Put away your purse & become debt-averse

Kantankrus_Mare

I think skin care is more a case of finding what suits your skin whether it is expensive or cheap. I remove eye makeup with wipes, preferably johnsons and wash with Dove soap. Moisturiser is Olay day cream with spf 15.
I have tried other things over the years but find changing products just brings me out in spots so end up going back to the same old things.
I am rather partial to the odd facial though and treat myself to a full body massage once every 6/8 weeks.

So your "vintage" is slightly higher than mine but your mortgage is less. :rotfl: I know what you mean about needing things doing to the house and adding to the mortgage. We have done this a couple of times over the years and if we hadnt, we would probably be mortgage free now. Its my OH that is the spendy one and I have to reign him in.
We do have another option we can take in a few years. We have a small rental property where we have a really good tenant. I have one child living at home and if she ever decides to leave, (not looking likely any time soon) we have discussed selling up and moving to the rental property. It would be downsizing but is in a nice area with a better downstairs layout than what we have now.

Thats one for the long term future though and the more we can pay off this mortgage the better off long term we would be.

foxgloves

Agree, Kantankrus. Let's keep plodding on & seeing the total come down. I've been paying rent or mortgage for so long, I can barely imagine a time when I hopefully don't have to!

foxgloves

Not a spendy day at all, today. We've been South to visit Mum & said we'd treat her to coffee & a cake in a cafe she likes, at which she fished about in her handbag & produced a cafe voucher for £7, so we ended up paying just £4. She's a cheap date!
Mum has a tendency to send us back up the A1 with all sorts of random odds & ends, so we can often arrive home with an eclectic mixture of free stuff. Today's offerings: a recycled jam jar, a big pile of magazines, today's 'Observer', 2 potted herbs (a tarragon & a purple sage), a torch, some buttons, a chicken carcass (lots of meat on it.....I know it would have gone in the bin if we hadn't been there!!), some leftover couscous & coleslaw, a plastic freezer container & 4 tins of cat food!!
Planning to do my regular mid-month budget check-in tomorrow, so hoping very much that all will be in order.
Enjoy the last of the weekend.
F x

wishingthemortgaheaway

What a random collection of oddments. Sounds like fun though.

foxgloves

Yes, WTMA, my Mum is known for her giving of random collections of objects! I think she's also slowly clearing out since my dad died last autumn & so all sorts of strange finds are coming to light! Often they are very useful things, or nice things I want to keep, but if they are things I don't want, I just take them to a charity shop or list them on ebay. One thing she offered my recently, I have to admit I didn't even know what it was! I asked her & she didn't know either & couldn't recall where it had originally come from, but it was an attractive large purple glass container & when I'd brought it back & cleaned it up in a bowl of hot soapy water, it looked really nice. It's now on my front window sill with flowers in it!
On the less useful front, one of her boxes of odds & ends included a light bulb. I phoned & asked if she'd popped it in by mistake as it was a dud one. She said 'No', she didn't know if people are 'allowed' to put those in their wheelie-bins, hence she'd passed the decision to us. Hmmmm!
F

foxgloves

Afternoon Debt-busters,
Well, I've been glued to my desk this morning with my trusty (free) calculator. I like to do a mid-month budget check-in at around this time, as I've mentioned before. Usually, it's pretty accurate with no nasty (or for that matter, nice!) surprises, but occasionally, the figures are out & today was one such example. When I set each month's budget on pay-day, I always leave a small sum in our bank account as a 'cushion'. I budget for all our bills & essential outgoings first, of course, then I pay our emergency fund & our 6 savings 'piggies' for the various categories. There's always some little expense that crops up & so I like to have the option of using the 'spare' cushion of money in our account, rather than diving into other pots. It seems to work fine. This month, I left around £120 cushion & I knew we'd had a few little spends which I'd need to deduct from it this morning when I updated the accounts. But having cross-referenced it with a bang up-to-date bank statement, receipts & everything else, my budget looks to be £67 out......in our favour......that's the good thing. Even with those little spends deducted, there is more actually in our 'cushion' now, than my original accounts show before those purchases were made. Well, I know plenty of people would ask why I'm bothering to spend the time on it, seeing as it's a discrepancy in our favour, but I'm just interested in where it's come from. I've checked my original budget, I've racked my brains as to whether we spent anything else & I've lost a receipt, but that would be very unusual, & now that I've been a Reformed Character for several years, I wouldn't forget a spend of £67. Hmmmm. If this is accurate, that's great, as we are due to be invoiced for a legal bill shortly & every little helps where large bills are concerned. I think the most likely error has been when I set the original budget & did a lot of cash swaps between pots. It did get complicated & although all the pots ended up straight, I may have made an error on paper. Oh well, I think I will keep an eye on our account online, until pay-day, just to check nothing untoward rears its head. But if it genuinely is an extra 67 quid I didn't know we'd got, yeah, I'll take it!
I must say that my pre-LBM budgeting system of opening each statement, peering at the balance for about 1 second (with my eyes shut), before helpfully filing them away in a drawer never to be looked at again, was a much speedier, if ultimately very silly debt-inducing, method!!
F x

wishingthemortgaheaway

Foxgloves, have you tried ynab (you need a budget). It would suit you down to the ground, every penny coming in and out accounted for. I think it would work with your approach. Yes, there is a subscription fee, but I believe it pays for itself many times over, well, it has for me..

Gemsy81

Really enjoying reading your diary. I am quite far behind you, having only had my LBM six months ago, but I am loving being in control of my money for for first time in my life. In fact, I am sure I am borrowing my OH to tears with it!

Another vote for YNAB....it has helped me out massively!

foxgloves

Hi WTMA & Gemsy,
I did briefly consider YNAB, as I know lots of people swear by it. I decided against it - not because of having to pay for it, but because I really enjoy writing......as in handwriting! This might sound daft, as I'm perfectly IT-literate, but I genuinely enjoy running my system, which is a big A4 book known as 'The Money Book'. I sharpen my pencils (I use different colours!), fetch out a good rubber, my ruler & little purple calculator & off I go! I like a big pile of scrap paper too, to work out various scenarios. I know I could run all my different pots of money on YNAB, but I do like my Savings Piggies....I used some of my craft stash to make some funny little shiny pink piggies to stick on the front of the envelopes! So despite my pretty decent IT skills, my preferred budgeting method is really low tech. ....though admittedly not nearly as low-tech as the pre-LBM method of doing sweet b*gger all then being stressed & annoyed when I had no money!
I do use an excel spreadsheet & online banking regularly, but everything else happens in the Money Book, with it's sexy (Not!) piece of black elastic marking the current page!
F x

foxgloves

Gemsy- It's great feeling in control of your money at last, isn't it? I always say that there's simply no bag of tat I could come home with now that could make me feel as good as finally being in control of my finances after so many years.
Keep up the good work,
F x