From care-free spender to debt-free saver

SeduLOUs

Well done! I remember that sinking feeling of adding up my debts and realising the total. But I also remember the elation of making the first payments and getting that feeling of being in control. I'll be subcribing to keep an eye on your progress and to remotivate me as I'm quite a way down the line from my lightbulb moment!

With regard to tracking your outgoings I have one word - YNAB.

Not going to waffle about it here (I can go on for hours), but it was a lifesaver for me, and there's loads of info in these forums about it if you want to see what you think.

Re Nicotine gum, if it works for you buy more - the cost is well worth avoiding smoking again! You could try weaning yourself down the strengths, or possibly get some 'normal' gum to have instead of it sometimes? I think a lot of it is about having something to do, and possibly chewing any gum might work as well as the nicotine supplement for a lot of the cravings.

Good luck!

craididlyaig

I'm going to post an SOA now. I'm just going though it.

craididlyaig

Actually, scratch that. I'm finding it difficult going through the SOA as I'm not sure what my outgoings on food and stuff are. Perhaps later.

craididlyaig

SeduLOUSe, is YNAB really that good? I've seen a few people mention it on here. I'll go check it out I think.

SeduLOUs

craididlyaig wrote: »

SeduLOUSe, is YNAB really that good? I've seen a few people mention it on here. I'll go check it out I think.

If they suddenly decided to issue a new version and charge £150 for it I'd more than likely buy it. It stops you looking at an overall bank balance and thinking "oh yay, I can afford to go out for a meal" - it's like an envelope system so you assign all of your money to do jobs so at any point in time I know I have £20 left to spend on takeaways, and £250 saved ready for the car MOT. At first like you, you won't know how much to put in each category, so you make a guess and adjust as you go along until the patterns start to emerge. If you've not budgeted enough to get a pizza you have two choices - don't get a pizza, or take money out of a different category to pay for it. If the only categories available to take it from are essentials or savings, it's a lot easier to decide to cook something!

It's a lot easier to make informed decisions when you can see how buying something will affect your other goals and bills, instead of just seeing a healthy bank balance and presuming it means that you can afford something.

craididlyaig

After checking out YNAB, it does look pretty awesome actually. I think what I'll do is once I get paid next month and have some money to actually play with, I'll give it a go.

Today, i did a meal plan for the whole week and went to Aldi for the first time. It's so cheap! People don't lie when they say it's cheap! I got everything I need for the entire week (I think) for £11.16. Including carrier bags, as I forgot to bring them with me and I live in Wales where you have to pay for them...

To be fair though, a lot of what I need for the week I do already have in the cupboards so this is a little misleading but that £11.16 included enough chicken for four meals and enough beef mince for three meals so you really can't complain.

The plan now then, is to see if I can go right through to next friday's food shop without spending anything. I might need to get some bread or milk maybe, but that should be it. Wish me luck.

On a negative note, I had to pay some men to take away some rubbish from a renovation we have done recently, and it came to more than I was expecting. I had already paid them a deposit of £49 and i today had to pay an extra £75...

I really am poor now until pay day, this has been a very expensive month, and i still have Mother's birthday present to get and a 15 year old to take to the Dr Who experience to come yet. Tomorrow I'll do a proper check on exactly what funds i have to the pound, and figure out if this month will be possible without resorting to using the credit cards.

On the plus side, there is lots of awesome rugby tomorrow. England v Wales, should be good! And free, because i'll watch at home.

patman99

Looking at your sig., you are close to paying-off loan 4, so this will ease your outgoings by £25.55 each month.

3 months later and loan 3 also gets paid-up, so if you can survive 6 months, you will end up nearly £81 a month better off.

Split this 50/50 towards the overdraft and loan 2 and you will have paid-off this loan 2 months early (and may even get back 2 months interest). You will also have reduced your overdraft by £360 over the 9 months to boot.

As for YNAB. They used to do a trial for 1 month. At which point you then decided whether you wanted to buy it or bin it.
I bought it and was impressed with it. You get free updates for life and they do versions for Windows and Mac. You can even get it working without fuss on Linux (you just need to install WINE).

They even do an app for the iPhone and Android that allows you to log your spending as you go (although this requires you to save your budget to something like 'Dropbox' or 'Onedrive' or 'Google drive').

I would reccommend working through the tutorials if you want to get the most out of YNAB though.

craididlyaig

Hey Patman, thanks for the advise. I think actually what I'm going to do is pay off the first payday loan in full when I get paid on the 15th October, so this process should be sped up a bit. I'll have to figure it out though, because Christmas is of course coming and I want to make sure I have money aside for this.

craididlyaig

So both yesterday and today were both NSDs! No money spent at all! Ordinarily I would have probably spent a tenner or so on terrible food from the shop up the road, and maybe a little something something on a takeaway but nope. Onwards and upwards.

I literally cannot wait until payday so I can start making some payments and adjusting my sig. It's going to feel so good. I'm then going to figure out a weekly budget for myself, and anything left at the end of each week can go into an overpayment, probably on one of the PDLs so I can get rid as quickly as possible.

This month, however, things are officially tight but not as tight as I thought they might be. After I have budgetted for the Dr Who experience, I have £51.80 left to last me until the 15th October, which is 18 days away. Bearing in mind I still have to entertain my 15 year old cousin for the day (and I expect she eats food also, I'm pretty sure I ate food when I was 15.) I imagine I'll spend maybe an extra £15 here. Also bearing in mind I have to get my Mother a birthday gift and pay for postage. We never splash out ridiculously on each other though, and she will understand if I don't push the boat out for her here so I'll expect to pay maybe £15 for this. Leaving me about £20.

But I DO have food for the rest of this week. Then I will have to feed myself for another almost fortnight after that. It's definitely possible, but it's going to be tight. My cat also needs food and litter for this time. He's beautiful, but he doesn't pull his weight in this regard at all and he expects me to pay for everything.

The penny jar is going to be emptied and counted out at some point this week. With a bit of luck, and a lot of care, I may be able to get through this horror of a month without using my credit cards. They are of course there if I need them, but I have every intention of making it to payday. Next month is a much cheaper month, and a very different story. I will keep this updated to the penny, so wish me luck!

Orange_Ena

My cat is a lazy so and so too. He hardly does anything to help. But he does catch spiders so can't complain too much

Good luck getting through till payday. You can do it :T