Learning to think like a frugal person

ForMyGirls

Stressed Steph - I loved reading your post - especially the part about feeling annoyed about having to spend money on brake pads and a charger!. For me it is those times when i see that the way i think is changing that i get really excited and hopeful. The number on the scale going down and the debt balance reducing are exciting and rewarding but nothing beats that feeling of realising you just approached a food or spending decision in a new and sustainable way!

Good on you for committing to reading your ARC whenever you are tempted to spend. I find it very helpful to read it everyday as well as "as needed" because then those reasons are really prominent in my mind all the time and they tend to pop up even without my having to consciously prompt myself.

I imagine it must be a bit disheartening to be facing the thought that debt free by 40 won't happen. Would it help to reframe the goal? Could you phrase it as being less than $10K in debt by 40? Or "i will get out of debt when I'm 40". Or another approach could be to sit down with the budget and work out what extra payment would be required to pay it off by your 40th and then see if it is possible to make that reduction in your expenditure somewhere? Whichever way you go the main thing i would try to keep in mind is making sure it is a realistic goal - you want to be able to get the positive reinforcement of constantly achieving what you set out to achieve. And you also want to establish spending patterns that are sustainable long term so that when you pay off your debt you can keep going exactly as you have been and turn the extra $ into savings.

Thanks also for a really well timed upbeat post. I had an emotionally draining day yesterday and while i held it together yesterday i was feeling very flat this morning. Reading your post has put a much needed smile on my face. Thank you.

StressedSteph

Morning FMG
(or afternoon, I never can figure the time difference )

So sorry to hear you had a tough day yesterday and glad my mindless ramblings put a smile on your face. Keep going hun, I just adore your posts and without knowing it, you are really helping a lot of people on here. The ARC and a lot of your other ideas have really spurred me on to keep positive and not let this debt win. :grinheart.

This YNAB budget is so brilliant. I can see why so many people love it. It is Friday and I still have £320 in my bank account :eek:.
Just 1 month ago, if I had seen that amount of money in my account, I would have gone straight out and bought something mindless with it, foolishly thinking that this was available spare money . Now doing YNAB, I know that every penny of that and more (facing abit of a shortfall this month) is taken up with paying bills. No wonder I was maxed out in my overdraft before I switched accounts and started YNAB.

It is just a shame I didn't discover this way of budgeting three years ago. Nevermind. I will beat the debt this time and so will you FMG.

Hope you are having a happier day today, don't let things/people get your down. You are amazing xxx

ForMyGirls

Thanks for the lovely message Steph.

Yesterday was a day of wallowing and today was still a bit off track (more on diet than money) but I am almost completely me again. Credit to me for posting to you all because it felt a bit like sticking my head in the sand was the right thing to do tonight! Also credit to me for NOT buying yet another iPad note taking App when I was wallowing yesterday!

I so empathised Steph with your story about having $ left in the bank and not spending it! It is also a very strange experience for me to let a small balance sit in my bank account. I have discovered that on the YNAB iPhone app you can "pin" categories and they appear at the top of the list - so I have my "play money" and "kids' expenses" money pinned. Makes me think I only have $15 left to spend (actually rephrase that - it REMINDS me that I only have $15 to spend - the fact that there is $300 in my account is irrelevant!)

My checklist (in brief)
1. ARC - yes 2. other response cards - yes 3. transactions in YNAB before spending and savoured purchases - sort of 4. Credits - most of the time 5. Spent wisely - not applicable 6. spending plan - not yet but about to :-) 8. Monitored my spending - yes

StressedSteph

Hi FMG,


So glad you posted on here, Giving and receiving support is what makes this site so successful. We all have down days and glitches but if we post on here, there will ALWAYS be someone to help pick you up and dust you down. Keep smiling xxx




I haven't totally figured out the YNAB app yet. I am not sure how to sync it so that it is up to date. What is showing on my app at the moment is VERY out of date. Will have to look at the YNAB site I am sure there will be a video or something on the forum to help me figure it out. Mind you, the app isn't that crucial for me as I am home most days and not out for too long, so I am able to check my budget at home before I set off out for the shops .


I hope you have a nice weekend planned. Even just to chill out and get yourself ready for the week ahead. xxxx

chanie

Aaarrgghhh - I just typed a huge post when my tablet crashed. So this is the shortened version.

Hugs to both fmg and Steph - thanks for your support and keep up your good work yourselves.

I over spent by £4.50 yesterday. I was in the supermarket and bought a few gifts which were reduced (full price £12). I can easily claw it back out of next week's weekly money (so pleased I give myself money this way as it means I'm not skint halfway through the month!!!). I'm a bit annoyed with myself as I went into autopilot when I bought them and it was only on the way home that I started to reflect on the spending. I suppose that's what happens if you don't read your ARC every day. Naughty chanie.

ForMyGirls

In the Beck book Day 17 is called "End Overeating". No doubt anyone who has ever dieted, or who is just conscious of what they eat, knows that portion control is incredibly important. Beck talks about the fact that there are two common instances where we overeat - when we eat "family style" so it is easy to serve a large portion, or go back for seconds - and when we eat out and are served more food than is an appropriate serving.

She defines "overeating" as eating a food, or a greater quantity of a food, than one planned to - OR - continuing eating past the point of fullness.

The exercise for Day 17 is to intentionally create these situations and practice eating leaving food behind on the plate. What she suggests is that at a chosen meal you put more on your plate than you have planned to eat - or put an item that you are not intending to eat on your plate. At the beginning of the meal you push the bit you aren't going to eat to the side and then don't eat it (and notice how it feels and what you are thinking while you do this). If it was really hard not to eat it then she suggests repeating the exercise until it doesn't feel impossible.

To translate this into the world of money my thinking is:

- there are probably too types of overspending - the "I spent more than I planned to / bought more than I intended to" and the "I had no money left but I spent money that was earmarked for another purpose". (The second is (has been!) one of my most entrenched habits!)

- the equivalent of the large serving when eating out is probably the marketing we are bombarded with whenever we step into the shops or use the internet

- the exercise that I am going to try out is going to the shops with the purpose of buying one particular thing. I will deliberately take with me more money than I intend to spend and while I am in the shops I will chose extra items to put in my basket (or carry around with me). Then when it is time to pay I will put away everything except the thing I came to buy.

I am going to have to wait a week to do this exercise because a) I have kids home with me for the school holidays next week so I won't be kid free at all (and I am going to feel enough of a goose doing this without two little people asking questions!)and b) I am not planning to buy anything (other than groceries) until after my next payday. So tomorrow I will move on to the next day and come back to the Day 17 exercise in a week. In fact right now I will put it in my to do list for that day!

The checklist for Day 17:
1. Read my ARC and NO CHOICE card?
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. Practiced not overspending

ForMyGirls

Hello coaches,

Just thought I would give a heads up to anyone who is doing the program with me that I have now gone back and added in checklists to each of the posts that outline a "Day" in the program. If you are getting on line to read up on each day when you are ready then all is well - but if you have printed the days out then it might be worth going back to the post so that you can use the checklist.

I have also added some material to Day 5 to incorporate an amalgam of Chanie's Pause, Plan, Pay strategy and Mizmir's "questions to ask before spending" strategy, which I think are a great option for Day 5, which was a bit of a blank space when I posted about it. (I can't remember Chanie and MizMir whether this was the day you both came up with these strategies so apologies if I have misrepresented your thinking).

StressedSteph

Hi FMG,


Ooooh not sure I could do Day 17. It just sounds like torture to me and also tempting fate .
Abstinence is my only way with over-spend, I am also finding that the FUN money budgeted to me each week if really working.
I allowed myself £10 this week, I went to the cinema which cost £4 and I have bought two Kindle books each costing £1.99.


Instead of having a feeling of guilt for going to the cinema and buying the Kindle books, I have a feeling of happiness knowing that I have £2.02 to roll over to next week .


Also if I hadn't have allowed myself that FUN money, at the cinema I would have probably justified buying the drink & popcorn, with the feeling of "well if I am already spending money, I may as well enjoy myself with the extra treats".
Knowing that I had to stick within my budget made me be sensible.


Guess things work differently for different people. But it sounds really painful to add extra treats to your basket, to then have to take them out again. Ouch


Hope you are having a good weekend. xxx

ForMyGirls

Hello coaches,

Fully back on track today. Thanks for you hugs and messages Steph and Chanie!

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 - some of the time 5. Spent wisely - yes 6. tolerated compulsive urges - n/a 7. spending plan - yes 8. Monitored my spending - n/a

Credits:
- doesn't feel like anything particularly credit worthy today because I didn't feel any temptation to spend BUT there is always something to deserve credit so I will dig a little deeper;
- um - like duh - I pulled myself fully out of the land of wallowing and did the thinking about Day 17, and updated earlier posts with checklists! - this is actually a big deal - it helped get me solidly back on track - how could I not have remembered that as credit worthy!
- did some "in the back of my mind" planning about spending over the next few weeks - decisions about what to prioritise with my play money and the kids' spending money. This is credit worthy because it wasn't based on "how much money will be in my account" but on "how much money will be in that part of the budget". Nice to notice how my attitude is shifting :-)

Steph - great to hear the FUN money is working well for you. It is amazing how permission to have a little bit of play money makes it so much easier not to spend a lot :-) And kudos to you for having fun money left at the end of the week!

chanie - well done you for noticing your auto-pilot shopping, for thinking through what happened and for posting about it here. Everytime you confront your habits that way you are a step closer to breaking them!

I have had such a lovely weekend.

Spent a chunk of it sorting through my digital photo archive - somewhere along the line I accidentally duplicated a huge number of my photos so have ended up with about 10,000 photos - of which about 1/3 to 1/2 are just duplicates. Some pictures are in there 4 or 5 times! So I am gradually sifting through and trying to weed out the duplicates - principally motivated by a computer that is running out of storage space. It is a time-consuming task but as most of the photos are of my girls when they were babies and toddlers it is just delightful. I am looking forward to seeing them tomorrow and showing them some of the photos I found - they always love hearing stories about when they were little and all the funny things they did :-)

Also went to the farmer's market and bought a bunch of cheap tomatoes which my partner is busy turning into relish. Yum! His last cook up was a big batch of fabulous strawberry jam. It got me into some scone related diet trouble but I figure there is only so much calorie damage one can do with tomato relish :-)

Hope you enjoy the rest of your weekend!

dearlouise

I think I need to get on board with this YNAB thing. *googles YNAB*