22 months to work, dig, tidy and declutter my way to debt freedom

DedicatedDFW

Hi P&F

I'm wanting to take cutting of the herbs to grow little plants for people - they can get bigger when they have them :rotfl::rotfl::rotfl: although i do intend to use some for cooking - plants are:

rosemary, curry, thyme (from what i remember - far too wet & muddy to venture out

Hope your sleep pattern gets better hon - is anything on your mind? x

peaceandfreedom

Just popping in to say that I haven't disappeared off the face of the earth. It's just been extremely busy here and I haven't been able to devote proper time to money-saving.

I would like to say I've been too busy to think but sadly, I've done a great deal of thinking, probably too much and I am feeling very stressed at the moment .

Will aim to get back to normal service soon - have a good Thursday everyone .

jwil

Hope everything's ok P&F and you feel a bit better soon.

Take care xx

peaceandfreedom

Sorry, folks, been away for a while and also slightly under the weather. Back now with plenty of bounce :j.

I need to sit down and re-sort out my plans for the next few months. I definitely need to focus properly on Kondo-ing the house and at the same time raising extra funds. I have re-jigged my budget slightly to ensure I am properly concentrating on debt-busting.

I realised the other day though that I sometimes get ridiculously wound up about relatively small savings and I need to stop this. I wanted to buy some shoes the other day (nothing fancy, a necessary purchase). Some shoes were on offer for 11.99 and others for 14.99. Only the 14.99 ones fitted me. I wasted a good 45 minutes searching for the cheaper ones in my size and also arguing with a manager about it (the cheaper ones were identical and also in a larger size).

I eventually bought the 14.99 ones and I left the shop rather hassled and irritated - all entirely self-inflicted and all over 3 measly quid. I know every penny counts but really, the 3 quid could so easily be scraped back elsewhere, my budget now has a lot of leeway.

I wouldn't mind but after all that I then blew 2 quid on a slice of cake in the Waitrose cafe (coffee was free) :rotfl:.

Sometimes, I can get so caught up in paying the lowest price that I lose sight of the fact that I also have a life .

peaceandfreedom

Just a brief update on the garden:

• Now harvesting lots of tomatoes in red, pink, orange and yellow hues.
• Entire armies of courgettes.
• Runner beans are young, tender and delicious.
• Autumn raspberries slowly making an appearance, still have some blueberries.
• Some beetroot harvested and roasted, more is coming along.
• Spring onions are particularly delicious.
• Have made some rather excellent rhubarb and ginger crumbles.
• Garlic all harvested and slowly curing in the garage.
• Lots of cucumbers - too many .
• Chilli plant has lots of peppers on it, will freeze or dry those eventually.
• Pea-shoots are so easy and cheap to grow, and very tasty.

littleDOTS

Hello PEACEANDFREEDOM,
good luck with reaching your goals. Your budget breakdown was really interesting. I've only been tracking and logging my spending for 3 months now in varying detail. I hoped it would help me behave but not so. I've realised tracking doesn't do anything much. What a shocker to realise that I have barely broken even for 3 months; and that's when I'm being a little more mindful of my spending. I so need a budget - it is a BIG stumbling block. If I do not spend on 'luxuries' I will save £300 per month.
Every month I've used a different tracking method and like you noticed too, had to ponder on how you categorise a luxury? I made a luxuries column which now includes coffees out and about and clothes. In May alone I spent £131 on coffee and cake in cafes. A lot of luxury - but maybe coffee and cake in a nice caf! keep me sane!
Good luck on the de-cluttering. I read a really helpful book called The Magic Art of Tidying by Marie Kondo. It had loads of really good revelations about the things we keep and the effects they have on us. Clever little book!
Yes eBay can be a pain and I would say is what's the point of getting say £1.50 for selling a top when I might blow £2.50 on a coffee easily. It seems a lot of work and then there is a very occasional problem with a disgruntled buyer to cast misery on things....but.....it is very good to see that total climb on paypal and at one point I accrued £80 which I then carefully spent on something which felt very good about indeed. So what I did occasionally was decide I wanted to buy some particular thing and sell stuff till I reached that total, then buy. Sometimes I want to de-clutter like crazy and wheel EVERYTHING out of my house until it is a series of nice white boxes...ahhh....instead of a mad crammed space. There's extra plants, books, tat and bric-a-brac even after a good declutter with the help of that book. I know how very hard it is so my best wishes to you!!

littleDOTS

Oh sorry I just noticed you have already have the Marie Kondo book. Isn't it a marvel! I am so proud of my drawers...although I was looking for three pairs of nice sandals this summer that I was sure I had and realised I may have been a bit rash last Winter!!


I hope you don't LOVE to many of your possessions - that was my problem!!

peaceandfreedom

littleDOTS wrote: »

I've realised tracking doesn't do anything much. What a shocker to realise that I have barely broken even for 3 months; and that's when I'm being a little more mindful of my spending. I so need a budget - it is a BIG stumbling block. If I do not spend on 'luxuries' I will save £300 per month.
Every month I've used a different tracking method and like you noticed too, had to ponder on how you categorise a luxury? I made a luxuries column which now includes coffees out and about and clothes. In May alone I spent £131 on coffee and cake in cafes. A lot of luxury - but maybe coffee and cake in a nice caf! keep me sane!

Hi littleDOTS - thanks for visiting my diary and for your good wishes .

I would say that tracking does do stuff for you - you have now realised that you are barely breaking even. And you have realised that you are spending a large sum of money (for me, an unthinkable amount) on coffee and cake. Most of that £131 could have been thrown at a credit card. Think what a difference that would make every month. I suspect there are loads more areas where you could trim away your luxuries and free up some cash for either saving or debt-busting depending on where you need to put the money. When I say 'saving', I mean saving money against future costs that you know will be coming out, such as running a car etc.

I promised DDFW a while ago that I would publish my current budget categories and I will do that later today. I can tell you though that my 'luxuries' budgets covers anything that isn't strictly necessary - this includes any kind of entertainment, eating out, alcohol, books, clothes, coffee shop, food that is just a treat and only for me, parking (because I reckon you can always find free parking if you look hard enough) etc.

Look at where you are frittering away cash - it can all add up to a considerable amount and that is where tracking your spending comes in.

I can tell you to the penny what I spent on absolutely anything in the past year.

littleDOTS wrote: »

Yes eBay can be a pain and I would say is what's the point of getting say £1.50 for selling a top when I might blow £2.50 on a coffee easily. It seems a lot of work and then there is a very occasional problem with a disgruntled buyer to cast misery on things....but.....it is very good to see that total climb on paypal and at one point I accrued £80 which I then carefully spent on something which felt very good about indeed. So what I did occasionally was decide I wanted to buy some particular thing and sell stuff till I reached that total, then buy.

You are right on all counts. Ebay is a pain and gains are generally very low. But what you decided in the end - to sell stuff to reach a total so you can buy something - is what I've decided to do for clothes and other gifts to myself. I don't need clothes, I have loads (need to Kondo a lot of them) but sometimes I like to buy something new. I have given clothes a zero-budget until I am debt-free and have decided if I want to buy something, I will raise extra cash to do it .

peaceandfreedom

DedicatedDFW wrote: »

Can i ask what categories you have for your budget categories please?

I have tasked myself to redo mine but is a slow process when i have the time to do it.

Hi DDFW,

Sorry it's taken me so long to answer this one properly. I have been re-doing my budget a bit lately and I won't give full details as a lot of is will be personal to me / my family. I haven't given budget figures for everything and have rounded things up (bit paranoid about privacy).

NOTE to anyone reading - this is not an SOA, I am not looking for comments / suggestions, I have already spent a lot of time tweaking expenditure to suit our budget and lifestyle. I know I could spend a lot less in many areas, but since I am not always the one spending the money, I have to accept that it is easier to spend a bit more rather than fretting over every bit of money spent. .

Also note that this is just stuff that my own money pays for - OH pays for a lot of other stuff but he is not an MSE-type person and so I only manage my own budget.

A breakdown of the main categories is this (with monthly figures):

Monthly bills from my own account:
Donations..........19
Fuel..................60
Life Insurance.....40
Mobile Phones.....10 (me and DD2)
Lotto................. 20 (well, you never know )
Buffer................25
TOTAL comes to around £175 per month

Luxury spending:
Spending Money........50
Coffee Shop...............5
Entertainment...........20
Food.......................20
Lunch at work............0
Books.......................0
Donations..................0
Parking - work...........0
Parking - other...........0
Clothing....................0
Sundry......................0
TOTAL on luxury spending comes to around £95 per month

Joint monthly bills:
TV Licence...................12
Electricity and Gas......130
Phone and Broadband....40
Window cleaner............12
British Gas contract.......16
Papers..........................9
Miscellaneous...............39
Donations.....................5
Food and household stuff...500 (I know it's a lot!)
TOTAL joint spending is around £750 but it has been reducing nicely lately - wiped out a £500 overdraft simply by spending less from this account.

Irregular-frequency bills:
Health and Beauty (haircuts, prescriptions, opticians, dentist etc.)
Car - Insurance, MOT, Repairs
Household Stuff (electrical goods, repairs, all kinds of stuff)
Birthdays and other Gifts
Garden Stuff (including contractor work)
Money given as gift (like to keep this separate)
Unaccounted for cash (less than a fiver last year)
Day Trips
Miscellaneous
Entertainment
Christmas
TOTAL for this is a LOT of money, at least 500 pcm

Savings categories:
A lot of savings are stored in the irregular categories above
Tax Bill
Contingency Fund
My own money
Household Jobs to be done

Some notes:

• Luxury spending categories are very flexible and can get adjusted downwards depending on whether or not I need to divert funds. Anything spent in a zero-budget category is deducted from the main 'spending money' category as I am never sure what I will spend money on. Many of the zero-budget categories should never be used - for example parking, particularly at work, can be easily got for free. Likewise, I very rarely spend money on lunch at work.
• I am not saving a huge amount at the moment because I am concentrating on clearing debts. However, I am building up a contingency fund and am saving a monthly amount into each 'irregular' category so that the money is there when the bills come in.
• The budget amounts for the irregular spending are based on last year's figures and my estimate of this year's figures. I divided the annual total by 12 and budget that every month. Sometimes I have to 'borrow' from a budget category but I try to return that money. This is another set of categories that is very flexible, depending on need.
• Christmas has always been a bit of an issue for me and I think this coming Christmas will be the first in many years where I do actually have sufficient funds already saved. It is very nice to see that category building up nicely in YNAB .
• A lot of random spending goes into a Miscellaneous/Sundry category unless I decide I am doing a lot of it, then it gets its own category.
• As YNAB allows you to state Payee, you can break down spending using that, so I avoid having too many categories because it makes it a bit cumbersome.

I think the beauty of using something like YNAB is that you can totally personalise it to suit your needs and approach. You can also create different budgets - for a few months, for example, I recorded precise details of our grocery shopping on an entirely different budget in YNAB. However, I am not prepared to always record to that level of detail.

I check my bank accounts online and reconcile with YNAB most days. I use cash a lot and try to jot down spending in a notebook so that I remember where it's gone. I like having my personal spending money as cash for some reason.

Hope this helps a bit to anyone setting up a budget .

peaceandfreedom

DedicatedDFW wrote: »

I'm wanting to take cutting of the herbs to grow little plants for people - they can get bigger when they have them :rotfl::rotfl::rotfl: although i do intend to use some for cooking - plants are:

rosemary, curry, thyme (from what i remember - far too wet & muddy to venture out

I don't know about curry. With Rosemary, I take semi-ripe cuttings in late-ish spring and pot them in some very sandy compost - they rot easily. Then keep them moist (I spray the leaves with a little sprayer I keep in the greenhouse) but not too wet. You will know they have rooted when they start putting on new growth. If you can find some see-through pots to use, that is ideal because you can then see the roots - I used old yogurt pots that I have washed out.

With thyme, it is easiest to just divide the plant - you can do it around now, saving some nice roots and pot the whole thing up. I have found thyme to be somewhat temperamental though.

One of the easiest ways of growing herbs is to pot up the ones you buy as 'growing herbs' in the supermarkets - cheap as chips and they grow on quite well. I do the same with living lettuce packs as well - you get tons of new lettuce plants for less than a pound and they grow very nicely. A very excellent ploy for late summer when seeds probably won't germinate.

Happy gardening .