Extracting head from sand and facing the truth

Working_Mum

I started with this process when my kid were 8 & 10 and their Dad had just left and everything was absolute chaos!!

Have you got a nice notebook hanging around somewhere?? Grab a ruler and at the back draw four columns down with the headings date, description, amount, balance - start with your first wodge of cash you take out and track every single penny balancing each day.

I am a stationery lover so I have different colour pens and hi-liters and store all my old spends books but have had to check back on things so it's been worthwhile.

Given the fuelcard situation maybe have a page for tracking what fuel you put in and what gets deducted from your salary and you may find a pattern which starts to make sense over time.

If you dare....go onto Pinterest and search "kitchen command centre" and you'll find some great tips for making sense of life when it feels like a runaway train!! My early morning sessions help me look ahead not just financially but socially and for sorting birthday cards etc - I feel like a proper grown up sometimes!!

Lydia42

Working_Mum wrote: »

I started with this process when my kid were 8 & 10 and their Dad had just left and everything was absolute chaos!!

Have you got a nice notebook hanging around somewhere?? Grab a ruler and at the back draw four columns down with the headings date, description, amount, balance - start with your first wodge of cash you take out and track every single penny balancing each day.

I am a stationery lover so I have different colour pens and hi-liters and store all my old spends books but have had to check back on things so it's been worthwhile.

Given the fuelcard situation maybe have a page for tracking what fuel you put in and what gets deducted from your salary and you may find a pattern which starts to make sense over time.

If you dare....go onto Pinterest and search "kitchen command centre" and you'll find some great tips for making sense of life when it feels like a runaway train!! My early morning sessions help me look ahead not just financially but socially and for sorting birthday cards etc - I feel like a proper grown up sometimes!!

Great advice. Thank you so much. I'm going to take a look at all this over the weekend. My kids are 8 and 11 so life definitely seems chaotic all the time!
Bit of a stationery junkie myself so no doubt i have a note book about somewhere :rotfl:

Lydia42

OK. Back with my tail between my legs having sulked and hidden. Did it get me anywhere - NO!

So. On the plus side i kept the Barclaycard i cleared open. Just as well because my car blew up last week on the way home from work. One minute fine the next dead with no power and steam and smoke billowing out from under the bonnet. My brother kindly helped me tow it into a local service station where we had to leave it until it could be recovered the following day. News from the garage was that it was terminal unless i wanted a new engine or to rebuild the broken one - not financially viable as looking at close to 1000 for the repair for an old car that i'm not sure wouldn't need even more work doing to it.
So i have had to get another 'cheapish' second hand car as i can't not have a car due to work. Cost me 1600 - only 47k on the clock. Hoping i have a bit more luck with this one. On the plus side Barclaycard had another 0% offer on money transfer to bank accounts. So i transferred the money needed along with an extra 3000 which now clears our overdraft completely which was the only remaining debt that was costing us interest each month. I also added 1000 on top of this as an emergency fund which is now sitting in a separate account so that we are actually in a position to deal with emergencies without further spending on cards or overdraft.
So the line is drawn. I've pretty much massively increased our existing debt, but am trying to see the positives - if there are any. The car was something i had no control over. Sh*t happens (usually at the wrong time). I was lucky, i was safe and it could have been much worse if it had happened when i was on the motorway a few hours earlier.
Our costly overdraft is now also at 0%, along with all our debts now. I'm waiting for the end of the month when all CC balances will have updated to get a final tally of how much everything has increased by. Not looking forward to it - but it is what it is.

On a further plus - i emailed YNAB and asked for an extension on my free trial, which they kindly did. I will get to grips with budgeting properly if it kills me.

Last plus note - i have sorted a Monzo card for hubbie to use for petrol. He is going to use it like i use my fuel card - topped it up yesterday with 100 and i can track the spending on my phone as he kept forgetting to keep petrol receipts so we had no idea at all how much his petrol was costing each month. Hopefully this will make things a little clearer.

Lastly - i've just taken 100 out of the bank in cash today to use for food shopping for the week, as i am clearly unable to restrain on the grocery shopping at the moment either - i am a terrible emotional eater so all the stress recently and feeling down has really caused me to overspend on food.

So - lots of failures, but i am trying to look at over-coming the problems rather than making myself feel even more crap by dwelling over them!

Kitten868

Do not beat yourself up! You didn't go out and buy a new car on a whim. You didn't sign up to £40k PCP. These crises happen and you were able to deal with it. It wasn't great but you've done your best with it. I also like that you've worked our the best savings vs debt challenge your own way. No excuses now. Keep plugging away at your budget. You will win xxxx

Lydia42

Thanks Kitten868. Definitely pleased the overdraft is not going to cost us anymore in interest. And you're right, i could have looked at a much more expensive newer car on finance. Phew!

Feeling a little more positive today. Just been paid (Yay), so i am ON IT now. Have spent a little time watching the getting started and basic YNAB videos again. Think I've gotten my head around using it. I've been struggling getting started with it as i get paid on 25th so have always run my months from that date. Obviously YNAB runs as a calendar month. So I've found the dates of all my direct debits, and am going to upload them as i go until the end of the month, then update November. Hubbie gets paid in next day or so, so that will help.

It's already been a massive eye opener. I always started the month with payday looking at what i had been paid - not what i had bought the few days before pay day and which was still to clear in our account. So I've been adding all that stuff to a category in YNAB too as it clears (category- stuff we forgot to budget for). So far already we are £157.32 down and things are still clearing in the bank!!!! So no more closing my eyes to it. This has to be covered by the budget this month if we are to even stand a chance of seeing the wood for the trees.

I've also had some good news in that someone wants to buy a ticket to an event i am selling since I've had my light-bulb moment, so that should give me £100 extra if he buys it.

No spend day planned for today. Mum has kindly offered to pop over for lunch and bring fish and chips for myself and the kids so i don't intend to leave the house. Chill out day planned instead.

Last positive note - three curries into freezer from last nights dinner (always cook loads when we have a curry night), and tonight's dinner already cooked too as i did it at the same time. Bolognase always tastes better the day after.

Lydia42

So.............signature updated. Feeling sick! But that's everything on 0% now. All in black and white.

GlendaSugarbean

Well done on getting a good value car on 0%, that could have been a lot worse. EF good too, as is keeping up with your tracking on YNAB.

I use my Monzo for groceries and fun money - it is motivating when any spends come out immediately!

redmel1621

Lydia42 wrote: »

So.............signature updated. Feeling sick! But that's everything on 0% now. All in black and white.

It might look scary, but you have done very well getting it all on 0%. Keep going and I'm sure you will get it down.

Kitten868

It's not going to go up with charges or interest. That is the most it can be. So what's the new plan of action now that your debts have changed? I forget - are you snowballing? The only way is down

Lydia42

Thanks for the comments everyone. Feeling a little calmer now that i can see i have made the best of the situation as far as i can.

So plan of action for this month is to get to grips properly with YNAB. I've watched a few more videos so i have been adding more details and refining things eg. dates of DD and putting it all in order to make things easier. Everything has a category now, and as i work my way through the month i am going to set up the regular DD and SO as they leave the account. I think it's too over-whelming to do all at once, but doing it daily makes me check the bank account to see what has cleared each day and is making sure i haven't missed any categories such as my son's scouts subscription which i had forgotten about.

Hubby has now been paid so i have been able to allocate that for the month too. I can see already that it is going to be a tight month especially as i have had to pay extra on my car insurance to transfer policies due to new car, etc. Also, seeing the over-running debits from October as i start to properly watch every penny. So i'm going to be careful what over-payments i make this month to the cards. I'm also waiting to see what Barclaycard minimum is going to be now that i have filled it again. Everything else i have logged on to and bumped up the minimum payments to round them up by a few pounds (i like things tidy haha).
Next month i plan to start the over-payments to MBNA 1 as that is the card with the 0% deal that runs out soonest - Dec 2019. So my snowballing is going to go by end of deal date as everything is on 0%.

On a really positive note my Dad has just given me £500 towards the car chaos. Totally shocked and completely out of the blue as he's never given me anything (wasn't brought up to expect anything either) and things have been strained between us for years due to how he treated my mother. I've decided to add this to the emergency fund as all debts are on 0%. Hopefully this will give us a little more breathing space if things occur over the next few months before we can build up our 'sink funds' (car maintenance, boiler, vets, etc).

Right off to bed. Actually looking forward to tomorrow and logging in to check bank balance and update YNAB. Other than a few essentials like milk i'm hoping for a minimal spend day tomorrow too.

Off to bed to hopefully sleep a little better than i have been recently.