Snowscreamer's debt reduction efforts

snowscreamer

Leisure £200 £110 £90

Holidays £425 £0 £425

Spending money £45 £0 £45

Subscriptions £25 £10.75 £14.25

Travel £247 £21.90 £225.10

Occasions £320 £41.94 £278.06

Meals & Drinks £275 £138.93 £136.07

Groceries £380 £104.93 £275.07

Car expenses £110 £0 £110

Taxes £264.12 £232 £32.12

Utilities £312 £152.93 £159.07

House expenses £777.23 £647.23 £130

"Stuff" £80 £36 £44

Insurances £89.74 £10.70 £79.04

Savings £30 £30 £0

Other £5 £5 £0

TOTAL £3585.09 £1546.31 £2038.78

snowscreamer

And a personal update, we had a pay review at work yesterday and I got a pay rise!! It works out about £115/month after tax so really chuffed with that. However I am NOT going to increase the budget, the whole of the extra will go towards paying off the debt.

snowscreamer

Lunchtime today:

Spent £33 on Christmas gifts (£28 for my Dad, £5 for work Secret Santa)
Spent £6.93 on wrapping paper, tags and string. The string was reduced from £3 to £1.50 if I bought the wrapping paper too. I think we actually already have enough wrapping paper over from last year but I did make a conscious decision knowing that even though we didn't strictly need it, and I hadn't intended on buying it, it will get used (even if that is next year)
Spent £5.50 on lunch (Thai Express again... but I *will* stick to the monthly budget which may mean homemade soup and rolls taken to work for the latter part of this month, well I can live with that!)

Thinking about Christmas budget, after today's spree we have £168.13 left from the £500 I allocated in total (£250 left for December).

Already paid for sister's present, OH's mum's present, my mum's present and now my dad's present. And I have bought OH's main presents but not any stocking fillers - however I haven't entered the £64.85 I spent on two shirts yesterday to the budget yet. So that leaves £103.28 for:

OH's present to me (we agreed a budget of £100 each - this is quite a cut for us - whoops; I have spent just under £90 and am stopping here!)
2 x stockings [might have to stick to chocolate coins and nuts and a single pair of socks?!]
OH's dad's present (we have spent £28 each on OH mum, my mum, my sister and my dad so will probably look in the same range for OH dad)

Going to be very tight and I think we will go over. Assuming OH spends the same on me as I spent on him and we spend £28 on his dad that already takes us £14.56 over budget and that doesn't include stocking fillers. Must NOT buy any more pointless Christmas tat this year!!
Hopefully some room elsewhere in the budget to take from, or can take from next year's Xmas budget? I have tentatively set this up as saving £50/month to give us £600 at the end of the year.

snowscreamer

Changes:

• OH got £437.50 payment from work as a share of proceeds from eBay sales of unclaimed stock - as his car tax (£145) is due this month and I had only budgeted £20 for that, I'm going to up the budget to £145 taking £125 from this payment, so that leaves £312.50 of this payment to go towards debt reduction.
• Since we joined the gym in August we have been having more convenience food on gym nights as we don't get home until 9pm and we often don't have the energy to cook: this has led to an increase in waste from our vegetable boxes. Consequently I have downsized our vegetable order and now going from £17.84 / week to £15.14 / week. I then worked out which deliveries we'd be getting this month and was able to downsize the vegetable box budget from £90 (average of previous months) to £65.96. With this saving I have reallocated £25 to the Christmas budget and the remainder will be debt reduction.

Leisure £200 £110 £90

Holidays £425 £0 £425

Spending money £45 £0 £45

Subscriptions £25 £10.75 £14.25

Travel £247 £21.90 £225.10

Occasions £345 £146.72 £198.28

Meals & Drinks £275 £134.43 £140.57

Groceries £355.96 £104.93 £251.03

Car expenses £110 £0 £110

Taxes £389.12 £232 £157.12

Utilities £312 £152.93 £159.07

House expenses £777.23 £647.23 £130

"Stuff" £80 £36 £44

Insurances £89.74 £10.70 £79.04

Savings £30 £30 £0

Other £5 £5 £0

TOTAL £3711.05 £1646.59 £2064.46

snowscreamer

Lunchtime spending:

£5.50 on my favourite lunch...
Plan to make a big batch of soup from leftover veg this weekend and some rolls so next week can be low-spending on work lunches.

We also had the poo lorry last month and paid the invoice today, that was £102.38. So we may find utilities tricky to balance as I only budgeted £50 for drainage. I may borrow from the heating oil budget as our tank is quite full at the moment. Then I will increase the heating oil budget from January.

snowscreamer

I had a chat with OH whilst updating the budget last night and we have made a few changes, culminating in the total budget slightly increasing... Well I guess this is the most expensive month of the year!! At least we are still watching what we spend now and not assuming that the money will come from somewhere.

• Added pet expenses as a new category, previously this was bundled within groceries!! Budget of £40 to cover food and medication for this month (no saving for vet bills or other pet expenses for this month but we will introduce this) - budget taken from groceries so no new budget
• Removed saving for breakdown cover for this month and started that from January
• Discovered that I forgot to cancel our regular wine club order (one crate every 8 weeks) having accepted a one-off Christmas order (d'oh) so we will go over budget for that this month. I've cancelled our next one so ultimately we will be worse off now but will claw the money back when we don't get the next one.
• Increased the mobile phone budget for this month (so that's where the rise in the overall budget has fallen) due to realising we'd already used it up as OH's DD bounced at the end of last month so they took it again at the beginning of this month

Pet expenses £40 £0 £40

Leisure £200 £110 £90

Holidays £425 £0 £425

Spending money £45 £0 £45

Subscriptions £25 £10.75 £14.25

Travel £247 £24.90 £222.10

Occasions £345 £257.79 £87.21

Meals & Drinks £275 £155.96 £119.04

Groceries £315.96 £194.92 £121.04

Car expenses £100 £0 £100

Taxes £389.12 £232 £157.12

Utilities £349.22 £305.31 £43.91

House expenses £777.23 £647.23 £130

"Stuff" £80 £36 £44

Insurances £89.74 £10.70 £79.04

Savings £30 £30 £0

Other £5 £5 £0

TOTAL £3738.27 £1557.60 £2180.67

snowscreamer

Morning,

I hope if there's anyone out there, you all had a good weekend

As for me, the following was spent this weekend:

• £35.96 to fill up my car - yes!! Loving drop in petrol prices. Has in recent memory cost up to £45 to fill up.
• £9 on Christmas tablecloth for our two Christmas parties (out of £50 entertaining budget)
• £18.89 on groceries at Sainsbury's which included a £14 bottle of Calvados as we are rather partial to homemade mulled cider at the moment and had run out! I did make a special effort to go to Sainsbury's for this though as we get most of our shopping delivered by Ocado but their cheapest Calvados is £22
• £22.03 on a Christmas present for OH's dad. This is £6 less than we have spent on other relatives but we have now officially gone over the Christmas budget. I'm going to borrow from next year's: I had decided on saving £50/month to give a total budget of £600 but now this will be slightly less due to overspend this year
• £5.22 on a net of logs from local garage for the fire: we have made enquiries to order logs in bulk which will cost more upfront but less per log overall but we wanted a fire yesterday and were all out of logs so had to buy a single net.
• £10.93 on 24 sausages from butcher
• £25 on a birthday present for OH's mum - only had £10 in birthdays budget but no birthdays in Jan & Feb so will borrow from there

Total: £127.03 - not bad?! Still on the first month of this budgeting malarkey so still learning... I am trying to justify every pound spent and making sure the money is coming from somewhere within the budget.

snowscreamer

Pet expenses £40 £0 £40

Leisure £200 £110 £90

Holidays £425 £0 £425

Spending money £45 £0 £45

Subscriptions £25 £17.74 £7.26

Travel £247 £60.86 £186.14

Occasions £345 £313.86 £31.14

Meals & Drinks £275 £155.96 £119.04

Groceries £315.96 £240.88 £75.08

Car expenses £100 £0 £100

Taxes £389.12 £244.12 £145

Utilities £349.22 £310.53 £38.69

House expenses £777.23 £647.23 £130

"Stuff" £80 £36 £44

Insurances £89.74 £57.24 £32.50

Savings £30 £30 £0

Other £5 £5 £0

TOTAL £3738.27 £1762.46 £1975.81

snowscreamer

Yesterday's spending:

• Just one but it's a biggie - £74.13 Ocado order. This encompasses:
  • £40.33 on general supermarket groceries (hopefully this will be the last spend before Christmas?!
  • £30.30 from entertaining budget for bits for our Xmas parties (mince pie / mulled wine ingredients, paper plates, crisps, nuts etc)
  • £3.50 cat food

I used my final stamp on my loyalty card at lunchtime at my favourite Thai outlet to get a 'free lunch'.

snowscreamer

One change to the budget:
Was charged £6 by Nationwide for using my overdraft so I have taken this out of the spending money budget and classified it with "Other".


Pet expenses £40 £3.50 £36.50

Leisure £200 £110 £90

Holidays £425 £0 £425

Spending money £39 £0 £39

Subscriptions £25 £17.74 £7.26

Travel £247 £60.86 £186.14

Occasions £345 £344.16 £0.84

Meals & Drinks £275 £175.30 £99.70

Groceries £315.96 £281.21 £34.75

Car expenses £100 £0 £100

Taxes £389.12 £244.12 £145

Utilities £349.22 £310.53 £38.69

House expenses £777.23 £647.23 £130

"Stuff" £80 £36 £44

Insurances £89.74 £57.24 £32.50

Savings £30 £30 £0

Other £11 £11 £0

TOTAL £3738.27 £2328.89 £1409.38