Snowscreamer's debt reduction efforts

DFB35

Good luck Snowscreamer! Subscribing to your diary

snowscreamer

Hi DFB35, thanks for subscribing Hi to any other lurkers.

Time for a quick mid-month update. So far in February we have incurred net expenses of £2152.01. By net expenses I mean expenditure - unexpected income eg. eBay sales + cash down the sofa (£10, yippee!). These are the "unusual" expenses/income this month:

• Car tax for my car £130
• Coolant leak fix for OH car £186
• New large chest of drawers for our bedroom £189 - justified by eBay sales!
• eBay net income of £105 - sold a few random bits and pieces plus biggie a spare dressing table brought across from our flat but with no 'home' in our new house for £101. We also have our smaller chest of drawers listed - hoping to get around £80 for that, but current bid is £25.
• Plumber identifying fixing a leak we had end of December - his bill came through beginning of this month - £125

We currently have £3231.95 budgeted for February so that leaves us with £1124.96 for the next two weeks. Most expenditure is front-loaded ie. mortgage at the beginning of the month, bills on the 1st or the 15th, so hopefully spending for the rest of the month can be relatively light. Hopefully quite a chunk of the £1124.96 won't be spent and will remain in virtual jars waiting for months when we have to cash in! The unexpected car repair took our "car repairs" jar £36 into the red as we had built up £150 in that category working on the basis of £50/month. I now don't believe that is sufficient with two cars and that fund needing to cover MOTs and annual services in addition to anything that crops up over the year. And we can't ignore the fact that OH's car is aging so its repair bill will be creeping up. So I have upped the amount per month for car repairs to £60 from next month.

So, ticking along nicely all in all - being good and making up for previous overspends in other categories by being restrained.

Good news this month - I didn't realise that my company reimburses us the excess on our medical insurance should we need to use it and as I did use it in 2013 and 2014 and covered the excess (£200) myself, I have now expensed it so that should be a £400 windfall next month No budgets will be increased, I will not feel flush, and all £400 will go towards debt repayment. Repeat ad infinitum...

snowscreamer

snowscreamer

Still feeling pretty positive about February. Our total outflows are £2295.93 so far - £1000 less than budgeted. Now I know it's not always the same month-to-month and we did have some bigger expenses last month (holiday + house insurance excess), but it still feels pretty good to be spending that little and knowing that the rest is bringing down the credit card interest bill!

On the slightly negative side I have overspent by £7.49 on groceries so far (this includes an Ocado delivery yesterday which should hopefully see us through to the end of the month). But I did set a very tight budget for groceries (£300; we used to spend £400+ regularly before budgeting) and there was an overspend of £23.77 last month which rolled over. So in a way I guess I'd be just about within budget if I hadn't overspent last month! Hopefully next month I can catch up and finally be within budget for groceries. I just need to stop now for this month and make it through to next weekend with no supermarket trips! Should be achievable.

I haven't overspent this month in any other categories so that is great. When we balance up for February next weekend and assign any unspent money in "everyday" categories (rather than those for which we have to build up pots eg. car maintenance) to debt reduction I am quite hopeful that there will be over £600 of genuine surplus this month.

snowscreamer

Wishing away the next couple of days so we can balance up at the end of the month (and start buying groceries again)!!

snowscreamer

So, another month comes to an end. Good and bad. It was our lowest spending month since we started using YNAB in November 2013, but when broken down, most of our income not yet spent does have a job and is allocated, it's just hasn't actually been spent yet. Here are the figures:

Income £3638.56
Outgoings -£2719.96

Net worth -£4492.31
Reserved -£620.06
Available -5112.37

What it boils down to, is whilst our income exceeded our outgoings this month by £918.60 (hooray!), a great deal of that has been allocated for future expenses so we only cleared £343.56 which will permanently clear debt. The rest is only clearing it until it's spent!
That said, I'm taking the positives:

• In the past I would have seen that I had £900 odd in the bank and gone on a spending spree, disregarding the fact that eg. next month home insurance is due.
• £343 is £343 more than 0 and previously we were overspending every month without regard to future expenses

Next month's plan:
Budgeting £3100 (£200 less than the budget last month as there were a couple of annual expenses which went out last month that now go down to budgeting 1/12 per month)
Expected income £4017.56: this is £400 higher as I am getting an expenses payout from work of £400 for medical insurance excess I paid last year and previous year and didn't realise I could claim it back

So if all goes to plan we should be able to put around £900 towards the debt next month. Here's hoping

One other bit of good news - both OH and I currently have enough in our current accounts to cover the whole month's spending and more. So we can start paying down the credit cards in earnest and OH's credit card (CC1 in my signature) will start going down rather than creeping up as it is currently. Our first goal was to get out of our overdrafts so goal achieved!!

Happy Sunday everyone
snowscreamer

MoneyMission2015

Hi SS


Just popped in to check out your diary. You seem to be very organised & the good thing is you have a healthy income so while you might not be paying off as much debt as you'd like, you are paying it & not falling behind on payments.


One thing I did notice briefly reading through was that you mentioned you shopped at Ocado. Is this all the time or was it a special offer? Only reason I ask is because whenever I do an online shop I always use mysupermarket & Ocado always come out a lot more expensive than all the other supermarkets. If you do shop there often I just thought that could be something you can cut down on if you're hoping to pay more off the debt.


I'm still loving YNAB & am desperate to purchase it, but I still have 20 days of the free trial so I feel like I'm cheating myself out of 20 free days if I buy it now :rotfl: So I'm going to wait until I've got 2 days left & then purchase it, I don't want to leave it until the day before just in case I don't get round to it & it expires and wipes out everything that I've already done. I am loving the program but I don't fancy having to set it up again.


Good luck this month. That's great that you already have this month covered. You should make massive dents in the debt in this case! I have currently worked out a figure that I should have left over at the end of the month, but it seems higher than I originally expected so I am wary of spending anything until I know it's correct.

snowscreamer

Hi MM and welcome!

I think groceries is one of the areas where I am less willing to cut back, or at least would rather cut back in other ways than switch from Ocado. I have tried Tesco and Sainsbury's but I just find the Waitrose own brand much better quality. I am quite particular about food! I am instead trying to cut back by:
* always buying own brand - and cheaper variants where possible and I am happy with the quality (eg. we recently switched from our favourite Cornish Quartz extra mature cheddar to equivalent strength in Waitrose Essential range)
* reducing waste - only buying what I know we will use
* always cook from scratch - although I have always done this anyway!
* meat is a treat, only a couple of times a week, and we use our local butcher

We spent £275 on groceries last month and I think I'm OK with that. In previous months this has been £300+. Going to continue to try to keep it down as much as I can but very reluctant to switch from Ocado!

I'm constantly playing with and tweaking my YNAB. This week I started budgeting our credit card debt after someone mentioned it on the YNAB thread and I googled how to do it. So now I can allocate each month where "spare" money goes (which CC or into our "buffer" - this is spare money in he clear) so that's great. Budgeted this month to pay £321.75 off CC1 and £723.21 off CC2 - that will reduce the figures to a nice round £2600 / £3150. Hopefully we can stick to the rest of the budget or even underspend and can afford those repayments at the end of the month. Am hopeful!!

snowscreamer

Realised I never did an SOA... Anyway here it is (roughly). My YNAB has far more categories and I've become quite au fait with my outgoings!!

Statement of Affairs and Personal Balance Sheet

Household Information
Number of adults in household........... 2
Number of children in household......... 0
Number of cars owned.................... 2

Monthly Income Details
Monthly income after tax................ 1917.56
Partners monthly income after tax....... 1300
Benefits................................ 0
Other income............................ 500
Total monthly income.................... 3717.56

Monthly Expense Details
Mortgage................................ 647
Secured/HP loan repayments.............. 0
Rent.................................... 0
Management charge (leasehold property).. 0
Council tax............................. 232
Electricity............................. 50
Gas..................................... 0
Oil..................................... 50
Water rates............................. 63
Telephone (land line)................... 0
Mobile phone............................ 85
TV Licence.............................. 12.12
Satellite/Cable TV...................... 55
Internet Services....................... 0
Groceries etc. ......................... 275
Clothing................................ 40
Petrol/diesel........................... 175
Road tax................................ 22
Car Insurance........................... 50
Car maintenance (including MOT)......... 60
Car parking............................. 25
Other travel............................ 20
Childcare/nursery....................... 0
Other child related expenses............ 0
Medical (prescriptions, dentist etc).... 10
Pet insurance/vet bills................. 15
Buildings insurance..................... 25
Contents insurance...................... 0
Life assurance ......................... 57
Other insurance......................... 0
Presents (birthday, christmas etc)...... 70
Haircuts................................ 20
Entertainment........................... 400
Holiday................................. 300
Emergency fund.......................... 100
Total monthly expenses.................. 2858.12


Assets
Cash.................................... 2302.61
House value (Gross)..................... 500000
Shares and bonds........................ 0
Car(s).................................. 7500
Other assets............................ 0


Secured & HP Debts
Description....................Debt......Monthly...APR
Mortgage...................... 195929...(647)......1.85
Total secured & HP debts...... 195929....-.........-

Unsecured Debts
Description....................Debt......Monthly...APR
BarclayCard CC1................2921.74...50........16.9
Nationwide CC2.................3873.18...40........0
Total unsecured debts..........6794.92...90........-


Monthly Budget Summary
Total monthly income.................... 3,717.56
Expenses (including HP & secured debts). 2,858.12
Available for debt repayments........... 859.44
Monthly UNsecured debt repayments....... 90
Amount left after debt repayments....... 769.44

Personal Balance Sheet Summary
Total assets (things you own)........... 509,802.61
Total HP & Secured debt................. -195,929
Total Unsecured debt.................... -6,794.92
Net Assets.............................. 307,078.69

Created using the SOA calculator at https://www.stoozing.com.
Reproduced on Moneysavingexpert with permission, using other browser.

MoneyMission2015

I know what you mean with the reluctance to switching supermarkets. To be honest I have never used Ocado or Waitrose so only know they're expensive from what I see/hear on here & on mysupermarket.


I shop at Asda for most of our groceries so reasonably priced. We go to Costco for our meat as it is excellent quality & we just freeze batches of it.


I have tried Aldi & Lidl because that's what people on here often suggest, but try as I might I just do not like them. I know everybody has different tastes/opinions so some people will disagree with me but I just don't find the stuff good quality unfortunately. I wonder if it is different depending on the store?


There are also some things we will not/cannot switch brands etc. For instance, we can only use Heinz ketchup because when my daughter has the cheaper brands she comes out all blotchy, I don't know if maybe it's the higher acidity levels or something as the rash is usually around her mouth etc & cheeks but sometimes on her arms & neck etc too. We have tried going down a brand in things like beans, chopped tomatoes etc & it is all trial and error. Chopped tomatoes I'm happy now with the Asda own but beans have to be Branstons


Our problem is not so much the price of the things we buy, it's just the sheer quantity. I am working on it though as I am very aware that we waste far too much food.


I think I'm having withdrawal symptoms now because I didn't get to have a play around with YNAB last night as we were over the in laws for tea (saved us some money :rotfl:) and today I have been in work all day. I am going to update it later though because there's been a few payments, transfers etc that I want to track. Obsessed, me? Nooooooo.


Your SOA looks good. Luckily you've got a good surplus at the end of it and you've obviously got good control over your budgets so are still able to have the entertainment & holidays budgets. I've seen some SOA's on here & they are so tight because of low income or just really high debts and you can see in the people's posts what a desperate situation some of them are in!

snowscreamer

I'm just desperately trying to knock this on the head now before we get in any deeper and end up in some of the sticky situations others are in with 5-figure unsecured debts.

You would not believe our average spend on holidays and entertainment last year... we worked out our previous average monthly spends before setting the budget and deciding where to cut back. I cannot believe how out-of-control I let matters get. Perhaps I will dig out those figures from last year to demonstrate how much we have cut back!!