Facing up and cracking on

BBC Good Food for students sounds great thanks!

Hi everyone,

Should be going to bed really....

Debt ticking down very slowly, MBN/A are really annoying as can't seem to have a fixed payment to them, so we have it set as minimum (as it is the longest 0% card) and each month we pay a pound or two less.

Christmas shopping pretty much done present wise but I think it is the food bills that get us as we love a tasty Christmas treat :-).

OH has been very on board with the money saving for the past couple of weeks which has been great and what we spent in November was in the green (black?) by £700!! Amazing to think we have that much money spare if we work really hard. In reality this year it has been spent on new boiler and a few other house improvements. It sounds so romantic buying a house where everything needs doing but in reality it costs a fortune!

Looking forward to finishing work at the end of the week and then two weeks off. Obviously planning low spend, snuggly Christmas activities.

I'll be back with a proper total at some point, and hopefully it will be in the 17s. I wonder what it will be this time next year!

Debt total 1st Feb 2018: £17,386.56

Writing down what we spent for 2017 went really well and were so pleased to see we spent less than came in! This time last year we were always going into our overdraft and now we don't. We even finished the year with a really healthy bank balance. We were quite frugal and sensible in the run up to Christmas but I did buy quite a lot of things in the sales. It was all covered by Christmas money but it felt a bit weird as normally Christmas money goes into the general pot. It was nice to replace a couple of household items that were on their last legs! (like a leaky kettle and very old hand towels).

We've done a bit of DIY this month so don't expect the budget to be healthy so far this year! At least for the first time I will know exactly what we spent though.

DIY spends are in and bank balance is bad!! We went over what we had saved by about £5k. Considering half our house was refurbished I'm not beating myself up about it but I just want it to be gone ASAP. We were quite happily ticking along living within our means. Our debt problem is all about not saving really. All of our debt is from buying a house, buying a car and now renovating house. It's all on 0% and ticks down nicely each month. I think it's the stage we're at in our lives though. We have a family home and no intentions of moving so hopefully things will get easier and easier! (yeah right). Anyway, focusing on ebaying and other methods to bring in extra income.

Trying to decide if something like swagbucks is worth it? On the days when I work from home I can do little bits here and there and would like something more varied than surveys.

The 1% challenge has given me the motivation to get extra money through overtime and selling, I have managed to pay off 10% of one of the debts in a month. I'm so excited by this, can't wait to do my next 10%. I wonder if I can keep up this level of enthusiasm for 90 more %!!

I have downloaded a debt tracker app. It doesn't really do much, just has the debts listed individually and as a total. It also gives a debt free date of July 2023 if we just pay minimums! Payed off my chunk of 10% and have got this down to June 2023. Definitely a bit of a lightbulb/inspiration moment since I downloaded this as I want to get this down!