Put away your purse & become debt-averse

IzzyBee

I think a lot of us have had the speedy years I know I have looked at things I never used and thought WHY

Blackcats

Ditto to Izzybee's post.   So much money spent, so much stuff bought and never used.  

Onebrokelady

Yep that sounds familiar 🙄

foxgloves

OBL, Blackcats & Izzybee - Yes, it's definitely a pattern of behaviour shared by many on here......a combination of impulse-buying mixed with the unfailing ability to convince oneself that the item is a fantastic bargain.
Post-LBM, when I was in the process of snowballing my way through paying off debts, I found myself developing a new thought process. I would be looking at a scented candle or whatever the item was which caught my eye & yes, of course I'd still be thinking 'Oooh, that is such a lovely fragrance & it would look fab on my windowsill/fireplace/dressing table/wherever' but then I'd imagine buying it (perfectly allowable but it would need to come from my monthly Personal Spends allowance) & would find myself going off the idea. In a stand-off between going home with a candle or still having the money, even if it was just in case I might see something even more fabulous, I started to find that keeping my money was usually my preferred choice. This would have been unheard of pre-LBM. I think it was that dawning realisation that I had lost nothing by not buying the candle, but once spent, that money was gone forever.
Honestly, none of this is rocket science, so goodness knows why it took us so long!!
F x

welshspendthrift

I have to agree, there have been many things I could have bought over the last month but my tight budget keeps my mind  focused  on paying debts and cutting back on the food spending. Reality of keeping a budget and no credit spending is slowly becoming a good habit 😀

foxgloves

Budgeting is such a good habit, Welshspendthrift, I agree. I used to be quite dismissive of people who budgeted their money each month because I saw it a process which would limit, restrict & prevent. As I got into it, I soon found that the opposite was true. Budgeting is empowering. Rather than being a 'preventer' of scented candle binges, take-aways, eating out, upmarket cosmetic 'offers', it is an 'enabler' of greater security. I've said this before, but there is simply no bag of tat I could come home with now, which would make me feel as good as being debt-free with an emergency fund. Best wishes to you on your paying-off mission this year. 
F x

foxgloves

Still thinking about bad habits during The Spendy Decades........ I was never tempted by expensive designer gear, so none of my debt involved £800 handbags or shoes. I have always considered these overpriced nonsense. My problem was consistently overspending my income on lots of smaller things twinned with zero interest in budgeting. Having no savings put the cherry on the debt cake because as we all know now that we are sensible, no emergency fund means that emergencies will be dealt with via borrowing. It's that classic toxic mix. Frittering £50 at the garden centre, on a new top, a top-up shop, a takeaway with a couple of bottles of wine, a few fancy bits & pieces for the home, a DVD multi-offer with a couple of paperbacks......it was the sheer persistence of these purchases which built the debt. Do it 4 times (& I could do that in a week or even one city centre trip) & that's £200 gone. Do it another 4 times, that's £400...... & even though I worked full time, this behaviour then builds to the sort of deficit which it isn't possible to claw back with a month of economies. Yes, those regular £50 fritters were dangerous because of their frequency. £50 didn't feel like a lot of money. It wasn't. But multiply it by 10 such fritters & that is £500 completely & utterly gone......as had my salary by the middle of every single month, from exactly this behaviour!
F x

Lookafterthepennies2020

Morning foxgloves, it's interesting to hear how so many people got into the debt mess for the same reasons.  I'm exactly the same I never would have dreamed of just wiping my savings or sticking a holiday on the CC but top up shops, takeaways here and there and money you will spend but put back does accumulate. I also think that outlooks on budgeting really change, I started because I had to, now I've got £44 left out of my weekly budget because there just isn't anything I need and I know each week I have money there.

I was tidying out two of our big cupboards yesterday that were full of tat so found some storage boxes on argooos yesterday, £20 for 2 that would fit. I then changed some of the items around I already had in boxes and made space for them to use I my cupboard. £20 saved this time last year I wouldn't have even thought about it but now it's an extra £20 towards cleaning the debt.  X 

foxgloves

Lookafterthepennies2020 - Yes, you're right, because every pound saved adds up. It's what I was talking about regarding all those £50 fritters in exact reverse..... underspending your budget because you shopped an item from home or stretched your meal plans for an extra half a week produces 'spare' money for paying debts off more quickly, or in my case now, adding to savings for our future security.
I find I'm able to shop so many items from home which I'd previously have bought, it's got to be better for the environment too.
F

Blackcats

Confessing that I did the frittering with so called little but often spends and also dabbled a couple of times into designer stuff too.  One Christmas I chose a gift from OH of a designer handbag, matching purse and credit card holder 😵.  OH and I had joint finances which were jointly stretched and massively overspent but that was what I got for Christmas.  I can even remember adding up the cost of the 3 items to check that there was enough credit available on the credit card before proceeding to checkout.   At the time I thought that checking that the card wouldn't be declined equated to sound financial management.