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

quintwins

warby68 wrote: »

Right ladies, can you please stop with the skincare brands :rotfl:Its making me google and want to try new things when I was quite happy with my Liz Earle.

I'm MUCH older than you ToPM and moved to slightly better quality products a couple of years ago. I know this isn't an OTT brand price-wise and the products last but it is boring using the same stuff.

This isn't in my grocery shopping BTW.

Oh, and husband has started craftily using the moisturiser - I'm really not sure he's worth it although clearly he thinks he is. Just got to get him to use a tiny bit not a great dollop, and no its not just like aftersun !

:rotfl: go buy him some Nivea for men, will save you in the long run.

Kantankrus_Mare

I'm quite a bit older than you as well.......(50) have always used Olay mainly because anything else including expensive creams irritate my skin.
I use the slightly more expensive one (£18) but never buy it at that price. Can usually get it for a tenner or sometimes even £7.50.

I have been told several times I don't look my age but I think its a combination of factors.

I dont smoke........exercise regularly, and try to use sunscreen.
Cant say whether its genes as my mother smoked since she was 12 :eek::eek: and has terribly lined skin and COPD which has aged her a lot. My nanna had lovely skin at 80 though so maybe good genes.....maybe not. Just couldnt justify spending more than I do on face cream.

joeyjimbles

I use a mix of Liz Earle (clease and polish, toner) and Aldi (serum and moisturiser)- slightly schizophrenic brand-wise but works for me. I buy the muslin cloths from Superdrug to go with the Liz Earle cleanser - the Superdrug cleanser wasn't for me, bright red blotches for a week after I stopped using it. It's all down to what works for your skin and your budget I suppose.

Treadingonplaymobil

Have just been food shopping. Over budget, of course, but only minimally. Have copied original estimates, with notes in red.

Total stands at around £72 (hard to be precise as doesn't do a good Aldi shopping basket for comparison) and will only get us through until Tuesday
Grand total of £78.84.

£17 evening meals
£17.53 including lunch stuff as well (I think I included this in treats when I was estimating)

£17 breakfasts (this surprises me, but does include a £6 big bottle of maple syrup for pancakes while camping. One DC has eggs every morning)
£18.75, despite going for a smaller bottle of maple syrup at only £2. Over because I bought coconut oil (used for frying breakfast, they had it cheap in Aldi and they don't often have it, so I stocked up at £3.99) and extra bacon because we are camping with novice campers and I wanted to get enough to provide breakfast if they get caught short.

£26 snacks/treats (including fruit - some of which gets used for breakfasts too - and extra treats for camping. I would expect this to be much lower in a normal week but will be an interesting one to watch)
£21.91 snacks/fruit/treats/puddings. I think this has gone down because of moving some of the lunch stuff over to snacks rather than any great savings here, as I bought a sticky toffee pudding that wasn't on the list.

£11 baking ingredients (this includes butter, which gets used a lot for toast etc too, as well as usual flour/sugar etc)
£11.15 baking ingredients. Nicely on budget.

Additional categories:
£3.97 on booze - we're not big drinkers, but will have a couple while camping, and I forgot to menu plan any.
£5.53 household - tissues, shampoo and a pressure pump action spray - we need to reproof our tent and I read literally yesterday that the pump action sprays you use for spraying a garden are the best way, so it seemed like fate when i saw one for £2.99 in Aldi. None of this was on the shopping list, all things I raw/remembered we needed once I was there.


This all seems very lovely and good, but there are a few little issues already this month:
1. DH had to buy two breakfasts and three lunches at work this week, as we hadn't thought to plan for packed food for him while we were camping (he went to work from the campsite), which has added £20 to the monthly spend already (because he knows no reason when he has to provide for himself)
2. I spent £7 at the shop this morning on dinner for tonight (we were eating before big food shop) and biscuits to take on a playdate this morning.
So £27 before even starting, plus £78 in the supermarket, and it suddenly looks a lot less impressive for the first week of the month.

ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Deep breaths. It's a terrible start to the month, but hopefully this summarising by category will help a little. And if it doesn't, then frankly I'm photographing my menu plan and my receipts and inviting a free for all critique.

quintwins

Treadingonplaymobil wrote: »

Deep breaths. It's a terrible start to the month, but hopefully this summarising by category will help a little. And if it doesn't, then frankly I'm photographing my menu plan and my receipts and inviting a free for all critique.

This is not a terrible start, you know where you went wrong. it's a learning curve. I don't think you did too badly at all.

Treadingonplaymobil

quintwins wrote: »

This is not a terrible start, you know where you went wrong. it's a learning curve. I don't think you did too badly at all.

I'd be perfectly happy if we weren't starting from a 'negative' of over £25. Maybe we'll find that things like that are the problem rather than the actual food shop...

quintwins

Treadingonplaymobil wrote: »

I'd be perfectly happy if we weren't starting from a 'negative' of over £25. Maybe we'll find that things like that are the problem rather than the actual food shop...

You might and then you can work on it. My problem is a love of takeaway food and coffee's. Have you considered shopping online, it could help with the wee added extra's.

Newchapter

Well done for being brave and facing up to your debts. This community has been supportive to me over the years when I have sought advice and I hope you find some helpful and comforting words here too.

Like you, I did have over £65k of debt. I have reduced that slowly, now £40k, but it will take another five years to clear it I expect.
I did use a DMP. It was the only way forward for me. I also stopped pretending to my then teenage kids that we could afford holidays, meals out etc. We cut our social life right back. My kids have learned a lot about budgeting and the value of money as a consequence.

In the beginning of starting a DMP, I was embarrassed and frightened what would happen to me, but as time has gone on, I have become accustomed to the different way of living and its actually ok.

I no longer go to John Lewis, eat organic, or engage in shopping that I cannot afford. One day in the future I might indulge a little, but I am determined not to get into that unhelpful and stressful was of living again.

You can do it. Be brave. Allow yourself to make hard decisions. It will get easier.

Treadingonplaymobil wrote: »

I can see how it reads, but actually I'm fairly confident my light bulb is on . We've actually paid off £2,657.97 since consolidation-gate in October. I know exactly where the shortfall came from - a reasonable chunk of it was meeting basic expenses when I was earning nothing at all after having child 3 (was overly optimistic about getting back to work, as I managed it quickly with the other two), the rest was from just living outside our means repeatedly, but not in a 'buying actual products' way. We ate out, had weekends in London, bought expensive versions of things like clothes and technology (even though we don't buy much of it), things like that.

We aren't spending on credit cards at all now, and hope not to ever again (I am trying to build up an emergency fund for those months when I make only my minimum of £250, but I can't make it happen instantly, sadly).

We manage really well in a 2 bed house! Honestly, it isn't even close to being a concern for us. We'd like to extend one day, but if necessary we can divide the rooms up - we could turn it into four fairly poky bedrooms just by sticking up cheap partition walls. I get a lot of inspiration from those 'tiny house' blogs etc.

We could NEVER get a bail out from my parents - I would go bankrupt before I'd tell them about the amount of debt! So no, no hopes of being bailed out. And they are all in perfectly good health, so not holding out for an inheritance.

warby68

Try not to let Week 1 shopping 'fail' get you down - see if you can claw back. Is husband fully on board - £20 on himself is a lot when he knows the budget?

When I said brave enough to post I meant the actual items and the quantity/price not the categories but I wouldn't like to bare my soul to that extent so of course up to you. Nothing looks a lot from your summaries but if there is only a couple of things in each one its not so good.

Brutally, you can't afford £6 maple syrup nice as it is - I know you didn't buy it in the end but I do suspect this is where the real issue is - you don't buy much in terms of quantity but there's still a quality/lifestyle issue where your choices don't match your budget.

Treadingonplaymobil

warby68 wrote: »

Try not to let Week 1 shopping 'fail' get you down - see if you can claw back. Is husband fully on board - £20 on himself is a lot when he knows the budget?

When I said brave enough to post I meant the actual items and the quantity/price not the categories but I wouldn't like to bare my soul to that extent so of course up to you. Nothing looks a lot from your summaries but if there is only a couple of things in each one its not so good.

Brutally, you can't afford £6 maple syrup nice as it is - I know you didn't buy it in the end but I do suspect this is where the real issue is - you don't buy much in terms of quantity but there's still a quality/lifestyle issue where your choices don't match your budget.

Husband is fully on board, but has to be walked through each issue one at a time, much like me. I suspect that because he never ever buys lunch at work he just went for some nice things without thinking, and they came to £5-6 a time. If he had been buying lunch every day it would be lower
as we'd have tackled it. i can't be too cross as I've had to painfully learn every lesson along the way, as shown in this diary.

No qualms at all about sharing my full receipt, but when I came to type it out (a) it took ages and (b) it didn't make much sense without knowing where things were allocated (e.g. 30 eggs - half to baking, half to breakfasts - wouldn't make sense without that explanation), so I thought categories might actually be more illuminating. Could break it down more, or into individual items, but I'm not sure how much more it will show. Maybe if I upload a photo of the receipt along with the breakdown. There genuinely is no point this week as it contains loads of things like booze, burgers and sweets that just won't be on there for 48 weeks of the year.

Maple syrup also falls into this category - we buy a bottle every few months as a treat when we have guests or similar, rather than it being a regular part of our shop. Having said that, I have noticed that hosting other people forms a part of the problem - we aren't huge social butterflies and I wouldn't have said, pre LBM, that our 'hosting' budget was remotely significant, but even if we have a family over for lunch once a month, it's adding £25+ onto that monthly spend between buying booze/nice juices and nicer food, so that's another interesting point. Not sure how to tackle it without becoming social pariahs, but one for the list.