Drifting in a Sea of Debt

BettyBones

Another month of frugal living and if I'm honest, I'm totally bored of it now And I think I've sunk to new lows in my quest to become debt free. I ran out of t-bags the other day and had no money left in my grocery budget this month to buy some more, so I helped myself to a few out of my ex-husband's tea caddy to tide me over :eek: Ridiculous behaviour I know! Anyway, this month's figures:

Debt totals last month:
Tax Credits: £0.00
Capital One CC: £0.00
Santander CC: £0.00
Halifax CC1: £0.00
Halifax CC2: £2,575.00
Tesco CC: £665.00
Total Debt: £3240.00

Debt totals this month:
Tax Credits: £0.00
Capital One CC: £0.00
Santander CC: £0.00
Halifax CC1: £0.00
Halifax CC2: £2,060.00
Tesco CC: £530.00
Total Debt: £2,590.00

It's sooo tempting to just balance transfer the last £2.5k onto another card and pay it back over a longer period of time but the determined me keeps saying 'No!, Don't do it!' I've only got 4 payments left to make until I'm debt free but in order to stick to the repayment plan and clear the H@lifax CC before the 0% runs out I have to continue living on practically nothing for the next 4 months :eek: Oh well... needs must I suppose. I'll soldier on. Now where did I put this week's treat... my 25p packet of Tesc0 ginger nut biscuits :rotfl:

Have a good weekend everybody! :beer:

BettyBones

DS has been feeling a little run down lately so I popped into Tesc0 today and spent £6.50 of my meagre £15.00 weekly entertainment budget on some Metatone Tonic for for him. My local Tesc0 has a newspaper stand in the foyer where you can pick up copies of local free papers, magazines and holiday brochures etc so on the way out I stopped by the stand and picked up a selection of stuff to amuse myself with this evening. Got home and realised that I left the blinking Metatone I'd just bought on top of the newspaper stand. What a numpty! Rang the store to see if it had been handed in but sadly not. So back I go tomorrow to buy some more and just like that, my entertainment budget that I was saving for this weekend is reduced to £2 :eek: I'm the one in need of a tonic now! :rotfl:

Disco_Dolly

Hi BettyBones, just read through your diary. You've done amazingly well, very inspirational. Best of luck with meeting your DFD, I'm subscribing.

BettyBones

Thanks Disco Dolly! I'm not very good at keeping up with my diary and tend to just post randomly but I always do my month end summary to keep me on track and accountable. I've just caught up with your diary too. You've done amazingly well and your end is in sight too. Just think... a few more months and we could be enjoying this summer debt-free! Woohoo! All we need to do is stick to the plan! We can do this!!! x

Disco_Dolly

BettyBones wrote: »

Thanks Disco Dolly! I'm not very good at keeping up with my diary and tend to just post randomly but I always do my month end summary to keep me on track and accountable. I've just caught up with your diary too. You've done amazingly well and your end is in sight too. Just think... a few more months and we could be enjoying this summer debt-free! Woohoo! All we need to do is stick to the plan! We can do this!!! x

I like the monthly round up idea, it really shows how far you have come each month. Might steal that idea for my own diary

Its great that the end is in sight for both of us, hopefully if my plan works I will be almost at my DFD by the time you come back from your lovely cruise :j

BettyBones

Steal away Disco Dolly I like to keep my zero balances in my monthly summary too because it reminds me that I'm four debts down, two to go

Received £60 mileage expenses today and plonked them in a separate savings account. I started to get my ducks in a row a while ago for when I'm finally debt-free and have opened separate savings accounts for holidays, motoring, xmas, rent and emergencies and now I'm slowly trying to feed them. Not easy on a budget as tight as the one I've set myself. However, this is the state of play so far:

Holiday Fund: £1,350
Fully funded. I've been feeding this for a long time now and it will cover the balance of my holiday when it's due in April (£1,250) as well as give me a bit of spending money.
Rent Fund: £525
Fully funded. This will cover my additional rent & water payment in April (I pay my rent 4 weekly rather than monthly so have to pay twice in one month every year). Once I've paid it in April I'll start putting £43.75 a month back in again to pay it when it happens again next year.
Xams Fund: £20.80
I started the penny challenge on December 01st and am so far managing to keep up with it so am on track to have saved £667.95 by the end of November for Christmas spends :T
Motoring Fund: £60.00
First payment made to this fund today and it should cover my road tax this month (£20.00) and might also pay for the MOT when it's due in April (approx £50.00).
I still need to find around £200 for car insurance though, which is due for renewal in May, and a bit extra for any repairs the car might need but I'm hopeful that I'll have a few more work trips between now and the end of April to bump up the mileage expenses.
Emergency Fund: £0.00
This one's a big fat fail so far. I've been a bit naughty and have sort of been regarding my holiday fund as my emergency fund as well. Not ideal but I figured that if the sh*t really hit the fan then I could use the holiday money to pay for the emergency and then just pay for the holiday with a credit card. I know this isn't the right mentality and luckily I haven't had to resort to this drastic measure thus far. I would like to start paying into my emergency fund now but my budget is just too tight. So I probably won't crack on with funding this until after me holibobs in June. Then it will be a priority.

I also have £62.00 in my £2 pot to pay for DS's birthday in May and a whole hunk of change in my 'Mystery Pot'. But I'm not planning on cracking the mystery pot open until New Year's Eve. So all in all, not too shabby I think. I finally have my head in the game and am getting my financial sh*t together so to speak. Just praying that no dreaded curve balls come my way to knock me off course.

Right... I really should be working now. Lunch time was over ages ago! :eek:

BettyBones

Gosh! It's been more than 2 weeks since I lasted posted. I really am rather rubbish at keeping a diary. I'm still just plodding along trying not to spend any money. It's soooo hard though!
Yesterday a friend asked me if I wanted to go into town for a bimble round the shops. Nooooo!!! I've pretty much managed to go nowhere near the shops for the last 18 months so I politely declined. However, it was such a nice day that half an hour later I was ringing her back to say yes. My intention was to take my £15 weekly entertainment budget with me, do nothing but window shop and spend as little as possible on lunch. But it didn't quite work out like that. I made the mistake of wandering into one of my favorite outdoor shops and they had a sale on :eek: Found a pair of trousers and a t-shirt that I really really liked :eek: :eek: The trousers were reduced from £34.99 to £16.99 and the t-shirt was reduced from £18.99 to £7.99. I must have picked them up and put them back 100 times before I headed to the checkout with them. Honest! When they went through though, the trousers came out at £9.99 and the t-shirt came out at £4.99. Reeeesult!
After that I defintely needed to quit whilst I was ahead so decided to just grab a coffee rather than go for a full on lunch. We ended up in John Lewis and I used my Waitr0se card to get a free coffee with a slice of lemon cheesecake that was reduced to 75p. So all in all I had a very nice day with my friend, got some nice new clobber, and came home just 73p over budget. Gotta be happy with that :j

BettyBones

£56.25 mileage expenses landed in my account yesterday so I've paid my car tax (£20.00) and moved the leftover £36.25 to my 'Motoring' fund. Motoring fund is now £96.25 so I've got enough to cover the MOT. I know I need a new wiper blade which I'll get before the MOT but am really hoping it doesn't need anything else. Have a work trip next week so that should swell the motoring fund by another £100 or so. Fingers crossed the car doesn't need any repairs and I can get enough pennies together to renew the insurance in May. Not sure if I'm going to have anything left over to get the service done though so might have to do a couple of car boot sales next month to swell the coffers. Trouble is I don't really have anything left to sell. I've already decluttered my life to the point where my entire worldly goods could probably fit into just two or three cardboard boxes.Might have to tap the relatives up and offer to get rid of their unwanted goods for a commission.

Oh well... tomorrow I'm volunteering at a local half marathon so I'm looking forward to a nice day out with a free lunch For the rest of today I'm just going to Netflix and chill. Although my DS tells me to stop saying that because it doesn't mean what i think it means? So what does it mean??? :huh: I thought I was 'down' with the kids, but clearly not :rotfl:

BettyBones

Ooo... I have my '100 posts on the forum' badge. Thank you badger

ada-or-ardor

Netflix and chill is today's equivalent of "do you want to come up for a nightcap" so it's basically code for getting down n dirty ;-)

But I totally think you should keep using it in front of DS, especially when his friends are round.... !!!