Learning to think like a frugal person

mizmir

Ah - the Apple shop - I never go there - it makes me want to upgrade everything!

Well done on the "new" dress! :j:j:j It is so satisfying when that happens. Last year I lost around 4 stone with SW and was suddenly able to wear an Italian suit that I had kept for 25 years because I !!!!d it so much - even though at my biggest it was 4 sizes too small! I wore it for a family dinner on my 50th birthday last year and it was such a good feeling. I've put a stone or so back on since then so I need to take things in hand a bit - but I have definitely changed my eating habits so it will be much easier to do that now.

Just need to do the same with the finances!

mizmir

Up to Day 6 - find a budgeting coach. Think this one is easy - looks like we can all encourage each other along. MSE overall is a wonderful place to get support. I know each time I come back I get in the frame and each time I drop out I lose the plot. So this time I have to be in it for the long term - and I need to make sure I don't drop out.

I think in the past I have thrown myself into it and spent hours on here - joining dozens of challenges etc. - that is not sustainable. Instead this time I am going to limit myself to checking in a couple of times a day and just stick to one or two main threads. I can't do this quickly - I need to do it sustainably.

StressedSteph

mizmir wrote: »

Up to Day 6 - find a budgeting coach. Think this one is easy - looks like we can all encourage each other along. MSE overall is a wonderful place to get support. I know each time I come back I get in the frame and each time I drop out I lose the plot. So this time I have to be in it for the long term - and I need to make sure I don't drop out.

I think in the past I have thrown myself into it and spent hours on here - joining dozens of challenges etc. - that is not sustainable. Instead this time I am going to limit myself to checking in a couple of times a day and just stick to one or two main threads. I can't do this quickly - I need to do it sustainably.

You have a good point here Mizmir. I have over done it with challenges in the past, failed abit with one or two of them because I was doing too much and then it makes me give up.


I have subscribed to a bare bones 6-7 diaries that I like to reply to, this one and yours included. Otherthan that I am not really signed up to a challenge yet. I might do the NSD's challenge in February as that always helps and that will do.


xxx

chanie

I've spent most of my weekly budget this week. I really wanted to save it, but, its within my weekly spend, so all is good. First of all, Mr Chanie, wanted me to buy him some cigarettes on the way home. I don't smoke, so I couldn't believe the price - £5. He said he'd give me the money back, but we are a family and that's what families do for each other, so I feel I should absorb the cost, albeit, begrudingly. Then, I forgot my lunch for work yesterday. I was having a stressful couple of days and I forgot to pick up my lunch bag and by the time I realised, it was too late. I chose a yummy salad for £3.50, so it was a cheaper lunch than I could have got (my lunch of choice is sushi, which is £6+). I don't need to buy anything for the rest of the week, so it should be okay.

I'm really pleased with my pause, plan, pay mantra. I wanted to save my weekly money so I could buy the children some items at the end of the month. I was going to buy DS a new umbrella as his one had broken (the truth is, I have yet to find an umbrella that can withstand the rough handling of my 3.5 year old). When I got home from work yesterday, Mr Chanie had fixed it - I assumed it was broken, as one of the arms was dangling, but I guess it had just been dislodged. Anyway, that means, I don't have a buy him a new one and can use the money elsewhere.

Similarly, with DD, I was going to buy her a cute little bag, but I've since realised she loves vacuum cleaners and would love a toy one, so thats what I want to get her.

I know that being frugal isn't about pandering to what the children want. However, we don't actually buy them lots of toys. In fact, DD barely had any money spent on her at Christmas (partly because she is only 1 and partly because she had all of DS's old toys to play with). I am happy with my choices regarding what we spend on the children, but I wanted to put it into context.

StressedSteph

Morning Everyone,


I love your posts FMG, but I hope you don't mind me not posting about me working through the steps. A lot of the steps I seem to be already doing but it is lovely to be part of this thread and reading and re-reading the steps really helps.


I am such an impatient person, I would find it hard to only do one step a day.


xxx

ForMyGirls

Hello coaches,

StressedSteph - no worries whatsoever about your not posting about the steps - it is funny though that you posted about this today because when I was reading up on Day 16 this morning I was thinking "I reckon StressedSteph will really like this one" - it is a very powerful tool for combatting the "instant gratification" urge which you have spoken of, and which is an oh too familiar friend of mine as well. I will hopefully post about Day 16 tomorrow and you can decide if you want to give it a whirl :-)

And yes you are right - it is much more bike riding weather here in Oz than in the UK - although last week was too hot. Do you talk in centigrade or farenheit in the UK? Lots of places in Oz were in the high 40s (centigrade) last week. The hottest I have experienced is 43 and that feels like your throat is burning when you breathe so I can't quite comprehend what 49 must feel like. Last summer the weather bureau had to add an extra colour to their chart because some little town in the bush recorded a temperature that was in the 50-55 range! Fortunately this week is saner so bicycling is an option.

Chanie - well done for handling the financial hiccups of your week so well. A bit further down the track in this program there is a day that is about 'getting back on track' and another about saying "oh well" when things don't go quite as you had hoped or planned. For me it is a crucial part of the program to be able to accept that sometimes things will come unstuck, or I will misbehave, and that that doesn't mean I've blown it and it is time to give up. I raise all this because I imagine with the week you have had it would be easy to think "oh this is all too hard - I'll just buy something to cheer myself up" whereas what you have done is said "OK - some !!!! happened so how do I adjust". Well done! (And I love the idea of a 1 year old with a vacuum cleaner :-))

Mizmir - What a helpful insight to realise that you can get spend too much of your time on MSE. It is such a delicate balancing act isn't it to give important things the time they deserve but at the same time keeping the rest of your life going.

I also meant to say that other day when you talked about your success in asking to be paid for your work - that this ties in with stuff Beck has to say at some point about the way in which sometimes our decisions to eat badly (or in this context waste money (or time when for you, as a self-employed person, time is money!)) is a result of wanting to please other people - or not wanting to offend. In the diet context she talks about the way in which we will eat a piece of cake at work because we wouldn't want the person whose birthday it is to feel bad. The point she makes is that if we put ourselves in their shoes would we actually feel bad? Have we ever actually been offended when someone didn't have a piece of cake when it was our birthday? I think the same thing applies in this context too - I know that for me I always worry that I will be perceived as "stingy" if I don't give my time for free but the reality is that I have never thought that a person with specialised expertise of skill who I was engaging was stingy for billing me for their time!

Credits (lots today):
- did my grocery shopping today and went to Aldi. Tallied it up and it saved us $27! Lots of extra credits from the Aldi trip too ...
- said "no choice" to a 'lunchbox filled with snacks' special at Aldi - it included some noodle snacks my older DD loves and I can never find in the shops so I nearly fell for it, but then I realised that I would be paying for a lunchbox we don't need and a whole lot of other snacks they don't like so really it would be a great big waste of money
- overcame my "I'm not that person" snobbery and bought some Aldi products I haven't tried before by remembering my response card that says "if it turns out that it isn't as nice as the Woolies one then you can buy the Woolies one in future, but you owe it to yourself to try". Haven't tried them yet so we'll see, but I am proud of myself for pushing through that barrier - it is surprising how heavy that stuff sits
- some meat I bought (from Woolies!) was off when I opened it (despite having a week left according to the use by date) so I have put it in a plastic bag to return it tomorrow. IN the past I would have just thrown it away and been grumpy but the new frugal me is not letting $10 of meat be wasted!
- resisted the urge to buy a pretty new tablespoon measure that I was momentarily convinced was a completely essential requirement for baking bread - it blows my mind sometimes when I realise the nonsense my brain tells me to convince me to spend money!
- kept to my spending plan today

Checklist:
My checklist (in brief)
1. ARC - yes 2. other response cards - yes 3. transactions in YNAB before spending and savoured purchases - yes 4. Credits - all the time 5. Spent wisely - yes 6. tolerated compulsive urges - all the time 7. spending plan - yes 8. Monitored my spending - yes

ForMyGirls

This is one of my most favourite of Beck's techniques.

In the diet world she talks about that experience you have when you are standing in front of the fridge or pantry thinking "shall I eat those ....?" and then you spend ages arguing with yourself about whether you will indulge or not. In the budget world I see this as those times that you walk past something in the shops and think "shall I buy that ...." and then have this long debate with yourself that includes thoughts such as "I really want it" "I know I shouldn't" "But I've been so good lately I really deserve it" "But I want to stay on budget" etc etc etc.

Beck says that part of the reason (maybe most of the reason) you end up caving and eating the thing is because you just want to relieve the tension of all that arguing with yourself! And eating it (or buying it) does relieve the tension.

Her 'no choice' strategy involves setting yourself some clear rules to follow and then when you are confronted with these situations you don't have to argue with yourself - you just relieve the tension by remembering and following the rule. Initially that might sound a bit challenging but she talks about the way that we have lots of rules that we follow in our lives all the time - the example she uses is that we have a rule about brushing our teeth everyday and we just do it - and how much easier it is to just do it than to debate the question with ourselves every time.

So the task for Day 16 is to write yourself a "No Choice" response card and from now on you should be reading that card every day (she recommends twice a day - I am just doing it once). I read it at the same time as my ARC each day along with any other response cards that are particularly relevant at the time.

There is one rule that is non-negotiable - "I will follow my spending plan" but the rest of it is very individual - think of the situations that challenge you and what rule will work for you. It is also a card that you should expect to add to and adapt over time.

I will put here as an example both my diet no choice card and my brand new budget no choice card because I know that the diet one works for me while the budget one is still an experiment.

My budget one:
- I will stick to my spending plan
- When in the grocery store I will only buy things that are on my list (except for staples that I am CERTAIN we have run out of)
- if invited to an impromptu coffee I will have a glass of water (this one might change, I am not sure how realistic this is - another thought that I had for this one is that if I feel too much of a tight !!! doing this in a cafe I could suggest to the person issuing the invitation that they get a takeaway and we go and sit in the sunshine somewhere (workable for now, maybe not so much in winter!)
- I can pay bills when they come in without waiting to have them on a daily spending plan
- if I am contemplating putting a purchase on my 'spending plan' I will ask myself first "is there something I already have that I could use instead?" and "Could I get it for free or for less $" (thank you Chanie and Mizmir for these questions!)

My diet one reads:
- I will stick to my healthy living plan
- I will have alcohol no more than once a week
- I will drink water with dinner
- I will have only two treats (i.e.: cake, ice-cream, chocolate) a week
- When confronted by meals I haven't chosen I will eat mostly vegetables and a small portion of any high calorie dish
- when faced with birthday cake or the like at work I will have a cup of tea

I look forward to seeing what you choose to include when you get to Day 16.

The Day 16 checklist
1. Read my ARC?
2. Read my other response cards as needed?
3. Used my strategy for avoiding impulsive spending and savouring the fruits of my expenditure? (All the time, most of the time, some of the time, none of the time)
4. Gave myself credit when I engaged in helpful spending behaviours (all the time? Most of the time? Some of the time? Not at all?)
5. Used my 'spending wisely' strategies?
6. Wrote out a spending plan for tomorrow
7. Monitored everything I spent today
9. Made a no choices Response Card

chanie

Day 11 - identifying the motivation for spending

I think I have a good understanding of the reasons for my spending. These are:
1) I feel guilty I have to work full time to support my family.
2) Because I work full time, I should be able to afford some treats
3) I don't always have the time to visit the cheaper shops

I think my 'pause, plan, pay' has helped me to deal with my motivations for spending as the 'pause' makes me stop and using Mizmar's questions. The plan, means I put it on my list of things I need/want, I can then research items and prioritise them (the fact that I know I will eventually get them make it seem all the more sweeter!!!) and then I pay for it when I have the money.

Two examples, both relating to DD:
1) she was bought some earrings for Christmas and lost one of them. I suspected it was somewhere in the house, but couldn't be sure so I was going to buy her a new pair when I got paid. I found the earring this morning.
2) I'm planning on buying DD a toy, which I found for £20. I've since seen it for £18 and £15.

ForMyGirls

Chanie - loved your examples of the payback for pausing and planning.

Credits for my day:
- i took back the off meat. They were apologetic. I didn't feel like a difficult customer. Conceivably i could do it again the next time i buy meat that isn't fresh.
- it is not directly a budgetary thing but i felt like i was very mindful today. I was really able to notice what i was thinking and feeling in eveything i was doing today and managed to make lots of good choices about how to use my time. This will be really helpful in keeping me on track whenever i next have challenges
- my spending plan for tomorrow is "nothing"

My checklist (in brief)
1. ARC - yes 2. other response cards - yes 3. transactions in YNAB before spending and savoured purchases - n/a 4. Credits - most of the time 5. Spent wisely - yes 6. spending plan - yes 8. Monitored my spending - n/a 9. Wrote a no choice card - yes

StressedSteph

Morning all,


Crickey FMG, I can't believe the heat you have been experiencing. When we have a HOT summer and its in the late 20's (centigrade) I start moaning about the heat


Really good points been written today, I wrote out my ARC a week ago, but I have now written it down on a card and put it in my purse.


I really feel that if I can read this ARC whenever I feel the urge to spend then it WILL stop me. There are so many things I am desperate for in my ARC.


ARC
I need to stop impulse buying and get debt free because:-

1: It will free up over £800 per month.
2: We can finally have the family holidays I crave for.
3: We can finish the house renovations that have been on hold.
4: Replace car thats on last legs
5: Financial security (Savings)
6: No sleepless nights and constant Stress.
7: Stop being afraid of the phone or postman.
8: Be able to say yes to the occasional invite to dinner instead of always having to say NO because we have NO money.


Thank you guys. I also have my snowball calculation in my purse so I can cross off each months payment.
I do hope to re-do the snowball calculator over-time as I want to make extra payments to bring the debt free date forward.
So far it is May 2016.


I wanted to be debt free by the time I am 40 in July 2015.
At the rate I am going I will still owe 8k in July 2015 .
So, I HAVE to stop misc spending. I am pretty sure if I can stop this, then we can hit a large chunk of the 8k off and maybe at least become debt free before the end of 2015.


So got to be VERY tough with myself and keep looking at my ARC. I am so sure that these methods will work. I have never done anything like this before.


Credits for today
Not many really, except I have faced my Paypal account as I knew there were debits to still come out of that from purchases made before I started all of this. Upon looking it up, it wasn't too bad. There were only brake pads for the car and a charger for my childrens tablet. Both quite necessary, but I experienced REAL annoyance/irritation at having to find a space for it in my YNAB budget. That is a new emotion for me about spending. Usually its just wild abandon, so I feel its a good turning point.


Hope you all have a good day.