PB’s Very Exciting Diary...!

Pink_Butterfly

Hello all :hello:

The title might be a bit optimistic, I don’t live the most exciting life :rotfl:

I wasn’t going to start a diary but I’ve been slipping into bad habits recently & I need to get rid of this debt that I’ve accumulated, so I’m using this as motivation.

I’m not in a TERRIBLE position but £16K worth of debt is nothing to be proud of. £9K of it is v low interest (2.9%) and the rest is on 0%. I will be tackling the £9K first which I hope will be clear by the end of 2020, and then I can get started on the rest.

I have an emergency fund of £5K which is roughly 3 months wages. I also have a mortgage, and want to start overpaying it once I’m debt free

My forms of income are a full-time wage, child benefit, and tax credits (the benefits help me with my childcare costs).

Looking forward to sharing my journey with you all!

MovingForwards

Welcome to the wonderful world of diary management.

Along your journey your diary friends will be here, supporting you through the good times and blips. You will never walk alone!

Pink_Butterfly

Thank you It will be lovely when I’m debt free and can throw money at the mortgage. The aim is to move house when my daughters are getting close to starting senior/high school, so I’d like to increase the equity as much as I can so that I have a decent deposit. We currently live in a flat and we will have outgrown it by then, so we’ll need a 3 bed house.

As nice as a house will be, I won’t like paying the extra costs of running it. My flat is so cheap - the bills including my mortgage are less than £600 in total. I will definitely miss that!

foxgloves

Well, the key thing with debt-busting, Pink Butterfly, is that is isn't exciting. It happens when there is a concrete plan to stop all the usual 'money leakages' & a realistic budget. Then, it is all the little routine everyday things you do in order to free up money for over payments. I found it surprising how the small things really do add up. If you think of it in terms of every £1 you don't spend being an extra £1 you can pay off your debt, you soon find you get into that mindset of looking for the best prices on things, buying own label instead of brands, always taking packed lunches to work, ditching daily coffee shop runs, weekly takeaways, etc. I found that as the debts started to come down & I got into the swing of it, the challenge become as enjoyable as frittering money used to be! I've talked a lot in my own diary about 'shopping from home' or in other words, using what resources you already have, adapting them if necessary. This still saves us a decent amount of money, as back in the Spendy Years, my default setting was always to 'go out & buy one' rather than see what I could source from home.
Good luck with it all - it can be done and you have a goal in mind too, to motivate you.
F

Pink_Butterfly

Thanks foxgloves. I have changed my spendy ways a lot in the past couple of years. A separation can be good for that! Once I realised I was the only one bringing home a wage I knew I had to reign in the spending. It’s how I’ve managed to save a £5K EF, plus pay off £1.3K worth of debt.

It’s only been in the last couple of months or so that I’ve not been as frugal, which is why I have started this diary. My life can be hectic trying to juggle a full-time job, children, a relationship etc, and I found I was buying too many ready meals and takeaways to save time. Plus I was eating out quite a lot which is also not good for the waistline!

Yesterday was a good start to my DF journey as it was a NSD :cool: Today won’t be though as I’ve seen one of my Christmas presents on sale for Black Friday (even though it’s not Black Friday yet), so I will be buying that. It’s half price, so a decent amount will be saved

Pink_Butterfly

Christmas gift bought, & not only was it on sale, but I was pleasantly surprised that I also had a double advantage card points offer when I logged on to the app, so I loaded that before I went out & it meant I got an extra £4.76 in points :T So I’m very pleased with that considering I was going to buy the product anyway!

I also bought 3 other gifts, 3 pairs of school tights for DD1, 2 x £1 advent calendars for the girls & some cheap food storage, so a bit of a spendy day but all within budget. I returned a pair of boots that were a bit too small for DD1 aswell so that can offset some of the costs Only £7, but every little helps as they say...

I went to the supermarket too. I never really do a ‘big’ shop as I find that I waste too much food when I do them, so I tend to go every 3 days or so. It works for me, but I do want to start batch cooking more to save money and start eating healthier. My meals lately haven’t been great (like I said earlier about eating out loads & take aways :eek ) & my energy levels have definitely suffered. I always feel much better when I do ‘clean eating’ so I bought some nice healthy ingredients today & will hopefully start to feel the benefits soon Not sure yet how it will affect my food budget - I currently spend an average of £155 a month on food, toiletries & cleaning products so we’ll have to see!

Pink_Butterfly

A NSD today, & it’s pay day! :beer: My bank account is looking much better now, although my wages were a little less due to being off sick for 2 days in October.

Despite the deduction, I’ll be making a debt overpayment of £300 this month :j I might even be able to pay more than that, but I will stick with £300 for now and then review it in a couple of weeks. December is obviously very expensive & I don’t want to leave myself short!

Someone close to me is going through a difficult time financially at the moment, and is likely not going to get paid by their current employer at the end of this week on their pay day. I have offered to loan them the money from my EF, and then when they receive their redundancy payment from the government in about 4 weeks (hopefully), they will pay me the money back. With this in mind, I am going to transfer my £300 overpayment to a separate current account that I have, and keep it there until I get the EF reimbursement, just in case. I don’t doubt that this person will pay me the money back, but I guess you never know what could go wrong with these things.

My food intake today was ok but definitely room for improvement. Breakfast & dinner was very good, lunch was ok, but the amount of chocolate I consumed was definitely not ok!!! Will try harder tomorrow

Pink_Butterfly

Still too much chocolate consumed today :eek: but everything else was ok!!! It’s probably the wrong time of the month to tackle the chocolate cravings :rotfl:

Money wise - another NSD in the bag :T a DD went out for my phone bill, but I didn’t actually SPEND anything, & even managed to resist the temptation to walk to the food van near my work & buy a delicious jacket potato with chilli, which this weather definitely calls for!

Pink_Butterfly

Evening readers :wave: I am so glad to be home. Work has been very frustrating the last couple of days so it’s nice to be able to chill on my sofa and do not a lot! I have my dinner in the oven & am catching up on here while it cooks. I’m eating a bit later tonight because I popped round my friend’s house after work so she could do my roots My hair was looking awful & I couldn’t put it off any longer! She is a hairdresser & charges me mates rates, in return for me entertaining her toddler It usually involves me singing ‘baby shark’ to him 3,000 times! :rotfl:

What else has happened? I did a mini food shop yesterday. I might have to do another one tomorrow but then again work is buying us all a hot meal at lunchtime as it’s Black Friday, so I might just eat toast tomorrow night I can then do my food shopping on Saturday.

I do not need to dip into my emergency fund tomorrow after all, however I’ve decided that I’m going to keep the £300 in the current account for now, and will keep adding to it until I feel more comfortable in paying a chunk off the loan.

I got some more xmas presents ticked off my list, I just need to finish off my mum’s, my dad’s, my kids’ dad’s (from them of course), my childminder’s, & then finish off my OH’s and his mum’s. Not many then!! :eek: :eek:

Pink_Butterfly

Currently at work on my lunch break & it has been crazy in here today! Lots of noise from the sales team & various prizes have been won. I’m not in Sales but I have managed to win a bottle of wine I don’t drink usually, and never drink red wine, so I will find someone who likes it & will gift it to them.

I’ve paid the childminder today which was £404 I have had to transfer back the £300 from my ‘loan overpayment’ account as I will be short until my tax credits get paid. My own fault, I made a mistake on my spreadsheet but will transfer it back once I receive the TC

Various stresses are happening to people close to me & I’m feeling anxious about it all, but hopefully things will settle down soon. Tonight I have a night in planned with OH which will be nice I am looking forward to just chilling out on the sofa with him & trying to forget about everything.

Pink_Butterfly

I’ve had a lovely weekend so far with OH It has been a bit spendy aswell, but all within budget :A We nearly always go out for lunch/dinner at the weekends but today I persuaded him to eat at home so we bought dinner from the supermarket and he cooked it :T I also bought enough food to last me & the kids until Wednesday, some toiletries that were on offer, and a couple more xmas pressies (which were also on offer & under budget). And fuel.

Total food/cleaning products/toiletries spent in November was £168.61 which is over budget so I’ll try & reduce that in December. It won’t be easy! But I like a challenge

This afternoon I wrapped a few Christmas presents while my OH put up my tree :xmastree: We didn’t decorate it though as my children come back from their dad’s tomorrow so I will let them decorate it They’ll be so excited, especially when they see their advent calendars too!