Little By Little...

kindofagilr wrote: »

Hey :wave:

I'm here waving you on

You will do awesome, I have complete faith in you

Try not to feel deflated, you have done so much already xx

Thank You :beer:. I'll be trying my best to sort myself out. I honestly can't believe this debt has racked up so much!

Lydia42 wrote: »

Don't feel deflated. You're doing great. Write a list of the things you want to get done, and pick off a few easy ones to start with. That will help get you motivated and you'll be able to see things getting crossed off the list. My 'to do' list seems to keep growing but i can actually see i have achieved something when i look back, instead of panicking over what i haven't got done.
Just a quick suggestion about your council tax - have you spread this over 12 months? It's not something they seem to tell people, but if you call them they do offer this as an option instead of over 10 months. It gave us a bit more breathing space each month. Little things soon add up.
Hope you have a good day :-)

Good luck with the gym by the way. I went back to slimming world this morning - summer holidays have definitely caused tighter trouser syndrome hahahaha

Thanks. I had hoped to get a free 12wk SW membership, but my gp surgery stopped it earlier this year and only offer the gym/swimming membership. Given we got whacked with £105 NHS fine a few weeks ago, I'll take anything I can get off them lol. Good luck with SW. I am pondering joining back up myself, but will try just cutting back on junk along with the gym for now.

Unfortunately the council debt in my list is a housing benefit overpayment from when dh and I were both out of work earlier this year. When he got back into work we left it a couple of weeks to tell them as he had to work 2wks before he got any wages. We do pay our council tax over 12 months, although that is higher than it should be again, due to the switch over between council tax benefit and going back to paying it all... it is about £35pm higher for the rest of the year! Maybe one day I will be able to pay it all off at the beginning of the year and not have to worry about it monthly

Afternoon, Diary :A

Yesterday turned out a pretty busy day! My eldest son bought a motorbike, so I had to take him to work, then collect him at lunch time to go to the bank, then take him back to work. In between that I took younger two to trampoline centre (we had bought the summer passes) and buy last minute school bits inc lunch boxes! I then had to get in the attic to dig out all the husband's motorbike clobber. Dh got home at 4pm then we picked Ds1 up at 5pm and set off to get the bike. The M6 was rammed yesterday evening and it took forever. We also had to stop for some food on the way back as we were starving, having had no dinner. We finally arrived home with the bike at 10pm! I feel shattered today.

Anyway, because of the hectic day yesterday there was nothing done on the dfw plan, but today I decided to go through our statements for the last 3 months to ascertain why we are always short for the bills (this month we are short £350) I am embarrassed to post what I discovered, but here goes:

On a mixture of clothes, the pub, takeaways/fastfood, holiday (in August), and random other stuff like Amazon/ebay/Wilko/B&M types spends, plus NHS fines and car repairs... We spent:

June: £489:(
July: £646:mad:
August: £906:eek: :mad:

There are other random cash withdrawals that I have no idea what they were for so haven't listed them. Also in August I have spent about £200 on DS1's birthday (which is in November) So that will be on top of the August figure. Just the pub and takeaways/fastfood comes to around £200 in July and August and £150 in June, but most of that was for my brother's wedding (daytime meal and evening drinks), so slightly more justified :cool:

I need to work out some way of separating the money, so we don't spend what we shouldn't. June is when DH started work, which is why it is the lower figure. But when he was out of work we didn't have a penny spare each month, everything was (should have been) accounted for... Then in July and August we had (I have just worked out) £240 per month as 'spare spends' not taking into account saving for Christmas, birthday, or car repairs. So really we may have had about £50 to spend on treats... No wonder we are up the creek without a paddle

I am going to get DH to sit down tonight and show him the figures. I'm not going to lie and blame it all on him, although he is slightly more frivolous than I am, but we are both to blame... we both spent the money and we both need to stop.

I feel like this diary is like a non-religious confessional Although I'm not sure if I feel better or worse for my outpourings. At the moment it stings. I feel stupid, useless and deluded. Like, how on earth could I not see this. I did keep saying to DH that we were spending too much, but I never actually checked PROPERLY and worked out HOW much we were overspending.

I hope we can come up with a plan to cut this ridiculous spending habit of ours.

I have updated the figures as some regular monthly payments are going out in the morning, but I am at work all day tomorrow so might not get a chance to do it.

I am also starting a spending diary, so every penny we spend this month is recorded....

Willing2Learn wrote: »

It is a great thing to have a spending diary to track where every £££ is going. It really helps to watch every penny, to reduce unnecessary spending from your monthly budget

Good luck on your journey...

Thanks. I have started it from yesterday....