Learning to live within my means

astrocytic_kitten

Thanks @joedenise, I do my best to be healthy within my limitations and have balanced meals, lots of frozen veg, etc. Don’t really do takeaways or anything, though I do have a huge weakness for milk chocolate.

Meal planning while on holiday is pretty impressive, especially with limited space! Hope you’re having a good time 😊

joedenise

Thank you @astrocytic_kitten.  Meal planning comes naturally for me - I've been doing it for so long now I hate the thought of not knowing what we're going to eat!  When I'm at home I do a monthly meal plan but it's much easier because I have full cooking facilities and a fridge/freezer plus chest freezer so there is always plenty to choose from.

Planning on holiday is even more essential due to lack of cooking facilities - just a 3 burner hob and a useless grill/oven, it's just too small to be much use and doesn't get hot enough - max temp is about 160ish which isn't really hot enough for most things so everything takes much longer than it would at home.  Most meals we try to just use the hob but it's not always possible.  Tonight's dinner for example was just on the hob.  Steak; fried up LO boiled potatoes, onions & mushrooms cooked together.

astrocytic_kitten

I’m planning to take the £100/month I’ve been putting to emergency savings and send it to debt instead, I now have a 3 month emergency fund so it make sense. Should probably have done it before, but stopping saving feels much harder than I expected emotionally! I’ll still be putting money towards all my pots, just not building up the emergency fund any further till the debt is gone. In doing this it should be 9 months till I’m debt free.

On a strictly financial footing it would make more sense to use some of the emergency savings to pay off a large chunk of the debt (especially since the debt is still interest bearing), but with everything that’s going on and with my health I don’t feel safe to be without that safety net. Looked into 0% transfers too, but the maths doesn’t work out for that - if I can manage to continue overpaying the loan at my current rate I’ll pay less interest sticking with the loan than I’d pay on a transfer fee. 

So now I just need to be brave and cancel the savings direct debit...

astrocytic_kitten

Kicking myself right now for getting rid of a pile of shoeboxes during a clear out a while back, as I now want to sell some of the shoes. Have a brand new never worn pair, but no box....🤦‍♀️ 

Cancelled the savings direct debit though, and paid off an extra £600 this month. If my health holds up over the winter I’ll be debt free May 2021! I’m hoping to push that to April, just to get it cleared by the end of the financial year (not that it makes the slightest difference, but I do like my targets 😂). And on that point, will reach 70% paid off in a couple of weeks. 

Got an email yesterday saying my savings account rate is being cut again so I’ve been looking into alternatives and reading the guides on the site and also generally starting to think about life and money after the debt. The amount of choice is pretty overwhelming tbh - I’ve been so taken up with debt for so long, thinking about goals like 12 months emergency fund / overpay mortgage / LISA / increase pension / moving to a home with a garden are alien to me. Hoping if I start thinking about it now the way ahead will become clear!

astrocytic_kitten

Some boring financial admin...ever since my LBM I’ve been transferring money for every single bill that isn’t monthly into a holding account, where I use YNAB to keep track. It’s everything from something paid 6 weekly to saving monthly for annual insurance bills. It means I seem to always be transferring to one account or another (I also have a presents account, a clothes account, a vet account...as well as separate bills and daily spending accounts) and after something someone said the other day I thought of having to explain all this to a mortgage underwriter. Anyway, basically I’m now saving for a couple of things in the holding account (and home repairs and big vet bills remain separate accounts), but have moved the pots for everything else over to either my bills account or my normal spending account depending how they’re paid.

This feels like a Big Step! I think because it means I need to trust myself to budget and not just spend all the money in my account, or remove stuff from future bills categories so I can buy a new dress in the heat of the moment. Having it all separate really helped with that and helped reinforce that money in my spending account was everything I had for food etc when I stopped using cards, whereas now the spending account includes monthly savings for random things (e.g. quarterly loo roll subscription). It will mean less faff and transferring stuff between accounts though, and I’m hopeful I’ve come far enough and I’m deeply enough embedded in ynab to still keep to budget 🤞

In other moneysaving news, I almost bought a new laptop this morning as my ancient one had been plugged in overnight but still wasn’t switching on. I use my iPad and work laptop for almost everything but there’s still a couple of things I need my personal laptop for, and it’s verrrrrrrryyyyyyy slow and ponderous when doing anything. Anyway, it just wouldn’t switch on and after none of the fixes I’d googled worked I moved it to another plug, left it in for a few hours longer, and it finally switched on! It’s now working it’s way through endless updates. Hopefully at some point over the weekend I can tick a few more admin jobs off the list once it’s got all it’s updates sorted.

redofromstart

I am impressed at the laptop perseverance, hope the updates sort it.  Can you backup while it is on just in case?

GeorgianaCavendish

We are SO on the same page with the emotional side of saving / spending that it’s scary! I feel exactly the same, I’m trying to work on my self-trust issues with money. Intellectually I know that I’ve been a proper grown up for some time now and have managed not to blow all my bill money on clothes but I think emotionally I am still scared that I can’t be trusted. We’ll get there! 

GeorgianaCavendish

Forgot to mention, I bought myself some cashmere wrist warmers after your advice on my diary. They are great! 

astrocytic_kitten

Good idea on backups @redofromstart, I haven’t done that in ages. By the time the laptop had finally done all its updating I couldn’t be bothered with the admin last weekend, will aim to get that done this weekend instead.

And yes a lot of what you say on your diary really hits home with me @GeorgianaCavendish. I worry how much of my clothes spending being under control is more because I’m not going to the office and meeting people. I find it much easier to embrace a minimalist mindset when all anyone ever sees of me is my head and shoulders on Zoom or my coat when I’m meeting friends outside! Glad the wrist warmers are helping too!

Finances - I’m hoping to be debt free in 6 months - eeek! Almost doesn’t feel real. It does rely on being well enough to increase my hours at work a bit, but even if I don’t I should be debt free in 7 months. I’m pushing for clearing it all by the start of April rather than the end of the month as a final target.

I accidentally signed up for a Prime trial when buying a birthday present (I was trying to click on the ‘decline trial’ bit, honest!) I’ll definitely cancel it before it renews but I’m going to keep it till I watch Good Omens again. And now I’m finding myself very tempted by the spend £15 on kindle books, get £5 credit for other kindle books offer.....was doing a good job of telling myself £15 is out of budget until I remembered there’s a book for a £10 about managing with chronic illness that was recommended to me that I’ve been going back and forth on buying for a while. Apparently it’s very good, and it’s not available via the online library service. I’m still thinking I probably won’t buy it....but a little voice in my head is telling me I could get that AND the next two in the Rivers of London series that I’ve been waiting to go on sale for ages.

And I do have a little bit of out of budget money - online sales are progressing and I have about £50 in my PayPal account I haven’t allocated to anything yet. Up till now I’ve been quite haphazard about what I’ve done with the proceeds - I think I’ve probably cleared around £300 in this round of selling. Some has gone to debt, some to savings, some on buying myself some posh tea and new skincare. There are about a gazillion things I want to put this £50 to, I could easily spend it 20 times over. I should probably list them all out before deciding what to do.

GeorgianaCavendish

I have a list on my phone notes called “Things I Thought I Wanted To Buy” - when I get that itchy/panicky urge to buy something (the one that feels like I NEED it!) I put it on the list and mentally give myself permission to buy it later. For some reason this seems to stop me obsessing about buying whatever it is, I think “it’s on the list so I won’t forget, I’ll just get it later so I can stop worrying about it now” and last time I looked I had nearly 70 things I had actually forgotten about once I had given myself permission to stop thinking about them 😳  

I love Rivers of London! Which is your favourite? Mine is probably Moon Over Soho.