Debt free by 40 -- 19 Months and counting

debtfreewannabe321

Oh no how annoying How tight is your grocery & petrol budget? This is often where I will pull back on during the month to make money I need for unexpected spends. You've got 2 weeks left of March could you say eek the petrol out longer than usual and borrow £20 from there and maybe the rest from grocery that you're short of? I have other pots that I will dip into as well such as "kid's club" envelope as I always put £20 a month in but usually only spend £12 so usually have money left over from months gone by (which I'm usually trying to save up for swimming and soft play in the holidays lol) but it's usually good for a borrowed tenner here and there. My pocket money usually also always goes on "other spends" and nothing for myself :eek:. Aside from raiding a tenner here and there fro other budgets i'm out of ideas! xxx

bess1234_2

But this is all a sign that you are a changed woman. It's all brilliant , if another learning curve.


And indeed if only you didn't have a life, nothing would interfere with ynab, :rotfl:

Your doing amazing

StressedSteph

mfmaybe wrote: »

Life has an annoying way of doing that. But back to what I said before...you've worked out in advance that this is an issue and are figuring out ways to deal with it. That's all you can do. I know my husband is only supportive up to a point but gets a bit bored when it impacts his fun. For us what works is only merging finances for true joint spends (mortgage, gas, food shopping) but his hobbies come out of his wages, and same for mine. It's what works for us but that's possible as we both work FT on similar salaries. I appreciate it's not a solution for everyone. Ask him to sew up a few bits of bunting to fill the gap

Hi mfmaybe,

I used to earn more than hubby, but unfortuantely he is the primary wage earner now, I only earn pin money so we have to be a big joint pot.
We live in a very active social village and unfortunately hubby likes to get involved with EVERYTHING!!.
Trouble is everything usually stems around the pub and finished at the pub so it can turn out to be very expensive.
He also plays tennis during the summer and have warned him that it cannot end with a session in the pub as its just not possible to do skittles, tennis and golf. That would mean he would have to have around £60 per week fun money!!!. That is the amount of our food budget lol. MEN!!

debtfreewannabe321 wrote: »

Oh no how annoying How tight is your grocery & petrol budget? This is often where I will pull back on during the month to make money I need for unexpected spends. You've got 2 weeks left of March could you say eek the petrol out longer than usual and borrow £20 from there and maybe the rest from grocery that you're short of? I have other pots that I will dip into as well such as "kid's club" envelope as I always put £20 a month in but usually only spend £12 so usually have money left over from months gone by (which I'm usually trying to save up for swimming and soft play in the holidays lol) but it's usually good for a borrowed tenner here and there. My pocket money usually also always goes on "other spends" and nothing for myself :eek:. Aside from raiding a tenner here and there fro other budgets i'm out of ideas! xxx

Hi DFW,

Food is pretty tight (£60pw), although I might be able to save £5-£10 from it somehow. Fuel is even tighter. We both put £30 per week in our vehicles. But if I do anything other than school trips then I run out before the end of the week. Trials of living in a really rural area unfortunately. Think what I might do is borrow the missing money from our savings, but pay our FUN money from the rest of the month back into the savings to build it back up again.
Annoying as I wanted to see The Book Thief movie on the cinema next week before it goes, but looks like I will have to wait for it to be on the telly .

bess1234 wrote: »

But this is all a sign that you are a changed woman. It's all brilliant , if another learning curve.
And indeed if only you didn't have a life, nothing would interfere with ynab, :rotfl:

Your doing amazing

Hi Bess
Thank you so much for posting. It certainly is a learning curve, quite a painful one at the moment. Going to be tougher the more we get into the summer. Its easy to be a hermit and avoid lures of spending money, but when the weather gets better, people start organising things .

Really don't want to fall off track, I have given up before when things got too hard to handle, but we have done so well, so far and nearly paid of 3k since December. Got to keep it together and not let it slip:o

Thanks for your words of encouragement xxx

Puzzcat

Hi SS,
I can feel your pain.. my OH has a very active social life and has a season ticket for his footie team. I meanwhile do very little yet i'm the one with the massive debts.... I have suggested to him that although they are my debts I believe the money was used for family 'stuff' rather than mulberry handbags and jimmy choo's... We also have always had seperate finances and used to just have the joint account for house bills/mortgage etc....
Sorry I'm wittering on...
Your OH will have to go and do some extra jobs to raise the funds for all his hobbies if he wishes to persue them all and to attend all the social functions...
As someone else said, is he any good at sewing.....

StressedSteph

Puzzcat wrote: »

Hi SS,
I can feel your pain.. my OH has a very active social life and has a season ticket for his footie team. I meanwhile do very little yet i'm the one with the massive debts.... I have suggested to him that although they are my debts I believe the money was used for family 'stuff' rather than mulberry handbags and jimmy choo's... We also have always had seperate finances and used to just have the joint account for house bills/mortgage etc....
Sorry I'm wittering on...
Your OH will have to go and do some extra jobs to raise the funds for all his hobbies if he wishes to persue them all and to attend all the social functions...
As someone else said, is he any good at sewing.....

Morning Puzzcat,


It is a difficult situation. Because I really feel like to a point our social life should be put on hold and only maybe attend the functions that are extremely cheap or free.

I know all too well that if you do not give your ALL to debt busting then it just doesn't happen. Our budget is so tight that it only takes a small upset to ruin a lot of the hard work that I have done.

I refuse to break into the savings unless it is a dire family emergency. and even then I would think twice hehe. Hubby has admitted that he has £15 in his wallet so that can go towards it all.

I just have to find £43 from somewhere :mad:.

I did suggest to hubby that just because skittle was twice this week it doesn't mean he HAS to go ......That fell on deaf ears. So he has said that he won't go for a knees up after golf on sunday which is what costs the most. I have also said that we will have to leave the pub at 11.30 on Saturday night then the babysitter will only cost £20. Really don't want to be paying anymore than that for a sitter .

What I haven't managed to get through to him is that it is only for this year and part of next year that we need to be super conscious of what we are spending. Once the debt is paid off then we will free up £1,000 :eek: per month. It will feel so amazing and I am keeping that fixed in my head.

We are paying 1k per month against debt and also savings up some small pots for emergencies. We will feel so rich when we are debt free :T.

Oh well, moan over xxx

StressedSteph

Morning Diary.


Not much too report today.


Balanced my bank statement against YNAB and we are ticking by ok. No spare cash ANYWHERE. But bills are being paid and everyone is mostly off my back.


On my bank statement today Santand#r took their £2 monthly charge for the 123 account, but paid me


£5.43 for 4 Communications Direct Debits
.65p for my Water Direct Debit
£2.30 for my Gas/electric Direct Debit


£8.38 minus monthly fee £2 = £6.38 paid to me by a BANK. haha that always makes me laugh. Never been paid for anything from a bank :rotfl:.


I have one more issue to sort out . My mortgage payment.


Back over December & January I had big problems paying the mortgage so I called them up and apologised and they kindly cancelled my direct Debit and said I could just pay within that monthly when I could.
Well this has gone on since then. My specified payment date is the 1st of every month but I have no hope in making it on that date. So I have been paying in the last week of every month.
I do get a letter from them every month warning me that if I don't pay by the end of the calendar month then they will charge me £40.


They haven't put any charges on yet so I have been just paying them when I can during the last week of every month.
BUT.......this probably isn't doing my credit file any good and I am also missing out on the cashback for this as it isn't on Direct Debit.


I will wait until I have paid this months mortgage payment, which will be when my Children Tax Credit comes in on the last week of March and then I think I will call them and ask if I can change my DD date to the end of the month not the beginning. Guess they will charge me some additional interest for doing this, but I think it is the only way.


Once that is done then most of my problems from my LBM / crisis will have been dealt with and back on track. Still got N#xt to pacifiy but sure that will get sorted soon.


That's about all to report today. Off to get sewing again xx

debtfreewannabe321

Hi Steph, can you pay the mortgage weekly or as and when the money comes in from jobs? Or will they only accept it once a month? Might be a good idea just to transfer bits over to them when you can and it won't seem as much to find in one go. I don't really know much about this though so could be totally wrong

Only £382 to go on BC!! Yay then you can move on to the idiots that are n3xt! xx

StressedSteph

debtfreewannabe321 wrote: »

Hi Steph, can you pay the mortgage weekly or as and when the money comes in from jobs? Or will they only accept it once a month? Might be a good idea just to transfer bits over to them when you can and it won't seem as much to find in one go. I don't really know much about this though so could be totally wrong

Only £382 to go on BC!! Yay then you can move on to the idiots that are n3xt! xx

Hi DFW,


Hmmm Never thought about the weekly thing. I suppose I could work out a weekly amount to send to them. If I didn't have two BIG MOT's to worry about in JULY, I would plough that savings money into getting back on track with the mortgage but have a really nasty feeling we are at least going to need ALOT of tyres :eek:.


Will ask the mortgage company when I call them at the end of March if they would accept weekly. Can't imagine it, but I might be able to do that myself and just un-officially send it to them.


Food for thought. Thank you xx

chanie

Steph,

How do you feel about bit having alcohol at the comedy night and maybe just having soft drinks as a way to save some money? Or, you could be naughty and buy a soft drink but sneak in miniature spirit to top it up with?

Maybe you could claw the money back over the next few weeks from the rest of your weekly money. I do this, if I overspend, I make sure I claw it back by the end of the month, so my monthly budget remains balanced.

StressedSteph

chanie wrote: »

Steph,

How do you feel about bit having alcohol at the comedy night and maybe just having soft drinks as a way to save some money? Or, you could be naughty and buy a soft drink but sneak in miniature spirit to top it up with?

Maybe you could claw the money back over the next few weeks from the rest of your weekly money. I do this, if I overspend, I make sure I claw it back by the end of the month, so my monthly budget remains balanced.

Hi Chanie


Thanks for replying.
Update of FUN money debacle.


I have managed to offset hubbys golf and Skittles from his FUN money, He has some left overs from previous weeks and he wont have any spare next week. (£40 in total) I haven't donated my FUN money because I KNOW he wouldn't want to give his money over to me if the boot was on the other foot :mad:.


I was then left with £60 for the Comedy night.
I have allocated it to the Nights/Days out category and will try to snaffle money aside to make it up over the next two weeks. I have slightly raided the Pets and holidays savings funds as they are not quite so important as the others.


I often don't spend all of my FUN money either so I can move over what I don't use.


Not too bad all in all, but wouldn't want to make a habit of it.


Got paid £9 today so have paid that against my Barclayc#rd.
Down to £373 I think now.


Not much else to report. Have a great weekend x