Tackling This Debt One At A Time

[Deleted User]

@WinterWarrior two more sleeps lovely, I did a small money shuffle dance when transferring the correct amounts into my money pots. This evening I've spent an hour paying the actual bills.  The money soon disappears  No pain, no gain (as my dear dad says to me)

It does feel we've made a sizeable dent in our finances and reduced the time considerably being in this pool of debt! We are starting to tread water rather than constantly sinking!!  

Also did an essentials food shop today, hoping not to buy food unnecessarily and keep to budget.  Let's face it, I don't have a backup now with not having a CC to fall back on.  Decided on £100 per week budget for all spends including food.  Will be keeping a tally of my weekly spends in there hope I stay within budget.

WinterWarrior

That’s an excellent plan. Snowballing makes so much sense. Money does disappear so quickly, but I even get a small kick out of paying bills...crazy, but it feels like adulting, even though I should have been adulting for decades already. It will be a lovely feeling when you close that card!
I am planning £50 p.w., but that’s excluding food - if I can’t manage on that I need a kick up the bum!
Are you meal planning? I don’t, but I am reducing as much food waste as possible and making sure I use or freeze before crucial dates. I might make a shed load of flapjack, that’s cheap and cheerful and always goes down well.
Good luck for a clever budgeting May. You can do it ⭐️

[Deleted User]

@WinterWarrior lol, I would rather have the money in the account but needs must and this debt has to go!! Paying bills reminds me on my banking days when customers used to come in and ask me to pay their bills from their account.  I used to like it as it felt I was spending other peoples money. 

[Deleted User]

@WinterWarrior I do meal plan weekly, which helps reduce my food waste. Mr BB also has dietary requirements which can be expensive but most of my meals are allergy friendly anyway which also helps.

CRANKY40

I'm also addressing my food budget this coming month. I'm no good at meal planning so I'm going for mostly using the contents of the freezer and buying the bare minimum to make whatever I liberate from the frozen wastes each morning into a proper meal. I make a packed lunch 5 days a week for my best mate who has to be dairy free and I have a few allergies myself so I feel your pain. It's easier to make the treat type stuff myself because anything with a label that includes the word "free" as in dairy/gluten free seems to automatically double in price from the ordinary version. Good luck.  

WinterWarrior

@CRANKY40 that made me laugh. You are so right, it’s like they charge you extra for the ingredients they aren’t putting in! Trying to find gluten free snacks for my sister was like that, she gave up in the end! 

@MrsBrownBear does meal planning take a lot of time? I have a vague idea, but never a real plan. 

[Deleted User]

@CRANKY40 MrBB is coeliac so it has been challegening over the years.  A lot of my meals are cooked from scratch so a lot of the ingredients can be substituted.  It used to take ages when I bought ready made as I had to keep checking the ingredients of any changes.  You can be surprised how many items contain wheat flour just to thicken up sauces etc. I just buy bread, flour and pasta now.  I make a lot of treats myself, thankfully MrBB doesn't have a sweet tooth.

@WinterWarrior At first I would spend a few hours meal planning but over time it's got so much easier.  I have a magnetic meal planner on the side of my fridge, which reminds me what I'm cooking that day.  Also to stop MrBB and my two cubs nagging me too about what's for tea!  They have an input too.  I also follow SW and many of the meals are/can be gluten free anyway.  I just need to set time aside to actually cook the meals which can take usually 30 minutes to an hour depending on what I'm doing.  My children actually like home cooked food which is nice to hear as a person in my 40's I was brought up living off a lot of processed food - hence the diet now!

WinterWarrior

Ahh processed food and such small portions (no wonder I got a bit fat when left to my own devices). We would have one of those fray bentos pies, a tin of new potatoes and a small tin of peas between four of us! And the Sunday joints we had wouldn’t make 2 of us a sandwich now. 

I also did slimming world for a while, but got fed up of cooking from scratch every night after a full day at work...laziness really, I should go back to it.

[Deleted User]

@WinterWarrior It was crispy pancakes in our house with chunky chips and baked beans!! Sundays were Bernard Matthews Pork Roll or Turkey Roll -basically reconstituted off cuts covered and cooked in fat.  It was grim 

Closed CC3 today! It's gone so no temptation to use it again.  Feels quite liberating but scary at the same time - the debt is going away.

Looking at changing my job and wondered if anyone on here has ever worked from home.  A job opportunity has come up basically answering calls, dealing with banking enquiries (something I used to do many years ago, in a branch, before children and then in insurance before I got made redundant.). I would love to get back into it.   The only downside it's 40 hours a week but as the children are older (ones a teenager and the other is a tween) I'm feeling a little redundant myself and want to do more.  I'm just not happy with my job anymore.  I have moments when I love supporting children in their learning and seeing their faces light up when they suddenly understand something you're explaining. But with more politics, paper filling and planning, rather than actually teaching/supporting the children, I've really fallen out of love with it.  

WinterWarrior

Proper grim, but I expect the turkey rolls were bootiful...I’ll get my coat 😁
well done on closing that card, Dave Ramsey would be proud. Fabulous to have one less to worry about.
I work from home, have done for a good number of years, 16 maybe. Our company bought into home working in a big way, but now are all about the offices. I live in fear of being sent back! I get lots more done at home, don’t resent late meetings half as much and feel so much happier not fretting about where to park, road works, office politics, etc. I’m a happy loaner though, I much prefer a team call than face to face.