Put away your purse & become debt-averse

HairyHandofDartmoor

I hope you're feeling better Foxgloves. There are a lot of lurgies around at the moment.

foxgloves

Thanks all - am still lergified but will pop on with my new year update later. I need to make bread first.
F x

RoslinGirl

Happy New Year, Foxgloves! I hope you start feeling full of health very soon. I am off to start my first proper meal planning exercise for which you have provided lots of inspiration. I am very much a cook in training but cooking from scratch makes such a difference to cost and taste when you get it right.

savingmore

Just delurking to say Happy New Year and hope the lurgy goes soon. So many seem to have the lurgy on these forums.

i thoroughly enjoy your thread and thought the new decade should start by popping in and saying hi. I am in preparation for retirement in 40 months and find inspiration in your daily life and adventures.... i want to see how much i can prepare to set me up as well as poss for 2023, which now doesn’t seem too far away......

can’t wait for your new year update!

foxgloves

Kittikins - That is a really good tip for night time brain racing, which does drag up all sorts of anxieties, mostly of a non-helpful unprogressive nature. I think I will have to try it. Thanks for sharing.
F x

foxgloves

Thanks for all good wishes re the lergy.
Thanks too to all the new people who have de-lurked to comment for the first time. We are all on the same mission one way or another, aren't we? Whether we are just embarking on the process to become debt-free or further down that road & trying to stay motivated, Plenty of people in a similar position to us too, where debts &/or mortgage have been paid & we are trying hard to keep it that way!
All comments & contributions welcome on my diary. It still amazes me that anyone who was as bad with money as I was for so many years could ever inspire anybody else on anything budget-related, but as I always say, if I can change my bad habits, then truly anybody can. Just stop making excuses, about 'needing' unnecessary stuff & that will help get your head in the right space for the job ahead. Good luck to anyone just starting out, or starting over for the new year. There is a lot of support on these diary boards, as well as on the Daily DFW Small Things thread, which is where I first started posting.
F x

foxgloves

What a dull grey old afternoon! I've only viewed it through the window, as I am still lergyfied & really haven't felt like going anywhere today. In fact, I think I've felt worse today! I'm annoyed that this wretched lergy has not developed in line with my expectations. Broadly, having discovered I'd brought my nephew's germification back from London with me, I expected the following: Suspicious throat. Then sore throat & tight tubes. Then snot. Lots of it. A couple of boxes of tissues' worth. A couple of days of sitting around feeling sorry for myself before picking up, maybe a bit of a cough, but from thence back to normal. But this hasn't happened. I just have a sore throat, a bit of a cough, gungy tubes, no energy & swollen glands but no other real head cold type symptoms. Nothing is really changing. I feel pretty much the same every day. I keep hoping I will wake up snotty so that I could feel there's some progress & it'll soon be on its way, but no......so far, just the same yuk every day. I have done a few things today nevertheless - I've taken the Christmas tree down & Mr F helped me with all the other decorations & moving the room back to how we usually have it. I've sorted out the clean laundry, but didn't feel up to ironing. I've also made bread, which is just in the oven at the moment, had a nice soak in the bath & hair wash and done my online German. No effort required for the rest of the day, as we are going to be heating up some of the chicken chilli I batch cooked the other day. I am going to knit a few more rounds of my jumper & read by the fire. It's all I really feel like doing, to be honest.
I'm really hoping for a city centre trip on Saturday, as well as a big supermarket shop to use our nectar points and a nice walk at one of our favourite places on Sunday, so I really do need to find some energy from somewhere. I think I need a Moan Jar & every time I moan to poor old Mr F yet again about my throat, I have to put 50p in the jar. I reckon I could have raised sufficient for a holiday over the past few days, the rate I've been complaining!
Anyway, I did intend to get my goals for 2020 posted on my diary, so I will do that next.
And it won't contain moans.
Or throats.
F x

foxgloves

Goals for 2020. I've been thinking a lot about these. I don't want the negativity of setting myself up to fail or having a list of resolutions which are all about denial, but there are aspects of my life which do need taking in hand (again!), improving & in which I need to self-deliver a massive kick up the bum.
So I am going to concentrate on 5 areas in a positive & hopefully progressive way:

1. Look after myself better (Yes, this will include all the usual New Year intentions like resuming my healthy eating, reducing my weight - I am still 4 stones lighter from my big weight loss a few years ago, but I have endlessly cycled the remaining 2 stones on & off again, which needs to stop. It also covers things like resuming my 7000 daily step count, riding my bicycle, working on my annoying sleep pattern & lots of the little enjoyable things like manicures, pedicures, face masks, etc, which all help to emphasise that I am 'worth it').

2. Make this the year I finish my novel, even if I have to superglue my ample backside into my desk chair in order to do it (that'll be AFTER I've achieved my 7000 steps for the day, of course!) I absolutely love creative writing. The only obstacle to getting my novel finished is me. It all goes well for a while, then I lose confidence in my writing abilities & start finding displacement activities. On a good day, I know I can write. I know I have a story to tell. I love the darkness of it, I can utterly lose myself in the creative process & find half a day has passed & I've even forgotten to eat (which might assist with Goal 1, lol!) I WILL finish it this year. I have never felt so determined.

3. I will endeavour to employ excellent teamwork with Mr F in order to project manage the work we badly need doing on our house. It feels daunting at the moment because neither of us knows anything about builders, damp proof treatments, wiring or a host of other things. It also feels scary because we don't have any idea of what any of it will cost. We will make all decisions relating to this together but I have said that as I am not working, I will manage the budget for it, try to ensure we don't make any silly mistakes & try to get as much done as we can to put our biggest asset into good order.

4. I consider that we are very lucky to be mortgage-free nine years earlier than we expected. It was only possible because I lost both my parents just a year apart & I am not squandering their gift by sliding back into spendy behaviour. While I don't think this is likely these days, because we have both had such a huge change of heart with our attitude to money, I intend to consolidate our financial position by continuing to budget regularly & well, ensuring that we have mechanisms in place for saving for things rather than being tempted to borrow. I truly believe that apart from buying a home, a reliable car for work or education, there is NO situation in life which is improved by being in debt. there is no such thing as 'interest-free credit', only 'interest free debt' & I won't go that way again. As part of our financial rehabilitation, we have also become much more environmentally aware. I intend to build on this. 'Shopping from home' may be a simple process, but it is a good way of reducing unnecessary consumption & I will definitely be continuing with it.

5. And finally.......I would like to value my time more highly. Like many people, I am capable of wasting far too much time online, especially following the political stories which drive a lot of my ethical beliefs. I doubt I will come to harm if I don't read the news 4 times a day! I didn't even used to buy a newspaper every day & I coped perfectly well! I need mentally to convert the time I save online to words of my novel or square metres of our veggie garden hoed & dug. And if I read less right-wing trolling on social media, that's also a good thing. I am going to think of them as mere wind-up merchants who are probably sitting up in their bedrooms in their pants. I will not waste my anger on them when I could be putting my energies to much better use & using my time more effectively & enjoyably.

So that is how I would like to shape my year. I am intending to continue with my diary, as it does help me to focus on the sound financial behaviours which have enabled us to turn us from such naughty spendy little goblins into really quite sensible people!
To all my readers - whether regular commenters or background lurkers - I wish you every new year blessing. All change begins with that one first step........& it continues via the formation through repetition of small good habits. I really don't miss the insecurity & over consumption of those Spendy Decades.
OK, into 2020 we go, folks!
Love & Peace,
F xx

DawnW

Totally with you re the right wing trolls on social media. I am sure they are sitting in their bedrooms, in their pants, and what is more doing so in their Mums' houses in other countries! Nothing against other countries of course, but I have noticed that some of them seem to be based in the US according to their profiles!

foxgloves

Dawn - I agree. If I put as much time into my novel as I sometimes do into creating withering put-downs for trolls, I would probably working on a sequel by now! I was asked recently in a survey whether I thought the internet was generally a positive or negative force. I had to say that I thought it was neutral, because all the good, great, useful, informative, interesting, nurturing & beautiful stuff it is possible to access online is in my opinion definitely counter-balanced by bias, deliberate misinformation, hate-speak, radicalisation, trolling, yet more temptation into debt, abuse of personal data and the sheer & utter time-wasting of endless clicking 'just in case'. Added to that the dodgy attitude to taxation displayed by some of the big online companies......it's hard to say that overall they are a force for good, isn't it?
But the truth is that nobody is forcing me to pick up my phone & start clicking, so I'll be interested in seeing how many little blocks of time I can free up this year to use for something altogether more positive.
F x