Put away your purse & become debt-averse

foxgloves

Welcome Honeybug!

Well, the slow cooker beef stew was lovely. Purplefairy is right about using less liquid, but you soon get used to it.
While I was dishing up the stew, I filled mr f's big red microwave mug thing as well. It'll go in the freezer tonight & can just be whipped out anytime he needs a hot lunch for work.
There are some great slow cooker books out there. I borrowed several from the library when I first got my slow cooker. I also bought one (my favourite) called 'I love my slow cooker' (the word 'love' in the title is a heart shape).....but I did get £1 off!

RhiBi

I!!!8217;ve subscribed too. I love meal planning and choose quicker meals for days the children have hobbies.

I!!!8217;ve reduced my food shopping a lot by ordering meat in bulk from Musclefood (if anyone wants to try it I can give you a code that gives you some free meat). I list what is in my freezer and my weekly shop is based around this. I shop at Aldi mainly and my food shop is always under £50 and we!!!8217;re a family of 5 at home plus a cat and dog!

wishingthemortgaheaway

Oh my word Foxgloves, you are my hero already.

Bullet journal.... I love mine. Looking forward to hearing lots of mentions about what pages you have.

'Shop from Home' this is a new phrase to me, but obviously I know the principle, just didn't know it had a name. I must 'shop from Home' more.

Meal planning & shopping lists. I do this. But I usually end up messing the quantities up. I guess I need to list more carefully.

Love my slow cooker.

Onebrokelady

Hi just started reading your diary and I’m going to subscribe as I’m nosey looks interesting
I also used to take cash shopping and end up using my card to pay then frittering the cash away on something else,I thought that was just me,it’s nice to find someone else who did it it stops me feeling so daft
By the way do you mind if I ask if you come from the midlands anywhere, I ask because of your use of the word cobs whichnim presuming are bread rolls,I originally come from Derby and we always used to call bread rolls cobs, I’m in the Southwest now and have been brainwashed into calling them rolls :rotfl:

foxgloves

Hi Onebrokelady - You have correctly guessed my region! I am in a different county to the one you mention, but yes, I moved up here in my late teens for Uni & bread rolls were just called 'bread rolls' where I grew up. Eventually local habits caught up with me & I've lived up here so long now that a bread roll is a 'cob'!

foxgloves

1 luckylady - that's a nice thing to say, thank-you. Yes, I've been a bit of a bad girl with spending in the past. Today I think I'll share my technique for 'maximising' birthday money back in the bad old spendy decades. Because you 'know' me from DFW small things thread, very much post-LBM, you will think I'm talking about a different person!

foxgloves

Greetings Snowy Mortals,
Another freezing cold day here. No fresh snow since yesterday & our street actually looks to be thawing a bit, so that's hopeful. Well, I've had some horrible lergy since 17th Feb & although I felt a lot brighter yesterday, I didn't feel so great again first thing so mr f (he's off work today) said he'd go & get the grocery shopping. He's pretty good these days at sticking to budget, but we did go over by £8.99 today. This was because the local market was cancelled because of the snow & so he had to get our fruit & veg from the supermarket instead. The other reason was that 2 or 3 little treatypoos were snuck into the trolley for his poorly woman (& as I've snarfed one already, I can hardly complain!)
So today's efforts towards getting rid of that annoying bit of loan have been keeping all budgeting absolutely straight. I've updated my monthly Grocery Budget Tracker page in my bullet diary & have paid the grocery spend across to our M&S credit card. Why did we use that? Well, 2 reasons.......one is that we only use CCs for planned budgeted spending (petrol, groceries, etc) to maximise loyalty points for vouchers. The other reason is that a lot of our smaller budgets are cash-based. I am happy to take 3 different 'pots' of money out shopping with me so I pay from the correct budget, but mr f thinks this is one big massive faff, so today, when I'd asked him to get a couple of items for gifts (which he found for 20% off) & an item for me (which was £2 off), he puts all these planned small spends on his CC & I then pay the money across straight away afterwards & put the cash from the relevant cash piggies in the grocery pot, adjusting the grocery tracker sheet so I know how much of the remaining money is to come from the account & how much is petty cash. I know that sounds complicated, but of all the things I've tried, this is the one which seems to work for us. We have 6 different cash 'Piggies' (envelopes) for different categories of spending:
Car maintenance
Clothes
Holidays
Leisure/entertainment
Presents
Household
Then we have a cash amount each for our monthly personal spends - between £60 & £100 per month. It's £70 this month, but I'd aim to budget £100 each if we were going on holiday or to a festival, as it controls spending better than using debit cards. So we do operate quite a cash economy.
OK, back to today......so I've straightened out all the different budgets & checked for surveys. I'm still waiting for a £35 paypal payment from Toluna & when that comes, I shall bottom out paypal into our Loan Pay Down Fund as we also have about £24 in there from our last Ziffit sale. No sign of payment yet, grrrrr. Did a Yougov survey though.....that's my next one to cash out as am at £46.50 & can cash out at £50. So that's it for loan-busting efforts today, but I shan't be spending anything else as intend to read & knit by the fire.
I've enjoyed reading everyone's comments & feedback.
F x

foxgloves

Onebrokelady - I can see you understood instantly what I meant the other day when I mentioned the bad old days when I'd take a load of cash for grocery shopping, then when it came to more, use my cards & fritter the cash on other things. No, it definitely wasn't just you, as we did that frequently, & you really find you are wasting some serious money, don't you, when you do it. That's something I'm glad to say we nipped right in the bud when we started serious debt-busting. I bloody LOVED being debt-free (apart from mortgage, of course) & that's why I am determined to get shot of this loan.
During my Spendy Decades, a good example of this cash/card thing was every year when I received birthday money. I can't remember exact sums now, but I'd usually get around £100 in total, & I'd go straight off to the city centre to spend it because I loved shopping - (I still do, but honestly get more fun these days looking, researching stuff, trying on & choosing maybe ONE thing, as I don't have all the money problems afterwards). So I'd have this birthday cash burning a hole in my purse & I'd think 'Right I need a jacket & a top'. So I'd have a great time looking & trying on & I'd come out with a dress, jacket & shoes! That would usually come to a good bit more than the £100 cash, so I would pay using my debit card. Of course I'd still have that luvverly wodge of cashola & that was my REAL birthday money, right? What I should have done, is go to the bank & pay it into my account to offset the clothes spend, but no, it's my birthday money & spending on the card didn't feel like birthday money even though it was, so I'd continue to treat myself. The sort of thing I liked to buy were things for my house, books, CDs, DVDs, skincare (particularly a well-known brand with its own counter & the 'bonus-time' offers......), accessories, craft stuff, magazines & vintage stuff. So by the time I'd finished in town, I'd spent that £100 birthday money at least twice. But was that the end of it? No, I actually used to manage a triple spend! I'd get home & a few days later, I'd see something else I wanted & I'd tell myself that because the jacket I bought was an 'essential purchase', it shouldn't really have come from my birthday money, so say the jacket cost £70, I'd mentally 'credit' myself another £70 of birthday money to go & buy something extra! Because I managed to convince myself I'd diddled myself out of £70 by buying something useful!! Oh my days, what a baddie....& so silly too, as when my salary landed in my account each month, I was usually in credit for less than two weeks before living in fear of the bank cancelling my cards & not being able to fill my car up with petrol to get to work! Oh I was such a twit! I just could not go back to that cavalier attitude to money. I think it would actually make me ill now!
This is Foxgloves signing out of her confessional!
x

redofromstart

foxgloves, onebrokelady I'm in the midlands too but moved here many years ago. Where I come from we have nice floury baps (quit sniggering) and a cob is what they call a mardy in these parts as in 'I had a right cob on the first time I asked for nice floury baps in the sandwich shop and the staff just stood and laughed'.

I used to have cash in an envelope in the days of student poverty and it worked really well. If the envelope was empty I did without as I couldn't get anything out of the bank, the cash was my pub job wages. It was a good discipline to get into, its just to easy to spend on cards now. Who else remembers when you couldn't pay by card in shops and you had to write a cheque? That was useful sometimes the day before pay day.

ETA oh I so get the birthday spends from the bad old days. OH still does it actually, I still have Christmas and birthday money to spend but I am better at not rushing out to do it now.

foxgloves

Yes, redofromstart, I can remember a student friend here suggesting we just get a 'cob' for our lunch one day when we were out & about & I thought 'Eh? What on earth are we going to do with that?' cos if you went in a bakers shop where I grew up & asked for a cob, you'd be given a round crusty loaf. I love all the regional dialect variations.

And yes, I totally remember standing in a shop & writing a cheque. I also remember my Mum telling me 'You can't spend what you haven't got' & I gave her a withering look & said I could because I'd 'got cheques left'. I didn't actually have a credit card till much, much later. My bank kept up a relentless pressure on me to have one (I guess they could see from my bad money habits what a nice little earner this would be for them from all the interest!) & I am the sort of person who reaches the point that the more I am pressurized to do something, the more I resist it. I think if I'd taken them up on the offer when my spendyness was at its peak, my overall debt would have been quite a lot more than it was.
I am so different now with Christmas & birthday money. For instance, Mum gave me some money for Christmas & I spent it on a lovely new hairbrush (my old one was in bits), a gorgeous make-up bag & some new make-up items. I enjoyed choosing absolutely every item & still smile when I see that pretty bag sitting on my dressing table. I love useful presents now. (And.......I spent the money only ONCE as have learned my lesson!)