Mrs S.....life after debt

debtaghh

Glad to hear that things are going well x

MrsSave

Good morning. Weekend at last!! It's been an absolutely mad week at work. The positive is that it goes far quicker when I'm busy!! I've reconciled all my accounts on YNAB this morning and have done my weekly category skim. I'm not sure if I've mentioned that I now do this (every Saturday morning). My YNAB categories such as clothes, food, petrol, celebrations I skim each week down to either the nearest £1 or £5 (depending on the category, how much is in it and how much of the month is left!) and send that money to my mortgage overpayment category. I then make a small overpayment to my mortgage each week. Also, I send half of any extra money made during the week to the mortgage as well (other half to savings). Some weeks it can be tiny (was £2 something a couple of weeks ago), one week it was more than £20. Today it was £7 something. I don't miss the money at all, and if I can continue at the rate I have so far this year I will knock nearly 2 years off my mortgage (according to the MSE mortgage overpayment calculator).

I've written out my meal plan for next week this morning (except for Thursday, I can't decide what we're going to eat!! I'm going to browse slow cooker recipes as it's a work day). I discussed our cleaning tasks with Mr S yesterday and he has agreed to take on more tasks. He is now tasked with dusting and vacuuming the bedrooms (as well as sorting the bins and washing up!). He does do most of the ironing as well (I can't stand ironing) but we try to get away with ironing the least possible amounts of clothes!! I'm hoping that will take a bit of the pressure off.

I need a major bedroom sort out this weekend. I started de-cluttering our bedroom last weekend so will spend this weekend finishing it off. I actually managed to free up 2 drawers in the process! I've got a load of clothes to either take to a charity shop or list on ebay so I need to go through them and decide which go to where. I'll hopefully make a few £££ with the ones on ebay which will be fab (more for the mortgage!!).

Right, I'm off to look up slow cooker recipes for inspiration. Have a good weekend

MrsSave

Saturday morning again!! I've made another mortgage overpayment :j This week I've set up a standing order for Premium Bonds. Only for £25 a month, but it's extra savings each month. I know Premium Bonds aren't the best way of saving, and I do have savings elsewhere too, but I am planning on winning the million pounds at some point :rotfl:

Money is disappearing this month. We've spent over £75 in eating out and takeaways. That's not great and we're only half way through February. We still have some money left in the fun account, but not loads!! I have a few bits I want to sell (eBay and Facebook) so I may use any money I make (if I make any) to top up that account a bit!!

debtaghh

Hope you're ok Mrs Save

MrsSave

Wow, it’s been a while.

This year started off so well, but as the months have gone on we’ve spent more and more! Our food bill has literally doubled and we’ve spent a fortune on absolutely nothing too. I’ve decided that we’re going back to taking cash out each week and not spending on a card. I think that should focus us and get us back on track.

Our food bill has gone up for a few reasons. During the past 6 months or so I’ve lost quite a bit of weight. Whilst losing weight I’ve become very interested in health and nutrition. In theory this should mean a decrease in spending as I literally make pretty much everything from scratch but have been adding more expensive ingredients in to foods. I’ve been using home delivery for groceries far more recently as well which seems to knock the price right up.

During the past couple of weeks, though, I’ve started making extra portions of meals so that we have our lunches ready to grab and go for the majority of the week. Hopefully that will help bring the costs down.

I need a few things this week so have decided to budget £30 for the whole week. I have all our meal ingredients already so £30 should be easily done.

We’re going on holiday abroad this Summer. It’s all paid for (sorted all that before the spending went through the roof) but we need to save for spending money. We’ve rented a cottage and are self catering so we aim to eat back at the cottage most evenings and take picnics out on our days out.

We have also managed to completely re-decorate one of the rooms in the house (again we managed to save for it before the spending went out of control!!). This shows me that we 100% now how to save and not over-spend, we’ve just really lost our way.

No more excuses though. We’re totally back on the spending wagon!!

debtaghh

Lovely to see you posting again.

debtaghh

Hope you're ok x

debtaghh

Missing you on here Mrs Save, hope you are ok x

MrsSave

debtaghh wrote: »

Missing you on here Mrs Save, hope you are ok x

Thank you Debtaghh. Life just seems so busy all the time, but I really need to make an effort and post here. It really keeps me on top of things.

We've just got back from our Summer holiday. It all been saved for ahead of during the past 12 months and we all had an amazing time. I'm hoping we'll be able to save for a similar holiday next year.

I've stopped my YNAB subscription after probably 7 years. It was bugging me paying out for it each year :rotfl: We've started using a Monzo card so I'm planning on keeping on top of finances that way.

I've got a Tesco delivery booked for this afternoon which will be a big one. I'm hoping we'll then manage the rest of the month on little top ups. I have been using Aldi a lot more recently but with it being the summer holidays I've been using Tesco far more as it makes life easier instead of dragging the children around.

My healthy eating had been going well. I had lost almost 2.5 stones but will step on the scales tomorrow morning to see what the holiday damage is :eek:

Right, I will make an effort to post here more often and to do a proper update post soon!!

debtaghh

Nice to see you posting again.

Where did you go? How are you and DH getting on?x