Time for a Fresh Start!

EmotionalSpender

I’m so grateful for all your replies - they’ve made me feel better already, and already more focused. So thank you!

I’ve listened to ceb1995 and got cracking on some baking this evening - I had all the ingredients except for butter and chocolate chips, so I bought them today (spent £8.86 in total, including some stock cubes, flour, tinned tomatoes, fruit and eggs. Now I’ve got all the food I need for a good few days - my cupboard is full - although I’ll need to get more fresh stuff later on). Anyway, it was really fun - and my cookies turned out great! I’m a bit of a mixed baker - sometimes things go well, and sometimes they go horribly wrong. I’ve been working on this recipe for a while, and they finally are there! Yay! I had the kitchen to myself, which is very rare indeed, so spent an hour dancing around it singing to musical songs- and then a rather confused-looking flatmate walked in. Ha! I’ve also roasted a load of veg that was about to go off.

Dinner is leftover veggie soup I made a few days ago, and a cheese toastie. I nearly bought a bottle of wine, which would have been an extra £6.99. I was debating for a while about it - it’s been a bad week at work! - but then I got IDed, so then it got taken away from me. IDed at 30! Ah well, it was £6.99 saved. The job really has been a good debt incentive, at least. I took a bit of a risk accepting this job, and if I’d liked it, I wouldn’t be here right now. And hey, I’ve got cookies instead of wine!

I am going to try my local parkrun tomorrow for the first time. A bit nervous, but it’s free! The rest of the weekend will be quiet, which is also rare. I’m going to get some house errands done, a bit of job hunting and relax.

I finally dug out all but one of my APRs - my Tesco one is impossible to find - probably deliberately so! I’ll call them up.

But the others are: Barclaycard 19%; Halifax 26%; MBNA 24%; MBNA 2 0% for a year; Virgin 0% for a year; Tesco TBC.

I have room to balance transfer onto the Halifax, Tesco and second MBNA card. The high APR in Halifax is offputting but so is the high amount already on the Tesco. I also need the final piece of the puzzle of their APR. Definitely some food for thought. It’d be nice to get rid of the Barclaycard and the £100 a month on that. Anyway, it’s nice to actually give this some thought instead of my previous 30-second balance transfer decisions!

For my weekend meals, I have egg on toast, leftover soup, and the roasted veg to have with tuna, potatoes and green salad. Got cookies and crisps for snacks, and some fruit.

Hope you all have nice relaxing weekend plans.

enthusiasticsaver

I would not transfer the MBNA on to the Halifax if they are charging 26% or have I got that wrong?

EmotionalSpender

Hi! EnthusiasticSaver, you're right - Halifax is 26% so I won't be transferring the MBNA balance over. My Tesco APR is 19.9% so finally got everything together. My thoughts at the moment are to transfer £1000 of the Barclaycard to the interest-free MBNA and then snowball pay off the other £1000, before focusing on the Halifax, and by that point hopefully having a better balance transfer option.

So considering my weekly budget of £145, I've so far spent £98. This was a bit surprising (so many surprises of late!) but it has been a mix of food shopping, going out for breakfast once, replacing some kitchen goods, bus fare to the parkrun, some medication, a candle (?!) and a work dress. The candle and the work dress were from a charity shop, and cost £11 for the two, but still. Taking away the breakfast and the charity shop fare, I could have saved £23 out of this £98. I plan to have at least £30 from the budget to put onto my credit card by Thursday - but I don't actually need to spend anything at all until Thursday, so we'll see if it can be more!

This weekend has been really interesting to consider, for numerous reasons. For one, I can see how easily I got into debt now I've started adding all of this up. I have had no real plans this weekend, and yet...there's always food to buy, or something to replace, or some little wasteful purchase to make. I also initially had plans this weekend to go into central London, which were cancelled, so whilst I've not spent too much this weekend, honestly...that wasn't down to me. However, to my own credit, I'd probably have gone into central London yesterday or today anyway if my plans had fallen through before this debt-free goal, and this weekend - I didn't.

Some points I have taken away from this weekend:

1. Planning is key for money saving. I met a friend to do parkrun on Saturday (parkrun itself was...okay. I'll try it again as it's free, but that's all I can say about it, really) and I was supposed to go back home to make breakfast, but I was so hungry after the run that I went out for breakfast with her instead. I just took my phone, debit card, key and a bottle of water with me, as I assumed there'd be nowhere to store bags - but there was. Next time I go, I'll bring a flask of coffee and a packed breakfast with me.
2. I won't be carrying my debit card with me this week. I went to the shop with my friend after parkrun (not my plan!) and came out with a dress I admittedly can use for work and a candle I didn't need. Say I'd just brought £10 with me - or just no money at all - I'd have been restricted, or I'd have had to just go home and eat breakfast after all!
3. There are a few logistical challenges with flatsharing and cooking - which I always knew, but never realised how much it impacted my budget. I've had a rare quiet weekend, with no one else really around, which has meant I've been able to bulk cook a big pot of soup for lunches next week, bake, and cook some jacket potatoes for the week as well. I also have some more room in the fridge this week, as one of my flatmates is away. Usually, we all want to cook at the same time, and it's difficult to cook knowing other people are hungry too. I was manically chopping onions and veggies today at high speed like some mad chef on a timer, and it hit me: I am always cooking like I'm expecting someone to just walk in at any moment and interrupt me - because they do. Often, I'll just buy a takeaway or go out for food when I see the kitchen is full just to make life easier for everyone. There has to be pockets of time like this weekend during the week where I can just cook for a few hours, and I'll take note of that. Something else that is a bit stupid on my part - I never remember to bring my tupperware back from work, which means that when I do bulk cook, sometimes I can't transport the food back to work - where it needs to be! So I've made a note on my phone to remind myself to do this.
4. I made four individual "small food shops" between Thursday and now. I don't need any food at all now for at least a week, but I know this is a rookie mistake. Again, there's only so much bulk buying I can do with a shared space, but I always spend less when I do a bigger shop.

I've got breakfast and lunch stuff ready for work for the next few days, and a few basic things (beans on toast, etc.) for dinner, to free up some cupboard space.

If this had been a normal weekend (let's say I was going into central London with my friend as planned), I would have spent money on train fare, dinner, at least two coffees or glasses of wine, and probably something in the shops).

On a side note - I haven't had any alcohol for four days now. I don't drink too much usually, but the last two months or so have been boozier than usual - "just" a bottle of wine here or a beer with friends there, and I've drank something almost every day. I'm going to see how long I can keep this up for as a side health/moneysaving note.

The working week ahead should be fairly standard. I've got a few gym classes, am meeting a friend one evening in the week for a walk, and that's it. If I leave my debit card at home and make sure I don't forget this pile of food I've made, I should be fine.

And so...to Monday! I've hope you've all had nice weekends.

EmotionalSpender

Also - small side note - I cancelled Spotify this weekend Weirdly sad about it - but know it’s a good thing!

Kantankrus_Mare

Well done on the spotify cancellation. :T I have so many of my favourite songs and albums on Spotify that I cant ever see me being without it but Youtube is Ok for creating playlists and such a great source for music. Just have to ignore the ads.

Well done on the batch cooking as well! So much money can be saved with forward planning and a good dose of will power.

Just be careful....you'll end up like me and unable to part with your hard earned cash full stop and have an inner argument with yourself over every little purchase.

The girls at work couldnt believe I have never ever bought a take out coffee. I work in an independant coffee shop and see so much money spent by customers on these. :eek:

EmotionalSpender

Thank you! I can only hope that one day I’ll be questioning all my spending, haha!
Bit of a rubbish day today. A long day at work and I’m getting a cold, so my no alcohol thing has gone out the window. I bought some whisky, lemons and ginger, and made a hot toddy. I spent £9.19 (also bought milk). I made up a spiced tea with cloves, ginger and cinnamon, which made me feel much better.

I was supposed to be going out for dinner with friends tonight, which I put off cancelling even though I knew I shouldn’t be going out and hadn’t put it in my budget. So I cancelled today- they were okay about it, I think. So I didn’t go out, yay, but I did spend money in the shop. I really hope I don’t get a cold this week - I have no time to be sick!

I am fed up today. I have insomnia and I’m not sleeping right now - I have tiny pea eyes. I’ve got some family stuff going on, too. But we plod along, don’t we?! And I’m still on target to have £30 spare at the end of my first budgeted week.

Everything seems to be breaking right now. My computer is almost on its way out, my phone is broken, my headphones broke today, my internet at home seems to be breaking, and just..everything. I thought I’d make a cake today to cheer myself up and even that flopped today; I rushed the recipe, and it was so salty and flat, I had to throw it away. I guess it was just one of those days? It’s almost as if now I’ve decided to save money, the universe is like “time for everything to break!”

I’m still deciding what to do re: balance transfers, but today definitely is not the day to action anything!

Let’s hope tomorrow is better!

EmotionalSpender

So the first week done - and I have £20 left from my assigned budget! I also did spend more than I wanted to this week, so I know there's even more I can easily cut back on. I am quite pleased, actually.

Advantages this week: having one flatmate away, making life in the kitchen much much easier for things like bulk cooking. When she is back, this is going to be more challenging for sure. I could talk to her about an assigned evening for me to cook?
Limited social life (both advantage and disadvantage - I cancelled one meal, and had a friend cancel on me to go for a walk/to the pub. Had both of these things happened, I'd have probably spent around £30-£40.

Challenges: I really have to spend a lot of time talking myself out of buying things. I guess this will get easier. If I want a takeaway, I want it NOW NOW NOW - and I have had to take a step back this week and ask myself: okay, what am I craving - and then try and make a cheap alternative. It's exhausting to have this constant battle with myself!
I am not very patient. I think I always knew this. Now I've decided to embark on this journey, I want it done NOW, and thinking about the enormity of the task ahead has sometimes felt overwhelming. But this is something that will take time, and patience, and perhaps this is a skill I need to embrace more.

I have made one balance transfer - I have moved £1000 from my Halifax card to my interest-free MBNA. My initial plan was to pay off the Barclaycard first, but then I saw - actually saw and recognized for what it was - the hideous interest payment coming off my Halifax, and thought...it has to go! Plus the Barclaycard isn't really causing any problems ticking along in the background.

My new plan is to snowball pay the Halifax card, and then move onto Barclaycard. Hopefully by the time the Halifax is gone, I'll be in a stronger position to balance transfer other cards - I'll keep an eye on offers each month.

I now have £1000 in my emergency fund, so in five months I'll be up to £1500 and can transfer £1000 straight over to debt.

On a side note, I've been thinking a lot about why I've gotten into this debt, and my relationship with money. It's a complicated one, and one that will need further delving into. The fact that my debt tripled during the last four or five years can't be ignored, and the correlation with how unhappy I've been during the last few years is definitely there.

I've been feeling really negative about myself, the debt and how I let myself get into this mess of late - but I've decided to turn my thoughts around. One of the reasons I think I've struggled with past debt-free attempts is the fact I don't really have anything to aim for. I have some vague ideas of what I want to do in the future, but no hard and fast concrete plan. And with no aim - why bother? At least, that's been my thinking.

I've not really let myself consider what I want from my life for a while. I've not let myself dream. I've kind of just been cruising along in life, hoping for the best. I was very ambitious, once, and then it just drifted off after a wrong or disappointing turn or two. Even nice things in my life, like holidays or weekends away, haven't really been of my own planning - I've just agreed to go somewhere that my friends or ex-boyfriend wanted to visit. I kind of lost control of my life somewhere along the way these last few years, and let other people take over - and with that, let myself tumble further into debt.

With this in mind, today I wrote a big long list of what I want from my life. Places I want to visit, where I want to live, what I want to do with my career. Things I've been too scared to let myself consider, because I've just been burying my head in the sand about everything - not just money, but my whole life. And for the first time in a long time, I felt hopeful. Energised. Like I have a purpose.

Getting my finances in control is key to getting to where I want to be. It's going to be long. It's going to be hard. But I think I'm going to grow up a *lot*.

[Deleted User]

What a great post - and one I can totally empathise with, it sounds like I'm very similar to you. Although I keep writing small-to-medium goal lists, but studiously ignoring some of the bigger questions - I need to take your example and get some written down!

[Deleted User]

Great post and I'm sure resonates with a lot of us! It's so easy to bury your head in the sand and plod along and go with instant gratification to make yourself feel better in the moment.
It's a long process of slowly tweaking all our habits until it comes naturally.
I've just started reading a book called Atomic Habits to help me understand how habits are formed and address the ones I'd like to improve - I've found it a really good read so far.

[Deleted User]

It has an interesting chapter on goal setting - how just setting a goal and not changing your system of behaviour achieves nothing. Everyone at the Olympics goes there with the goal to win, for example. But only the ones with an efficient system of nutrition/training/gear/whatever actually make it.
So it's much more fruitful to address the systems directly instead of making oneself feel inadequate by setting very specific, very long-term goals. It's better to think "I'm going to stop spending money on lunches out", for example, and then just do that until it becomes natural, then move onto the next marginal gain. The results take care of themselves.
Reading about this has really changed my perspective about goals - I'm great at setting myself goals, but haven't always actually done anything to achieve them, then felt let down by myself again and again.