Starting to budget after years of wishful thinking

LegoHead

Sold a bag on ebay this weekend and made £78.18 after fees. Had £121.17 left to pay on my paypal thing. The next payment for this was going to be £60.58 on 27th so thought may as well pay it all off now with the extra money I made.

One step closer today! Need to make sure the postage costs stays less than £17.60 which I think is not a problem so will have also boosted my closing balance this month by a few quid.

This weekend was a tough one for spending all my play money. It was bonfire night so spent most of it, now just need to stay focussed and stick to the budget. 

LegoHead

Debt Now Total = £19092.26
Paypal Pay In 3 = 60.58x 2 months = £121.16 PAID 8th November 2021
Sainsburys Credit Card 0% till January = £1000
Sainsburys Loan 9.2% = £6032.90
HSBC Loan 3.2% = £12059.36

enthusiasticsaver

Well done on bag sale and debt reduction so far.  Savings starting to pile up too.  Good luck with your budgeting for the rest of November. 

LegoHead

Fridays update. Honestly don't feel like doing this now, but best to get it out the way.

Fuel, Food and Disposable budget
Have stuck to all budgets this week. Didn't do any food shopping as wanted to use up everything in my freezer as if I don't use it now probably never will. Because of this had £44.76 left in food+fuel acccount. Off out for dinner tonight so instead of passing this to savings I will be using this to topup my disposable cash for this week. Depending on what tonight costs the rest will go into savings. I honestly forgot to budget for this night out. My disposable cash was still kept in budget and I had £1.78 left I think. I am using Monzo and it doesnt appear to give balance after each transaction so had to get the calculator out.

Plan
From next month all my rent from lodger is going to go into savings/emergency pot. After my emergency pot is up to £1000 I am going to ask lodger to transfer straight into my savings account weekly and I will remove it from my budgeting. I don't want to rely on the rent just in case in future it isn't there. I am prioritising building the emergency pot as I may be changing jobs soon and might need a bit of a buffer just in case.

I have reduced disposable weekly allowance from £48 to £30. I will see how it goes. Probably not going to go much lower as I still want the occasional treat, but also starting to have fun seeing money being saved each week.

Checks

Surprises in Main bank account? - No, apart from extra money in from ebay :-)
Updated spending diary - added to spreadsheet
Review paypal, google for subscriptions - None
All bills correctly debited? - yes
Yearly bills and budget- no changes needed
Fuel, food and disposable budgets still ok - yes
Estimated main bank balance end of month = £58.90 (aiming for £100+ to leave buffer)

I did go to McDonalds for breakfast twice this week, this is because I ran out of my usual breakfast of eggs and got a bit lazy. I don't want to slip back into old habits so going to get some cereal and long life milk for the lazy mornings.

LegoHead

Just had an email from motorway.co.uk to say my car is listed for sale. At 3pm I should get offers. If the offers are really low then I will try and sell privately.

LegoHead

Just had my offer back from the company £10508 will be on its way to be clearing my debt hopefully in the next few days! Made £8 more than I bought it for back in March 2019. I really will miss it, but feel very excited about getting closer to debt free now.

vampirotoothus

Wow, congratulations, that is a real result.

Drawingaline

Brilliant news!

enthusiasticsaver

Great result on the car sale.  

savingholmes

Fantastic news. Just caught up on your diary. You've really turned things around.