Time to get back on the wagon...

E2006

A bit about us; our family consists of me, DH and our lovely littlies, little man (7yrs) and little lady (6months). Our debt free journey has been a long and at times, bumpy one. I've had a diary before but found myself waffling on and losing focus tbh. Several years ago we had over £15000k debt between us. Lots of reasons for this, but ultimately down to spending way beyond our means and poor budgeting. We took a big hit during my maternity leave first time round and relied upon credit to get us by (if only I knew then what I knew now). Although we've made progress (debts are down to just over £4000 now) we've never really put 100% into becoming debt free and have made the necessary payments we've needed to make and a little more, but not gone all out at war with the debts like we should have really. Its gotten worse as the debts have gotten lower tbh, and we both just pay a set amount by standing order and 'forget' about them.

We've now started to talk about our 'life plan'. We've loosely planned what we want to do in the past, but now we've decided to do something about it. We want to be mortgage free in a max of 10 years (we will be 45yrs then) and have a good amount of savings. We have also decided to make our current home our 'forever' home and extend it rather than move which will save us at least 70k. Before we can do this though we need to clear the last of the debts and get some savings behind us.

So that's the background. To get us back on track and keep up the motivation Im going to try to post most, if not every day. I'm going to list the money saving/earning things we've achieved that day as well as the money spending ones so we can see what we're doing well and where we can improve. Hopefully get back into good habits will mean that once we've smashed this debt, we can apply the same principles in becoming mortgage free and upping the savings.

I'll update todays progress separately as this has been a long post!

E2006

So todays progress:

Money saving/earning

• Listed a couple of items on ebay.
• made a payment of £1.39 to cc1 to round the balance down
• made a payment of £4.49 to cc2 to round the balance down
• Stuck to the meal plan for dinner last night and lifted meat out of the freezer for dinner tonight
• Went for a free swim this morning (I buy a monthly swim card for £25 which may seem a lot but at £4 per swim, I make this back within 2 weeks as I generally swim 4 times per week and as I passed the £25 mark a couple of weeks ago, every swim since then has been 'free')

Money spending

• I need to pop to the shops for baby wipes, potatoes and an onion and some mushrooms. Planning on walking to the greengrocers though rather than driving to the supermarket :A

tiny_courageous

Good luck with the debt free plans! It's good to have an "after debt free" plan as well.

beanielou

Happy shiny new diary

E2006

:hello:Hi Tiny_courageous and Beanielou, thanks for dropping in to my diary. It really helps on the motivation front when you know people are 'watching' you.

I've woken up this morning full of determination to debt bust, but being at that 'middle of the month' point, its really hard to do any more than little token payments - still, every little paid is a little closer to the end I guess!

I worked out in bed last night (sad I know when I could, and should (bearing in mind I have a 6 month old) have been sleeping) that if I could pay £300 per month I would be debt free by next Christmas. My 'basic' payments amount to £150 per month which doesn't seem much but its all I can manage whilst on maternity leave. I will need to re-assess this when I go back to work, but I will be going back part time so on a reduced wage to what I'm used to. This means that any extra really needs to come from ebay, savings on groceries, and any extra I can pull together - need to look into making some more money and will have a look over some of the money making threads. Its going to be difficult with Christmas coming up, but I'm determined to do all I can to take a chunk out of the debt, and also do Christmas as frugally as possible whilst still having a lovely time.

So today's update:

Money saving/making

• Checked bank accounts and checked online how much my next phone bill is going to be so I can make sure there's enough in that account (sounds simple and basic I know, but I didn't last month, and a bigger phone bill than expected put me overdrawn by £9, which then led to the back charging me almost £100 in charges! Very expensive mistake that I wont make again!!)
• Made a batch of cakes to be frozen individually for packed lunches as the last of the cakes and biscuits were used up today
• Stuck to last nights meal plan and have lifted meat out of the freezer for tonight's dinner
• Returned some winter boots that I got for my birthday and bought some different ones that were £7 cheaper

Money spending

• Used the car to take DS to school today as he had a dentist appointment first and I wouldn't have managed to get him there on time if we had walked

Off to look at my cc's online to see if they have magically reduced overnight.......... :rotfl:

beanielou

Off to look at my cc's online to see if they have magically reduced overnight.......... :rotfl:

We can but wish
Maybe if we wish hard enough..............

E2006

Maybe if we wish hard enough..............we will wake up and realise its all been a bad dream :rotfl: (If only ey?!)

Not much going on today as I'm poorly. Got this horrible tummy bug that's going round DS's school. Little lady and I are still in our pj's and will stay this way until its time to collect little man from school. My mum took him in so that was a saving on petrol, but I think I will probably drive up to collect him rather than walking today.

I started going through my bank statements last night and writing everything down in columns (i.e. [EMAIL="'Asd@'"]'Asd@'[/EMAIL], [EMAIL="'@ldi'"]'@ldi'[/EMAIL], 'petrol' etc) and its such an eye opener! DH's salary goes into one acc and that's where our mortgage and bills are paid from. My Salary pays for food, petrol, a couple of direct debits, savings and entertainment as well as any clothes etc the children need and other bits and bobs. Without really giving it too much thought we've continued with this arrangement even though I'm on maternity leave and I've bought things like little mans uniform, little lady's winter coat etc out of the little salary I'm currently getting, and actually, its amazing how the little things add up - no the wonder we are struggling to make my wages last each month! I know I'm coming across as really thick in this diary because this is basic budgeting, but I guess our habits are so entrenched that we just don't think about things like we should! At least DH now see's what I'm trying to pay for and he will hopefully be more on board with trying to spend less week on week (he has a terrible habit of popping to the shop for one thing and coming back with a bag full of others!).

E2006

Bleugh! I've been so poorly this weekend! Thankfully I'm starting to feel better now. Still ploughing on trying to make momey. Ive joined the make £10 a day thread, and have already beaten my target this month! Ive only gone for £5 per day until I get the hang of it, and to be honest, I don't think I will do as well as Ive done this month in subsequent months as Ive had a few one off payments. Ive made the following:

1. Refund of £70 bank charges for being overdrawn when the unexpected phone bill came out
2. Returned my winter boots and decided to make do with what I've got - £58 - I know its a lot but I used my birthday money and wanted something half decent that wouldn't wear out too quickly
3. £30 late cash birthday gift
4. The rest came from roadkill (i.e. money found lying around in coat pockets, bottom of my handbags, and yes I went rummaging :rotfl:), interest in my bank acc's, and the £7 I originally saved from returning the first winter boots I bought.

So further things Ive done are:

Money saving/making:

• Items listed on ebay, and all have bids
• I've joined crowdology and have made £1.92 on my first survey
• I've joined dooyoo (sp?) and have been doing as many reviews as I can to earn points - points make prizes
• DH bought this weeks groceries
• Have been too poorly to spend any money

Nothing to add on the money spending section so wont include it.

Right, well off to get some food - I haven't eaten all weekend (should include that on the money saving) and Im staaaarving now!

E2006

Productive day today!

• I went into town and paid my birthday money into my bank account.
• I've sold one item on ebay for £9.59 (after postage) and the others already have bids
• I returned the 2 tops I needed to return (although I saw a dress I wanted for little lady so got that too) so that's £10.50 back into my account.
• Added 5p of change to my roadkill tin, that DH left lying around

money spending

• Petrol and £1.10 in parking to go into town but had no choice and what I got back outweighed that
• £2.20 for a sandwich whilst I was out (I missed lunch and was starving)
• £21 for some aftershave for FIL's birthday (It was on offer and I thought that was a very reasonable price)
• Bought a Christmas pressie to stash for little man

I'm getting there! Passed that £150 extra I wanted to make each month, but the problem is not all of what I've made is available to be paid to my cc this month because I have a big bill coming in on 19th but at least I've managed to cover that without going more overdrawn or having to dip into next months salary. Hopefully next month any extra can go straight off the cc!

E2006

:mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad:

Ive just logged on to check my online banking and Im soooo :mad::mad::mad: at myself!! My phone bill usually comes out around 5/6th of the month. I checked the other day and it said billing date 19th so Ive been working towards this date. All my efforts to raise enough money to cover the bill and I was on track to have that, and more well in time for the 19th. Just checked and it came out over the weekend . It put me overdrawn which means I will be charged £25 and as I was overdrawn until today they will charge me another £25 for that . To make it worse, even though Ive (unknowingly) put it back in credit by paying money in today, I have another bill of £17 coming out tomorrow and only £12 in there. Because its not linked to any other account I don't know if a transfer from another account will reach it quickly enough to be in before the bill is taken out which if not, means another £25 charge on top . I've never had any problems with my account - the refund of charges the other day was because I'd never had any charges before, but it just seems to be snowballing now - and its all because of the huge amounts the banks charge! (Yes I know I went over in the first place but their charges aren't proportionate to the amount the account was actually overdrawn.

What I'm going to have to do is put any money I now manage to cobble together into that account to cover any charges that are coming over the next month or so, so that I can get it back on an even keel. Once I've done that I will go back to chipping away at the cc's.

I've been thinking that next month I will withdraw DH's petrol, and then leave the rest of my salary in the account and try to spend as little as possible. At the end of the month I might be able to make a lump sum payment to a debt.

E2006

The payment I made into my account last night went in via faster payment so was in time for the bill today meaning I didn't go overdrawn :j I'm actually £5.55 in credit, so the first chunk towards the overdraft! I've been paid for the first thing I've sold on ebay so need to post that today. I've staggered the listings starting from 5 days, then 7, then have listed others on later days because I made the mistake of listing all of my maternity clothes individually on the same day earlier this year, so had a nightmare posting them all off when they sold! Im also waiting for the refund to hit my account in the next couple of days so that too will go towards the overdraft.

I worked out that there are 85 days left this year, and if I could make £5 per day for the rest of the year it would amount to £425! That, plus my regular payments would reduce my smallest cc to £475! If I managed to do that and square up my o/d I would be a very happy bunny indeed!

Off to find more things to ebay....