Put away your purse & become debt-averse

foxgloves

1luckylady - I did laugh at 'breadcake'. I imagined my smallest nephew thinking he was going to get a cake, & then being given a bread roll!

Morning everybody else. A lot of busy 'Shopping from home' going on here today. Talk to you later x

Baileys_Babe

1LuckyLady wrote: »

I'm subscribing too Foxgloves, I love the way you write & I love reading about your spendy old ways

I'm subscribing as well. 1LuckyLady is right you write so well.

DawnW

Baileys_Babe wrote: »

I'm subscribing as well. 1LuckyLady is right you write so well.

And me, far too nosy to be left out

foxgloves

Aww, thanks Baileys babe & DawnW. I will try not to disappoint. Re the bad old spendy years, I will try to remember to include the trip to London which coincided with a day the bank decided to put a stop on my bank card. (Shudders at the memory) Should have been a wake-up call, but wasn't.

foxgloves

Hi diary readers,
Well today's contribution to getting shot of that blimmin' loan has been doing lots of 'shopping from home'.
We visit my Mum fortnightly now she's on her own & we take it in turns to buy lunch. Because of the snow, I was pretty sure we wouldn't be able to make it so hadn't put any money aside for this. Not that we go anywhere swanky. Mum likes paninis, coffee & cake at a garden centre as much as anything, but that can add up over the weeks. So....I've shopped from home & made lunch to take with us - fish & leek crumble. I remembered I'd got a box of trimmings in the freezer from when I divvied up our last big fresh fish order so that was perfect.....plus the lonely billy-no-mates leek in the veggie basket. Even managed to use up some out of date butter in the crumble topping. So a 'free' lunch tomorrow.
I usually take Mum a small gift so made a few cheese scones too.
Then it occurred to me that I shan't see her again before Mothering Sunday so I mixed up a quick apple & cinnamon loaf cake which I will foil & pop in her freezer tomorrow so she can enjoy that next weekend. The other 2 little gifts I wrapped using tissue paper & a pretty gift bag from my recycled wrappings stash, & a home made gift tag. It's amazing the resources that are knocking around at home. So I've probably saved a wodge of cash today. The less I dip into the monthly 'cushion' I leave in our bank account when I set the budget each month, the more cash can potentially be transferred across to the Loan Pay Down Fund.
Have been in kitchen nearly all day, but dinner is cooking itself in the slow cooker. All I need to do is lift the meat out & pull it, thicken the sauce & mix it back in. And there will be tasty leftovers.
Have a peaceful Saturday night all.....unless you are going out on the razz.....if so, enjoy.
F x

Honeybug

Love the shopping from home idea. The snow has made me realise how much you can actually do without, because you just cant get to the shops. I am also a big bullet journal fan and have now started a new page on just this topic

foxgloves

Hi Honeybug,
It's my first go at a bullet diary. So far, so good, although I found ruling up all the pages a bit tedious. For each month, I have a calendar, then daily sections for 'to do' lists, then also monthly grocery budget tracker page, monthly meal planner, a page to log my daily steps & calorie burn & a page for notes.
After all the monthly sections, I have general pages: birthdays, holiday planner, Christmas presents, Christmas baking plan, appointments/meetings for 2019 & my reading list. I do like being very organised & it does save money, as it's the popping out to buy things for stuff we've forgotten about that can really add up. Leaving no time to shop around can also mean spending more than intended.
Re shopping from home.....I'm intending to go through my craft stuff soon & see what I've got which could viably be turned into Christmas or birthday presents.

Honeybug

Thanks foxgloves,

I started bullet journaling january 2017, so on my second one now, before this I used numerous notepads, rough books and lists, so the bullet journal really works for me. I only have monthly pages, daily lists and musings, and different lists and challenges. I do a cash saving challenge for xmas where i rule up a box a week which i cross off when i deposit £3 in a sealed moneybox. It paid for those inevitable christmas works do's etc last year and as it was quite a small amount each week felt achievable. I could quite happily wax lyrical about bullet journals all day, so will leave it there. But really glad you are finding yours useful. I agree that ruling up those monthly pages can be tedius though :rotfl:

Onebrokelady

foxgloves wrote: »

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

You are actually ex money wasting twin:rotfl:,I would do exactly the same with birthday and Xmas money and because I work hard I would justify it every time :eek: what an pair of plonkers, at the moment I’ve gone so far the other way I don’t want to spend anything anywhere ever again but I’m sure this won’t last
My money was wasted on magazines ,craft stuff, books and the odd item of clothing,I’ve not bought a magazine since my LBM when I worked out how much they were costing me per month,I’ve told myself I’m not allowed to buy any more craft supplies until I have completed every craft project I have got waiting to be done and ive been through my clothes and worked out what I have and what I might need,Ive recently lost weight so some of my summer clothes might not fit now ,I had to replace all my jeans as I had gone down a size and that’s basically all I wear but I won’t need any now for ages,I bought three pairs the same working on the one to wear one for the wash and one for spare rule:D so I might need a couple of tops but that’s all as some stuff that was too small now fits me
I was paid last week and actually have money left this month that isn’t allocated to anything,it’s going in my new savings account when I open it,it annoys me now when I think I must have had money spare most months but just spent beyond my means and now I’m in debt and having to pay it back via a DMP,I do feel more in control of my finances than I ever have now though which makes me happy

Onebrokelady

I forgot to say re the magazines,I have a serious addiction to them and have had to go cold turkey,I had so many piled up at one point I just didnt have time to read them and when I did read them it felt like a chore, now Ive stopped buying them I havent missed them once, my dear mum treats me to a couple of monthly mags which I still have and Im enjoying reading them now because they are the only ones I have,I then pass them back to her to read and she then gives them to my niece
Ive also started to use my library again as I read constantly so buying books was costing a lot:)