Life By The Seaside

ohdearhowdidthathappen

Thanks for stopping by my diary, thought I’d return the favour 😊 I’ve been off the boards for a while, so didn’t read your old one. How frustrating to have to start a new one, but could be a nice fresh slate!

With your budget:

• I’d personally say things like massages and football tickets would come under personal spends. So you could merge and maybe reduce here?
• You’ve got pet expenses in 3 places. I don’t know what pets you have, but is the pet club a good deal? When I looked at it for my cats, my vet’s wasn’t that competitive at all. Is the pet ‘pot’ for food? If so, I’d try and merge it with your groceries as £300 seems generous for 1 person. We budget £1250 a month which covers food and toiletries for 7 of us (6 eat adult portions), including lunchboxes for all plus 2 greedy cats’ food.
• I don’t know how big your house is, but could you get a lodger short term if you have 2 bedrooms? One of my colleagues rents a room Monday-Friday and makes a very lovely amount. The lodger is only there Monday eve until Friday morning, so she hardly sees them.
• I’d be tempted to chop up your CC and throw all overtime and your pay rise money at it. I know it’s on 0% but psychologically you’ll see it shrink very quickly and then you’d be left with just your loan (ignoring your dad’s one for now). Are you in the NHS? If so, the pay rise has been agreed at 3.5% I believe, backdated to 1st April.
  

Anyway, I think in general your budget looks very thorough and realistic. These are just ‘fresh eyes’ thoughts, feel free to ignore them 😂

Catscoffeecake

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82032116#Comment_82032116

Thank you for stopping by and your insights, always good to get a fresh perspective.

• I did consider putting both under personal expenses, but found that didnt really work for me as I wouldnt have the money for it and rely on credit cards or cancel plans with friends. My hope is to eventually bring my personal spends back down to £150 per month because I pay for both these separately. But massage is for medical reasons and to keep me able to still be working and football is generally only thing I do hobbie wise. Some months I don't buy a ticket but other months buy two which would then be half my personal spends. So I would end up raiding other pots for it. I just found having it separate works best for me and means I don't have to miss out. I work hard, my job is stressful, so to me its important to have something I enjoy that allows me to destress and enjoy my spare time.
• I mean I could have all the pet expenses come out of one pot but I view the two direct debits as a regular bill so comes from bills account. I have one cat, who is an outside cat so needs her flea and worm as she is a rescue that had a historic issue which I have managed to keep on top of with the regular flea and worm. I get 2 free health checks each year as part of the plan and free claw clipping and weighing which is done about every 6 weeks which would otherwise cost £14.00. At the moment this is important as she is overweight so monitoring it to bring it down and has a problem with one of her claws which vet nurse is monitoring to prevent it growing back unnaturally. I don't include cat food in groceries because I bulk buy it online as its cheaper that way.
• Food shopping is definitely somewhere I need to look at, I have stopped menu planning and know that would help massively, but I find myself a bit bored with food. Though I do have food allergy which has to be catered for in it so some things cost more. Again I would like to get this back down to £250.00 each month as it is just me, but I am trying to focus on healthy eating and high protein diet. I also with doing overtime buy things that are convenient and easy to cook, but am aware that my freezer is rammed with food.
• I used to have a lodger, but now having had a friend stay with me for 3 weekends, I dont know if i could have someone with me. I would also have to move my desk out of spare room and into my bedroom and as I work 8am-7pm most days I don't really want my desk in my bedroom if can help it. But it is something I am considering especially as my friend is struggling living back with her dad.
• I have removed my credit card from my phone and put the actual card in my safe which is difficult to get to as have to move loads of stuff out way. I think the credit card probably needs to be my focus even though the loan is one with interest. But my hope is to tighten the budget back up over next few months and as you say chuck overtime and payrise at it. I work for my LA so its with the union the last update we got, hopefully they accept it like last year so we can have it paid soon.

ArtyJ931

In Terms of food boredom and meal planning I find a meal kit (gousto) has been an absolute wonder and a marvel. I got a huge initial discount to try it (70% maybe) and use them a lot now. I’m a single adult for food purposes (my adult son has a different diet) and I get the meal kit for two and so I only have to cook every other night as I do also hate cooking.

I am eating delicious food and always make sure I pick stuff from the 10 minute meals or prepped-in-5 menus. I wait for offers so I never pay full price but I get 5 meals for 2 (so 10 meals for me) for under £50 which is 2 weeks of dinners as I also have a roast dinner on the weekend and a takeaway treat with my son. £50 for the majority of my food for two weeks and to have healthy nutritious fresh meals delivered is good value I think. May be worth trying

ArtyJ931

no I don’t work for any of these companies either 😂

Catscoffeecake

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82032916#Comment_82032916

I used to have gusto when it was on offer and had credit thanks to others using my code. But I found I wouldnt cook the meals and instead use ingridients for other things or put in freezer. But maybe worth consideirng again with the quick and easy meal options. Might find the recipe cards out and see if any take my fancy.

Chocolatefund

Will give my 2 cents;

Your personal spends are not £200. It's actually £370. 200 plus 80 beauty plus 30 football plus 60 cleaner. This is too high for the amount of debt you have. They are luxurys you can't afford right now. Something needs to give.

£20 pet fund. Pet food could be part of your food budget.

£50 Home maintenance fund. Good to have long term, but unless there's something that needs urgent fixing it could probably be left untill at least the credit card is gone.

You need to do the proper SOA. There are categories missing such as birthday presents and parking tickets. (No, they don't come out of personal spends) There is so much miscellaneous stuff that we spend money on, it needs to be properly accounted for.

Your budget leaves no room for debt overpayments unless you do overtime. That's not a good plan. Overtime is not guaranteed and if you do it long term you will burn out.

Go for the credit card first and throw everything at it. It's more dangerous.

beanielou

I have a cleaner weekly. Im disabled & so cannot do myself. It's certainly not a personal spend in my eyes.

Chocolatefund

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82032996#Comment_82032996

Oh, I'd love a cleaner. I have a couple of work colleagues who have them and they say it makes a big difference to thier lives. It's definitely something I'm going to consider down the line.

Catscoffeecake

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82032991#Comment_82032991

Whilst I can see where you are coming from, right now to me its not a luxury, its what keeps me able to work. My health has declined over last 3-6 months, more so last 3 months which means that what I am able to do in my spare time is limited due to pain/tiredness. I have been to doctors several times over last 3 months for help, there support is to give me more painkillers and refer for physio. If I don't have a massage on regular basis, I get more headaches and in more pain which results in me needing more time off work and puts my job at risk. I am on informal monitoring for sickness so right now anything that is going to help me keep being able to work I don't see as a "personal spend". The only actual "beauty" treatment I have is a hairdresser about every 12 weeks which is just a cut, I have been trying to stretch it longer where possible.

Its worth noting that my "personal" spends is also used for extra travel costs outside of petrol, i.e train/ferry/parking. I use it to pay for eating out/coffee with friends which is never more than once a week at most, sometimes not even that. I also use it to pay for things such as when I buy a meal deal because I haven't made lunch due to going to bed early because of pain levels night before. Some days its hard to drag myself out of bed to work, let alone do anything else. I use it to purchase small gifts (not Christmas this is part of my sinking fund), my toiletries and any extra medication I have to purchase. I pay £9 a month from it for my car to be washed, purchase odd clothing on vinted or occasional activity with my nephew. A lot of miscellaneous stuff comes from my personal spends and that's probably not the best way to fund it but its hard to make the budget stretch.

Home fund is for one off expenses such as annual home insurance, boiler service and odd repairs and replacement of items that's needed. its to try and prevent the need to dip into emergency fund for these items or have to fall back on the credit card. I also use it to save for jobs that need doing, such as recently had the bathroom ceiling replastered and repainted. I saved the funds up in home maintenance fund for it as I knew it needed doing and didn't want to put it on a card or it get to point it became so dire it came from emergency fund. I guess its a personal preference thing, I would rather for sake of £50 a month know I have the funds should something go wrong and it take a bit longer.

My overall aim and hope is to tighten my budget in some areas and be able to make overpayments from that as well as PAD's and then pay rise which we should be receiving soon will be an extra £50.00 so will increase monthly direct debit to £100.00. But my budget is a generous budget and I am aware of that, but I also have to consider my health and impact that has on what I can and cant do as I never know until I wake up whether its going to be a good day or a bad day. Maybe I need to look at trying to stick to a lower budget and having the extra in a separate pot and hope I don't have to dip into it. But not giving myself enough funds to cover all my needs is what's caused a lot of historic credit card debt, as well as some impulsive purchases.

We have been guaranteed overtime for at least the next 6 months, its hard getting the balance of overtime to earn more money and enough rest/recovery time. But my thinking is that prior to doing overtime I still needed the massage to keep headaches at bay, so only extra cost that's come from it is cleaner at £60 a month, which I make more than that in overtime. In 6 months when overtime stops or if it becomes too much then its something I may have to consider stopping, but then I end up with having to pay for a deep clean instead, so its just delaying the inevitable cost.

Catscoffeecake

Item returned to amazon so £28.99 to go back on to credit card. Credit card has been removed from google pay and taken out of my purse.

Sinking funds raided to fill "pots" on monzo back up to match YNAB amounts, have taken everyone's advise and taken £50 out of personal money and £50 out of food to see if can manage on smaller budget. Currently sat in a saver. I will make an inventory of cupboards/freezers to create a menu plan based on what I already have.

But am beginning to think I need to start keeping better track of my actual spending to see where money is going especially in my personal money to see if some of these should be from a different pot or budgeted for separately. I also think I need to look at switching my personal spends and grocery spends to a weekly amount and choose a day of week I get my "weekly allowance" I used to do this and it worked well. But then I stopped it when became bit more relaxed about spending.