Snowscreamer's debt reduction efforts

snowscreamer

Yesterday's spending:

• £2.20 on P&R as work car park was full
• £5.50 on lunch

snowscreamer

One change: moved £4 from spending money to car parking category (under travel) due to using P&R for parking when work car park full.

Pet expenses £40 £3.50 £36.50

Leisure £200 £110 £90

Holidays £425 £0 £425

Spending money £35 £0 £35

Subscriptions £25 £17.74 £7.26

Travel £251 £65.26 £185.74

Occasions £345 £344.16 £0.84

Meals & Drinks £275 £175.30 £99.70

Groceries £315.96 £296.35 £19.61

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 £2348.43 £1389.84

snowscreamer

Yesterday's spending (quite a lot for one day but in the old days much worse!). We went out to Pizza Express and the cinema last night. Think it was our first date in about three months!!

• £2.20 on P&R as work car park was full
• £5.50 on lunch
• £31.40 at Pizza Express (EE Wednesdays)
• £9.00 on 2 cinema tickets (EE Wednesdays)
• £4.30 on popcorn :eek:
• £1.30 on car parking at the cinema

Total: £53.70

snowscreamer

Couple of changes:

• Moved £3.50 from spending money to car parking category (under travel) due to using P&R for parking again / parking last night at the cinema.
• Got charged £12 for going over my credit limit briefly on my credit card (*this* is why I have to sort my life out, it's just money down the drain) - consequently moved another £12 out of spending money to bank charges (under Other)

And in better news I discovered £70.56 credited to my credit card as cashback for this year so that's another £70.56 towards paying it off!!! I am not allocating this to any category, it will all go towards debt reduction.

Pet expenses £40 £3.50 £36.50

Leisure £200 £123.30 £76.70

Holidays £425 £0 £425

Spending money £19.50 £0 £19.50

Subscriptions £25 £17.74 £7.26

Travel £254.50 £68.76 £185.74

Occasions £345 £344.16 £0.84

Meals & Drinks £275 £217.70 £57.30

Groceries £315.96 £296.35 £19.61

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 £23 £23 £0

TOTAL £3738.27 £2419.63 £1318.64

snowscreamer

Today's spending (none anticipated this evening)

• £2.20 on P&R as work car park was full
• £1.69 on lunch [I was very good and resisted Thai Express, went to Pret instead]
• £12.99 for a muffin tray. I have one already but I usually make 3-4 dozen mince pies in one afternoon for my Xmas party and 2 trays will make this process less stressful and more efficient... probably could have held out but it will make my life a little easier...
• £18.00 at beauty salon (waxing)
• £36.00 on replacement Xmas present for my dad - long sorry story - he asked me for a plum jumper which I bought but was discussing with my mum and she bought the same thing and insisted I take mine back and get something else! :mad: I got the jumper before she got hers but she probably thought hers was better than mine or something...
  Anyway the jumper was £28 and the shirt was £8 more so that's the Xmas budget another £8 into the red but apart from stocking fillers from me to OH (going to go as cheap as I can - maybe just sweets!!) we are done spending the Xmas budget.

Total: £70.88

snowscreamer

Well it's not looking quite so rosy this side of Xmas!! I am sure if we hadn't been budgeting at all it would be worse so thank goodness we were making an effort. The bad news is there will definitely be a large dent in our home maintenance budget soon as we arrived home on the Thursday before Xmas to a leak between our bathroom and kitchen. That is now fixed, we are awaiting the plumber's bill and then there is a £250 excess on our home insurance for the reinstatement of our kitchen ceiling. So I'm sure that we'll be spending at least £400 from our home maintenance budget. If we continue to budget £100/month then that takes us to April before that jar starts to refill. Let alone what it does to our debt repayment hopes...

Budget changes:

• Moved £15 from car tax to bank charges (but we have still gone over on this due to bank charges - interest and penalties on both mine and OH c/c for going over credit limit) - car tax turned out to be £130 not £145 as we had anticipated
• Moved £5 from spending money to clothing as I decided £20 was really too low (and I went over buying £25 of clothing for OH Xmas present and classifying it as clothing due to Xmas budget exceeded!)

Overspends:

• "Stuff": overspent by £60.73 due to buying thermals and microfleeces for skiing for OH. Previously he has only been skiing in the spring but this year we are going in January so thermals were necessary... I did buy cheaper than I would usually (on offer in Mountain Warehouse at £7.99 per item) but it still exceeded the remaining clothing budget of 0... based on this I feel the clothing budget was fairly unrealistic so have upped it to £40 from January and will start recuperating. This means no more clothes buying until at least February.
• Utilities: overspent by £70.29 due to buying firewood in bulk and requiring our cesspit to be emptied. I have upped the drainage budget of £51.19 to £76.79 for the next two months so that this can be recouped whilst still saving budget for ongoing drainage management. So we should break even on that one in February as long as the price of £102.38 every 2 months doesn't change.
  The firewood budget of £15/month remains the same but we have bought in bulk to lower the unit cost so we will not buy any more. Then we will break even on that one by April.
• Groceries: overspent by £60.87 due to extra wine box I forgot to cancel (have subsequently cancelled our next one so this should end up being neutral and back in the black for this jar in February; no more wine boxes until April) and overspend of £20.88 at the supermarket. I have planned no more grocery shopping until January. Hopefully this £20 can be recovered next month as due to buying food in bulk that will last?
• Occasions: overspent by £43.27 due to overspends on Xmas, birthdays and entertaining. I am not increasing the budgets so all of this will have be recouped by restraint over the next couple of months. Have planned £50/month for Christmas next year, the Xmas overspend this year will reduce the total available for Christmas next year.
• Leisure: overspent by £59.80 because I had to pay the bill for this term's music lessons £136.50. Upping the budget for music lessons from January to April by £20/month so I can get enough in the jar before the next bill comes in, then reducing it back down to £40.
• Other: this is all bank charges - this month has come to £78.29 due to credit card over-limit charges, interest charges and late payment fees. Totally reinforces why we need to sort this situation out.

Pet expenses £40 £3.50 £36.50

Leisure £200 £259.80 £59.80

Holidays £425 £0 £425

Spending money £14.50 £9.99 £4.51

Subscriptions £25 £17.74 £7.26

Travel £254.50 £142.01 £112.49

Occasions £345 £388.27 £43.27

Meals & Drinks £275 £270.12 £4.88

Groceries £315.96 £376.83 £60.87

Car expenses £100 £40 £60

Taxes £374.12 £374.12 £0

Utilities £349.22 £419.51 £70.29

House expenses £777.23 £775.22 £2.01

"Stuff" £85 £145.73 £60.73

Insurances £89.74 £67.24 £22.50

Savings £30 £30 £0

Other £38 £83.29 £45.29

TOTAL £3738.27 £3403.37 £334.90

snowscreamer

Long time no post. I assume the previous budget breakdowns are really boring given lack of replies (actually they were pretty boring to write up too)

Anyway, as at the end of December I revised the budget to take out any underspends that I didn't want rolling over in their categories into January, rather to go towards debt repayment.

So:

End of November
Total debt: £6404.47

End of December:
Total debt: £5951.04
Budgeted: £3667.26
Spent: £3565.48
Total debt when planned spending taken into account: £6052.82

January (so far - expect another £150-200 to be spent in the next few days!):
Total debt: £5134.13
Budgeted: £3411.89
Spent: £3104.31
Total debt when planned spending taken into account: £5543.49

Based on the current trajectory, I am hoping that we will be back with a balanced budget (ie. debt free and no planned spending to send us back into the red) by December. This would be awesome.
In reality I hope we can be debt free before that but of course some money will be allocated to planned expenses so we wouldn't be truly out of danger. Really pleased with how the budgeting is going so far, and feeling much more in control. Previously big bills would arrive with no money saved up for them (even though they were often entirely predictable eg. car insurance) and we'd usually go into the red to pay for them.

Plans for this year: all bonuses, unexpected income etc to go straight towards debt repayment and we are not to increase the budget or treat ourselves because we are "feeling flush".

Plans for after the debt is repaid: Carry on budgeting and using YNAB (awesome app!!) and implement the YNAB method in full ie. start living on last month's income (and preferably have an even larger buffer) rather than living month-to-month.

Feeling positive :cool:

snowscreamer

This will be updated as we meet / miss our goals, or have to change the budget due to circumstances. Based on initial assumption that we will have no change in income during 2015.

The figures quoted are the balance available to budget for the next month ie. it is the sum of our debt and monies already allocated for planned expenses. They are all as at the end of the month. This figure for the end of 2014 was £6052.82

January: £5543.49
February: £5070.42
March: £4522.76
April: £4166.20
May: £3479.64
June: £3093.08
July: £2406.52
August: £2019.96
September: £1608.40
October: £896.84
November: £485.28
December: £73.72 (so nearly there!!! - hoping in fact by underspending in some discretionary categories eg. eating out, we will in fact manage to be debt and commitment free by this point)

snowscreamer

So we completed January, overspent in a few categories but rather than marking it as overspend and losing track of our goals we will be clawing back from future months so profligacy in one month means the next month for that category must be lean!

Still pleased with progress - we budgeted £3324.44 and spent £3381.20 but we had £101.78 reserved money from December. We currently have £45.02 reserved.

Our actual balance at the end of the month was -£5410.91, and an available to budget balance of -£5455.93.

For February we have budgeted £3173.87 which ought to leave us this month with a surplus of £443.69 if nothing changes. No council tax this month - hooray!

snowscreamer

So we made the decision to cancel £30/month going into savings as our credit card interest rates are much higher than what our savings can make. This "saves" £330 for the year - brings our current account net position into the black a month earlier - hooray! When we do clear the debt we will reinstate this. What is already in savings (~£1000) we will leave.

So "available to budget" now looks like (where red is negative and green positive):

End of 2014: £6052.82
January: £5455.93 up
February: £5012.24 up
March: £4448.83 up
April: £4018.10 up
May: £3287.50 up
June: £2856.90 up
July: £2126.30 up
August: £1695.70 up
September: £1240.10 up
October: £484.50 up
November: £28.90 up
December: £426.70 up --> Hooray!! Debt free with all expected expenses accounted for!