woah... are those MY finances??

stewby

Strange sort of day really... woke up early to go for a "flea cup" (cup of tea and cake to support macmillan. Bit of a disaster as the place we went to had a choice of three cakes and no seats.
*facepalm*

At least we found a chair for my granny. So, as it was a bit disappointing... we went for a second flea cup afterwards. (i paid for neither so it is a no-spend day so far).


Our spice rack has arrived (OH bought it) so we can now store his spices off the kitchen worktop which is great as he likes to cook currys so there are quite a fair few of them.


Now it is lazy day time so I am away to lounge on the sofa and watch Heston's Feasts with my mum. I love watching cooking shows despite the fact that my own cooking is terrible.


Shouldn't need to leave the house again so should hopefully be a no spend day. Getting into the swing of this. Hopefully will be able to do as good once the challenge actually starts in october.
Oh... speaking of which, lesson learned about copy-and-pasting, I do not plan to exercise three times a day, it's going to be three times a week. Silly me, reading what I want and not what I have written.
*facepalm*

Fmess

October challenge board is up

stewby

Ooooooooooooooh. Thanks very much fmess. I will go and add me to it.

scottishspendaholic

Aw stewby, are you from the NE Scotland? I am originally!

A fly cup, haven't heard that in a while! I'm baking for our local Macmillan coffee morning tonight!

Xxx

stewby

scottishspendaholic wrote: »

Aw stewby, are you from the NE Scotland? I am originally!
Xxx

I certainly am.


Had a look at these rules and hooray!! No signs of any exercise rules. (although it probably would have been better if there was, give me some encouragement).

*You will aim for 20 SFD (Spend Free Days).
I am going to include petrol in mine as it is part of my budget account and normally i do everything all in one (get food and petrol at the same time).

* Pay off debt first.
Going to bit the bullet and pay £200 off my next account. As this is my first attempt at budgetting, I am going to give the £200 to my dad and he will hold on to it for the month, he is very intelligent and impressively strict so it is doubtful I will ever see the money ever again.

* You will create a spreadsheet and budget EVERYTHING.
Will attempt to do this but (please don't laugh) I can't work excel or do a spreadsheet so I will do what I always do and make lots of pretty tables using pencils and rulers and write it all on there.


* Get a small spend diary.
I tend to stockpile books (I really like the oxford ones) so finding a budget book will be easy.

* Set your food budget now then reduce it by £20.
Okies. Deep breath. Budgeting £50 for fuel gives us £130 for food for the month. That's about £32.50 a week which seems do-able if we drop our brands as planned.

* Clear out your cupboards of food before buying more.
Honestly, this one won't really work as I am very fussy and we have a heap of meat in the freezer that OH will eat but I won't. Same with tinned stuff such as tuna.

* £3 of food will be donated to the local food bank.
Easily do-able. There is a food bank at tescimos so it will be no bother to get a couple of extra things when we do our shopping.

* Budget for outings, birthdays, Halloween parties, trick-or-treater treats and meals with friends.
I have very little social life so the plan is to budget in one take away meal for the month (either pizza or chinese) so my poor OH sticks with the plan. We do have one birthday (so that's about £22). We have sweeties for halloween.

* No eating out.
This one we will achieve, with the exception of a take-away one night. I can't force OH to cut everything at once. He would just get fed up.

Bring your lunch to work everyday.
Easy. As far as I am aware there is no canteen at work. The plan is to have breakfast and lunch at work (cereal, sandwich) and convince OH to make me supper three days a week.

* Choose a DFD.
According to the snowball thing, it won't be until next October before I pay off my debts. I plan on making it May 2014. Would prefer it to be February so I can turn 30 debt free but that is just not possible. May is the month before we go on kos and I would quite like to have paid for the holiday before we go.

* Use up all your beauty products BEFORE getting any more. No more than £10 allowed on beauty spends for the month.
No problem. I tend to prepare for the apocalypse so I have a lot of stuff in a cupboard. I also don't wear make-up so costs are minimal.

So... there's an outline of my October plan. Sounds reasonable I think. Hopefully.


edit: not going to try and sell anything as I am not allowed ebay (Dad's rules which has probably saved me from a much worse debt).

Fmess

Hey

As for the October challenge;

I agree 20 SFDs including petrol for me too. I love how your dad is both supportive and strict. I hide all my debt from my dad as he would be so annoyed with me! I reckon I can only do £288 for debts (£188 for loans and £100 for ccard) as I'm saving £200 towards MOT and car tax next month.

Your food budget has inspired me, I'm going to go for £180. Never been below £200 before. But I'm a little worried about the eating out as I love eating out It's my usual weakness guess it's good it's in the challenge!!!!

Hope you had a lovely afternoon on the sofa. I have my onesie on and finally my feet up

stewby

Had a brilliant afternoon being lazy. Currently debating the pros and cons of getting hot water bottles.

pro: will get that cosy feeling quicker.
con: will have to get cold before i get cosy.

It's a conundrum.


Need to decide before agents of shield comes on as I can't miss the start of it or I won't understand anything.


Wow... I can't believe I have inspired someone. The plus side is that your goal will inspire me to work harder to stick to it.


I have always been honest with my dad. If I had tried to hide it, then I would have had no sense of control and would probably have already booked new york. It's only because of his help that I am not trying to get rid of £20,000 worth of debt. Besides, he helped me get my first house (was guarantor as I was 17) so I owe it to him to be honest and truthful.

stewby

I have told you all that I am not the brightest log in the fire... Well, just realised that we have the ability to pause live tv.
So now I have two lovely cosy hot water bottles (no heating on yet). And I can watch my tv show from the very start.

Fmess

I'm definitely going to be using my hot water bottle this winter. I do kind of like cold winters so you can snuggle up inside

I wish I could be honest with my dad about my finances but he works in finance and is so careful with his money, that it'd be a huge disappointment to him. He has also helped me with my house as I couldn't get a mortgage as I was a student, so I feel I owe him to not get into financial trouble

stewby

Maybe once you have gotten a grip on it and paid off some of it, you could then speak to him about the situation fmess. I imagine he would be proud of you for managing to take the initative and start getting rid of the debt yourself.


I sounds awful saying this but I am kinda happy that there are other people in the same position as me. It's almost stupid when I look back and realise that I thought there was just me in this position and I believed that everyone else was doing brilliantly at this money juggling apart from me and my brother. (sorry, i know that sounds terrible but it is amazing how isolating being in debt makes you feel).


Anyways... enough moping and thinking about the past. Time to focus on the future. It's the beginning of the end for my debt.