Working Hard Debt Diary - Here goes

WorkingHardDFW

You are quite correct ltm07 its footie and cricket that he's missing.........

I've not noticed the difference with the sky sports gone but thats me being very girlie.

Once our BT contract comes to an end next month I've going to look into bundling our Internet and calls with Sky. Currently we pay £50 (!!!) to BT pm and £21 to sky. I'm pretty sure I can get that drastically reduced so thats on the agenda for next month.

We do allocate ourselves spending money each month. £50 pm which for me goes a long way and will buy the extra's that help. The OH uses his to buy his lunch - I know we've had numerous discussions about bringing his own lunch although thats not included me offering to make it for him. He knows that if he didn't spend his on lunches he'd have more money but it takes a while for my OH to get on message.

Mind you our discussions about the DFD of 11/2009 have brought it home to him, and me, that we can do it

ltm07

What i used to do is take my own pack up to work every day & then on Friday buy a bacon buttie from the canteen as a treat! Even if he did tis once a week,he'd still have around £40 a month to spend. Does he buy drinks from the machines at work? Me & 2 workmates have our own coffee school & it's saved us a fortune. Another of my workmate's stopped buying coffees from the machine & started bringing a flask & put the money he was spending on coffees away. After a year he saved £250 just by doing this & treated his family to a nice weekend away.

WorkingHardDFW

He knows that he needs to do it but doesn't get around to it. He leaves for work very early in the am and has to walk the dog before he goes. There isn't any excuse but I think with the approaching cricket season (he plays) he want a few beers after cricket and will therefore need to watch his pennies with rather more care. Last year he was just taking cash out of the joint account to fund the nights out.

I've been thinking about his comment 'living like this'. We have a good income and are merely living within our means now and reducing our debt. I think my OH will take a little while to be re-educated. If we'd lived like this for the last goodness knows how many years we wouldn't have the debt we have today (thats both our faults).

I guess as the debt reduce the budgets for nicer things can increase and things won't feel so tight.

DD said to my yesterday that she didn't want to do an activity at school this term since it would cost more for her and DS to do it. Bless she has clearly realised that we are watching our pennies but I felt it was good for her to realise not to take things for granted.

WorkingHardDFW

Thank goodness for the spending diary

Three months in and its worth its weight in pennies :rotfl:

Did a review of it last night to see what we are spending and it was no suprise to see that a lot was being in categories that I'd not budgeted for. Now my mantra is always budget budget budget so needless to say I was erked (spelling) that I'd not correctly budgeted.

However this oversight has now been corrected with the budget revised to include: haircuts, toiletries, medicines (eg tablets, pres charges), garden, household stuff, days out in holidays (still not sure whether this should come out of the seperate fund for holiday childcare - see note below), miscellaneous, dog food.

The summary of our spending on the above items - all in the MSE way - for the last three months projected for the remainder of the year adds another £100 to our monthly budget. This will have to be allowed for in my OH's pay rise since there is virtually no spare between the income and outgoings. I could reduce the debt payments but I so don't want to do that :cool:

ref Childcare in the holidays. I allow a certain amount to pay for childcare during the summer holidays etc. Obviously I use my own and OH's annual leave to cover much of it eg Easter Holidays and last year I managed to spend very little of the amount set aside. However when I am off I do take the kids on days out and no matter how carefully planned this does cost money. I guess I should take the expenses of the holidays out of this fund rather than out of general living costs. This would then give a true reflection of the costs of the holidays. How do other works it?

Sorry about the ramble...

One more point. My budget for food, household bits, toiletries, medicine (we're a well family but the odd cost), dog food comes to £355. We are a family of five plus one dog. I am probably just staying with that. Generally I spend at Tesco but I am now using Aldi, Lidl, local veg shop to keep the cost down. In your experiences is that a fair budget? I would appreciate any comments or advice/tips.

Thanks all.

WorkingHardDFW

Following the euphoria of clearing one credit card and paying an extra lump sum off another of earlier in the week its back to earth with a bump.

I was under no illusion that our route to being debt free wasn't going to be easy so having a hickup shouldn't be much of a suprise :rolleyes:

The downers this week:

• I got paid this week (:T ) but didn't receive my expenses (:mad: ). The result of this is that I am £200c short this month. When I get paid I transfer my expenses payments to a seperate account which get uses to buy petrol. So at present there is no money in the account to buy fuel. My OH gets expenses as well but his won't come in for another week or so and probably won't be enough to see us through the month. I'll chase up mine when I am in work next week but its hassle I could have done without. It not like I've got a spare £200 sitting around. It makes me cross :mad:
• I've overspent on my DS's birthday. I thought that I been prudent and had been careful but he wanted a class party. As a result its cost me £!30 all in and our budget for our kids is £100.
• The other issue with birthdays is that we've only started budgeting for birthdays properly this year ie putting a set amount aside each month to pay for all birthdays costs (children, family, mother/fathers day, kids going to parties). As a result the fund doesn't have enough in it yet to cover the costs of DS's birthday let alone by other DS's later next month.

None of these issues are major in the scheme of things and getting DF but we could so much have done without them.

Rant over I'll go away and deal with the issues....:p

waddy80

WorkingHardDFW wrote: »

One more point. My budget for food, household bits, toiletries, medicine (we're a well family but the odd cost), dog food comes to £355. We are a family of five plus one dog. I am probably just staying with that. Generally I spend at Tesco but I am now using Aldi, Lidl, local veg shop to keep the cost down. In your experiences is that a fair budget? I would appreciate any comments or advice/tips.

Thanks all.

Get onto the old style board. There are great tips to get your budget down. See sammy Kaye's thread re £100 for family of 4 LINK.

Joining the grocery challenge has really helped me.

WorkingHardDFW

Thanks for that Link waddy80. I've had a trawl through and there are some great ideas out there.

I've taken your advice and joined the April Grocery challenge. I think I need a more immediate focus than the overall debt challenge at present and this will help.

What I'd like to acheive is to keep the food budget under £300 this month. We've definately gone over in the last fews months which isn't good since we've got so very little spare in the overall budget.

Certianly in the earlier months of the year we've had the benefit of the food and drink stocks from Christmas but these are now depleted and therefore we need to become a little more savvy with our shopping.

We will be under budget this month and eat well.

waddy80

Glad I could help - good luck, I really must go and join the april challenge. Been very lazy as of late!

WorkingHardDFW

Good news and bad:

Good news :j - just sold some of DS's clothes (as a bundle rather than individual items) and made £25! Really pleased with that since it all helps the debt fund.

Bad news - OH has started muttering about wanting to change his car. No problem with that apart from the fact that he wants to spend more than his current car is worth!!! Where does this money come from ........a loan is his suggestion!!!! I wonder what planet he is on at times......

I have strongly told him that there is no way we can look at changing cars etc until next year when we are debt free. If the debt free date comes sooner then fine but if not then it will have to wait until then. How can he possible think that with our debt at £46kc we should be increasing it....

Words - almost - fail me. He knows in his heart that we can't fund anything else and he says he is just looking but goodness we shouldn't even he be having thoughts about it....

I'm not sure he gets that when we are flogging the kids old clothes and toys to make a few pennies here and there to throw at the debt that he can justify spending another £5k on his car:mad:

What is it about men and cars........

WorkingHardDFW

Sorry about the slight rant earlier - OH had got me quite put out with his hairbrained scheme....told him that in the present climate we wouldn't get a loan anyhow...so the whole issue is irrelevant at present.

New target for us is to clear the new target CC by June. The balance currently stands at £3950 :eek: . This may seem like a difficult challenge but April and May will be the first two months of the mortgage holiday and therefore we'll have an extra £1950 to throw at the debt. This said I need the incentive to be able to clear it in two months so that the remaining two months of the mortgage holiday can get thrown at the next target CC.

How are we going to do this? Well by my cals the difference between the scheduled payments and the balance will be £1340. This will need to come from extra income, ebay sales, consulting work (:o scary), mystery shopping, cashback sites.

Hard work but achieveable I think within the two months (April and May). I need to focus and make it happen.