Doodledos stop drifting and get shifting diary *new SOA*

doodledo_2

LilacPixie wrote: »

£58 a month for phone/net/tv seem high to me. £20 a month clothing for 2 adults and a growing toddler seems a little low as well. If you do only spend that its great but I know that i'm more than that for new shoes for my toddler and she seems to need new one every 8 weeks or so so that might be another source of money disappearing.

Gas and electricity may be high depending on size of home, car insurance ditto depending on circumstances.

One thing i have realised is you get no rewards from these companies for being a loyal customer so shop around.

The TV is with sky, wireless broadband is £5 with Orange and then my phone is the most basic package with BT.

I can't have broadband through sky or Virgin media etc as I live in the middle of the sticks and we don't have cable or other such modern technology lol. Only phone company who we can go with is BT unfortunately. Something to do with fibre optical cabling so I have been told. We tried to swap a few times but always come up with the same problems as soon as we give them our postcode.

The car insurance is for both cars. Both are high performance cars and I recently swapped mine reducing my monthly payments by £20 and getting £100 cashback through Quidco . Hubbies isn't due for renewal till October but will definately be looking around and pretty sure I'll bring that one down too.

My gas and electric I think are fairly average for the size of house. I am in the process of swapping them though. Only £5 on each less a month but another cashback amount from Quidco. Like you say there is just no benefit staying put nowadays.

doodledo_2

robnye wrote: »

petro/diesel seems high, does your OH use the car driving to work?, could he cycle/use bus
electricity - go green... make sure all apliances are switched of at socket if not used.... who needs a clock on the microwave..., power adapters still use electricity even if not charging... ie if its warm unplug it.
£10 per month on haircuts..... change to bi monthly or quarterly

are you using the snowball effect, ie paying the minimum to the lower interest rate cards/loans and throwing any extra at the higher interest rate debts, ie MBNA, you could reduce payments (A&L) to minimum plus monthly interest.... then throw the extra at MBNA, then move onto the welcome finance

Petrol is one our big "problems" we both drive high performance cars bought way before our LBM. I don't use too much as I work from home 2-3 days a week and when I do I don't go anywhere other than walking my daughter to and from school and popping to the village shop.

Petrol costs are mainly hubbies. He works 12 hour shifts as a copper so works nights as well. Where we live there is only one bus and it runs between 8-4 :eek: so no good for hubby at all as he leaves either at 6am or 6pm.

We did look into using a local park and ride scheme but again their opening hours were useless and didn't fit in with his shifts at all.

doodledo_2

Today is my last day working from home this week so need to get my action plan into gear.

First target is to clear our last credit card which is MBNA - total on there is around £1000.

So need to think of some ways to get some extra cash as no room for overpayment until payday.

To do list

1) List at least 10 items on Ebay.
2) Quidco clicks
3) Finalise switching gas/electric supplier via Quidco
4) Venture back to the world of STP

The_Dragon

Sounds as though you have the right idea doodledo - and yes both you and OH need to keep a spending diary it is amazing how that extra cup of coffee, packet of crisps, magazine etc mount up!

dottyanne

your very organised and focused - doing great - you will defo get there and hopefully you will bob on my diary and we can keep tabs on each other!

x

robnye

definately do the spending diary.... you will be amazed at what rubbish you spend your hard earned pennies on.....

re sky, what about freeview reception? freeview box for £20

hypno06

flying visit while at work....just to say hi!!

HI!!

Back later x

Surfbabe

Afternoon Doodledo - A spending diary is really revealing !!!!

Good luck

mizmir

Definitely do the spending diary! Completely scary thing to do! :eek:

doodledo_2

1) [STRIKE]List at least 10 items on Ebay.[/STRIKE]
2) [STRIKE]Quidco clicks[/STRIKE]
3) [STRIKE]Finalise switching gas/electric supplier via Quidco[/STRIKE]
4) [STRIKE]Venture back to the world of STP[/STRIKE]


:j Good day so far. I have even managed to get my ironing up to date :eek:

Tomorrow will be harder as I am in the office all day so need to make sure I use my time in the evening once my likely girl is in bed for some more debt busting.