Getting & staying debt free, whatever happens!

beanielou

Bluegreen143 wrote: »

Beanielou I will PM you a link as you’re not meant to discuss. I’ve been doing it 7-8 months and so far so good though super boring I just warn you.

Thank you

Bluegreen143

Eeeek I haven't done very well at posting will try to do so more regularly.

We had to get a plumber out for a leak which cost us £130 to repair - I used the money from our Christmas fund rather than the credit card. Really shows the necessity for building up a proper emergency fund when you own your own house.

I have £1,177 currently in a stocks & shares ISA which isn't that easy to access at the moment. I think I'll transfer that into my cash savings account and use a little to pay down some of my Barclaycard and keep £500 as a starter emergency fund (and also repay the Christmas fund).

One tiny positive is that the Barclaycard have credited the card £20 as part of their intro offer (I didn't realise this). So it's gone down by £20, yay

Bluegreen143

Husband has been paid, yay!

I’ve not quite stuck to this month’s budget - haven’t gone into debt but haven’t maintained the savings I’d like for Christmas etc. It’s a very tight budget without a lot of slack which is making it challenging. However my credit card balance is down slightly to £2,117.38 which is great (as you may remember, my mum has paid my other card and I’ve to arrange to repay her at a later date). Hoping that once I receive the pay for my part time job this month I’ll be able to bring this down to below £2k. I’m also arranging to have the money in my stocks and shares ISA (around £1,185) moved to my cash savings account. I’m going to top up my Christmas savings to where it should be, put some money in my emergency fund to start it off, and use some to pay more off my credit card. I’d love to bring it down to £1,500 at this point, but we’ll see as I really don’t want to be leaving savings short. That’s what got us a lot of the debt to begin with!

Here’s our shiny new budget for this month, copied from YNAB (credit card already paid and more funds will be added when we get child benefit, my small wage and also my husband is being paid for some DIY work he’s doing for a family member).

SPENDING - WANTS
Husband - £150
Me - £20
DS stuff & entertainment - £40

(Have left the home & garden, entertainment and charity categories empty for now)

SPENDING - NEEDS

Petrol & parking - £45
Food - £140
Household/cleaning - £25
Pets - £25
Medical/dental - £50 (I NEED new glasses, desperately)
Clothes - £0

BILLS

Mortgage - £726.82
TV license - £12.37
Gas & electric - £77.96
Internet - £20
Council tax - £144
Life insurance - £14.78
My phone - £34
Husband phone - £44
Road tax (towards annual bill) - £12
Car insurance (towards annual bill) - £50
Home insurance (towards annual bill) - £0 as it’s due and I have enough in the pot
YNAB (towards annual bill) - £5

SAVING POTS

Birthdays etc - £0 - total £0 (none this month but need to bump this up a bit)
Christmas - £0 - total £100 (will add to this)
Car MOT etc - £20 - total £20
Emergency fund - £0 - total £0

Haven’t funded holidays or baby fund for obvious reasons in that we don’t have any spare cash!

This month I’m going to try and use the car as little as possible and also be really smart with the food shopping - we’ll see. I would like for us to go and visit my Papa in Aberdeen, but it might need to be at the end of June after the next payday, as it will use a lot of petrol...

Bluegreen143

Quick update. Spent yesterday morning in the garden, planting on some little kale, broccoli and lettuce plants I!!!8217;d grown from seed, and sowing carrots, radishes and mixed salad leaves. Gave the veg patch a good weeding too. It!!!8217;s not going to be a bumper year I don!!!8217;t think - the late spring plus the chickens digging up the veg patch not once but twice have NOT helped our progress!

Spent £10 ordering prescription glasses online - chuffed as I!!!8217;d budgeted £50 for this. The glasses were necessary as I have lost mine (which were a slightly out of date prescription anyway) and have been driving about with a taped up back up pair! The spare cash has been reallocated to our garden pot as we desperately need compost in order to repot our tomatoes, and could do with a couple of other bits too.

Also spent £17.22 ordering a set of puzzles and two books for DS. I!!!8217;ve been meaning to get him puzzles for ages as his are all too babyish and easy for him. One book I was desperate for and the other I added as I!!!8217;d like it and it made the postage free so it only added £1 to the overall cost. This comes out of my son!!!8217;s budget which has cash in it anyway. Trying to get in the habit of checking the budget BEFORE buying rather than going to update it afterwards!