Put away your purse & become debt-averse

foxgloves

@Sun_Addict, @Baileys_Babe & @Tescodealqueen - It seems then, that even public sector December pay dates seem to vary. Mine was always a week or almost a week early and so is Mr F's. The combination of early access to January's money & being persistent overspenders was really not a good mix for us at all & I just know that heaps of people are going to fall into exactly the same trap this year. 
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foxgloves

@Jellytotts - They were challenging times for you & I was glad to read that you had got through them. Our debts, both individual & then combined, were all due to our stupidity rather than misfortune, such as you describe with your OH unexpectedly having an accident. I found your view on almost needing to go through the Spendy Years in order better to appreciate the benefits & mental calm of 'debt-free' really thought-provoking. 
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foxgloves

Past Spendy Sins of Christmas 
No. 3 - No presents planning.
Even as a well & truly reformed character, I still love shopping. But I now shop from the firm foundations of a budget. It is like a financial corset (the type my Nan used to wear which she had to wriggle into, then go & wriggle out of again after her Christmas dinner!) - underpinning all buying decisions with the prioritisation of affordability & longevity. Back in the day, I really LOVED shopping & Christmas shopping was arguably my best shopping of the year. I'd start buying presents in October on my very frequent city centre trips (all of which also included coffee out, lunch out, then usually a quick trippette to the store with the well known food hall for a top-up shop) but none of this gift buying was ever done with any kind of a plan. This is fraught with pitfalls: Buying on impulse, having no idea of amount spent, ending up with several gifts for the same people & nothing for others, drifting in & out of shops stacked high with seasonal gorgeousness & treating myself at the same time, etc, etc. 
How I approach things now is quite different. For starters, I make a list of everyone for whom I will be buying presents. I tend to buy people several smaller things rather than a single more expensive item each. I then sit with a coffee (this is optional but I run on caffiene) & think about what I gave people last year (I only buy for Mr F, close family, best friends & an elderly distant relative who has no family left at all closer than my sister & I, so remembering isn't too difficult). I then jot some initial ideas next to each person's name, & revisit this list often, crossing off as I buy things & substituting ideas if I have better ones. I would estimate that including the time spent researching items online (I prefer to use real shops, but also shop online if that is the only source of certain gifts on my list), I probably spend about 3 times longer on the planning than the actual buying process. I can also see from my list that the gift bags we will be giving to people are balanced in terms of content, which means avoiding that additional pitfall of suddenly thinking 'Oh, I don't think I have enough for X, X or X, so I'd better go & buy them all a couple more items', which can be both wasteful & stressful. Once the ground work of a good solid list has been done, it's just a case of buying what's on it, then (importantly) stopping when everything has been crossed off. Admittedly before my reformation, I was very spendy, but I'm sure that even when taking this into consideration, I'd have spent a bit less on presents if I'd put in the planning.
So I personally think it is worth spending about 3 x more time on properly planning what to buy on a person by person basis than the time spent doing the shops or ordering bit. That is what I do now & I can't see it changing. I end up spending less to give better gifts because more has gone into the planning stage. You know those people you see on Christmas Eve sweeping vast piles of random gift sets into their trolleys? They are the ones who didn't put any thought in OR do a list. Probably their Great Aunt Jocasta will end up with the same sleep mask, single tea bag, body lotion & nail clippers combo set that she received last year. I guarantee there would have been a lovely little gift available for half the money, had a bit of thought gone in at the planning stage.
So there we are. Planning. It almost always saves us money & we need to be doing it!
F x
 
 

foxgloves

@Humdinger1 - Oh gosh, yes, blaming the bank. For some reason I have never to this day understood, I never actually had a bouncing cheque. I had cash withdrawals blocked at cashpoints, had my cards stopped & was also summoned in to see the bank manager, but despite going over my permitted overdraft level extremely frequently, I never had a cheque bounce. I always blamed the bank. I would actually head to the cashpoint in the 2nd half of the month thinking in my head, 'Right, let's see if these b-words are going to let me have any money", yet the only reason I had, yet again run out, was because I had chosen to spend it all. Honestly, I actually have a masters degree & a profession - you'd think I might have worked out the cause of my lack of money a bit sooner than the two decades+ it too me, but I suppose it was probably a case of being in denial.
What a numpty!
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Baileys_Babe

Planning and lists save my money, time and sanity, especially when it comes to Christmas shopping.

Blackcats

I'm another one who viewed early Christmas pay day every year as a bonus - how nice not to have to wait til the 25th of the month.  Of course I would have to wait til 25th January to temporarily replenish the coffers but that didn't matter to me at the time.  

My version of Christmas budgeting involved working out the difference between my credit card balance and my credit limit and "trying" to only spend that much on the unplanned present and food buying frenzy.  This didn't always work and I would sometimes get the £12 over credit limit charge which I actually didn't mind too much - I thought it was a bit unfair but was pleased that the purchase that pushed me over my limit hadn't been declined 🤷‍♀️

I'm enjoying your spendy tales - it's a great trip down memory lane for me 🤩

scandimore

Just stopping by to say I'm really enjoying your spendy tales, or rather the 12 spendy lessons of Xmas   this is the first year we've actually saved all year into a pot for Xmas and it's been a revelation. It's nearly all gone and I'm surprised as we don't have everything we need yet- obviously pulling a random figure out of the air at the beginning of the year wasn't too accurate! I am recording what we spend this time so we can set the budget more realistically next year.
Storm Arwen has been a bit more intense than we were expecting considering we are in the West and she was expected to hit the east - no power till tomorrow, loads of trees down. We've ended up staying with family to keep warm and fed. I'm staying tuned for tomorrow's tale! You must feel so much more content and less worried nowadays.

foxgloves

@Blackcats - Yes, I can identify with that. I would constantly be checking my evil flexiloan to ascertain the difference between my balance & agreed borrowing limit, then spending that sum. That's why I had the wretched thing so long!

@scandimore - Yes, I initially found it difficult to set a realistic amount to set aside for Christmas. I set it too low at first. Then I trebled it, thinking we'd never spend it all, but we did spend most of it. My. Savings Pot is slightly different in that it isn't a Christmas pot as such. It is a Presents Pot. I know I need a certain amount in it by autumn because  because most of our family birthdays also fall in winter. So our Presents Pot covers all presents & cards, things like gift wrap, postage, gift cards/birthday money, etc. Atm, I can budget what I think is quite a generous amount. If our circumstances changed & I needed to via that money to another part of our budget, I would do that without any guilt. I won't outspend my means on presents again. It was not a good start to the new year to be carrying forward festive debts - minutes to spend it, months upon months to pay it back. 
F x

CRANKY40

Another one reading along and nodding frequently at recognised behaviour from my twenties and early thirties. I was never taught to budget when I was younger. My dad worked for a well known ship yard and was "on strike" a fair few times during my childhood so there was never any spare money. My mum came from a blended family with a lot of children and subsequently very little money although my grandparents passed on cooking skills and some valuable morals to me. My dad's mum was a widow that lived with us and who taught me how to love and how to bake (my mum couldn't cook and for various reasons my parents spent a lot of time arguing). 

I am teaching my son how to budget. He's 17, he has dyscalculia which is a challenge in itself (and makes budgeting an uphill job) but hopefully it will stop him making the mess of things that I did. Given the contactless limit on bank cards which is a bit scary now, I've already taught him to move most of his money into his savings account and transfer money back for the week in small amounts in case he loses his card. We've talked about the difference of "wants" over "needs" and starting next year he's going to come and do the weekly food shop with me. That'll be an eye opener for him ha ha. 

Thanks for an interesting and often thought provoking diary. 

foxgloves

You're welcome, @CRANKY40. I migrated over to the DFW diaries from the Daily DFW Small Things thread, & I had two objectives, really.....firstly to keep myself on the straight & narrow. I am well & truly a reformed character now on the financial front, but am also aware that I was spendy for much longer than I have been a sensible debt-free person, so my first hope for my diary was that it would motivate me to keep up my good habits. The 2nd reason was that I wanted to show that is really is possible to change even very longstanding poor money habits & thought my diary might motivate a few people who perhaps were thinking it would be too difficult to change tack because they were in their 40s or 50s.
It's a great idea to teach your teenage son how to budget. This is something I never learned at home. I think my parents didn't have much money when my Mum gave up work to have me, but as my Dad's salary slowly increased & Mum started up her part-time business when I started school, they were better off. I never saw any practical budgeting. My Mum was the one who kept an eye on the bank balance, but I think that is all it was. If it looked lower than usual, she'd say things like 'Money doesn't grow on trees' & 'No, you can't have that, we've has a lot of expense recently & can't afford it' etc, but mostly, I think their income was pretty stable & as they didn't have foreign holidays, didn't smoke, were teetotal & didn't have gadgets, we were comfortably-off, but not wealthy. I can't recall any budgeting advice other than being repeatedly told 'You can't spend what you haven't got' & my Mum being sniffy about people buying stuff on 'the never-never', by which she meant any form of credit. I think talking to your son about the difference between 'wants' & needs' is a good idea. I think it sounds as though he will be a lot better with money than I was, although I didn't really start my atrocious habits until I was 18/19 student & had moved away from home to a big city.
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