Learning to budget and taking control of my life.

Disney_Princess85

Applewood1 said:

Hello, just dropping in to say good luck on your journey, you can get there You sound very organised and focused! 

I just hope it continues!

Disney_Princess85

Payday came and went. I've rejigged some money into different pots and accounts to help me through the month. 

Ive got an account for food, one where I get paid into and where my direct debits come out of,  and one for car/fuel purchases. I also have pots on the main account for childcare,  birthday/presents etc. It's definitely helped change my mindset slightly if I can see that each bit of money has a purpose. Otherwise I just end up frittering it away if it's all in one place.

Off on the hunt for birthday presents for my stepson later, with my partner and daughtet. Hoping it won't be too much of a spendy day, for me at least! 

Disney_Princess85

Not much to report so far this month.

I've managed to stick to my budget so far, although still over spending slightly on food. I definitely need to food prep more, particularly for lunches when i'm in work. I need to get into the habit of doing them the night before, as by morning there is never enough time. Otherwise I end up popping to the shop to get food to take with me. Despite all that i do feel slightly more in control which can only be a good thing.

SuperFrank88

Disney_Princess85 said:

Not much to report so far this month.

I've managed to stick to my budget so far, although still over spending slightly on food. I definitely need to food prep more, particularly for lunches when i'm in work. I need to get into the habit of doing them the night before, as by morning there is never enough time. Otherwise I end up popping to the shop to get food to take with me. Despite all that i do feel slightly more in control which can only be a good thing.

Do you own a slow cooker or a soup maker? By far the 2 best gadgets I’ve got in the kitchen. On a Sunday I’ll do a big batch of something and split it between 3/4 tuppaware boxes for my weeks work lunches. So next week for me is leek & potato soup. That’s all I need to do in the mornings is get a low GI roll (Lidl) out of the freezer and it is defrosted by lunchtime in work.

Last week was a chilli. Did a big batch on the Sunday, split into tubs and froze them. Though they will be fine in the fridge for a few days. In the morning, just emptied half a pouch of microwave rice into the tub and the other half of the rice was for the next day.

Couple of ideas for you it is so easy once you get into the routine. Saves me a fortune on going out to buy things at lunchtime, plus I only get 30 mins break so every minute counts.

Disney_Princess85

SuperFrank88 said:

Disney_Princess85 said:

Not much to report so far this month.

I've managed to stick to my budget so far, although still over spending slightly on food. I definitely need to food prep more, particularly for lunches when i'm in work. I need to get into the habit of doing them the night before, as by morning there is never enough time. Otherwise I end up popping to the shop to get food to take with me. Despite all that i do feel slightly more in control which can only be a good thing.

Do you own a slow cooker or a soup maker? By far the 2 best gadgets I’ve got in the kitchen. On a Sunday I’ll do a big batch of something and split it between 3/4 tuppaware boxes for my weeks work lunches. So next week for me is leek & potato soup. That’s all I need to do in the mornings is get a low GI roll (Lidl) out of the freezer and it is defrosted by lunchtime in work.

Last week was a chilli. Did a big batch on the Sunday, split into tubs and froze them. Though they will be fine in the fridge for a few days. In the morning, just emptied half a pouch of microwave rice into the tub and the other half of the rice was for the next day.

Couple of ideas for you it is so easy once you get into the routine. Saves me a fortune on going out to buy things at lunchtime, plus I only get 30 mins break so every minute counts.

I've got a slower cooker i'm just really lazy! If i make a pasta dish or bolognaise or something like that i'll usually make extra to take to work the next day. I'm just not very consistent with it!

I've got loads of recipe books so may did some of those out to try some different things this week.

Disney_Princess85

Did some more surveys today, up to £11.75 on valued opinions - i'm waiting for it to reach £15 so I can get an amazon voucher. I also did another survey on prolific academic, there's not many on there at the moment but it has been a good earner for me over the years.

Disney_Princess85

So it turns out that I am a bit rubbish at updating and keeping a diary. Thankfully i have managed to keep up with my debt busting.
So a bit of an update:
Current Debts are:
Aqua (Cabot) -£3960
Barclaycard £2979
Capital One - £1867.74
First Direct Overdraft - £392.24
Simply Be - £750

My car loan from the bank of mum and dad is down to £1400 too. I pay £100 a month to them which is due to finish August 2021, ideally I want to find a way to make this a bit sooner, so this money can go to paying into my DMP.

I did some digging the other to find out how much of my debt I have actually paid off. At it's highest my debt total was £15071.98 it is now £9948.98 which means that I have paid off £5123 or 34% which is amazing considering I have been very lax in my debt busting compared to some on here. This is since the beginning of 2018 where I have been on and off in my debt repayments and had a couple of DMP's which I started and then stopped in a bid to get all of my creditors to default me. Some were really good and did it straight away ( like the CC companies) but I have several pay day loans that refused to, so I tackled those first so they would come off my credit report earlier than if I had kept them in the DMP. As a result I have now gone from 15 creditors to just 5!

I want to have a go setting myself some targets to help me get rid of some more debt. For the debts in the DMP I pay Stepchange £136 a month so by the end of the year, the normal payments will take me from £9948.98 to £9132.98. I want to get this under £9000, I've been skimming a couple of my debts that are in the DMP as I still have access to them online ( I dislike unrounded numbers!) so where I can I plan to do this over the next 6 months to try and get my total under £9000.

I also want to try and pay for some of Christmas through surveys and free money - I've currently got £80 from a couple of surveys and from Quidco when I changed my broadband, this is in cash in a separate pot in my main bank account. I then have £2.75 in amazon vouchers in my account. I aim to get to £200 in cash and £50 in amazon vouchers.

So that's where I am at the moment. Off to try and do a couple more surveys!

Disney_Princess85

Thought I'd do a quick update of saving as well.
I have 3 savings accounts:

1. Emergency fund- currently at £537.30. I pay a little bit into this each month, I'm not sure how much I am aiming for in this but I've got a bit of a buffer, in case anything goes wrong.
2. Help to Save - currently at £900, I am due to get the bonus on this in January which will go in my LISA as part of my eventual house deposit. This gets £50 a month, mainly because the interest is so good.
3. LISA -  currently has £353.90 which just gets money drip fed into it as an when.

I also have little pots off my main account when I pay a little bit of money each month for clothes, DD's clubs, School stuff, Dentist etc. I find having little accounts rather than keeping it in the main account helps keep me on track. If it's all in one account I tend to spend it and I feel like I have less control, so separate pots definitely help me mentally!

Baileys_Babe

Is there any way you can increase the emergency fund? It wouldn't take much to use the current pot and wreck your budget.

When you have paid the car off you say you plan to use the £100 per month for your DMP, what plans do you have to pay for the current cars  replacement (hopefully a while into the future)?

We also try to fund as much of Christmas as possible for free using cashback/vouchers/reward points.

Disney_Princess85

Baileys_Babe said:

Is there any way you can increase the emergency fund? It wouldn't take much to use the current pot and wreck your budget.

When you have paid the car off you say you plan to use the £100 per month for your DMP, what plans do you have to pay for the current cars  replacement (hopefully a while into the future)?

We also try to fund as much of Christmas as possible for free using cashback/vouchers/reward points.

I am adding to the emergency fund each month as well. It's not staying at what it is currently. I rent so apart from my car I don't really have much that I would need to replace in terms of the car although I'm trying to build it so that I have more of a buffer for the future.

I also save each month for service, tyres etc which is overestimated so what doesn't get used each year essentially sits there as a bit of a buffer for when I need either repairs or hopefully a very long time in the future when I need a new car!