Too much month left at the end of our money...

Nikky2003

Wow! you have come so far - wishing you loads of luck for the rest of your journey, now subscribed x :j

debtfreeoneday

Aww thanks Nicky - still feels like we have so much further to go.. but we will get there.. Will also find your diary and subscribe! x

debtfreeoneday

Well I had the dreaded letter from tax credits and as expected, its a large overpayment so our monthly payments have been reduced to nearly nothing.. I'm so thankful we get the free hours next month to help us, but we seriously have to monitor our budget and I may yet have to plead poverty with tax credits to see if we can pay the overpayment back over a longer period. Not that I want to do that, but...

I've downloaded a budget monitor app now to see exactly what each month looks like and to know we can stay within budget and what extra we have to save etc.

Also starting to plan for next year for Christmas and birthdays with the intent of keeping within budget.

Debating our house move at the moment, if we move where we plan to, we can sell a car and reduce our fuel bill by some £100 per month. But then feels wrong to be selling our house and incurring the costs of doing so.

Ho hum.. what to do..

debtfreeoneday

Had a second Christmas day today with stepkids and little people, so here I am once again stuffed on the sofa! Got some smellies that I absolutely love so that will save me some money come next year.

I got some jeans for £4 off ebay so that was good, plus watching a few other bits and pieces. Have loads of ebaying to do myself, but just waiting for it to pick up a bit in the New Year.

Christmas decs are coming down tomorrow - so can't wait for the house to be back to normal and all the clutter cleared.

Food wise, it's going to be a week of using things up in the cupboard to last until our food delivery next Sunday, but that's fairly easy enough to do.

About to head out for a walk to clear out the cobwebs and let the little people run off some energy and get some fresh air.

Hope everyone is having lovely Sundays x

debtfreeoneday

Started to think about how I'm going to tackle my goal of losing weight next year. For along time, I have juiced on and off, but for various reasons haven't maintained it. I'm desperate to overhaul the whole families eating habits and therefore have decided I am going to do a juice reboot for 7 days initially. I'm happy to give up £10 of my money each week (I get £20) as this goal means so much to me and then also use £10 of the weekly shopping bill which will hopefully be offset by the fact we will be buying and using less food if I'm not eating with the rest of the family.

Longer term the plan will be to reintroduce meals that are healthy and processed food free. I still hope to be able to do this within the weekly shopping budget of £50, but will review that as time goes on.

I know people might think I could just eat less, move more, eat healthy, but I need a kickstart to get this weight loss going and I need to see some results quick for motivation. That said, it didn't go on overnight and it isn't going to come off overnight.

I'm going to start Tuesday as we don't do anything for New Year and I can wake up on 1 January with one day under my belt, I don't expect the rest of this week to be easy, but I do hope to feel massively better within a few days.

Thanks for reading all. x

beanielou

At the end of the day it has to be something that works for you & if you think this will then go for it

debtfreeoneday

Evening all.. hope you've had a nice day. Few unexpected spends for me today as I've had to cancel a hospital appointment in London due to little man being exposed to chicken pox. Rearranging and changing the tickets has cost approx. £40, but I can't do this any cheaper and I have to go to the appointment..

Apart from that I have sold two things on Ebay for £10 each so that was £20 towards it and a few more things going on tonight to hopefully offset some more of this. I want to build a little stockpile of pennies in Paypal to use for things that we buy from ebay..

So health kick starts tomorrow, excited but nervous about willpower and motivation.. anyway will focus on one day at a time.

debtfreeoneday

Happy New Year DFW's!

Hope you all had fun - I was in the land of nod by 10pm..

Was hoping to go to the beach today as we usually do on NY Day, but it's absolutely peeing it down here, so think it'll be a bunker down day and play with toys!

Health kick starts today and the scales creaked and groaned in at 203.8 pounds eeeek so here goes 60 pounds. I am absolutely determined to do this.. have rethought the juicing and am going with healthy eating for a bit.. am feeling so very motivated about taking control of the pennies, I feel I can give the weight loss a good go without racking up extra cost as well.

Have a small pile of stuff for ebay so will list some of those today..

We've made the decision to move our childcare in January as well as long as where we want to send them still has places.. will be just our luck they don't, but hopefully they will. Over a School year, this will save us some £1300 and we just can't justify the cost. Will ring them up Monday and hopefully get everything in place. Every little helps doesn't it.

Feeling really motivated and excited for the year ahead. I don't expect to get much paid off the debt over and above our monthly repayments, but I am happy to know I will be in control of other costs and out outgoings / spending and therefore will put ourselves in the best place possible to continue to pay off the debt and save what we can towards paying it off.

Come on 2014, I'm ready for you!

parsniphead

Happy new year debtfreeoneday.

Wow you have done so well to bring down that debt, I'm so impressed. The last bit will be gone in no time I'm sure.

Hope the little one with chicken pox is feeling better. I'm itching here just remembering.

I have about 55 pounds to lose. I will definitely follow your progress as it will spur me on along with looking at the success stories over on my fitness pal site. Unfortunately the house is stuffed with cakes and chocolate still but I may feed them to step son and his girlfriend who is a bit of a dustbin and will shove anything in her mouth.

Childcare is a massive killer especially when you have little or no tax credits. Hope it all works out.
Have a good day.

Habibiboo

:wave:
Happy New Year 2 u too, we're in a similar boat but the mortgage is the debt we're trying to stamp on in 2014 - won't clear it, but will hope to get it into a much better place by the end of the year and repay the whole thing at least 4 years early!
60lb is also my magic number for weight loss this year, so I'll be watching your progress with interest! I've never tried juicing, I think I'm going to start with yeast-free / sugar-free and see how I go! As a motivator, I'm going for a system of a £1 per 1lb - if I drop a lb then £1 into the sealed pot, if I gain a lb, then it's a £1 fine into the sealed pot! That way any yo-yo diet outcomes will help towards next CHristmas!
All the best!