New Habits Needed...

Debt_Me_Out_Of_Here

BalanceBy50 said:

Thank DMOOH - love your user name but not sure how you shorten it! Do you have a diary?  Will have a look and pay a visit.x

I hadn't thought about how to shorten it - whatever you like haha!

BalanceBy50

Today will not be a no spend day.  I have been and bought a bottle for my childminder as she has acted above and beyond what I pay her for this week and also had to put up with some bad behaviour from my eldest - just wish she drank wine rather than spirits! I have also bought a gift for a friend who has badly fractured her ankle.
Weekly Spends w/c 7th May
Fitness Class - £10
Boys Activities - £12
Brunch on Sunday - £15
Pocket Money - £6
PayPal (Candy Crush) - £1.99 embarrassed about this spend but recording it as I think this could be a big fritter spend.
Gift Childminder - £19.75
Breakfast & Coffee - £4
Total = £68.74/£100

XX

BalanceBy50

I have just completed a PA survey for 90p and I have £2.66 - I am not very good at responding to these and looking to see if there are any available.  Can anyone recommend any other survey sites? xx

WinterWarrior

I also do ipsos i-say but they are long winded and sometimes you’ll get quite far in before they say you aren’t suitable.

Debt_Me_Out_Of_Here

I've found PopulusLive quite good in terms of payout. The threshold is £50, but I did reach that in less than a year as all their surveys pay at least £1. I can't really be bothered with sites where you get like 10p a survey - I'm desperate to pay debt down, but not being paid less than a pound an hour desperate haha. 

Debt_Me_Out_Of_Here

Also check grassroots mystery shopping, I've done a few of those and they were all easy and paid between £10 and £20. 

jwil

I do I-Say as well and find I can get to £5 fairly quickly for amazon vouchers.  I also do YouGov which takes about 2 years to get to £50 and OnePoll which has a £25 cashout.

TheAble

BalanceBy50 said:

Finally managed to sit down and sort my finances out this morning. Everything is straight, largely due to a cheque my in-laws gave us. They wanted it to be used for the boys hobbies so that’s what we have done instead of using our money. Without it though I would have overspent at the weekend. The overspends were on greenhouse glass, ironing board cover & a new mop even though the house pot is empty.  I also, yet again, overspent on groceries. I have recently increased this budget to £130pw and it covers food, cleaning products, basic personal care such as toothpaste & shower gel, cat food & litter & about £12-15pw on alcohol for 4 of us (obviously the alcohol is only for 2 of us 😂😂) I don’t know if this is a reasonable amount or not.  

We allow £100pw for entertainment & a shortfall in other stuff. £10pw is used on an exercise class for DH & I and £10 on a sport activity for the boys the rest, especially during lockdown is frittered away. Today I spent £3.10 on a breakfast sandwich, I took a flask to stop me buying a coffee as I am not a fan of the coffee in the office (I buy the milk & my colleague buys the coffee - it’s Douwe E... so not cheap but I don’t like it 😂😂😂) I also took a salad & some fruit so quite a low spend 😁.

I have transferred £36.98 to my credit card as I’d had a refund for some clothes I returned 😁. I have paid a deposit for a celebration event for my oldest son’s birthday next month - this has depleted my gifts pot - not sure if this is the right pot but I don’t have a pot for birthday celebrations.  it’s my dads birthday next week & nothing in the gift pot for his present 🙈 so that will have to come out of our weekly spends. My youngest son has decided he wants piano lessons in school (we borrowed a keyboard off of my in-laws but it doesn’t work very well and I think this is what prompted the cheque from my in-laws) so we bought a new one however we encouraged our son to pay for this out of his birthday money.  We are paying for the lessons & used the money from in-laws to buy the books.  

Think that’s it from me today.  I hope tomorrow is better weather wise - I just want it to be a bit warmer 😁
xx

You definitely can't be frittering away over £300/month on "entertainment" when you're running credit card balances with interest rates in the high 20s. Every single pound you get your hands on should be going into paying those back asap. You're allowed to buy food, pay your mortgage and other essentials but that's about it.

BalanceBy50

WinterWarrior said:

I also do ipsos i-say but they are long winded and sometimes you’ll get quite far in before they say you aren’t suitable.

Debt_Me_Out_Of_Here said:

I've found PopulusLive quite good in terms of payout. The threshold is £50, but I did reach that in less than a year as all their surveys pay at least £1. I can't really be bothered with sites where you get like 10p a survey - I'm desperate to pay debt down, but not being paid less than a pound an hour desperate haha. 

Debt_Me_Out_Of_Here said:

Also check grassroots mystery shopping, I've done a few of those and they were all easy and paid between £10 and £20. 

jwil said:

I do I-Say as well and find I can get to £5 fairly quickly for amazon vouchers.  I also do YouGov which takes about 2 years to get to £50 and OnePoll which has a £25 cashout.

Thank you so much for these suggestions I will definitely look into them x

BalanceBy50

TheAble said:

BalanceBy50 said:

Finally managed to sit down and sort my finances out this morning. Everything is straight, largely due to a cheque my in-laws gave us. They wanted it to be used for the boys hobbies so that’s what we have done instead of using our money. Without it though I would have overspent at the weekend. The overspends were on greenhouse glass, ironing board cover & a new mop even though the house pot is empty.  I also, yet again, overspent on groceries. I have recently increased this budget to £130pw and it covers food, cleaning products, basic personal care such as toothpaste & shower gel, cat food & litter & about £12-15pw on alcohol for 4 of us (obviously the alcohol is only for 2 of us 😂😂) I don’t know if this is a reasonable amount or not.  

We allow £100pw for entertainment & a shortfall in other stuff. £10pw is used on an exercise class for DH & I and £10 on a sport activity for the boys the rest, especially during lockdown is frittered away. Today I spent £3.10 on a breakfast sandwich, I took a flask to stop me buying a coffee as I am not a fan of the coffee in the office (I buy the milk & my colleague buys the coffee - it’s Douwe E... so not cheap but I don’t like it 😂😂😂) I also took a salad & some fruit so quite a low spend 😁.

I have transferred £36.98 to my credit card as I’d had a refund for some clothes I returned 😁. I have paid a deposit for a celebration event for my oldest son’s birthday next month - this has depleted my gifts pot - not sure if this is the right pot but I don’t have a pot for birthday celebrations.  it’s my dads birthday next week & nothing in the gift pot for his present 🙈 so that will have to come out of our weekly spends. My youngest son has decided he wants piano lessons in school (we borrowed a keyboard off of my in-laws but it doesn’t work very well and I think this is what prompted the cheque from my in-laws) so we bought a new one however we encouraged our son to pay for this out of his birthday money.  We are paying for the lessons & used the money from in-laws to buy the books.  

Think that’s it from me today.  I hope tomorrow is better weather wise - I just want it to be a bit warmer 😁
xx

You definitely can't be frittering away over £300/month on "entertainment" when you're running credit card balances with interest rates in the high 20s. Every single pound you get your hands on should be going into paying those back asap. You're allowed to buy food, pay your mortgage and other essentials but that's about it.

Thank you for taking the time to comment.  Unfortunately not allowing ourselves any 'entertainment' money is not going to happen.  We have tried this in the past and it resulted in us being miserable, resentful and running up more debt as we couldn't sustain a life that didn't allow, in our case, any fun. 
I am working towards a balance and starting a diary is helping with that.  The realisation that I can cut my dfd by 6-9 months by paying an extra £100pm has come about from this diary and i am very much working at paying more towards my debts than previously whilst keeping some fun in our lives especially after the last year.