I want to stop drowning

debtaghh

Frugal living challenge amour set- £8000 this is to include food, presents, entertainment , hair cuts, clothes, shoes. I secretly would like to reduce this. I buy for too many people at Christmas.

I still need to meal plan.

debtaghh

Morning,

I popped to the shops the other day and have stocked up on next years xmas cards. I’m going food shopping today and have a couple of bday presents to buy. I have a £12 off voucher for the food shop so am hoping to spend £48 ( it’s off £60). We have people round Sunday and Monday which is all going to be costly. Apart from one day next year I haven’t organised to see friends etc, I normally would have done by now but am thinking of the cost. In fact the chn are going to a bday party in a couple of weeks and I’m going to bring two other peoples presents to save on postage and to save me having to see them to give them their present ( that sounds really horrible but it’s only to save money) we will still see people but I’m trying to stretch it out eg instead of once a month , will be once every 6-7 weeks. It’s the only way we can cut back as if we go to someone’s house that uses fuel and then I tend to bring something ( even just a cheap £1 item) and if they come to us that’s food.

Hope everyone has a good frugal day.

enthusiasticsaver

Sounds like a good MSE tip to take a few presents at once if there are a number of birthdays close together. Do you have lots of birthday presents to buy over the year? One of my daughters has lots of children to buy for as most of her close friends now have kids so she has taken to buying multipacks of books and splitting them to give to more than 1 child. It would cost a fortune otherwise.

Stretching out trips or visits out is good to save money but don't go too mad. You have to live as well. I think one of the best things in your situation would be to look at increasing income. Surveys, mystery shopping maybe if your business is struggling or you can't find a job to fit round the children.

debtaghh

enthusiasticsaver wrote: »

Sounds like a good MSE tip to take a few presents at once if there are a number of birthdays close together. Do you have lots of birthday presents to buy over the year? One of my daughters has lots of children to buy for as most of her close friends now have kids so she has taken to buying multipacks of books and splitting them to give to more than 1 child. It would cost a fortune otherwise.

Stretching out trips or visits out is good to save money but don't go too mad. You have to live as well. I think one of the best things in your situation would be to look at increasing income. Surveys, mystery shopping maybe if your business is struggling or you can't find a job to fit round the children.

Yes I do have quite a few chn to buy for , I try buying deals and then splitting them up eg 2 for £10 offers.

I do surveys already, I’ve made quite a bit through one lately and even got to test the products. I agree that increase in income would help and have been looking for jobs again but also know this won’t happen quickly.

My dh is going to ring payplan today to book an assessment. We just want to see what options we have.

enthusiasticsaver

A discussion with payplan won't hurt and at your level of debt with just one income and high rent it is certainly worth considering a DMP. The only bugbear really is the family debt as that will not be allowed within your soa so you will need to overestimate the other acceptable areas of expenditure. I am not sure what they allow for holidays either which is really your Achilles heel so to speak. Are you still paying out for tutoring?

debtaghh

enthusiasticsaver wrote: »

A discussion with payplan won't hurt and at your level of debt with just one income and high rent it is certainly worth considering a DMP. The only bugbear really is the family debt as that will not be allowed within your soa so you will need to overestimate the other acceptable areas of expenditure. I am not sure what they allow for holidays either which is really your Achilles heel so to speak. Are you still paying out for tutoring?

We haven’t booked any new holidays and infact made one shorter so I’m hoping that is a positive for us. Just to clarify we haven’t been on an abroad holiday in nearly ten years and stay at premier inns a lot of the times.

Yes we are paying for the tutor but I was strangely enough talking to dh last night saying we should get rid of it but he didn’t seem as keen ( I’ll need to work on him!) worse case it’s five more months and I have limited them by missing some weeks.

With regards to payplan and overstrectvhing that won’t be an issue as when we previously looked into it they allocate loads for food, haircuts etc ( a lot more than what we spend). My biggest worry is the dmp will still be high once we include the family debt or take a ridiculous amount of years. I’m very motivated to get rid of this debt ASAP.

debtaghh

I’ve just copied Mrs save and looked at all my statements for this year and am shocked 😮.

Not including cash as I know for a few months I was cashing money out for food etc we have spent £5172 on food shops plus £1038 on takeaways 😱 if I’m being honest this is probably not accurate by £2k so is more round the £8k figure. 8k is my challenge but that includes haircuts, presents etc so will def be a challenge!

motivated

I was only just thinking about the takeaways debtaghh. We tend to have one every Friday and we spent at least £20 sometimes more if we have Indian. That works out at roughly £1040 for the year :eek:
It’s more convenience as I’m shattered by Friday and DH gets paid so we tend to think oh well let’s order something. It soon adds up as you’ve just said.

Thanks for a wake up call for me too

Tonight I plan to cook and save a few pennies.

MrsSave

It's so scary. I thought we were being pretty frugal..........obviously not!!! Some months I was popping to the shops 10-15 times-that's ridiculous!

enthusiasticsaver

Takeaways and top up shops are almost always the culprits plus buying lunches out even on meal deals plus coffees at costa coffee. We rarely have more than one takeaway every couple of months and even then only when we have the family with us. My daughter and her husband do a payday takeaway on their payday only. I would rather save the money and have a nice restaurant or pub meal.