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

Busy_Mee1

The hyacinth idea is fantastic - I am going to do that too and I might do some amaryllis too, because I love amaryllis.

They will look lovely in vintage pots, but I doubt I will have time to trawl the charity shops so I have sourced some enamel buckets on a florist supplies outlet online ( Michael Dark ) They have some lovely cream, grey and vintage red with a snowflake buckets ( these are particularly nice ! ) costing between £2-£3.80.

You really seem to have got your head around doing a lovely Christmas for less TOPM. I am convinced you can shave £100s off last year's budget by a bit of organisation and shopping around.

I wouldn't worry about your boo boo, it is only an accounting error rather than a fundemental problem. Your grocery spends are much better and savings on football and audible books all add up. This will actually be a saving of £17.99 a month and over a year £215. It is often these small changes that will make the difference.

I am glad you are feeling less stressed, juggling work with a young family is hard and you need to be kind to yourself x

Treadingonplaymobil

emmie26 wrote: »

I tried YNAB and I couldn't get on with it. I use paper and pen, at the start of the month I write down all regular outgoings and then tick them off as they come out of the account. At the start of the month I know how much (little) I have to spend. I do use excel for my savings pots because it all goes in one saving account and gets a bit confusing but even that has got jumbled and my real life total doesn't match the spreadsheet, so I don't think there is an easy way.
Well done on the food spend, what's the secret?

missymoo81 wrote: »

Well done on the lower food shop! Groceries are always something we can bring down! I'm another one that couldn't get on with YNAB im either note pad and pan or excel now!

I usually get on really well with YNAB, but it all rather fell apart last month when I tried to move the Partnership card from an on-budget account to an off-budget one (as I wasn't going to use it again. Ha). Transactions went all over the place!

The food spend has literally just been a case of being on it 100% of the time. To be honest, for us, it was eliminating the top ups, which I thought we were immune from as I didn't view them as top ups, they were just 'little extras' (because calling them something different totally made them not count :rotfl: ). Things like going to the health food shop to buy mung beans and coming out with four boxes of lovely herbal tea or going away for the weekend and buying £20 worth of food as a gift. Our actual weekly shop has been fine for some time, as so many of you commented when looking at my 99% vegetarian home cooked from scratch menu plan. I've actually been able to drop some treats back in (the odd Pukka herbal tea, but from Sainsburys not the extortionate health food shop, some avocados every now and again) without it being a problem.

Busy_Mee1 wrote: »

The hyacinth idea is fantastic - I am going to do that too and I might do some amaryllis too, because I love amaryllis.

They will look lovely in vintage pots, but I doubt I will have time to trawl the charity shops so I have sourced some enamel buckets on a florist supplies outlet online ( Michael Dark ) They have some lovely cream, grey and vintage red with a snowflake buckets ( these are particularly nice ! ) costing between £2-£3.80.

You really seem to have got your head around doing a lovely Christmas for less TOPM. I am convinced you can shave £100s off last year's budget by a bit of organisation and shopping around.

I wouldn't worry about your boo boo, it is only an accounting error rather than a fundemental problem. Your grocery spends are much better and savings on football and audible books all add up. This will actually be a saving of £17.99 a month and over a year £215. It is often these small changes that will make the difference.

I am glad you are feeling less stressed, juggling work with a young family is hard and you need to be kind to yourself x

Ooh, good find on that Michael Dark website, will use that if I can't find anything in the charity shops! Might actually be cheaper, given the price of charity shops round here.

Thanks for putting the Audible and football costs into context, it feels much more significant when you put it like that.

Treadingonplaymobil

Ooh, the other thing I keep meaning to talk about is packed lunches. Yes, it's taken some time and effort, but I can genuinely say we are achieving the packed lunches for perhaps a total addition of £4 a week to the food shop (a punnet of grapes, a red pepper and some extra cheese, usually). I have been doing a fair bit more cooking, making quiche, pizza whirls, pasties etc, but feel like I'm producing nice healthy packed lunches for a fraction of the school dinner price (which averaged out at £30 per month year round). Hurrah for that.

enthusiasticsaver

Well done you on cutting down the food shop and only paying £4 extra a week for what sound like lovely packed lunches.

I can't really follow your explanation re the ynab accounting issue on the partnership card but I thought that was the one you cleared every month? I prefer clear checkbook or spreadsheets to ynab I would have to say but you sound as if you are on top of it.

I strongly urge you to use october and November to save as much as possible for Christmas even if it means just keeping the debt at this level rather than reducing it and just paying minimums. Putting it on a credit card would cause more problems.

Treadingonplaymobil

It is so long and complicated. The partnership is the card I had to use in August/September when I basically didn't earn anything and didn't have a buffer in place in my account (and was planning to clear it with DH's pay rise, which didn't materialise, again). It's been in the paying it off that my maths has gone wrong. Very long and boring money moving fail situation, it took me about an hour to work it out this morning, so I'm not going to attempt to explain it here and confuse everyone! Short version, it will all level out by the end of this month and the numbers will be right, but there will still be a significant balance on the Partnership CC at that stage, as expected.

mumtoomany

Me again! If you are still looking for craft ideas for the children, have a look at s&s craft supplies and Baker Ross. Loads of ideas, some very cheap indeed. I think you said you normally buy craft stuff for the whole year at Christmas. Some of their Easter, spring and summer things are in the sale now. Just watch you don't get carried away, (I always do!) Hope this helps someone, M2m.

Silver_Queen

My local Asda has a huge amount of supplies such as colouring pencils, sharpies, nice paper etc on clearance at the moment, 12 pack of sharpies reduced from £12 to £3.50... I'm not sure if it's nationwide but if there's one near to you, it may be worth a peek?

Honeysucklelou2

Well done on the packed lunch successes. I like the idea of pizza whirls!

enthusiasticsaver

Just read your comment about your DC giving up one of the activities and how good it is you are gradually embracing little economies to hopefully get to a point where you are reducing the debt but still managing to live the life you want. It is not only the savings on the club which does not sound much but also you will save on kit/equipment and travel to and from the club.

Busy_Mee1

Me again with my calculator. So in just these three things ( lunches, audible and football) you have saved a regular £47.99 a month. To earn this amount after 20% tax you would need to earn an extra £60 a month or your husband ( after 40% tax ) would have to earn an extra £80 a month. I think you said you earn about £10 an hour, so the saving you have made equates to 6 hours work. I know this is all a bit obvious but It really helps me value the small savings to look at it in this way.