Learning to pretend, in a good way

Suziebabe

Thanks fedup, I'm hoping I'll get to where you are if I stick with it! I think the thought of the debt still being the same or bigger next year, and the year after, and the year after and on and on .... is what's different for me this time, hopefully the penny's finally dropped that Camelot isn't going to dig us out of it and its time we were a bit more grown up with our money! But oooer it is hard to change !!

Suziebabe

Right, nice easy day ahead, no shopping planned, just nursing my cold away. So I'm taking inspiration from julie2710 and using the down time to come up with today's to-do list!

- get October's spreadsheet set up, aim to learn from where it hasn't worked this month!
- do this week's meal plan - and this time, plan everyone's lunches as well as the dinners! (forgot OH's lunches last week oops!)
- finish reclaiming a top & cardigan for wear. I dug out the sewing machine yesterday and found a blouse I bought for work ages ago that needed shortening, I'd tacked it up just not sewed it. So now it's sewed, and I've got the daylight to take the tacking out, then it'll be like I went shopping without the spends! Plus Mum gave me a jacket-style cardi she didn't want that I can change the buttons on to modernise, then that'll do for work as well.
- cook roast chicken and plan for leftovers
- get washing outdoors to dry & get ironing done for work/school next week
- reshape my Denis Healey eyebrows! Saves on paying someone for it and far more relaxing
- if I can stop sneezing long enough, make some pasta sauce from my tomato harvest for the freezer. Maybe also some blueberry puree for next weeks porridge from the blueberry harvest.

That's all I can think of for now, off to get started!

Suziebabe

Well, that's everything except the pasta sauce done, that'll have to be tomorrow night.

Got very excited when I worked out October's budget, if we stick to it we should get the debts below £30k for the first time in almost a year - first goalpost! :j

I've probably been a bit too strict with the food budget again, but I got nervous of increasing it too much. Not sure why I think this, but I worry that if the budget is £60 a week and we spend £80, that's manageable - but if I increase the budget to £80, there's a risk we'll spend £100, and that's not ok. It worries me that I'm this nervous, and that by not setting a realistic budget we're not tackling the underlying problem. Perhaps, on reflection, I should set the budget to £80 a week? :undecided Hmmm - luckily we've got a couple of weeks before payday to decide what to do.

Blimey, can't believe I'm thinking ahead to the end of October, feels a bit like wishing the time away. Mind you, it's a first for us to be ready for the next month this far ahead!

Suziebabe

Pasta sauce done, 6 portions ready for the freezer.

Can't say I really felt like cooking tonight, but I realised that if I didn't the tomatoes would go off, which would be a waste. And it occurred to me as I forced myself to get on with it, that a lot of the new ways I'm trying to adopt to save money all seem to require more effort than I'm used to, like making lunch for the next day and mending clothes instead of buying new. And I found myself wondering whether I got lazy over the years, how did it creep up on me? And how long til it doesn't feel like hard work?

Next challenge I'm considering for next weekend, is to have a go at making my own pasta To go with my home made sauce. Off to browse the recipes.

Suziebabe

Well, still here and still plugging away!

I had one of my insomnia nights Friday night/Saturday morning - I think caused by the expectation of going over budget on the grocery shopping the next day. So spent a fair bit of time reading through the threads and boards here to pick myself back up.

I got inspired by a few people's signatures and set up a 1% chart for the total debt - wow! Seriously motivational! Turns out we've managed to clear 4% of the total already, and if we can stick to plan in October it'll go up to 7% !!:j

So I then did some calculations on how long it'll take to clear all of it - and came to a range of 5 years (if we only manage what we did in September) to 3 years (if we can throw an extra £250 a month against the debts every month). 3 years would coincide with a big milestone for me (one of those birthdays with an 0 in it:eek:) plus DS will have done GCSEs so it makes a really good target to aim for.

And motivation is back!

Suziebabe

A successful day, makes me realise how far we've come.

- I was on a work trip and took some sandwiches with me instead of splashing out on take-out sandwiches.
- OH had the car for the day, and he used to head into the city and have a good old spend, but instead he realised since he didn't have the cash until his wages went in, so stayed at home.
- the bank accounts all match the spreadsheet
- we've knocked over £600 off our debts

I know there's a long hard slog ahead of us, but when I look back at how out of control we were only a couple of months ago, I'm SOOOOO proud of us!

:j:j:j

julie2710

Well done you :j That's a fantastic achievement! You must be really proud!

I wish I could say the same, I've had my head in the sand a little bit this last month and am feeling a bit overwhelmed again. Sat down this morning though and did a bank account check and now need to get my plans in place for next month!

You'll soon make light work of those debts at this rate!

Suziebabe

Thank you Julie - so sorry you're having a tough time of it, it must be hard to keep the momentum going, but you've come so far! When I look at your signature I'm in awe of how much you've cleared, I'm sure it must be really hard to keep chipping away at it, but it's THOUSANDS of pounds you've paid off!! Have you worked it out as percentages? It's about 8% that you've paid off of the credit cards, it'll soon be 10% and then before you know it you can start saying a fifth, a quarter, 2 fifths and you'll be so far down the road the end will be nearer than the beginning!

It's easy for me to say, I'm full of new starter eagerness, and I realise that we haven't even hit our first bump in the road - so much of this is in sticking to it and I worry we won't manage the endurance event. God knows, we've never made it this far before, so how we're going to stick at it for next 3-5 years I just don't know! £600 isn't much in the grand scheme of things, but when I did a 1% chart it's almost 2% of our total! which made me feel a lot better. In each cell of my chart I've put the amount of our debt less 1%, with each row adding up to 10%. Then my plan is once we reach the total in the cell, I colour it in green and cross through the amount - I can't wait to get to the next cell's figure to colour more of it in! It might work for a bit, then I'm hoping I can come up with something that keeps us at it when the hard times hit.

Having said that, I've just had to shell out on school photos (can't bring myself not to buy some of them, even though they're a rip off) which wasn't in the plan, plus have a load of travelling to do this weekend which I haven't budgeted for either - so it's going to be interesting to see if we get through October and manage to make a dent. And then it's Christmas ... I don't want to think about it!

Suziebabe

I feel a bit like I'm trying to walk uphill against the wind this weekend, and October hasn't even started!

It's not a major drama, but I've had a load of travelling to do this weekend that I hadn't budgeted extra petrol money for, and we've got company for part of the month that I hadn't counted on. Unfortunately, it's the sort of company that doesn't like most of our standby meals, like spag bol or chilli, so even though the freezer's stocked up and we could have had a cheap grocery month, we've had to shell out more than our usual weekly spending on extra food for us all this week, as it would be too awkward to make different meals all week. I'm hoping we can reclaim some of this later in the month with super-cheap shopping, but I know we're not very good at that! So I've increased our overall monthly grocery budget, and shaved money off the later weeks when we should be able to eat out the freezer more. I really wish we could be like some of the MSEers who can eat well on £20 a week, we'd be lucky if that lasted us the weekend! Mustn't lose heart, we'll get better, and life's not going to just stop just because I've got all strict on budgeting.

On the plus side, I have made almost £50 from some old teapots on EBay, that I'd got sick of alternately putting on display then getting bored of them and putting them in a cupboard - a lot more than I expected! Which has given me the EBay bug again - just have to hope it lasts past the wrapping up stage!

And I caught myself slipping back into a latte habit last week, so have increased by target for NSDs in October to get back on track. While I know it's not good that the habit came back, I am quite impressed that I caught it after only a few days! :T

Ok, I've talked myself out of it, we can handle the extra pressure! Keep smiling and :wave::wave::wave::wave:

scotdebs

Suzie just catching up on your diary you are doing great ! we have similar amounts of debt and like you go through super strict then super silly times -it's about finding balance, being in control even when you are having a mini splurge ( that you have planned for an budgeted for of course;) )

Keep plodding my love keep plodding