Hugglemonster hits the debt hard!

savingholmes

Hope the car bill turned out okay.

PurpleFairy26

Hope the car was reasonable. 

janb5

Hi Hugglemonster- do you find selling you books via book sites worth it- they seem to offer so little?

clearmydebts

I have my fingers crossed for your car service HM. All sounding very productive and organised in your house

hugglemonster

Good morning, up with dh this morning at 0600 to go and collect the car - huge thanks you're all my lucky charms, the car cost £100 and sounds and feels back to normal!! I need to pop out shopping later and actually put in some fuel, amazing that I haven't been to the petrol station for over 2 months.

Janb - I've never sold on MM before but yes some of the books aren't getting much but on the flip side the hard back books are pretty reasonable and better than A**zon as they only allow a fixed postage cost and often it works out to be more expensive. I've got a few books on FB page but they aren't shifting at the minute, I need to clear them off the table today so we can sit down and eat.

I had a bit of a wobble yesterday thinking of all the things that need to be done in the house, things we need to get for the kids, paying off debt etc and wondered how you manage the pots for each expense. It feels like if I broke down everything e.g. clothes, repairs, birthdays, Xmas and the like that I would have no money left but I need to have these pots to be more organised. I also wondered how many things you have to focus on at the same time, for example in the house we need to sort out an air lock in the pipes that just isn't shifting, then we need to save to get the guttering and soffits replaced (my bedroom decoration is going to be set back again) plus I would like to buy some more seeds for the garden to grow veg, the list is endless! 

I'm thinking of maybe having a focus item from each category to aim towards but it's frustrating to be saving/spending when I'm trying to pay off the debt, I think I've just got to be more patient and acknowledge that it's going the right way. 

Had a call from my boss yesterday just to check that I'm OK, my furlough has been extended to end of July with no change in pay, HR hadn't informed him of the information they had emailed me so I will copy him in to my response to them later.

A couple more little payments from surveys due in so will pay this off the credit card after the next statement comes out tomorrow, I also need to email a bill for a club for work that dh does for them so about £100 to come back from that. 

Plans for today:
* meal plan and shopping list then go shopping
* fuel in the car
* clean out fish tank with ds
* clean behind the fridge and freezer and that whole area of the kitchen
* put the vacuum back together and hope the excessive noise has been sorted otherwise I'll be getting a new one after we've paid for the washing machine.

Have a lovely day, H x

savingholmes

Hi HM 
I work out all my annual bills and put them on a spreadsheet for when they are due to be paid. I work out all my fixed bills (direct debits) and all my standing orders. I save money into a single pot in practice for my EF and annual bills. I do budget spreadsheets each month - so that if I want to focus on something different one month I can (there's a tab for each month, the EF and my snowball). I set a budget for food and fuel and other costs - and try and knock some off those if it's a bad month. DH and I now have £100pcm spends each, it used to be £50 at an earlier point in our journey. I am paying for much of what I am doing in the garden from birthday money and personal spends. HTH

PurpleFairy26

You might feel like you wouldn’t have any money left if you did pots but the reality is you spend that money now, it’s just a different way of doing things. Ultimately if you budget correctly for all categories in reality you would have nothing left. 

My experience is it takes some ‘evolving’ to get to! I started by working out all my annual bills and dividing it by 12 and adding 10% and that’s how much I save in one account. I did that for a couple of years if I’m honest before I started budgeting other pots. I then added a few distinct pots. One for presents and one for an EF. Once they were up and running I added some more and now have pots (in addition to my annual bills pot) for:
presents
EF
music lessons
dentist and opticians
gym
childrens activities
Fuel
holiday
BTL EF
clothes
house stuff 

some I pay in to each month, some I stop when I get to a certain amount. But it takes some time to get the right amounts. Also don’t be too hard on yourself, I started my EF pot with £30 a month as it was all I could ‘afford’ at the time. I now pay £100 each month and have done for some time. I increased it when I could an other commitments were reduced. 

Sorry for the long post but basically there is no right or wrong way to do it but I have found that since doing this it made such a difference to the way we look after and control our money and ultimately it helped me pay off our debt as I knew I could OP the money left as everything else was accounted for. I wouldn’t go back now, as even when we get to a month with lots of birthdays in, for example, I know I have the money to cover it. 

I would say start small and play around with it and be flexible and see how you get on. 

hugglemonster

Thank you so much @savingholmes and @PurpleFairy26 great tips and ideas there, I've made a start and will be tweaked as needed so far I've done the following:
Updated my birthday, anniversaries and annual bills calendar.
* Emergency fund - I was already paying £50 a month to this and my first goal is £1000, so far I have £200/£1000
* Annual bills fund - Again I have started to pay £50 a month into this and have £100 in there, this will cover Garden Waste scheme, Home insurance (already paid in full), Pet Insurance (already paid in full), Mountain Training membership (paid in full), Car Insurance (currently pay monthly so will overlap for a while), Car Tax (currently pay monthly so will overlap for a while). I will need to up to £65 though.
* Washing machine on BINpay6mths - currently have £50/£310 and saving £50 per month. 
* Worked out annual and monthly costs for 5 pots and have made these pots in my Monz* account ready for me to transfer the amount over each month - these 5 pots are Birthdays & Anniversaries, Xmas, Car repairs and maintenance, House items, Clothes. I currently pay a service plan which covers MOT, service, and breakdown cover so when this finishes next year I will add this to the car pot. 

Still to sort are the food budget - this includes cleaning products, cat food and cat litter but does not includes kids school dinner money. Also not set anything for entertainment or holidays, entertainment is difficult because we don't go out much as the sense that we don't go to the cinema, out for drinks often or restaurants but we do like to be outdoors and that might involve camping fees, a treat whilst out that sort of thing. I'll see how the rest of the budget works to begin with and then I can sort this section whenever we're allowed to go out.

I'm not using much fuel money at the minute so I was thinking about maybe moving this to the debt until I go back to work.

Now the car is sorted the next thing is to try and get rid of these vibrating pipes, then to save up for the guttering to be done not sure how much I'll put aside for this so this is another job to do.

Feeling like we've got plan in place now and hopefully it will put us in a better position.

Enjoy the evening, H x

PurpleFairy26

Wow. That is good progress. It takes up to a year for the pots to be fully ‘working’ as you might get a payment that’s bigger than your pot value before you’ve been doing it for a year but stick with it. It will revolutionise your finances. We’ve only just started a ‘fun money’ pot and ‘eating out’ but they tend to be for the month we’re in rather than cumulative. We don’t eat out often but maybe covers coffee and cake if we’re out using our annual membership. 

hugglemonster

Evening all, hope you had a good weekend. Enjoying finally being able to get some fitness back with running, walking and strength training, my shoulder is still sore and now crunching but strangely after one exercise when it made a horrendous crunch it felt slightly different and hasn't been so sore but obviously still something wrong. I restarted Pilates last night too, only 10 minutes but I am so inflexible it's tough!

Nothing happening much with the finances as this is the lull between a loan payment next week and then pay day on 25th, a few small wins the vacuum cleaner has been fine since I cleaned it all out so fingers crossed it will continue and I've taken it off the shopping list, also the pipes have been better today so again just monitoring that, so the next thing to save for is the guttering - I'm aiming to save £2000 which is probably more than enough but my Dad said he paid £1300 about 13 years ago so I'll save that and then get some proper quotes to see where we're at. I think I may sit and work out whether to save up and pay for the washing machine early then get started rather than paying a bit into several pots, then when the debt is paid I can up the figure.

Credit card statement is out and aiming to get this down to £3000 at least this month, I will make a bigger payment when I get paid but I sent over a small survey payment today. Also redeemed another voucher from a survey site.

Plans for tomorrow include revarnishing the kitchen table, just needs an extra layer plus I will sand and paint the legs, I'm on the look out for 6 chairs either cheap or free as the ones we have are disgusting.

Hope everyone has had a good day, H x