£67,031.92 is a frightening number indeed....

brizzledfw

PS. We have made a type of sourdough too..using a cowboy recipe from a Texan cookbook I have which has some great recipes from the 'trail'. It was lush....must try it again soon - thanks for the nudge

JoJoC

Just thinking about what you said about you getting more work when you post on social media. Are you aware of free tools like Hootsuite and Postfity? They are online accounts for free thst you can schedule social media posts in advance so if you sit down for an hour per week to create the posts, upload them into the account and select a date, time and attach a picture, you could have all your peak times covered with posts without worrying about making time every day for it. You can connect it to multiple accounts, so LinkedIn, twitter, Facebook, instagram etc.

Sorry if you already use this or know about it but thought it might be useful.

I'm in marketing and comms and I use this for all my social media. Saves bags of time!

You've also, on a side note, inspired me to make a banana loaf!

Treadingonplaymobil

JoJoC wrote: »

Just thinking about what you said about you getting more work when you post on social media. Are you aware of free tools like Hootsuite and Postfity? They are online accounts for free thst you can schedule social media posts in advance so if you sit down for an hour per week to create the posts, upload them into the account and select a date, time and attach a picture, you could have all your peak times covered with posts without worrying about making time every day for it. You can connect it to multiple accounts, so LinkedIn, twitter, Facebook, instagram etc.

Sorry if you already use this or know about it but thought it might be useful.

I'm in marketing and comms and I use this for all my social media. Saves bags of time!

You've also, on a side note, inspired me to make a banana loaf!

I used to use hootsuite, but recently I find I have a better success rate if I just schedule in 10 minutes every single day for social media, rather than trying to make an hour once a week. I'm only just getting back in the swing of it (since new year) and I think once I've got a bit more of a feel for the sort of posts that are working well I'll take the time to schedule a load. Inspiration always totally desserts me when I try to schedule in lots of posts!

Our banana loaf is just waiting for afternoon tea to roll around (right about now actually, need to nudge DH to put the kettle on ), took miles longer to cook than the recipe said but smells YUM.

Treadingonplaymobil

Officially the end of my first week of tackling this debt crisis!

A few significant wins this week:
- Paying £216.86 off the debt total. £96.14 was just a standard DD payment, which means that we overpaid by £120.72 this week. I am mega pleased with that. I know we won’t manage it every week, but just that overpayment knocked a month off our DFD.
- Adjusting the budget twice, firstly in the face of an obvious shortfall, and then again when I discovered my guaranteed income will actually be £132 a month lower than it was previous.
- Having a few NSDs. It’s not a huge motivator for me as long as I’m sticking to my budget, but I know it’s a good habit to get into, as it makes me notice when I do spend.
- Getting DH on board and aware of what’s going on - he always knew the exact debt numbers but I think, like me, felt that it was out of our control to do anything about. He has impressed me with his willingness to work on his spending habits (which are at least as bad as mine in terms of careless spending).

I’ve kept a list each day and a longer running list for the week, which has worked well to keep me on track and I think I’ll keep on with that method for now.

To do today:
1. Make bread (I make my own sourdough). Should be able to get two big/four small loaves out of the amount of starter. Done, and the starter is fed and slowly fattening up again for another batch later in the week.
2. Bake banana loaf to use up manky bananas. Done! Found a recipe to use up the coconut flour that’s been knocking around the cupboard for six months, and was inspired to check for recipes to use up other loitering ingredients.
3. Spend half an hour trying to reduce next week’s shop - I’d like to knock a tenner off it so there is some scope for a top up shop while still remaining within the £60 budget. Not perfect, but I did knock another couple of quid off with some menu juggling, which means even if I have to d a £15 top up at some stage I’ll still come in £25 under the remaining food budget for the month. Also discovered that my week had two Tuesdays, so was able to remove an entire meal!
4. List cot, travel cot and garmin watch on eBay. ]Watch and cot done, must do travel cot tomorrow.
5. Do as much social media while working today as possible (my business always does better when I am making regular social media posts, it’s where the majority of my customers come from). Done!

To do this week:
1. Redo our budget to ensure that even if I only earn my minimum of £250 per month, that the shortfall is gone, whether it has to come from clothes, food, entertainment or whatever. It's lovely to try to earn extra to cover it every month, but I need to get us to a position where if I don't that we're not getting further into debt. Redone on Day 5 to reflect new lower guaranteed income.
2. We are away visiting family from Monday until Thursday, so no worries about food shopping until then (DH at home, but can make do with what's in the house, there is loads), but I'm going to challenge myself to make Thursday's top up shop to get us through until the following Tuesday (normal food shopping day) come in at under £30. Well the £30 got reduced to £18.60 thanks to DH's random extra food shop for himself, but we did it for only £14.09 in the end. Yay!
3. List child 3's old cot on eBay. Done!
4. Menu plan for next week and use MySupermarket to keep the cost down to <£60 for the week. As long as we can get almost all of it in Aldi/Lidl, it will come in under £60. Would have liked to have gone slightly lower to allow for any top up shop, but have menu planned for 8 days rather than 7 (to get into March) and it’s due to be around £55 in Aldi. I actually have £100 available in the budget, I just want to come in as low as possible so there is more spare for dept overpayment.
5. DH - water meter reading to make sure our direct debit is accurate. Done, and direct debit reduced by £9. Not much, but better than nothing.
6. DH - gas and electricity readings, to make sure direct debit is accurate. Done, and we are all of £3 in debit. That's fine, as it's the end of the coldest part of the year so our usage will drop, but I was hoping we'd be in credit. However, we were at zero in September, so we managed the coldest part of the year on the £104 combined DD, so hopefully in another month or two we'll see usage drop slightly and we can reduce DD a little and still accrue some credit ready for next winter. Not the big win I was hoping for but better than a huge bill. Will still try to make our usage more efficient though - a plan to make next week when the children are back at school.

Treadingonplaymobil

Week 2: Day 1

And we’re into week 2, how exciting!

Unless I have some surprise income, this week is mainly going to be about minimising outgoings to ensure there is as much leftover as possible at the end of the month. The only areas I can really affect are food (£100 remaining), fuel (£151.52 remaining) and entertainment (£58.73 remaining). Food is entirely in my control, and I’m hoping to finish the month with £25 left, fuel, I think we might do two fill ups and a top up, based on plans for today and next weekend, so there might be £25 or so left in that, so even if we use up the entertainment budget hopefully we'll end up with £50 left either to put towards next month’s expenses or overpay on debt (probably a split of the two, to be honest), depending on how everything is looking on the 1st.

I’m busy today, so the list is short…

To do today:
1. Go through the ‘spares’ box of bathroom supplies (shampoo, shower gel etc) and make a note of what’s in there, so things can be crossed off as they are used, to stop us duplicate buying things.
2. Again, do some social media while working today.
3. Make fishcakes for dinner to use up tinned salmon in the cupboard.
4. Help DH make nice packed lunches to take to national trust house today - first time in a while they haven't gone to the cafe so it needs to be good enough to forestall any whinging!
5. Make welshcakes

To do this week:
1. Sit down as a family (we have a weekly family meeting on a Monday, this seems a good time) and come up with ways to reduce water usage.
2. Look for paper/online copy of washing machine manual to see which cycle uses least water/energy, as part of an ongoing mission to reduce costs of both.
3. Log into ee - our last two bills have been c.£91, which is even more ridiculous than the £85 contract fee, so we’re clearly overspending somewhere.
4. find out how much preschool bill is for this month and pay it - they seem terrible at giving out invoices and I don’t want to inadvertently get into arrears!
5. Ask at school whether there is dressing up for world book day.

I might add more to my weekly list if I get through all of that - I am working a few days this week so not sure how much time I’ll have to achieve things.

boxofpaws

Have a lovely time at the national trust house.

Good plan for this week

Paws:)

brizzledfw

Good plan... well done and enjoy the house

System

Have just read your diary so far. You have had a good week and seem very determined. Enjoy your national trust day .

JoJoC

Week 2 sounds like it's planned to perfection! I have no doubt you'll be able to shave some cash off your food budget - you're definitely focused!

Enjoy your day out and wishing you a really successful week!

Treadingonplaymobil

brizzledfw wrote: »

Good plan... well done and enjoy the house

Cumbria_lass wrote: »

Have just read your diary so far. You have had a good week and seem very determined. Enjoy your national trust day .

JoJoC wrote: »

Week 2 sounds like it's planned to perfection! I have no doubt you'll be able to shave some cash off your food budget - you're definitely focused!

Enjoy your day out and wishing you a really successful week!

You're all very nice, but I'm not going on the day out, as I have work to do, booooooo . DH and the children will have fun though! And they have a fabulous picnic packed by yours truly. I've got to do lots of admin catch up and an email newsletter to my customers which will hopefully net me a little more income.