My Weaknesses and how to address them

nolongerindenial

I have just sat down and gone through our monthly spend, to see where more can be trimmed and despite trimming over £440 of our arrears over the last month, I have noticed 3 massive weaknesses I have..

1. Food! We overspend monthly on our food budget, we have a reasonably good food budget of an average of £80 per week for the 3 of us (1 Son, Me and my wife), barely throw anything away but go overbudget by upto 25% per week

2. Takeaways! We work very long hours (Were both self employed, im working in the home office tonight and will be 6 nights out of 7 (7:30pm-~2:30am Sun-Fri) as well as 9:30-5pm(Mon-Fri), on a saturday night we love to have a takeaway and a few drinks and watch a film (usually borrowed), this is costing a fortune (£40 per weekend ) and whilst I eat any leftovers for the next day or two, its my one big massive regular weakness

3. Cars: Cars are my hobby, I enjoy nothing more than working on them and typically as the parts are bought as and when I can afford them (or full cars bought and purchase price recouped from selling the unwanted parts and weighing in the rest), they cost very little / provide funds for themselves. as there of the road there is no specific ongoing costs, I get very stressed when I have weeks without being able to be alone and just work on them, and some of the parts I sell regularly contribute to the household budget, last year provided a surplus of around £400, this year so far a loss of around £150.

What I am trying to do is something very difficult, its my personal challenge to clear our poison debts (arrears, credit card basically anything but the mortgage) within the next 21 months, I can see that the additional £246 (shopping excess + takeaway) per month (£5166 over 21 Months) would be so much better spent clearing debts - I know it in my head, and in my heart but I simply cave in every week to pressure from my wants and desires promising myself this will be the last week, ive done it every week for the past 3 months bar about 3 weeks.

Any tips to keep my strong this coming saturday would be greatly appreciated.

Yours,

Nolongerindenial, but cantbreakhisdesires

longtermplanner

nolongerindenial wrote: »

Any tips to keep my strong this coming saturday would be greatly appreciated.

Why not decide now what a great treat but not takeaway meal would be? Burgers with proper burger buns, bacon, cheese, gherkins, tomatoes? Or supermarket pizzas with extra cheese and anchovies? Chili con carne with doritos and dips?

nettles

we have a little treat that my daughter loves - big mac in a bowl! Basically cook up some mince, chuck it in a big bowl with some onions, gherkins, lettuce, grated cheese and either burger sauce or seafood sauce and mix it all together. Sometimes we have this in a roll or a wrap, other times just in a bowl

nolongerindenial

Thank you for the ideas - they are greatly appreciated and I still love this place, was first on here a few years back when I had my LBM, have been battling with the opposites that running a small business and growing it from zero (well a negative £3000 start as we didnt have the money for the bills when we started) to what I have now - a small but growing business (and this takes a LOT of time and money no matter how you look at it), whilst also trying to pay off as much debt as we can, and shop as smartly as we can (no going to the supermarket - there to good at making my wife put things in the basket - online shopping and get it here in tesco's £1 slot - cheaper than the petrol to drive there!)

Paulaviki

Supermarkets do great weekend meal deals on 'takeaway' type foods. Tesco do a big night meal deal, we got two huge pizzas and two sides for £6. It was no dominos but it wasn't too bad! Sainsbury do a £10 deal for curry or Chinese as well, and Asda do something similar for £7 (their curries are really good). I know it's not the same but it is much cheaper!!

nolongerindenial

I know we have been stupid, I have even joked it would be cheaper to by a pair of rubbish microwaves and get those meals in the long run (we both like to eat our food hot and together - my cooking skills are appalling, if it pings and doesnt require you to stir it in the middle Im game - other than that Im terrible.

cheaper is good - The £10 deal sounds good - but our nearest sainsburies is 5-6 miles away, although we know our local chinese restaurant socially so chinese food is really cheap for us (2 chinese meals, rice, chips and a couple of cans cost us £10), 2 chinese meals, rice chips and no cans also costs us £10 lol.

I will definately try out the curries and pizzas as I quite like Asda Pizzas (although you have to cut the large ones in half to fit in our oven lol)

cam6278

Good luck in cutting down

My weakness in order

Kindle books - much too easy to one click and download ( have removed my card )
Handbags and shoes - no more online browsing or sale shopping

Scritti

I guess I'm lucky in that I never got into the "takeaway" habit that seems to strike so many of the debt-busters on these forums.

I know a takeaway is lovely but it's so tempting because you're hungry. Trust me, you'd never "waste" that money if you were stuffed from eating something else.

I've spent up to £40 on a chinese for partner and a couple of friends as a treat in the past and all I could think of about 10 minutes after we started eating was "jeez, this was a HUGE waste of money, never again".

I'll sometimes chip in if others want takeaway pizza. It's nice but, again, after the first slice I just start thinking "actually, this isn't much nicer than the one I get from Aldi that costs £1".

So I now never get a takeaway more often than about once every two or three months and I've saved loads. I work long hours too - not as long as you perhaps but always at least 12 hours, sometimes only having a single day off in a 3 week period (lots of O/T to get myself debt-free!).

If I really want a takeaway-style treat when I finally get a proper wind-down, chill-out night off, I'll sometimes mix a small takeaway with stuff I've chucked in the oven myself. So we'll get a takeaway pizza and have a few slices each but we'll cook an Aldi one and share that too. I'll also chuck a load of Aldi's yummy chips (£1 for a massive bag) in the oven but I'll also get a portion of chips with the pizza (again, for that "takeaway treat" taste) and we all share those too. Microwave a tin of beans for a cheap side-dish and we're all sorted and well stuffed. The oven pizza & chips only take 25 minutes and is ready by the time we get back from the takeaway so it's no extra work and we've less than halved the cost of what we used to spend for 3 people.

Bit more difficult with Chinese food but we usually pad it out with extra rice or chips and maybe have a slice of bread each. Maybe doesn't sound so nice but it's actually lovely having a chip or rice buttie dipped in sweet & sour sauce.

When we've made a bit of tummy-room, I do us all a gorgeous chocolate pudding, again from Aldi. You just stick 'em upside down in the micowave and cook for 50 seconds. Chuck a big blob of Aldi's scrumy vanilla ice-cream on and you're away. Costs about a quid a portion and is gob-smackingly delicious, as nice as any I've had in a restaurant.

Anyway, I've blabbed on for a bit too long but I guess my point is that, instead of going cold turkey with the takeaways which I think can help many people psychologically when you're knackered and finally get to relax, perhaps at first try just spending less on the expensive stuff (maybe just get one portion instead of two?) and spend an extra 5 or 10 minutes padding the meal out with other goodies which are easy to cook or microwave. I enjoy my "takeaways" even more nowadays as it feels like I've had a lovely treat for about half the price that it used to cost me. It somehow seems to taste even nicer knowing that too!

Regardless, you sound like a nice bloke and I know the feeling of absolutely craving that time on your own to do your own thing - I hope you get some of that precious time soon and I wish you the best of luck with the debt-busting and your business.

Willowpop

We gave up our fortnightly Domino's in favour of Sainsbury deli pizzas. 2 14" pizzas with up to 3 toppings for £6. Feeds myself, my OH and DD. We have mayo to dip the crusts in and spend Saturday early evening watching a family movie scoffing pizza. We actually prefer them to the Domino's ones as they are not as salty.

ZeroSum101

Hi there,can I join your thread? I'm afraid clothes is my weakness... But I'm aiming for Zara or wallis from now on... Groceries too, sometimes I go without a list and like to have friends round..this is when budget goes out the window...

nolongerindenial

Feel Free to join the thread - identifying a weakness is the first step to overcoming it!

My budget never goes out the window when I go shopping, all my money is in my savings account and I only transfer what I think I am going to need - keeps you on your toes when your out shopping trying to avoid the embarrassing decline!