Put away your purse & become debt-averse

foxgloves

Past Spendy Sins of Christmas
No. 4 - Presents part 2: Loved-up couples
I am including this because it was very much an issue when Mr F & I got together. I was nowhere near an LBM when we started going out together. I was in permanent overdraft (of both the authorised & unauthorised kind), a nasty high interest card & a loan. Mr F brought his own debt to the relationship - a permanent overdraft 3 times the size of mine, a loan, a car loan & 2 credit cards. So there was a fair amount of debt payments going out of our accounts each month & if I was in overdraft by the 2nd half of the  month, he was there a week earlier. OK, so add to that the fact that both of us adored Christmas. It had been a big occasion in both our families in different ways & we both happen to be that generous type of person who likes to treat people. Oh my life, that first Christmas together. I had to smile at @Sun_Addict's tale of Mr SA spending an absolute fortune on Christmas Eve because I can recall a similar incident when my mobile rang & a bewildered Mr F announced he had driven to a large out of town shopping centre near Sheffield to buy my presents. He said 'You wouldn't believe how crazy it is here' . Well, I could, because I knew the place well. He said he'd done about half his shopping & would be driving down to my house later. The amount of presents he'd bought me was extremely generous. I felt cherished & adored to receive all those treats, which went beyond all common sense. For example, for one of my smaller gifts he wanted to buy me a big box of chocolates. He went to the shop (a lovely chain of shops sadly no longer with us) & chose an Austrian-themed selection.......lovely. I opened them & thought "Ohhh, these will be gorgeous", as indeed they were. But a little further into gift-opening, he passed me an identical sized present, which was the Italian-themed chocolate selection.......& about 10 minutes later, I opened a THIRD box - the Belgian ones!! At that point, I asked him if he'd actually intended all 3 boxes for me, or if he'd labelled them wrongly. He assured me that they were all for me, that he couldn't decide which box to buy & in any case, I deserved them & he liked treating me. I should add that compared to all the other presents he'd bought me, the chocolates were very much at the lower end in terms of cost. I didn't go QUITE that mad with the gifts I chose for him, but still spent way too much - I don't need to point out that both of us were spending the bank's money, not our own, & still paying for them well into the New Year. 
When the LBM struck, I took over the budgeting (we were married by then & had mostly joint finances) & I started putting a limit on Christmas gift spending for each other of £70. I suspect we both went over this by a little initially, then him for a little longer. I don't put an agreed limit on it now because it seems to have regulated itself in more recent years to what I think is a generous but not stupid amount, which is paid off by the end of December, incurs no interest & definitely does not drag over into the New Year. And of course, it comes from the Presents Pot, so is budgeted for.
I've included this as a past spendy sin as it is very easy to do, especially for new couples who do not have children to buy for & who tend to enable each other's bad financial habits. Much better to start the New Year both loved-up AND solvent! 
F x

Deni_debt-free_dreamer

hi foxgloves and friends
I'm just catching up on the past few days.  Enjoying reading about your past spendy habits.  I'm quite careful with how much i spend for most people except i can go overboard with my 2 x DDs; i do need to set a realistic budget for them.  In our family there are 4 of us sisters and we have 8 children between us so we each buy for one sister and 2 nieces/nephews and we rotate round each year.  We have a limit of £15 each; we've done this for a few years and it works well.  I don't go overboard with food as my family live far away so i don't have to entertain them over xmas (although i would like to!).
I've always worked in the public sector and my payday has never changed in Dec; it's the 20th of the month 12 months of the year - i never realised the public sector changed paydays in Dec but i'm glad my organisation sticks to the usual date !
love Deni 

Sun_Addict

Our overspending on stuff didn’t stop at Christmas, as I’m sure yours didn’t. Every Saturday we would go into the city centre and wander aimlessly around the shops looking for things to buy we really didn’t need, stopping off for a coffee at some point, followed by lunch at a particular pricey restaurant we liked. 

Thankfully that stopped when we got the dog as our weekends were spent taking her out for nice walks instead. 

I shudder at how much we used to waste on stuff we didn’t need. 

marionmgcars

Loving the posts on your spending sins of Christmas 😊

foxgloves

@Deni_debt-free_dreamer - That's a good system you have with your sisters for buying presents. I tend to buy quite a few things, but not for many people, because I have so little family, so I suppose se that evens it out.

@Sun_Addict - Yes, you are of course quite right about our spending during the rest of the year. It was just as bad, especially on the regular city centre visits, just as you mention. I wonder if you & I have queued next to each other at the tills with all our past spendy bags of shopping!

@marionmgcars - Thank-you. My approach to festive spending is much more sensible now. 

F x

foxgloves

Hello Diary readers, Busy day:
*3 loads of laundry squeezed onto heated airer
*Divvied up our fish box order for freezing - saved all the trimmings to make a fish pie
*Did Monday morning budget updates.
*Changed bed linen. 
*Studied this month's energy statement & logged the figures.
*Sorted all my jars of preserves in the pantry & selected enough to make up a couple of little hampers for sis & sis-in-law.
*Ordered a Christmas present for myself (from my Personal Spends, of course!)
*Plenty of various sorting & tidying tasks as I have an increasing intolerance of clutter. 
Spent nearly 40 mins watching a fabulous sparrowhawk in the garden.
Bird bath still frozen solid mid-pm, so went out & thawed it & chucked a few nibbles out as Robin was looking a bit hungry.
Stay cosy, 
F x

foxgloves

The Past Spendy Sins of Christmas:
No. 5 - Supermarket scrum.
Before my financial reformation, I never did any meal planning, didn't often write grocery shopping lists & wasted plenty of money through frequent unfocused browsey supermarket visits. Both Mr F & I would self-describe as 'foodies' - a dangerous combination for the bank balance at Christmas.
So in our house, meal planning very definitely extends to Christmas. We have already planned what we'll be eating, including the two days where we have guests. As we intend using Mr F's nectar points towards our Christmas food shop on Saturday, I've made a start on the shopping list. The meal planning process also nudges me to check what we already have in stock, which helps avoid chucking stuff in the trolley just in case. 
So it's meal planning all the way here.There will be another food-based post based on Mr F's pre-LBM supermarket expeditions between Christmas & New Year. Oh my life.......
F x

Blackcats

A propos loved up couples ...
I liked the boxes of chocolates story, that was actually very sweet (pardon the pun)
OH and I used to encourage and enable each other's spending - one year I decided I needed/wanted a mul berry handbag - we couldn't afford it of course but that never stopped us.  So off we went armed with a new credit card and bought a handbag and a matching purse 😱.  I was prepared to stop at the handbag but OH pointed out that it would be sacrilege to put my existing inferior purse in the new handbag.
Our worse transgression though involved me encouraging him that if he wanted/needed a new, fancy, fast, flashy car then he absolutely should have one.  No matter that petrol consumption was appalling, road tax and insurance was horrific and obviously we couldn't afford the car.  No, we deserved it and probably even "needed" it so we did the obvious thing, consolidated our debt into a new bank loan with enough extra to buy the car.  
So awful to think about now - this is like a pre Christmas confessional 😇

Jellytotts

When I was growing up, money was scarce (so I’ve been told, I knew no different, which is credit to my parents). Dad worked for a bloke who owned a building company and my parents rented a flat from the same man. After 4 years he did a moonlight flit, mum and dad had the bailiffs at the door making them homeless (no rent book needed from your boss…you’ll be fine)…and then it transpired that no tax had been paid in dads name….again, cash in hand, yeah all the deductions are taken care of…dad was naïve but trusted a friend.  I was 3 at this time and the resulting tax bill took them until I was 18 to pay back, at which point my sister got married and they had another bill in their hands.  I moved out at that point and paid for my own wedding as they were just broken from the constant cycle of debt repayment.  I should have learned from it but didn’t.

We’ve done the spendy Christmas gifts, we’ve done the £1 shop gifts for the kids sake and we’ve done a few years of the “can’t spend a penny” no gifts when it was just us alone but this year we’ve managed for the first time to set a limit and buy each other something nice. It will be lovely to have something to open knowing it’s paid for and a surprise.

foxgloves

@Blackcats - Yes, Mr F & I also enabled each other's bad financial habits exactly as you describe. I used to feel quite smug that even when at peak spendiness, I was never lured down the designer handbags road. Designer labels didn't really do a lot for me (maybe a slight influence from my lefty credentials.......not that these ever stopped me spending, though) & much as the brand you mention did indeed produce handbags I liked in some very lovely colours, I have to this day maintained a little bit of smugness that even at my worst, I never have spent so much on a single bag. The truth of the matter, however, is that compared with the cumulative amount of money wasted on endless smaller items, I probably could have bought a designer bag & come out with leftover change! It is all very well having a laugh about my past bad habits on here with all of you, but it wouldn't do for me to dwell on the amount of money just frittered away which could have gone into savings.
Consolidation loans were never the solution we convinced ourselves they would be. We had three. Each was going to be 'the last', & each time more money was borrowed than we actually needed to get rid of the smaller debts, 'just in case', but really so we could buy something. We were paying off the 3rd one during the time that I was struck around the head by the LBM & I told Mr F that we would not be going this route again. He did tentatively suggest it as a way of 'paying off our debts quicker' as we'd only have one payment but he got short shrift. As the (new) budgeter in the relationship, I'd made a plan of the order in which to pay off or debts & consolidation did not feature in those plans at all.
Yes, I agree it does sometimes feel like a confessional on here, but I suppose it is helpful to know that we weren't alone in our frittery behaviour & that there is a route out of it.
F x