Is There Any Way Out Of This?

lionelflare

im not looking forwars to the big bad budget meeting tonight, just hope that she dosnt get peed off with extreme cut backs. Whats the best way to do it?
Cut down gradually or one big hard chop of all the luxuries? I cant help but think it must be like living a nightmare if you dont give yourself time to ween yourself off things like the odd beer in the house or a curry once a week. I suppose if you dont do it properly at the start then you are more likely to go back to bad habits

Squiffy

If you can afford it, you can still have treats.

Just include them in your budget!

The best way to approach it IMHO is to be totally open and honest. At the end of the day you want a budget that you can live with. Think about prioritising things as essential (e.g. council tax), desirable (e.g. sky TV) and luxurues (e.g. going out) and set your budget appropriately.

Try using the budget spreadsheet here - http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/cgi-bin/viewnews.cgi?newsid1089226742,17582,

It certainly concentrates the mind when you see it all written down!

Rave

Well, to tell the truth our life is a little tedious at the moment, but you can rent DVDs at Blockbuster £5 for 3, buy videos/records at charity shops, boot fairs etc., there are cheap ways of entertaining yourself. To get out of the house we often go and sit round her parents house or her aunt and uncles, both of whom have gardens and are usually pleased to see us (and to be honest tend to ply us with food and booze too;)).

I'm a great one for seeing a new piece of technology that I simply must have and justifying the expense, and she's a great one for not realising that 5 small purchases add up to the same as one quite large purchase. Disciplining ourselves has been hard and I'm still not convinced that she sticks to the £25 a week. When we got married and moved in together our outgoings increased massively (rent etc.) while our incomes did not and we'd spent all the cash we got as wedding presents (and built up around £1000 of overdrafts which I still have) by the time I figured out that we were living way beyond our means. Hopefully this year she'll be able to get a full time job and we'll be able to treat ourselves a bit more and/or save up to buy a place of our own. That's always the way with debts really- a bit of hardship paying them back now will be amply rewarded with much more disposable income in the future .

lionelflare

it realy helps just to talk about it, ive even got her details on to my egg money manager to work it all out!

Thanks again for the help, i guess its all stuff i knew i just needed to hear that other people are doing it and getting it to work for them.

I definately need more things to do with my time though i might look at evening classes or something like that, broaden my horizons and help meet people?

Squiffy

There are many cheap ways to occupy your evenings.

Cycling , walking, and other exercise. A badminton court can only cost a couple of quid for an hour.

Evening classes

Have friends round - home made meals are cheaper than eating out, plus they should return the favour so you get a 'free' night in return

Even simple stuff like board games evenings can be fun for relatively little outlay. (A shame I can't find anyone else who enjoys my favourite board games of Risk and Axis & Allies).

I'm quite a big PC and xbox gamer. However I buy and sell all my games via ebay, so the actual outlay is very little indeed.

Cooking is a great way to combine cheap entertainment, learning skills and saving money. Follow some of the recipes elsewhere on this BB to find out how to turn modest & cheap ingredients into delicious meals.

Make homebrew wine & beer - and then spend enjoyable evenings drinking it. :beer:

lionelflare

I would be realy into the cooking for friends thing but i hardly know anyone in my area, I work 45 miles away from where i live and i only moved to the area 6/7 months ago. Evening classes sound like a good idea, i remember I did a cookery for men course many moons ago and realy enjoyed it. Might have to look in the local paper to see if i can find anything interesting to do.

margaretclare

lionelflare wrote:

Might have to look in the local paper to see if i can find anything interesting to do.

Have you got a park near you?

It's a beautiful time of year, long hours of daylight. Why not get out into your nearest park and see what wildlife you can identify - trees, birds, butterflies, flowers. There's no shortage of interesting things to do!

Aunty Margaret

soon2bjobless

Individual budgets for treats really do help - so does the 24 hour rule - if you want something, thing about it for 24 hours to decide if you really need it - 90% of the time you dont!

Our best treats was to buy ourselves a tent - we have cheap weekends away and scour the net looking for nice camp sites.....

Nickynoo1

I've written a list of things do for free, and things that cost just a little. When i don't want to sit in front of the computer or t.v i have a look at my list to see what i fancy. I made the list because i would always think what i could have done if I'd thought about it earlier.

Free things include, pinic in the park - i'm not talking extravagant, bike rides, walk in country park, watching the ships at the beach, kite flying, roller blading, libary visits, etc.

cheap things, dvd and curry nights (home made of course), fish&chips and a bottle of plonk down the beach in the evening, local theatre plays, etc.

Why not try dancing lessons? Salsa, street etc. It's not just ballroom these days!

Good luck

Nickynoo1

soolin

Although I don't have debt my family and I were recently faced with having to live on just the small amount i earned from part time work. We were not eligible for any benefits as we had a pot of money out aside for the children to go to University. We were reluctant to spend that too quickly so we were ruthless at cutting down our outgoings.

You have £120 a month on phones and TV, cut those back, we managed to stop using mobiles entirely except for emergency calls and we didn't have sky or anything either to worry about.

We found we spent more time in the evenings cooking entirely from scratch (101 things to do with economy mince!) so we didn't just sit around and get bored. We also made a point of trying to go to the cinema once a week on a Wednesday so I could use the orange Wednesday scheme and get BOGOF cinema tickets which cost £6 for the 2. WE smuggled in our own bottle of water or coke rather than buy any refreshments there at all.

Once a month or so we would go to Yates for a meal using Tesco vouchers. a £5 Tesco voucher can be exchanged for a £20 Yates voucher and depending on what night of the week we went out there were often cheap deals or BOGOF on food which meant we could have a meal and a bottle of wine for the £20.

I hope things work out for you, but as others have said it's th elittle odds and ends you have to watch. Coffee from Starbucks, sweets at the newsagents, magazines every time I went into WH Smiths.

Soo