My Intentional Journey to Debt Freedom

foxgloves

@LTMA - It really does come down to finding a basic budgeting system which suits you & then tweaking it (by experimenting, really), until you arrive at an end-product which works in an optimal way for your circumstances. I would have said by the end of last year that I'd got our budget set-up & adminstration thereof pretty damn perfect for us, but then I thought of a little improvement, then Mr F suggested another, both now in place & working well. I think having been very much a non-budgeting over-spender for well over 2 decades, my overall aim was simply to produce a home accounting system which, together with the major attitude shift, would keep us within our monthly income. The savings pots, emergency fund & personal spends all arose as helpful methods of achieving that. Once we were also mortgage-free, we extended what we'd learned into building savings, both for the future & practical things such as our Car Fund, which we put in place to ensure we won't need Car Finance or a raid on our general savings to replace our vehicle when the time comes. It does take time (which is what I originally set out to say) to build one's own optimum budgeting system. We are all different. Despite being perfectly IT literate,  I know I am someone who is more motivated by nice stationery than software, so my monthly budgets are handwritten (& sometimes this involves coloured pencils!) in nice A4 notebooks. I am also.more motivated by success than budget failure so this helps me keep target figures realistic, rather than setting myself up to fail. I also accept that not every single item of expenditure always need to be allocated to a specific pot, as long as it is planned. For instance, if we have planned lunch out for a special occasion, I will write this in as a line in my budget when I am setting it - the important thing being, as always, that I know we can easily cover the cost without dipping in elsewhere or sticking it, unplanned, on a card.
It's really good that you are discussing new ways of working (lol, that sounded like a public sector training course!) with your partner & trying different things to find your own Best Budget System.
F x

Less_Talk_and_More_Action

Thanks @foxgloves. There are so many good points in there 😁. The one that resonates the most at present is about being realistic.  As said in an earlier post, I am very all or nothing and to be successful in my endeavours I need to be more “something all the time” in the form of small consistent wins.  Learning to be patient is proving challenging but knowing my mindset,  once I see pots building up and debts going down, I will build on those small successes.  As always, Mr L is on board.  If I’m really honest, he isn’t the one who has accumulated this debt but he’s happily alongside me. 

L x 

PennysIntoPounds

Happy 200+ posts! You're doing fantastically; it's self awareness and a willingness to learn and try that makes the difference to genuine quality of life. No-one is ever going to be 'perfect' and without any wants or vices or indulgences, and thank goodness because the point of being mse (imo) is to be able to enjoy things without financial fear, not to become an automaton whose life has got smaller rather than richer in enjoyment and contentment x

P.s. three cheers for Mr L, a good partner who's an actual partner is a thing of joy (and safety). Those of us with good 'uns are lucky indeed 

Less_Talk_and_More_Action

What a lovely post @PennysIntoPounds. Thank you so much.  You are so right about the bigger picture and this is about how we want the rest of our lives to be 

We are still very much a work in progress but I’m happy to say there is progress.  The sweet spot for me, and mentioned by so many of you, is the control of the impulsive and ultimately unsatisfying expenditure. I have made improvements in this area but recognise that the habit isn’t very far below the surface and I need to keep pushing to be that intentional person I want to be. 

I am very pleased with 200 plus posts and all of your contributions have kept this fresh for me past the normal time when I would have run out of steam.  My usual modus operandi being about three weeks of extreme action and complete denial (weight loss as well as debt repayment) and then sight of something I just have to have and off I go again!! So to be 6 weeks in and chipping away at things and, more importantly, seeing the value in that approach is excellent.  

Mr L is indeed a great person - very much more laid-back than me but a good counter-balance to my more volatile approach to things.  He’s had some good insights over the last few weeks.  Who knew the benefit of me actually listening 🤣🤣. 

L x 

RosaBernicia

@foxgloves your budget sounds beautiful - I would absolutely be motivated to try it but sadly, even the loveliest notebooks don't have YNAB's ability to compensate for my innumeracy

The main reason I use software is because I only have to get the numbers in the right boxes and something else does the maths! 

foxgloves

I do have Excell spreadsheets for monthly bills, savings pots & personal spends, @RosaBernicia, but my monthly budget/accounts are always written out longhand. It's a case of whatever method works best for us & we are all individuals. The key thing is that we work to underspend our monthly income so as to free up funds for debt repayment & then to build the security of savings. It doesn't really matter how we get there.
F x

Less_Talk_and_More_Action

I do love my notebooks @foxgloves and have written out our budgets in a lovely notebook that I had already.  I do think (for me anyway) that the act of writing it is somehow more of a commitment.  The other factor for me is that I spend a lot of my working day on laptops doing one thing of another so doing something away from a laptop is always a bonus.  

I get what you’re saying @RosaBernicia but I like adding everything up (at the moment anyway) as that feeds into wanting to be more intentional and the very act of adding and subtracting and writing in a notebook really solidifies everything in my mind.  

As I said before, I tried YNAB a while ago and whilst totally getting how it works etc it just wasn’t for me but one of my friends absolutely loves it.  

No doubt I will end up with a system different to my current one but I’m enjoying the opportunity to hear about what everyone does and seeing what works for me.  

I have a bit of a random question for a Saturday for anyone really.  I am reviewing all my skincare and I’m really interested in how long a standard 50ml jar/tube of facial moisturiser lasts for you.   

Have a great Saturday.  

L x 

Cheery_Daff

Can't answer your moisturiser question I'm afraid... but I'm enjoying reading about the different ways people manage their budgets

We are both pretty thrifty by nature, so haven't had the 'spendy years' many of you talk about, although I did get all in a muddle with a credit card when I had a very low income for various reasons, so I found my way here trying to dig myself out of that hole. 

Anyway, these days, I manage pretty much all of our finances. Mr Cheery wouldn't spend much - but he also wouldn't do any kind of price comparison or bank switching. 

I use YNAB these days, and I do like it - it's worth it for me, but it was a bit of a steep learning curve and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone in debt, purely because there's a cost attached. 

So I manage my pots through YNAB, rather than separate accounts, although we do actually have multiple accounts for different reasons. 

• Main joint account - all bills come out of here
• Main credit card - paid in full every month, only have it to rack up points -currently 1% of all spending
• Joint savings account - decent interest for an easy access
• Joint account with another bank that I use for matched betting - we have two high interest regular savers attached to that
• Another joint account with another bank that we just opened for fee-free spending abroad on a recent trip - there's a high interest regular saver attached to that too

Then we have various other accounts that are in the process of being switched hither and thither, that we don't actually ever use. 

You'll notice we don't have individual accounts... We did, but they were never used, and they both got sacrificed recently to the bank switching gods. All our money is joint. There's quite a disparity in income - my wages account for about 77% of our income at the minute. BUT Mr Cheery is quite a bit older, and had pretty much paid off his mortgage when we met, so it all works out pretty evenly over time I reckon. 

We don't really consult with each other when we want to buy something, although we'll usually mention it if it's over about £60 ish. 

One quirk of our system - Mr Cheery often gets paid in cash for his self employment work. This usually lives somewhere in the house, and I don't count it as part of the budget - purely for simplicity. It only ever comes in relatively small amounts (under £150), and he'll usually use it for his own general spends, or I'll take some rather than using a cash machine, but it does build up, and every so often gets plonked in the bank. 

I sometimes think we 'should' have separate spending pots each, but really, what we do works well for us right now, so no need to complicate it. We've been together over 18 years now, and have very similar tastes and spending habits - I can see it very much wouldn't work otherwise!

Anyway, very interesting reading how other people sort out their budgets Enjoying your thread too, it's lovely seeing how you're working out different things

PennysIntoPounds

I also can't help on the 50ml as my moisturiser comes in either 100 or 200 and lasts long enough I can't remember when I opened it! It's Olay and I like that it goes on easily rather than being thicker and having to be deliberately doled on if you know what I mean, but I should look into getting one with SPF30 now I'm in the maturer skin age. Any recommendations for not expensive, slatherable moisturiser with UVA and UVB and SPF30 very welcome!

Less_Talk_and_More_Action

Thanks so much for your insights @Cheery_Daff. We have always had completely joint accounts since we got married.   We celebrate our silver wedding later this year.  Mr L has been retired for a number of years (he was made redundant) but with a good occupational pension that also had a good income attached to it before he reached 60 and took his pension (he had very good terms attached to his redundancy).  He does everything around the house as I travel and work at a senior level and so it feels like a good balance.  He also does the dog walking during the week. 

This is definitely a joint journey though and he is very much on board.  

We have a way to go but I have definitely changed my mindset.  I was scrolling through clothes today and saw lots of things I liked but I didn’t buy anything 👏👏.  That is rarer than it sounds and I think shopping was a form of entertainment!!! 

Patience is one of the harder things for me as I’ve said before- appreciating that the small steps all add up.  All of your comments reinforce this and that definitely helps. 

I’m not so good advising on the SPF @PennysIntoPounds in terms of facial moisturiser but I am a bit of a cave dweller and don’t really sit in the sun.  I bought really good sunglasses with the money from my first Saturday job when I was 16 and that was certainly a good decision and I do wear sun cream if I’m out in it but separately to a moisturiser.   I know what you mean about moisturiser going on easily - I am loving the Skin F*od light by Wel*da very good - rich but not heavy.  I have really dry skin but some rich moisturisers just sit on it and don’t absorb.  

Enough of my ramblings.  I generally seem incapable of a short post 🤣. 

L x