A space for my thoughts - tackling debt once and for all!

Debtfree2026

Ok, so I am mentally struggling a little here.......I am wishing the days away so that I can get to next pay day and put more into pots etc! January is dragggggggging!!

I have been distracting myself by being organised, which thankfully is something I really enjoy doing.

We are going to Lapland in December (booked since Feb last year!) and my husband has had a £50 gift card for Mountain Warehouse since last March.  I noticed they currently have a 70% off sale so used the gift card to buy myself and our kids some baselayers and some socks in readiness for the cold.  I only had to contribute £8.56 so that's a really good saving!  Obviously I need more stuff but I'm hoping my 'clothing' pot can assist with that. 

Meal planning is going well, so I'm continuing with that.

My eldest daughter is 9 and she is fully immersed in the budget saving!  She had a couple of suggestions for more saving pots - including garden!  She is quite right - we do need some landscaping doing on our garden and need to save for this!  But I have said that I want to get some debts paid off before starting another pot!

Debtfree2026

Also another thing - my eldest and I do Race for Life every year and I got a 50% off code if I sign up before the end of January so I've signed us both up for that and taken the money from the Entertainment pot.

LzzyIsGod

January is always a long old month! I'm sure there are extra days snuck in somewhere 🤣

I'd keep an eye out on places like Vinted or local selling sites for children's ski type clothes in the spring - people will often sell on outgrown and lightly worn ski stuff but good saving on mountain warehouse!

Catlady2025

Just checking in to agree with you. January feels so long!

Sounds like you're doing really well though. I'm finding that throwing myself into the forums is really helpful. 

Debtfree2026

LzzyIsGod said:

January is always a long old month! I'm sure there are extra days snuck in somewhere 🤣

I'd keep an eye out on places like Vinted or local selling sites for children's ski type clothes in the spring - people will often sell on outgrown and lightly worn ski stuff but good saving on mountain warehouse!

Yes, I'm definitely going to check out Vinted!  That's the kind of stuff that I would have just bought new in the past....so learning my lesson there!  I checked in with a good friend who has two girls slightly older than mine and she has some ski jackets that they have grown out of and she is going to give me for free, so that's really lovely and helpful!

Debtfree2026

Catlady2025 said:

Just checking in to agree with you. January feels so long!

Sounds like you're doing really well though. I'm finding that throwing myself into the forums is really helpful. 

Thanks for checking in!! Yes I actually didn't come on yesterday but most days I do lurk on here to keep busy and get some ideas!

I'm doing an online HR course at the moment - well, I'm supposed to be - so I've made it a priority to focus on that and that's providing some much needed distraction!

Debtfree2026

So another Sunday begins...... all feeling a little under the weather here but clearly it's been going round.  My online food delivery is due in an hour or so, hopefully to get us through the next week.  Looking at my pots - I've got £127.42 left for groceries and £66.11 in my personal spending pot.  Will be interesting to see what I have left this time next week - I'm intending to use any surplus towards my Nationwide CC (the only one incurring interest) and then start my pots from zero for the following month.

We had an unexpected but necessary expense this month - our youngest is at preschool and they raised some concerns with her speech.  Our eldest has used a wonderful speech and language therapist for a few years and we asked her to do an assessment on our 4 year old.  Thankfully the SALT has reported that she has no concerns and our daughter does not require her assistance at the moment but the bill for the assessment was £200.  I had exactly £200 in my extra-curricular pot so I've used that to settle the invoice and upped the pot to £300 for the next two months to make up for it.  This is exactly the kind of thing that used to crop up and we'd be near/in our overdraft at this point of the month and would have to go further into it to settle the invoice......so this is definite progress! 

Whilst writing, my food order just arrived and honestly, I tried to stick to below £100 for this weekly shop.  It was £99.59 and there isn't a whole lot to show for it.  I am planning our meals in advance and that is working well but I need to get that food bill down.  This shop did include some bits that aren't weekly - like cat litter, bulk bought cat food, washing up liquid, coffee, butter - so some of that is stuff that I won't have to buy next month.  The last online shop was a week and a half ago -I was super restrictive and nearing the end of this week we were out of snacks and didn't have much choice for lunch stuff so I'm trying to work on that.  My husband works 6 days a week normally so eats lunch at work - my girls have school dinners and I just tend to have soup but as husband was poorly he was home yesterday and I hadn't really accounted for that.  We are allowing ourselves one takeaway a week and yesterday was Chinese so we have some leftovers for lunch today and we'll do a roast chicken for dinner, I'm then going to make my husband and I chicken and mayo sandwiches for lunch tomorrow.  We have a lot of pasta based dishes planned for this week, I won't lie - my daughters will probably love!

Right, time to have a nosy at some of the other diaries on here and see how everyone is doing!

warby68

Well done with the unexpected bill - its always a bit of a blow but so much better when you have the funds and don't need to dig out the card.

If you're struggling with the grocery bill, you could always try the takeaway bill instead - even one less a month should let you buy some kind of easy cheat meal with your shopping instead with a few quid left over towards the shop as well. I unloaded a 70 W'rose order yesterday and honestly, it looked like little more than you used to shove in a carrier bag as a top up shop !!

Cara_

Hello Debtfree2026

I have just read through your diary and you are doing well. It's good that you had the money put to one side for the unexpected bill - it does take the stress and knock on effect to your monthly budget away.

I'm in agreement about the cost of food so it's difficult to reduce the bill there but the Old Style section of the forum does have lots of tips. One tip I took on board was to only buy joints of meat and to cut them up myself. It does take some time but I've saved a lot of money doing this - I'm not sure if this would be something would have time for but there are lots of ideas and I am sure you will find something that would help.

Good luck with the debt busting.

Cara

Debtfree2026

I can certainly buy some joints and cut them up myself - that sounds like an excellent idea!  I am trying to make changes - we had some bananas that wouldn't last this week so I made banana bread yesterday, which always goes down well at home!  We had the roast last night and so much leftover - I've brought cauliflower cheese into work for my lunch.  We can have the leftover roast potatoes with sausages and Yorkshire puddings and peas tonight for dinner and I'll use the leftover chicken tomorrow night for a curry!  That means the meals I did have planned for tonight and tomorrow can be pushed back and will last us longer.  Win win!

I was reading some other diaries and had some musings that I didn't want to clog up other people's diaries - hence returning to my own to put down my thoughts!

Impatience: Now that I've had my LBM and am quite frankly, obsessed with getting rid of this debt, I just want to get it gone!  Unfortunately time is the only thing that can get rid of it - I need my monthly salary to reduce it each month and realistically that is going to take a couple of years.  If the business continues to do well perhaps I could look at another pay rise next year and that could help to reduce it quicker but I'm not sure how realistic that would be. I'm certainly not going to rely on that idea.

I've reviewed finances this morning, with a week to go until payday.  I think I will have at least another £50 surplus which I intend to put towards my Nationwide CC.  It's so nice to see the numbers go down!  I'm looking forward to doing an end of month review and working out how much I've paid towards everything, I think it'll be pretty satisfying!