Won't know until we check I think.

hohum

Well we continue to pootle on. I am going to go over my spending money this month, but will limit the damage to £10 over. Too much socialising and coffees. Clearly not had my lightbulb on this as despite cutting down, I'm obviously not yet willing to stop.

For some reason our grocery spend is really low this month. We've only spent £67...we could do with a top up and I have £25 set aside for this but the issue of course is that's not going to go far in an online shop and as car is out of action I'm limited to local shops and market. Which is incredibly cheap, I've mentioned it before but box (as in a 30cm) of mushrooms was just £2, I got four cucumbers for £1, four avocados £1, ten nectarines you guessed it..£1. Haven't meal planned this week. Am thinking to do some batch cooking on sunday as meal prep for lunches is a big pain. I might do my epic refried bean burritos. They freeze well although cost per portion can add up. My secret tip for excellent home made refried beans is a) use black turtle beans and b) add a bottle of beer, diced onion and a whole dried chilli to the beans as they cook.

I have some delightful kippers to use up so might do fish tacos this eve, have got the veg but will need sour cream, cheese, tortillas and white fish for boyfriend who does not like smoked fish. Can use the leftover cheese/cream/tortillas for burritos. That's the theory...It's either that or I do kippers in oats and have to do an option for boyfriend.

I am slightly relieved the weather's turned for the worse as it means I can spend the evening finishing off tax return without pining for outside. Have a quilted laptop cover I made that needs finishing off too...sort of thifty as I used all scrap material to make it but spent £3 a couple of months ago on batting and £1 on velcro this month for fastening.

If boyfriend gets paid for one of his jobs we are going to spend it on car parts. EXCITING.

Matilda80

I'm on my way over for the burritos,I'll bring wine! X

dawnybabes

Sounds yummy x

hohum

Well I am currently zapping one of my burritos in the microwave they are indeed yummy. Had a bit of a disaster with other dinner plans as had left whole chicken too long before deciding to freeze it...when I came to defrost I saw that the bottom of the chicken was discoloured, slightly suspect smell and I decided not to risk it. Like throwing a fiver into the bin

The other :mad: over the weekend was that we did a bank rec on boyfriends account. And discovered there was £30 odd of spends in his second account he was hiding. Things that really annoyed me about this:

a) does he think I'm stupid
b) if we'd discussed at the time we could have just adjusted the budget and put more in his spending money. Instead, he lied to me and CONTINUED to lie to me.
c) this has cost us a tenner in bank charges as to do his spends he went into an overdraft that costs £1 a day
d) this deducts money from our holiday fund to cover his spending
e) he gets all 'I'm a terrible person' and feels terribly guilty. You know what? Feeling guilty doesn't cut it. Fix it and take responsibility.

Now I have also spent over what I allocated myself in spending this month. Because I am the person who's administering the budget, I looked at it and adjusted categories. So I'm no Snow White and I'm not so annoyed by overspending. I am annoyed by lying to me and then all the sound and fury trying to cover it up.

I think he can hide spends because he is transferring the responsibility and authority for this budget to me. We are not yet handling this together. I accept he's never going to do the admin, but he needs to be on board with the strategy! I believe that if it's something he has equal input to, he has more reason to continue with it.

If he thinks I'm giving up on this he has another thing coming Maybe I can bribe him to do weekly budget meetings by promise of cake/ beer. This is a new way of working for both of us, and brings up some uncomfortable emotions sometimes. Doesn't mean I'm going to quit.

hohum

Right so the numbers are in:

In May we received £1779.22 in income (£400 of that was gifts from family to me).

We spent:

'discretionary' type spends

£120.99 on groceries
£121.64 on my spending money
£88.63 on his spending money
£16.26 on takeaway
£29.99 on YNAB
£45 on boyfriend's weekend away

= £422.51

Bills:

Rent £450.00
Phone & internet £25.45
Council Tax £75.00
Gas & Electricity £50.00
Water £26.80
Mobile me £21.44
Mobile him £11.00
NI him £10.80
NI me £11.00
TV licence £12.12
Joint A/C fees £2 15th £2.00
Software £7.99
AmazonPrime £9.99
Car ins monthly £78.46 :eek: (this is seriously the lowest premium we could get. Did price comparison etc)

Total £717.05

Training and exp:

His employment exp £20.78
Driving lessons £58.50

Total £29.78

Travel:

(no petrol costs this month as car needs fixing)
Public transport £98.70

Debt repayment:

OD £90
My NI Debt £10
His NI Debt £89.61 (this is an old debt he should have sorted years ago, and now we can't miss payments. One more to go)

Total: £189.61

Rainy days, savings and future bills:

Road tax £60
Birthdays £14.32
Friend's wedding £94.84

Total £169.16

Cost of servicing debt :mad:

My OD interest £25.80
His account fees and charges £44 :mad:
My OD usage fee £6 :mad:
Credit report £14.99 (we forgot to cancel before DD was taken. Have now cancelled)

Total £90.79 :mad::mad::mad:


^^^^ Some of the above spends are covered by money I'd put in the previous month, so we finished the month with no overspends.

Can we all just note that my boyfriend through rubbish use of his OD, was paying £44 of charges for £200 of credit :eek: and that despite this reducing, because of his 'secret spending' we're probably going to pay something similar this month. He has now taken the card for the second account out of his wallet.

Can we also note my overspend of £20 odd pounds on spending money. This could have been avoided by not buying drinks at industry type events, not buying coffees when travelling, and not failing to bring in my lunch to work.

The car is costing us a lot of money. It's a difficult one. I think it will be cheaper to fix rather than replace, but a replacement could costs us less in both tax and insurance...We don't really have the funds to replace at any quality - it would be a £500 kind of affair. Boyfriend does need it to get to work booked later this year, it's stuff where he's travelling with kit to places with no public transport. Maybe we should start a car replacement fund...

Matilda80

That's really detailed, well done you. I think knowing where the money crisis half the problem solved. I need to do this.

Enjoying reading. X

Matilda80

Lol at crisis autocorrect fail! Was supposed to say goes.

hohum

Matilda80 wrote: »

Lol at crisis autocorrect fail! Was supposed to say goes.

love a good autocorrect...

It's nice to know someone's managing to enjoy my epic posts It's mostly down to YNAB that I can see where money is going. I'm totally subscribed to the cult of YNAB!

Although I'm doing my 2013/14 tax return self employment expenses at the moment and it's a bit painful seeing where the money went. Around this time last year I had a short term contract after several months of bringing in less than £500/ month. I went a bit OTT on coffees, lunches for two months and now I'm kicking myself. That money could have reduced debts, paid for Christmas etc etc At least this way I can't pretend it's not happening.

dimestorediamond

Hi Hohum, I feel the pain of self-employment tax return. Trying to muster up the energy to do my own accounts for the first time this year, I need to do it to sort out my student finance but it sucks. I feel like we have a similar sort of lifestyle - enough to keep your head afloat but not enough to make too much inroads on debt.

Keep going!