The October Awakening!

fyggy

NSK- this is all pretty much my reply to your reply! See the purpley colour Re gyms- How long does the introductory offer last? What does it go up to after that? It might lure you in then bite you! If it's not too bad and it looks nice you might be able to convince your savey friend to switch gyms too. But my feeling would be only switch if she does too- you're more like to go if you have a gym [read: steam room] buddy.

Debts. Totalling £997.67 in debt repayments Wowsers - this is amazing!! It sounds a lot when you add it all together, but only £220 of that is CC payments. The rest is made up of two loans and a HP.

Spreadsheet- I keep all receipts piles of them! ....... as I'm an iP.ader. I want an Ipad.. really do. With 3G so I can MSE from anywhere...and check up on you all.. lol! The app sounds amazing.. I am a little envious! Reciept collation is truly MSE - very proud. lol!Why thank you! DH brings home those oversized paperclips from work all the time so I have made use of them. Excellent for keeping each months receipts together. Mine has 3G. The app is available for all fruity devices if you've the most popular phone?

Food- I start my budgets from the 27th .........has been reduced to £100. £100 for two people for the month..?? Yes, £40 has already been spent, so £100 left. Shall just eek out the weekly shop to 10 daily instead. Also, not to make this complicated, but we are both on a nutritional meal replacement/supplement & other products which is, for me, 2 thirds-ish of all my meals (I am bulking/trying to gain at the mo, so eating 5-6 meals a day mind). I have also taken on the distribution of this product as a second job, Avon style. So my clients more or less cover my and DHs cost of this. But growing my business I anticipate they will deffo cover our cost of it for the month in Nov if all keep on.

Cupboards- .......We're low on things like Quorn though,
......only buy it when it's on offer!.... Same. bean living on black beans for a month! Oh yeah! I love a good bean stew, chilli, curry, etc etc.

Misc- Each week I give DH money for him to spend as he wishes. ....... Are you in control of his wages as well. As in you take them off him then give him an allowance? I want a compliant OH or an MSE'er.. a girl can dream....I do all the finances. All the bills come out of my account, apart from those for his mobile, his house (rented out), life assurance & Netflix. So I tot up what is needed to cover those and take out the rest. Then do the same for my acc. The leftovers sit in our joint savings acc and then we have an additional acc each that is our Pocket money acc, so I manually move that over each week. Same with food and fuel spends, we do that on our main accs and then move over the amount afterwards.
We have come to blows a little this evening as usually I have a little flex in the system e.g. a "spare" £30-40, but this month we're actually minus £100 as an eB.ay sale has fallen through (grr). I earn about £400+ more a month than him from my main job. He dropped his salary following a promotion earlier in the year putting us £250 worse off. So I have upped mine by working more and more nights & weekends, so topped up around £150-200. I am a spender, that's my problem. If we'd wanted something I'd have justified it and done it, put it on the CCs etc or left us with nothing for the last part of the month. I mentioned last month about resisting a dive trip I'd usually have booked and done. So I think he is used to me conjuring up money or saying yeah okay. He's been to a taster session tonight at a Cross Fit box (gym) and decided he wants to do it. Great. I want him back training as he's lost his mojo since Tough Mudder a month ago. Thing is he decided this today. After all the budgets. And so he wants to pay for the month- £39. I just don't have it. We don't have it. He can pay per session, so do £8 and say go weekly. But that'd have to come out of his pocket money. He's not happy to do this for this month. I can get why he's mad as I go to pole fit and that is £40 pm. But that's already budgeted for and paid. We're so skint this month. I smashed my phone screen and gonna have to pay for it out of an accumulation of my PM (£45 ) cause there's just NO flex at all.

Planned outings/outgoings-

5th- Football game at Anfield. ......A girly football lover... oh no! ...(Kidding).. I like this approach to keeping yourself sane with hobbies. There is an MSE way to everything. Very cool !Thanking you! Raised a footie fan from a foetus by my DF

19th-20th- ........watch the UK Bodybuilding & Fitness Federation (UKBFF) championship finals which is taking place in the town she lives in. Jealous. A colleague had entered so I was going to watch - he has done his back in so I bailed too.
Boooo!

24th- DH has to go back for a filling re-doing. I have so far recieved roughly £2000 of free dental work by going to a student college in London. I have "soft teeth" apparently so two fillings replaced, a crown fitted, a root canal prep and another crown tomorrow. The students have a dentist and a senior consultant watching them so are even more critical than your average dentist as they are scrutinised every step of the way...
Impressive! Kinda like student hairdressers! I wonder if there's a place around here in Yorkshire.. Hmm. First time we've had to pay more than our check up fees. I go twice yearly. He once. He hates the dentist. This is our 3rd as he didn't like the previous ones. Least he'll go on his own to this one.

Other things to pay for: Our diving gear is over a year old and so needs servicing- I concur servicing is a must... glug glug... I had an 8mm for snorkelling off the coast of Ireland. Still nearly froze to death...; - )
I'm not surprised you near died!! Haha. Unfortunately I worked out the costings wrong. It's going to be £210 not £100 Least the new wetsuits will come in under budget- £240. Hah.

I cut and paste so I could comment on the most impressive bits that stood out to me.. and the bits that got me excited... seriously love this post. Don't ever apologise for posting this long - if you want to tell us EVERYTHING then please do.. the more the better... I like getting an idea of a persons life....N'awww thanks! I go on, a lot. I even started my own diary as I feared I was rambling on too much on these challenge threads! Haha.

SFD- 1/20 to report.

banananana_2

Yay sfd 1 in the bank, 19 to go. Quick question, does doing extra hours at work count under the "earn £100.00" rule? Or does it have to be selling stuff? To explain my Foodie spends.. I get my wages on 24th, from which the food money comes out so I will consider myself a success if I have made the £180 last from the 24th of September until 24th of October if that's okay..Its still a month? Most other bills come from OH's pay which is on 15th so this will be our 1st big "pay off some more debt" day.
Should I be scared..cos I'm not! Feels really good to have a plan.

Munchin

Hi all

My stomach isn't happy about something so as I can't sleep I'm catching up on this thread - I can't belive how fast it has moved.

20 SFD - 1 today:). I'm going on hols Thurs morning and I have savings for this. I was going to budget 50 euro per day and if I go over this then I've lost a SFD.

Pay off debt first - Done:) but need to build up some savings as I know how quickly bad habits and not paying attention can let the debt sneak up again.

You will create a spreadsheet and budget EVERYTHING. - Done - borrowed from another thread.

Get a small spend diary – I use a free app.

Set your food budget now then reduce it by £20 - budget is £180 and I've already spent £51.84

Clear out your cupboards of food before buying more - will do

Out of your allowance £3 of food will be donated to the local food bank - I will use the Trussel Trust which I did last month.

Budget for outings - £40 x 2 birthdays

No eating out - Eating out on holiday & OH has voucher from work to be spent by end of month but that is it - honest:)

Bring your lunch to work everyday - joined this challenge last month and keeping it up from now on.

Use up all your beauty products BEFORE getting any more - ok & I'm very guilty of buying deodorants or smellies when I see them on offer but I don't need them.

I will try and ebay some bits and bobs but I had a massive clear out when I started my debt free journey. If I don't check in it's because I've been told the hotel only has wifi in the lobby which you have to pay for:eek:

CrazyCatLady1_3

Quick check in - SFD 1

xJOJOx_2

Avogirly wrote: »

Spend free day one is under the belt.

Thanks for the advice everyone re debt and savings. I do have interest on my debts and I think I will work out if by putting the savings monthly payment towards the debt then how much it reduces my dfd. I just need to be brave and not have any rainy day money.

I am away now until Sunday so will be quiet, but will check in every day.

If this inspires you my freezer, cooker and washing machine all broke within a few days of each other, i had no emergency cash. I made do and didn't put on any credit cards. Sourced a free second hand cooker, walked shop everyday for food needed and saved up for a new freezer(and fridge whilst at it) still got my old washer (it boils everything, burns hand when it comes out) so im very selected with what i wash, everything else by hand, or to the mother in laws ;-) I get a new washer as soon as ive sorted Christmas out!!

Its nice to have emergency cash, but whilst in debt id put it towards that. One of my biggest failings was I always trying to put money aside for a rainy day, but id save up so much then spend it when i didn't really need to. I guess all depends how strict you can be on yourself xxx

xJOJOx_2

NSD for me today, however oh is taking me town tomorrow whilst dd is in preschool, so i wont overspend. Quite looking forward to tomorrow as currently I have -£20 needed for my weeks budget, so I need to shave a few pounds off and pennies off and find a few bargains. I'm very confident I'll do it, I love a challenge :-)

Frugal_foxy_2

Morning all,

These are the targets I set for the two of us.

20 SFD's
Lunch made every day=31 days
Food shopping budget £200=£50 pw
Make £100 extra
Decide debt payment amount=£1200
Debt free date 01/08/2015

Day one was first SFD.
Food banks at several churches so easy to do £3
Not sure how other people manage on such a tiny food budget? We usually spend at least £65 pw so a big cut back for us.
We already use Aldi or Lidl as much cheaper.

Take packed lunches already so continuing this but without buying snacks at work. We both work really long hours so difficult not to get a can of drink or crisps.
I am hoping overtime will count towards making £100 extra?

Everyone seems really up for this-brilliant! :T

Have a great no spend day. X

Daisychain1

Good morning. I've been up for an hour, eating breakfast and reading posts. It's taken me all that time to get through it all, what a fast, moving thread.....love it:)

Please could someone tell me how to quote other peoples posts. I can't work out how to do it.

Wednesday looks a bit like this
SFDs 2/20
Food budget 0/180
No eating out 0/31
Work lunches taken 2/18

So far so good.

Have a wicked Wednesday

clippy_girl

hi daisychain, just click the quote button at the bottom of the post, press space bar and type if you want the quote the whole post, if you just want to do segments, simply delete every thing you want but leave the [ ] bits in. hope that makes sense!

few ppl have mentioned 3g ipads, i want a mini one and been looking into them (prob for xmas).

rather than paying £100 extra for the 3g model and a costly 3g contract, see if you can tether for free on your phone contract. i can do this for free with voda and it will just use my 1gb data allowance. as i normally browse on my iphone then by tethering and using ipad i dont think i will use more data. even if i do, i can add 1gb more data on my contract for £6pm. not seen any packages that give you 1gb 3g data for £6. as it is picked up as a wifi signal then you can just get the wifi model

cottage_retreatist

I love my ipad!! I recommend one but then . . . we didn't buy it - OH got given it as part of his job (lucky b*gger!!!) - we don't have a sim in it and just use it at home for me to browse via our wireless router (in a Pinterest addict when not here!).

Some great apps though - spend hours going through them trying to find the ones that work for me!!

or if you don't want to tether - take the sim card out of your phone and put it into the ipad - you can then 'facetime' people on it!!!!!!

that's what we do sometimes