2015 vs £10,156.75 - Helpme's Diary

helpme_115

Im not one for doing a diary but determined to get this debt sorted, having your support will be the key thing i think!

DFW Post HERE

Aim is going to be debt free by end of 2015, this is a massive ask and will only happen if no nasty surprises come up (requires at least £700 a month to clear)

First month is going to be alot easier than future ones, the wife works at our local football club behind the bar and this time of year she has lots of shifts (double time on New Years Eve WHOOP!). Selling almost all our CD's and DVD's to MusicMagie (total is currently £110)

March/April I SHOULD be getting a bonus and payrise, no idea how much this will be but is sure to help. Ive not planned my budget on this though, will update it once i get the money.

Please feel free to subscribe if you want to help me on my journey and bug me if I dont post anything for a while!

Monthly Savings made:£68
£20 - Switching from Bus pass to Train pass
£18 - Switched Gas/Electric supplier
£30 - Switching from full VirginMedia package to Internet only and NowTV subscription


Thanks

Ian

helpme_115

So the wife is working tonight and is my first opportunity to save money!

Usually she has to get a taxi home from work as she doesn't drive, there isn't any public transport at that time and I need to stay home to look after the kids.

Tonight im staying at my parents with the kids, usually at new years I drink a fair amount but tonight I will be staying sober so I can pick her up whilst the kids are at my parents.

Taxi Cost: £13.50 (usually £9 but they add 50% at new years)
Beer Cost: £10

Saved £23.50

helpme_115

Fairly good day.... Spent £75 on board games! £60 come from xmas gift money and rest off the entertainment budget.

Doesn't feel right that on day 2 I'm spending a lot on games but didn't want gift money going to debts,

Went to aldi n got cheapest bog roll (hope its not to rough or I'll have to hold it in till I get to work) and sandwich stuff for next week so I dont buy lunch at work.

Turned the heating programme off nye as we were both out, not turned it back on. Think the wife had it on for a hour today so that saved 3hrs of heating.

Also played board games so tv was off most the night, should save a few more pennies

helpme_115

Not a lot happened yesterday other than submitting a refund to amazon as I ordered the wrong thing (which I normally don't bother doing). They processed the refund and said don't worry about returning the product, was £4 so probably not worth their hassle whichave suits me.

Today we were invited to a kids party (or rather our kids were...). Put our meat in the slow cooker this morning ready for when we got back, we made sure we had enough drinks so we didn't need to buy anything and left money at home.

It worked, didn't spend a penny! We even saved by eating the kids left overs (if we had thought about it we shouldn't have put the meat in, could have lived off the left overs) so we didn't have roast spuds or stuffing with our Sunday roast (food and electric for oven savings there!)

Fin ding ourselvs not automatically putting the TV on as well when we get up/come home. We just put some music on a via a rechargeable portable speaker, must be saving electric there and better for the kids

helpme_115

Was hoping for a NSD yesterday and today but we had to post some things we sold on amazon yesterday and just found out we need some onions for tonight's dinner (would have got yesterday if I had known... ah well)

Set alarm for 7am so I could get up, have breakfast and make lunch for work (usually i get up at 8am, go out at 8:10 and buy from work), ended up snoozing the alarm a couple of times but still managed to make lunch. Today however I snoozed it a fair few times and ended up getting up at 8am, still made lunch though so wasn't all bad.

NowTV arrived yesterday to replace the TiVo box, all installed and working so took TiVo out

TiVo Power: 20watts, 0.48kwh a day (approx. 6p a day, £21.9 a year)
NowTV Power: 1watt, 0.02kwh a day (less than 1p a day, £1.13 a year)

NowTV gets switched off at the plug when not in use so is likely to save more...

Maybe I went a bit over the top finding the savings there...

Last night played board games again so no TV on for 3hrs that we normally would. Was hoping I could use the saving on electric as a excuse to buy more board games but for the 3hrs we were playing last night it would have saved us approx. 9p, it would take 1666hrs to pay this 1 game off, I need to find another excuse now.

Heating timer remains off and yesterday we had the heating on for total of 2hrs instead of the usual 4-5hrs. Based on inaccurate figures (a bit of googling to get a average) it costs £1.40 a hour for heating if its on continuously (which it is as starting from cold), based on that we will save approx £2.80-£4.20 a day. Will take a look at the meter tonight for a more accurate figure as this is probably way off!

The wife has been asked to work tomorrow, I usually go out on a Wednesday evening to socialise but her working means we get an additional £20 (doesnt sound like much but she has to pay for taxi to get home). £20 for me to play games with a bunch of blokes is a lot, good thing is told a mate and he is instead going to come over to me. Happy days.

Accidentally paid the wrong credit card today to, meant to put some money on our Cashback card but paid another one, not much of a issue as i would be paying it later this month anyway. So I have now officially moved off the £0 mark for paying off debts in 2015, paid £100 but minus the interest that came out the other day I have paid £87.09 out of £8,852.81

Thinkandgrowrich

Be proud for making a start we will get to the end of a journey and then can start a new worry free journey having money to save:j

greensalad

Saw your message saying there aren't many people here. Well I've subscribed! Not many people visit mine either, you're a lot like me. I write most of my posts just to myself!

helpme_115

So its been a week since I last posted and ive spent some money meaning im worse off than when i started!

Went to IKEA to get some furniture and put it on the card, good thing is that i didnt spend it on crap, i guess i could have either gone without or found a cheaper way. We got a Shoe Rack and Shelving for the kids room, given our house has been a tip since we the wife moved in 6 years ago due to her shoes and the kids and their toys im fairly happy with paying money to improve the house.

Other than that we have been really good and stuck to budget. Had a takeaway Friday for my birthday (wife did want to go out but convinced her otherwise), the takeaway even give us free cake as i put that it was my birthday in the comments lol.

Looking back on Just-Eat for January last year we spent £80, so far this month its £15.70, touch wood by the end of the month we wont have had any more.

So far this week ive took lunch to work every day and not spent a penny. Today the trains were delayed and I ended up working from home, submitted claim for compensation so hopefully ill get something back.

Tomorrow im off to London for work, can see me spending a bit of my entertainment money in the pub whilst in there...

greensalad

helpme_115 wrote: »

touch wood by the end of the month we wont have had any more

You don't need to touch wood. You're in control. You're the one who decides whether you buy takeaway or not.

helpme_115

Pay day today, after putting it into YNAB i was still a minus on the budget because of the left over on my cashback card. I excluded this a debt as I pay it off in full very month but YNAB highlighted that im living on next months wages.

After selling stuff, not spending and budgeting correctly it looked like that I hadnt made a dent in the debt. Ive decided to add the cashback debt to my total (which i should have done in the first place) so that all my accounts were £0 at the start.

This means my total is now £10,156.75 which makes the target of debt free by xmas 2015 near impossible (need £846 a month + interest) but im still going to have a good crack at it.

Looking at where we stand today ive paid off £485.35 since the start of the year which isnt to bad! Got £110 coming in tomorrow from selling my PS Vita and another £140ish from Music Magpie providing it all goes through ok (not expecting that cash for a few months mind...)

Bit of a lapse yesterday were i spent £15 on beer, this was from my entertainment fund so not bad spending as such but guess i could have spent it on better things (but man the beer was good!)

greensalad

As long as you budget for it, it shouldn't be too bad to have the odd treat. As long as you're working towards paying it off in good time.

The mindset I had to get out of with debt was that my debt repayments were whatever was "left over" from my living and entertainment budget. So I used to think like this:

1) Top priority from my paycheque is paying bills and rent
2) Second priority is spending money for fun/entertainment/etc
3) Lowest priority is whatever is leftover, which goes to debts.

By reversing point one and two and sticking to an entertainment budget I'm getting there slowly.

1) Top priority from my paycheque is paying bills and rent
2) Second priority is paying debts at a reasonable rate in line with my plan
3) Lowest priority is whatever is leftover, which is my entertainment/spending money.