DD's accountability thread

So why does this May suck so much?

All of our household bills seem to have shot up. We're renting, and haven't had a rent increase since we moved in three years ago which is great. But contents was more expensive, they put our electricity bill up twice (once with the spring bill, and again when I amended my surname on the direct debit...) and if I'm honest whilst I meal plan, I don't meal plan to a strict budget.

We have two cats and I actually pay more into the joint account to build a buffer for vets bills, and there's no buffer for vets bills. We actually have 3p left on the household budget with one food shop for the month to go. Luckily we have £38 in nectar points, £10 in Tesco vouchers and £10 on an M&S gift card so that's fine.

On a personal level, and I know this isn't going to go down well on this site, my biggest discretionary expense is personal training. I can justify it until I'm blue in the face, and at this point I'm not willing to give it up, but I know it's a lot of money at £25 an hour, three times a week. I may compromise and reduce it to fewer sessions, but there are things I'd rather give up first.

I also had a one-off £120 expense for a stall at a convention later this year, where I'll be selling off a collection of stuff, some of which is reasonably valuable - unfortunately we're talking £10s rather than £1000s! I have other stuff to sell in the mean time, and plan to use the bank holiday weekend for that.

I don't think I'd feel so skint if not for the 3p thing, but also a 0% deal on one of my cards ends next month and I'm not finding as many options open to me as I would've liked.

Thanks guys!

I know the PT is a very expensive luxury. My view currently is that when we move out of the area, which we're aiming to do within 12 months, I'll have to give it up and will probably go it alone rather than find somebody else so in the mean time I want to learn everything that I can from him. But it's in the back of my mind that I can cut the sessions down if I need to.

As far as other costs go; I always shop around for insurance though not mid-term. Our electricity bill (no gas) is on a fixed rate but we recently found out that the boiler clock was on the wrong times so although we don't have an economy 7 meter, we were heating hot water that we weren't benefiting from, for example.

I use YNAB, but my struggle typically is that I'm a bit too quick to move money around rather than go 'no I can't have or do this'. This month I've done better on that so I am looking to continue that trend! I'm definitely guilty of not setting aside money monthly for things like insurance, so the contents insurance was £77 out of our food budget which is the better part of two weeks food for us.

Sold another two wedding items, so was able to pay £100 off the MBNA card. :beer:

I started looking at my horse related things earlier but it was overwhelming. I separated out the sentimental bits I want to keep but that's about as far as I could get today. I'm hoping to find a local horsey car boot sale to shift some of the smaller items, and part of me can't be bothered cleaning them but I know they'll fetch better prices if I do. I'm also going to look at selling on FB for the pricier items and save eBay for further down the line.

I still have some wedding bits to list as well so I'd like to do that sooner rather than later too.

Not only is it helping to pay off the credit cards, I like seeing the amount of space in the spare room increase too because it became a dumping ground. Once I get into the swing of selling I am ruthless and nothing in the apartment is safe

I have started making a bit of progress on the horse-stuff clear out.

I found a local-ish car boot sale on Saturday that I could go to, so I've started the (feels like, but isn't actually) mammoth task of cleaning everything. My theory is if it's ready to go, then I have the option to go. Plus if I get it all sorted for one car boot, I can just rinse and repeat for others if I need to. I still want to list some bits on FB because I think they'll be too pricey to sell at a car boot. I also need to re-list some of the things on the wedding site I used to get them back near the top of the listings. I want to hand-wash the bottom of my wedding dress this week too so I can get that listed.

No more payments off the credit cards yet unfortunately but a couple of other wins this weekend!

Thanks to a tip from another poster on here, I got 5 months of NowTV for £25 by buying a gift card. Then the cat biscuits were half price at £17 instead of £35, then I had a £1 off voucher too. I was tempted to buy more biscuits (once I realised it wasn't a mistake - I kept quiet until I checked the receipt!) but figured we can't really afford it this month, and in any case a bag lasts us two months so no rush.

Because I use YNAB, I can run some reports on my spending habits. I was pleased to see that my discretionary spending is coming down, but I want to try and bring it lower still. That covers things like 'spending money', clothes, hair/beauty and gifts. I may split 'spending money' out into further categories, for example meals/drinks out, cinema etc. I have a separate category for bills, one for direct debits, one for debt, then the joint account (and all our reloadable cards) are separate too.

All this said, it feels like pay day - and further progress - is a long way off!