Teetering on the brink

ellen_vannin

Well done on finding more spare change hanging around. Well worth hunting down as basically free money.
Maybe make it like a scavenger hunt and a small reward to yourself every time it gets to £10. Even a small bar of chocolate as a reward keeps the momentum going.
Following your diary with interest as I know you can do it. You sound determined enough.

EatingBeans

Thanks @ellen_vannin ! I’ll be honest I didn’t think anyone would actually read my diary, I just thought writing my journey down would keep me focused. I am amazed that so many people have commented.

And you are right about the finding money being like a treasure hunt find free money. I had no idea that I just randomly discarded change into piles so often. I literally never carry cash unless it is for a specific reason so it makes sense really but I am amazed how much the odd coppers and silvers have added up to. I bet there is more in the car. 😁

EatingBeans

Made myself some cheese and cucumber batches for lunch today before remembering dd1 had left her roast dinner in the fridge again. Doh! She regularly gets back from work close to midnight on a Sunday but we still always plate her up a roast so there is something there if she comes back starving. Some weeks she is super grateful and microwaves it there and then, other times it remains in the fridge until someone claims it. Last week got left a day too long and ended up going to the dogs, much to their delight! Today, since I missed the opportunity at lunchtime, I may claim it for my dinner if dd1 still doesn’t want it! 🤣 I just have to remember it! 

Speak of dogs, since the dry dog food looks like it will fall just slightly short of our next delivery I am trying to eek it out slightly with other random foodstuffs. I always keep proper dog food ‘emergency tins’ on hand for this purpose but the pups always love it when we get to this stage in the month as it means they can get some random human food in with their meals. Today it was bananas that had gone just a little too brown for my liking m, and a bit of bread since I have more than I can eat before it goes stale and there is no room in the freezer. This was alongside a smaller portion of their usual kibble.

Now, before anyone squeals that I should rehome my dogs if I can’t afford to feed them only specially prepared dog food, I am just going to say 1, I always get comments about how well my dogs look and get asked what I feed them because they want to try it for themselves, and 2, I absolutely will not rehome either of my puppies. I would sell my house and live in a tent first. That’s not to say I don’t think people should ever rehome a dog, I actually have done just this when I felt it was in the best interests of the dog (I had a dog that was very nervous of children along with 3 young children, so I found a lovely, much more suitable home for her), but, for these two dogs, it is just not on the cards. 

Could I go out and buy more dog food or just buy cheaper quality food to stretch the budget further? Yes. But I would rather have better quality dog food and add the odd roast dinner or fruit to it instead. Each to their own. 😁

oh, and I completed another couple of Prolific surveys over lunch too. 😁

Edit: To be clear, just in case someone reads this and thinks about doing the same thing with their dog to save money/waste, it is important to know that I don’t just feed my dogs any old human food. Definitely no grapes or chocolate or anything else that might harm them. So please, please, before you consider this as a potential option, read up on which foods are safe to eat! Stay safe x

trizzyrascal

Hey @EatingBeans .I'm a newbie here too. I empathize with your situation. I too have Just over £30k of debt. I've got a plan to clear it. 
I've got a few techniques that earn me an extra few hundred a month which I use to just survive, or to determine if I can have a break from the hard graft of penny pinching and just have a nice time (which is super important but the way, debt fatigue is real)

Currently like you, I've got about £700 a month spare from my paycheck to smash through debt over payments. But I top it up with 2 main strategies.

1 user testing. Similar to surveys, but instead of mindlessly filling in £1 surveys, user testing, you get paid $10-$100 dollars a test (15 mins to an hour). Essentially businesses want your opinion on how their website works, or your thoughts on a particular product they sell. It's all online and is a mixture of you clicking around and speaking your mind as you go while youre recorded. And some actual interviews, where someone will chat with you for an hour about certain things. I like it because there's no wrong answers, you just give your opinion. 
I do about 20 of these $10 ones a month. I try to do 1 every weekday evening/lunch. 

Its free to join and then they pay you into your PayPal. Easy. 
(Removed by Forum Team)

Secondly, and one of my all time favorites, Facebook marketplace flipping. 

I scour fb marketplace for free things, mainly coffee tables, drawers, Ikea furniture that can fit in a car. You'll be surprised what people give away for free! 

Then I pick it up, normally I have to give it a wipe down. I don't get anything that I have to do any major work to, then I relist it on marketplace after a couple of days for £30 average (obviously depending on the product) do 2 of them a week and you've got £240 extra a month.

Little tip, join as many local buy and sell groups as possible, when you post, your listing will appear in the members timelines instead of people actually searching marketplace, so you get much better exposure to sell your stuff.

These things really add up and can be the difference between fuel in the car, dinner on the table, and actually comfortably overpaying debt. 

It still keeps me up at night, but I'm pushing through, aiming for end of next year to be debt free. 

You and I are on the same journey, so feel free to reach out and chat 

EatingBeans

Sitting at my desk at home waiting for a meeting to start. Hmm, I wonder how much change is just sitting on my desk I ponder. 15minutes later, (the meeting got cancelled), I now have close to another £10 to add to my pile to be banked! Seriously, I think I’ve had a blind spot to coins up to now as this is a desk I cleaned completely just last week. I swear I must be picking coins up, cleaning underneath them and putting them down again! Tbf most are actually in some kind of vessel - there were 3 purses just sitting on my desk! All purses now empty, one to go back to being used, one to be binned and one to be sold. 

It’s a slow day at work (don’t worry, I am sure I will make the time up tomorrow), so I decided to go through and cut up all my old cards while I was at it. Some expired as far back as 2019! I have two different B&Q loyalty cards, not sure which is valid, and two different loyalty cards from the coffee place at work, no wonder I need seem to reach the threshold for free coffee. Of course I only had 1 driving licence 😉.

Purse now cleansed I decided to pop to town to post a couple of things for ebay and to pick up the much needed cupcake cases for the blueberry muffins. 😋

En route I was struck by two thoughts:
1, This ‘print the label at the post office’ thing is genius. The only issue is remembering which package is which but that is easily fixed by writing the postcode on the package using a pen. This brought me back to the ink question and a note to self to ask the girls if they actually require a printer. Nothing stopping me cancelling the subscription, NOT buying any new ink and just seeing how long I can go before I miss it. I can always just resign up.🤷‍♀️

2: Next time I am in town I need to do a quick lap and see which banks actually still have branches there. That way, once MBNA has made a decision on my credit limit, I can see about switching one of my accounts to the one with the next best deal. It is really bugging me that I have a growing collection of coins to bank but to actually bank them I have to drive to the next town. I’ve planned that in for Thursday. 

EatingBeans

Thanks @trizzyrascal thanks for dropping by! Great to hear from someone in a similar position who is also just trying to furiously pay down their debt. You definitely sound like you have a plan which is awesome.👍

I’ll be honest, the user interview thing I will be sure to be looking in to but I am not sure I am brave enough to do the flipping thing. It is only a small town around here and I suspect the flipping might be somewhat frowned upon. I am actively avoiding facebook marketplace as the local community forum can be a vicious place sometimes. Ebay seems safer! 🤣

I wish you all the best for paying down your debt, you’ll have to let me know how you get on. 

We got this! 💪 

ellen_vannin

Or quite easy when using self service tills to use the coins up. For instance did you use some coins when buying the cake cases.

EatingBeans

Hi @ellen_vannin funnily enough dumping lots of loose change in the self service machines at check outs is historically how I have gotten rid of change but somewhere along the line I just stopped carrying a purse (possibly around the time I added cards to Apple pay), and just started chucking it in random piles at home it would seem. Going forward, now I have cleared out a decent purse, I will probably go back to at least trying to carry it about but I don’t think I will ever be a big cash spender as the benefit of paying by card is I can track what I have spent a lot easier. For instance, I did totally think about buying the cake cases from the change on my desk but then I know I would just spend it and still leave the remaining balance in my spending account untouched. Just felt like a slippery to overspending on the sly for me. I guess I know what i am like!

DrunklMunkee

Good evening @EatingBeans;

I do hope you are well, and that I have not interrupted mid-muffin 

So - just checking to see how you are getting on, and I remembered from an earlier post - you mentioned that your finance position has improved by £569.19 in January.

WOW!! - that is fan-flipping-tastic. It only goes to show what can be achieved with focus & working toward an end goal. Honestly - brilliant.

Also, following on from @Andyjflet's excellent advice on Dave Ramsey and the baby steps - it got me thinking about another of the little DFW tricks - I learnt on this forum.

It was the 100 step challenge or 1% challenge. I am not sure that the challenge still goes on, but it works a little something like this....

When one looks at their overall debt - it can feel a bit overwhelming. However, if you break it down into 1% chunks - it becomes a lot more achievable, psychologically. In my instance - £60+k was an eye-popping amount, but to take the first of just 100 steps, I needed to be rid of £600+ and that reduced my anxiety levels a good deal more. I think that in the end - I set myself a 1000 step challenge and brought the milestones down to £60.

Also, and here is the clever part, it doesn't have to apply to the overall debt. it can be applied to the debt you are concentrating on at the time.

Take your O/D - I think you said the current figure is about £380 - then each of the 100 steps is going to be £3.80 . Just think, after one cancelled meeting today and recovering long lost pennies - you took nearly 3 steps towards the O/D being repaid. At this rate - you'll be sprinting by Easter. Yay for cancelled meetings.

I appear to be a dopamine junkie - trying to get my high wherever & whenever I can get them. {thought to self - why did MSE ever get rid of the ROTFL emoji}. 

I'll let you get back to your muffin now. Take care

EatingBeans

Ah, what an evening! It started so well as I managed to secured the spare roast dinner for myself, (dd1 went out for dinner with her bf and dd2 had curry she wanted to use up), AND I also finally got a couple of delicious Blueberry muffins - they were worth the wait! 😋

I then TRIED to cancel the ink subscription, only to be foiled at the very last minute. First, the website started glitching (first time in all the years I have used it-it could obviously sense what was about to happen), then, out of nowhere a ‘new’ service appeared… ‘print on demand’! No more monthly subscription, just pay for every 15sheets I print whenever I print them. Plus I can roll over 15sheets from my existing plan and no payment taken until I have used up the rollover sheets. They got me. Well done you super smart Smart printing! So, as far as I am concerned, no more printing, but if by some miracle I suddenly need to print something the ink currently in my printer will still work while I debate my printing needs. Seriously, all this brain space for £1.49pm! I think I am losing the plot. 🤣

Anyway, then came time to feed the ever hungry labradors, this time with a side of scrambled eggs that were past their date - I have way more than I can possibly eat in a reasonable time. The only issue with this is explaining to the furry dustbins that they have to wait while it cools… cue puddles of drool. 😬

They eat, have their usual playtime and then, when they would normal calm down and snuggle on the sofa to watch tv, they just start moseying around - still no tv you see. I thought nothing of it until, CRASH comes from the kitchen. 😳 The youngest pup is an avid counter surfer and has just reached the height that she can get her nose on the rim of bowls etc and if she finds anything that might even remotely contain something, she flips it off the counter just to check it out. We have all become very aware of this fact and wash things straight up or at the very least push everything to the back, but today someone obviously forgot. Three smashed plates, one defunct bowl and a partial damaged floor later, I am beginning to ponder whether waiting to get a tv remote to avoid the postage costs was really a smart decision! 🤦‍♀️ Happy to report, both pups absolutely fine, apart from the crushing disappointment from being told no she can’t go and lick the plate shards! ah well, got to love ‘em!