Getting & staying debt free, whatever happens!

Husband has been paid, yay!

I’ve not quite stuck to this month’s budget - haven’t gone into debt but haven’t maintained the savings I’d like for Christmas etc. It’s a very tight budget without a lot of slack which is making it challenging. However my credit card balance is down slightly to £2,117.38 which is great (as you may remember, my mum has paid my other card and I’ve to arrange to repay her at a later date). Hoping that once I receive the pay for my part time job this month I’ll be able to bring this down to below £2k. I’m also arranging to have the money in my stocks and shares ISA (around £1,185) moved to my cash savings account. I’m going to top up my Christmas savings to where it should be, put some money in my emergency fund to start it off, and use some to pay more off my credit card. I’d love to bring it down to £1,500 at this point, but we’ll see as I really don’t want to be leaving savings short. That’s what got us a lot of the debt to begin with!

Here’s our shiny new budget for this month, copied from YNAB (credit card already paid and more funds will be added when we get child benefit, my small wage and also my husband is being paid for some DIY work he’s doing for a family member).

SPENDING - WANTS
Husband - £150
Me - £20
DS stuff & entertainment - £40

(Have left the home & garden, entertainment and charity categories empty for now)

SPENDING - NEEDS

Petrol & parking - £45
Food - £140
Household/cleaning - £25
Pets - £25
Medical/dental - £50 (I NEED new glasses, desperately)
Clothes - £0

BILLS

Mortgage - £726.82
TV license - £12.37
Gas & electric - £77.96
Internet - £20
Council tax - £144
Life insurance - £14.78
My phone - £34
Husband phone - £44
Road tax (towards annual bill) - £12
Car insurance (towards annual bill) - £50
Home insurance (towards annual bill) - £0 as it’s due and I have enough in the pot
YNAB (towards annual bill) - £5

SAVING POTS

Birthdays etc - £0 - total £0 (none this month but need to bump this up a bit)
Christmas - £0 - total £100 (will add to this)
Car MOT etc - £20 - total £20
Emergency fund - £0 - total £0

Haven’t funded holidays or baby fund for obvious reasons in that we don’t have any spare cash!

This month I’m going to try and use the car as little as possible and also be really smart with the food shopping - we’ll see. I would like for us to go and visit my Papa in Aberdeen, but it might need to be at the end of June after the next payday, as it will use a lot of petrol...