“Debt is normal. Be weird.”

savingholmes

Well done on the weight loss and the new goal. 
Junk food understandable with exhaustion and ill kiddies. You will get back on track.
Love the Valentine's presents -we did similar at xmas - although for us it was towel radiators!

browneyed_girl

A happy Monday to all!  Feeling the equivalent roughness of a badger’s backside after another disturbed night with DS, but it did mean getting up early and achieving bits and pieces before work.

Isitdoable said:

Just discovered your diary and working through it!  Really impressed with what you have cleared, and by your grocery budget!  Don't beat yourself up for the misery spends....it is so tempting, and it is VERY VERY draining when kiddies are ill.  I have a poorly little one at the moment, and it is both emotionally and physically draining.  I've just eaten a ton of chocolate and pasta to try and make myself feel better!

Thank you isitdoable - this does make me feel a bit better!  We are all only human after all!!

savingholmes said:

Well done on the weight loss and the new goal. 
Junk food understandable with exhaustion and ill kiddies. You will get back on track.
Love the Valentine's presents -we did similar at xmas - although for us it was towel radiators!

Love it!  Apparently I’m a difficult person to buy for (I personally don’t think so - some smellies and chocolates and I’m champion ), so found I ended up with lots of well-intentioned gifts that I never used.  So, now that I’m officially a grown-up and thinking about needs rather than wants, I’ll put off buying things that others could easily get me for birthday/Xmas etc.  This way I get something I actually want and I haven’t needed to fork out for those essential items myself - win-win!!  At Xmas, my mother bought me a storage unit I’d wanted for a while, and on my birthday I got a set of saucepans! . Best thing about it is that other people gift me better quality items than I would buy for myself.  No idea why I didn’t adopt this approach before.  The crazy things we do as we’re digging ourselves into debt, right?

Anyway, today’s goals/missions/achievements...

• Had £12.22 leftover from last week’s essentials budget - £10 paid to Very and £2.22 added to sealed pot.
• £7.43 rewards from current account put into emergency fund - it’s very slowly coming up again!
• DH will be doing weekly shop at Ald!.  Can’t imagine it being too expensive looking at what we have left in the freezer/cupboards, but he still has moments of temptation and goes off list!
• Cupboard under the stairs cleared out and organised.  This is my little haven with all my crafty stuff, items to reuse/repurpose, gifts picked up in sales etc.  Is it really odd that sometimes I find myself opening it and just looking inside at all the neatly organised shelves in order to instil a sense of calm?!  It’s these moments that I sometimes think I’ve completely lost it...
• Laundry pile attacked and a few items of clothing put into a new bag for charity.  Need to go through DH’s wardrobe at some point this week to find more to add to this, but need to approach it sensitively.  I’m just baffled by the number of T-shirts he has.  At last count it was 43, 7 of which were identical plain black shirts.  This is abnormal, yes?!
• Need to post some returns to Amazon but will probably end up doing this tomorrow as not sure I can get to the post office today.  Only £14 and did deliberate keeping the items just to have them, but then remembered I’m trying to get rid of clutter, not add to it!  Plus £14 is still £14 .

Hoping I’ll have some time this evening to get through a bit more of my mending pile.  Two pairs of trousers repaired yesterday (kids had managed to rip the back pockets off), but still have a cardigan, some socks and T-shirts to get through - it never ends!

savingholmes

Proud of you - in this day and age mending clothes is hard core.
I also struggle to return things - especially by post

browneyed_girl

savingholmes said:

Proud of you - in this day and age mending clothes is hard core.
I also struggle to return things - especially by post

Aw, what a lovely thing to read!  Savingholmes - I can’t remember the last time someone told me they were proud of me!  It’s made me get all choked up, big ol’ softie that I am!  

Not much to report today.  Finally braved the electric meter and sent off a reading.  Over the past 5 months since we sent our last reading, we have used approximately £60 more than was estimated on our bills.  I’ve increased our DD from £81 to £85, in the hope that this combined with lower energy usage in warmer months will be enough to get us back on track.  Not sure there’s anything I can do to lower our usage - heating is the main issue and a necessity with little children.  If it were just me, I’d be sat in the cold, in my dressing gown and slippers, reading a book by candlelight and eating only sandwiches.  I’m sure it makes for an interesting image.  Positively Scrooge-like.

Should be a NSD, provided nothing drastic happens in the next few hours!  Need to start keeping track of these.  I have a vague idea that we have 2-3 a week, but no idea if this is accurate.  Might help keep DH motivated (he doesn’t have my iron will!  ).

browneyed_girl

NSD yesterday achieved!  . Can we stretch it to two in a row?!  Can’t think of anything we need right now...

DDs both finally back at school after chickenpox and DS over the worst of it.  As a result, home is feeling much calmer and I once again have the time to do things other than doling out medicine and reminding children not to scratch 17,000 times a day.

Plan today mostly involves housework - lots to catch up on as this is typically done during school time.  Generally have a bit of a slump mid-week, so don’t tend to plan anything taxing.  Even dinner will be an easy cheesy pasta and veg bake with whatever needs using up thrown in for good measure.  

Managed to cash out £8.47 from a survey site this morning and have added this to the emergency fund.  Also need to post return items worth £14, but having seen the weather I might just opt for a second cup of tea and post it tomorrow instead! 

Plutonomics

Just started reading your thread, I didn't even consider my student loan when going through my borrowing 😣 now you mention it that's quite a chunk of pay gone before I even start working on other debts, so thanks for the reminder. Will have to update my spreadsheets!

Good luck with the journey though, sounds like you are on top of things and well your way to being debt free in no time 🙂

savingholmes

Enjoy your peace while it lasts. 

browneyed_girl

Ok, so yesterday wasn’t a NSD because we needed a few top-up items from Mr T.  However, DH made the most of shopping in the evening by coming home with lots of YS items - our freezer now has more bread than I could eat in a month!  NSD on the cards for today though so fingers crossed...

Having looked at my spreadsheets again, I’ve come to the realisation that I need to budget each month for loan overpayments, rather than vaguely hoping that there will be money leftover to use for this purpose.  At the moment, anything we’ve had leftover has been used to pay towards Very, though this should be paid off at the end of next month.  After this, I think I have to up my level of organisation.  Although I keep track of all our monthly bills, direct debits, food and fuel expenditure (the spreadsheet is even colour-coded ), we don’t currently squirrel away money each month for predictable annual costs (gifts, Xmas, MOTs etc).  This has been because we’ve always had the money available that month and therefore haven’t really had to think about it.  Now that DH is not working and the previous £1000 surplus each month dropping to about £450, I’d like the security of knowing that these big events have essentially been paid for in advance.  I’ve noticed that a lot of others on here employ this method and it seems to work well, though advice would be appreciated!

From my records over the past 2 years, I know my annual gift and Xmas costs - £380 and £650 respectively (though I’m always looking to cut this down whenever possible).  Therefore, I need to be setting aside £30 each month for gifts and around £50 each month for Xmas.  That leaves £370 that could be divided between other areas.  Categories I think we need would be car maintenance, clothing (mostly children), holidays (though our one this year is all paid for, I guess it never hurts to plan for the next one!), emergency fund and debt overpayments (which I’ll pay towards loans when I have a fair chunk saved).  Not yet figured out how much to put in each of these, or actually how best to manage these separate savings.  What works best for everyone else?  I don’t know what accounts are available that allow lots of separate ‘pots’, so wondering if it might be easier to have physical pots/envelopes for each and take out the cash each month...?  

blue_eyed_girl123

I use M0nz0 where you can have as many pots as you like . You can either have longer term (I use these for Xmas/holidays etc) and get a little bit of interest, or shorter term which is immediate access (which I use for the car etc). App based and really easy to set up new payees etc.

FootyFanDan

Wow! I have just managed to catch up with all your diary and i amazed by how much you have got off the debt already and i am super impressed that despite not having the best few months you have not gone off track (except the odd junk food that we are allowed every so often haha).