Learning to budget to make future adventures happen

crunch_time

Morning diary!

Minimum payments and £25 over payment gone out for the loan today meaning it is now down to £10,500! This also means I have paid off half of the car that I no longer own and haven't for 10 months! £1500 and then that's paid off forever.

I need to plan Christmas presents - that is tonight's plan.

I will get one childcare bill tomorrow but then not sure when I will get the other one so cant make anymore overpayments just yet.

I'm really itching to though. I'm just £500 away from sub £10k and I so want to be there! Just got to think that it will happen and it will happen this year!

Crunchy xx

MistyMountainTop

You are doing so well, I'm sure you'll be sub £10,000 before you know it.

I haven't started sorting Xmas really other than buying a few bits throughout the year from boot sales, etc. I need to go to Home Bargains and stock up on some gifty bubbly pretty things - thank goodness there is one not too far from here. Have you already budgeted for Xmas?

sm_1988

Hi Crunchy,

Just read your diary in its entirety and you're story is so inspirational!

Good luck, I'm rooting for you :j

S x

crunch_time

MistyMountainTop wrote: »

You are doing so well, I'm sure you'll be sub £10,000 before you know it.

I haven't started sorting Xmas really other than buying a few bits throughout the year from boot sales, etc. I need to go to Home Bargains and stock up on some gifty bubbly pretty things - thank goodness there is one not too far from here. Have you already budgeted for Xmas?

I have actually and I'm really pleased to say that we are actually sticking to it!!

I have finished stocking presents apart from chocolate (planning to buy 1 piece of chocolate for each.) Our stockings this year are actually expensive as I refuse to buy plastic for the kids tat like I did last year and useless things that never get played with again. So the kids have good colouring pens and a pencil case and some good games etc whilst I have earrings, a face mask and a few other bits that I actually like. At the moment the husband literally has a bottle of sloe gin and book! We have decided to just buy books this year as there are loads that we want (all second hand off amazon) and we don't want any more stuff. So we have budgeted £50 each of the kids, £60 for nieces and nephews and £20 each for us. AND I AM GOING TO STICK TO IT!!! No excuses.

Once I get paid in 2 weeks time, I will pick up something small for my parents and the wrapping paper to wrap it all up. Then that is it. I just need to get cards but we are getting the tree down from the loft this afternoon and I'm hoping I have some left over from last year.

How about you?

Husband and I ha

crunch_time

sm_1988 wrote: »

Hi Crunchy,

Just read your diary in its entirety and you're story is so inspirational!

Good luck, I'm rooting for you :j

S x

Thank you! It doesn't feel it sometimes but I'm pleased I'm inspiring people.

do you have a diary I can follow?x

crunch_time

Morning diary,

Minimum payment gone out for the 0% card so that has broken the 4 figure barrier and gone down to £950. A small achievement to be grateful for! I think we have paid off a chair that I am sitting on right now as I type this. Feels nice that I actually own it!! Ha Ha!

Husband needed new trainers and went over his £50 budget (not is fault). The trainers are nice but it means that the credit card has cropped up to £1461. Mine were £10 over budget too so it includes that extra cost. Never mind, its not that much and it is for stuff that we actually need and will wear.

I turned 35 this last week and my birthday present was more than I actually wanted to spend. I needed a new coat but the cheaper one wasn't available so I treated myself to the more expensive one I had my eye on but couldn't justify. Again, nevermind. That's where all the slush money has gone to so no extra payments to the loan in the meantime.

I get paid in 2 weeks time so I'm hopefully going to chuck some extra money at the loan then - the £200 to make it £10k by the end of the year.

Just got to get through the next 2 weeks with minimum spends.

We can do it!

Crunch xx

crunch_time

crunch_time wrote: »

Right, the DD is having a nap and my boys are making brownies so its time to reflect on where we are since we started this diary.

The quote below is the plan I laid out in the very first post in this diary...



Since this, the hubs and I have had lots more conversations about money and made some big decisions. We have decided our strategy is now to get the debt down to £5k by the end of the 2017 basically to allow us to do several things we NEED to do like maintenance on our house, buy our much wanted dog, save some money for a 2nd car (don't want to replace one loan with another unless we have to), have a proper £1k emergency fund.

To pay off the loan in 2 years is roughly £450 a month which is totally doable.

£450 plus our new mortgage of £613 is roughly what a new mortgage on a bigger house would cost anyway so basically we cant move until its paid off.

This is totally the essence of our plan - to learn to budget to make future adventures happen. Paying the loan off early will only save us a couple of hundred pounds of interest anyway so its ok to take the scenic route.

It feels great to have made a decision. the best bit is I'm going to start to think of the £450 minimum payment as part of my mortgage so I don't feel as guilty about it. I shouldn't feel guilty about it anyway its for cars and uni debt not 'stuff'. I should feel determined to have no credit card debt and an emergency fund.

I've just checked my spreadsheet and realised that I have factored in the new scenic route plan from next months pay for husband. So on 3rd January £450 will go out for the loan meaning I just need to find another £50 for it to be £10k at the start of the year. That's definitely doable.

crunch_time

Sorry for all extra posts but I have decided it would be a good thing to list how much the loan will be each month in 2017 to make me feel better about the scenic route.... Ive also decided to round it up to £500 as I think this is a good compromise.

Jan 2nd - £10,000
Feb 2nd - £9,500
Mar 2nd - £9,000
Apr 2nd - £8,500
May 2nd - £8,000
June 2nd - £7500
July 2nd - £7000
Aug 2nd - £6500
Sept 2nd - £6000
Oct 2nd - £5500
Nov 2nd - £5000
Dec 2nd - £4500

Wow that would be lovely!

AND have no more credit card debt. AND have an emergency fund (£1k). AND be well on our way to 3 months of expenses savings. AND contributing well to pension pots,

If we continued like this into 2018 it would look like the following:

Jan 2nd - £4000
Feb 2nd - £3500
Mar 2nd - £3000
April 2nd - £2500
May 2nd - £2000
June 2nd - £1500
July - £1000
Aug - £500
Sept - £0!!!!

Wow that would be even better!!

Itching to get cracking!!

So now I officially have a plan, lets tackle that credit card next!!

Crunchy xx

sm_1988

@Crunchy No I don't unfortunately. I've never quite mustered up the courage to do one

My sister lent me £11k to go towards my flat deposit but I have a plan to pay her back within a year and a half and she's fine with that

S x

crunch_time

Morning diary,

I felt very anxious this morning. After a few tears and a stroppy conversation with husband it turns out I am feeling very down about the lack of available space in our house to keep my stuff. All I mean is my diary, notebooks, laptop and current things I am working on like my Christmas cards. They just end up in piles and being constantly moved round the house and I can never find anything so I never feel like I am moving forward with anything, just always on the back foot - just like our money situation. Cant start the present or the future as I'm STILL paying off the past.

What we lack is surface space and me having the time just to think about how I want to organise our lives, devise a strategy and then do it and stick to it.

My initial strop was about having to move next year just to sort this out which I know is not the solution so I got stressed about our money situation AGAIN. It then lead to the solution clearly being to buy an expensive dresser to provide us with more cupboard and surface space and then a new sideboard so our current games cupboard could go upstairs in DS room giving us more storage - which is better but not the solution of course. I was then interested to hear my mums voice in my head which was 'you didn't buy a big enough house did you' (even though we had to borrow money off them to move 2 years ago).

Husband kept saying that if we have to buy new furniture we have to. I said that I just need some time without the kids to sort through my organisation so he has taken them out for the day for me so I can devise a system and places for everything that work.

In the time that his taken to write all of this down I have realised that we don't need any extra furniture to make this house work for us now, maybe just something like a basket that fits someone to put all my stuff in. Buying furniture we don't really need would be taking us backwards not forwards. The money NEEDS to go on debt so we can move house WHEN IT IS GONE GONE GONE!!!

Typical past behaviour of trying to chuck money at a situation to make it better when actually some sensible thinking would suffice. I'm very pleased I have written this all down so I can recognise how my traits can sometimes hold me back.

So I am about to put my tracky bottoms on and scrape my hair back and really nail organisation in my house once and for all before they come back at 3pm.

Wish me luck!

Crunchy x