Put away your purse & become debt-averse

11516182021809

Comments

  • foxgloves
    foxgloves Posts: 11,027
    First Post Name Dropper First Anniversary
    Forumite
    Greetings Spring Debt-busters,
    Sunshine!! Actual sun! The birds are tweeting like mad out in the garden today & my last load of laundry for this week has already blown dry for free. I've done some batch cooking this morning - a dozen wholemeal cobs, a batch of garlic flat breads & 8 chunky spicy chickpea burgers. All destined for the freezer, to help out with continued 'shopping from home'. I love cooking & it frees my mind up to think & my thoughts went back to why on earth I didn't have my LBM a whole load of years earlier. Time for another 'debtisode'.......
    Often on the DFW forums, I've noticed people set out their reasoning for this or that unessential spend & someone will say 'Oh, you haven't had your true lightbulb moment yet', & I know just what they mean, because my own lightbulb did some serious flickering back in the day. Sometimes it was flashing like the Blackpool Illuminations for a whole two days. But then it would sputter & be extinguished generally by me being out & about on a shopping trip & spotting something lovely.
    I've kept a journal for quite a few years of my adult life. They live in a box under the bed & I get one out occasionally to have a dip in to see what I was up to back in the 1990s. It is all too easy to see where the debt came from (my half of it, anyway....the lovely mr f brought his own share to the relationship). There are diary entries where I am obviously worried about money, knowing I'm close to getting my card stopped, or my unauthorised overdraft pulled, & I write about having to 'pull my horns in' financially. There would then follow a couple of days of exemplary behaviour.....batch-cooking red lentil bolognese, using up freezer & store cupboard supplies, avoiding unessential purchases - I've always been a resourceful cook - we had proper cookery lessons at school, the old-style 'Home Economics', I knew all about leftovers & how many meals it's possible to get out of one roast chicken.
    So, there would be a couple of days' diary entries where I went into money-saving mode, writing about how I needed to make sure my overdraft was less next month than this month, how I mustn't borrow any more on my flexible bank loan (Hmmm....now that damn thing is a 'debtisode' on its own, I wonder how many people on here had one of those?), etc. And to be fair, I sounded positive about sorting it out.
    Then, a couple of days later - it's so easy to see my old behaviour from old journals - there will be a entry saying 'Popped into city centre, met **** for coffee, stayed for lunch. Clinique bonus time in Debenhams, fab! Got a box of great stuff. Trousers I liked were in the sale, so bought them, also a top to go with them. Popped in M&S Food for some bits. Treated self to 2 CDs on way back to car park'.
    There would then be only the briefest mention of my financial situation for months.....just things like 'Thank goodness it's payday next week' or 'I must be very near my overdraft limit again' or the worst one.......'I must remember to pop to the cashpoint in case the bank is thinking of stopping my card' (then I'd spend that 'emergency' cash' & if the bank didn't stop my card, I'd still be buying stuff on that too).....I mean, what a total numpty! I can laugh at these episodes when I read them in my old journals, but it does seem odd that none of these flickering light bulbs actually ever flickered into life for longer than a couple of days!
    Oh well, our heads just have to be in the right place to effect any major change, don't they? Better late than never!
    Must remember to share the highs & lows of that flexible bank loan another time.
    F x
    "For each of our actions there are only consequences" (James Lovelock)"For in the true nature of things......every green tree is far more glorious than if it were made of gold & silver" (Martin Luther King Jnr)
  • foxgloves
    foxgloves Posts: 11,027
    First Post Name Dropper First Anniversary
    Forumite
    edited 20 April 2018 at 1:48PM
    Another past 'Lightbulb Flicker' which could have been an LBM, but wasn't.......
    Way before the stressful trip to London on the day the bank stopped my card (see previous post for that sorry tale!), back when I was renting & lived in a flat, I can remember having had a real span of spendy weeks - I didn't have a very reliable car back then, & of course, I'd never got any kind of emergency fund for car bills or unforeseen horribleness.
    Anyway, I can clearly remember this because it led to me making perhaps the worst soup I have EVER eaten in my entire life! I decided to embrace batch-cooking & reduce my over-large expenditure on food. For some reason best known only to myself at the time (& I can't remember what it was) I decided to make a big batch of celery & millet soup. Yes, millet. I had bought a bag while on some kind of health kick. Little round grains better known as budgie food. I made a vast saucepan of this soup (from an actual recipe, not some horrid thing I dreamed up myself for self-flagellation)) & it made 12 portions. I ate one for lunch....for 'ate', read 'managed to force it down without actually heaving) & froze the remaining 11 portions. Of course that's where they stayed, all neatly labelled in the freezer in single-portions.......until I needed the space & defrosted them before throwing them away. I only hope the bin men didn't look in my wheelie bin, as it looked like something skimmed from the surface of a foetid pond. No money saved there, then, & no LBM either. Still almost another 20 years to wait until it finally struck!
    But I do loads of batch cooking nowadays. Proper stuff which we like & I know we'll eat & enjoy. It's massively helpful to pull something tasty out of the freezer on a busy day, to find a nice container of curry & a couple of home made garlic flatbreads on a day where takeaway temptation might strike & a great starting point for meal plans in the spirit of shopping from home first.
    Oh....that vile soup though.......so long ago, but I can still visualise it sitting on top of all the rubbish in my wheelie bin!
    And that was another little flicker, a bit of good intention obviously there, but not enough to sustain any real change. It wasn't my LBM time.

    Hope you're all seeing some of this fab sunshine. It's such a lift to the spirits after so many soggy dark days.
    Cheers all,
    F x
    "For each of our actions there are only consequences" (James Lovelock)"For in the true nature of things......every green tree is far more glorious than if it were made of gold & silver" (Martin Luther King Jnr)
  • foxgloves
    foxgloves Posts: 11,027
    First Post Name Dropper First Anniversary
    Forumite
    Ooooh, it's so nice to see some warmer weather, isn't it? OK, this last weekend has been unseasonably hot, really, but even if it drops back a bit to what's normal for April, it will be lovely finally to have got out of that cold snap & into Spring.
    And Spring means savings on energy bills, which can only be a Good Thing. Our heating has been off since the beginning of April, though we did light the fire on a couple of evenings early on when it did seem to drop very cold. Our house has problems with condensation, so we have two dehumiifyers which we run when needed, but certainly every day in the colder months. Now we don't need them, as it's warm enough to open the windows. I like to have the patio door open too when the sun's shining, to give the house a good airing for free. Other savings - I have hardly used the heated airer this month - I've pegged out the laundry wherever possible to dry in the fresh air for free. Is it just me, or are there fewer creases in clothes which have had a good blow dry on the line? I'm sure I'm not imagining it. And when the weather is warmer, I don't want my bath water to be as hot, so another little saving too, over the summer months. I really would like to accumulate a nice bit of surplus on our energy account to take forward into next winter, & if there was sufficient to claim back a small refund too, for adding to the Loan Pay Down Fund, that would be even better. We've managed this before, but I know gas & electricity prices have risen since then.
    Hope everyone's seen some sunshine this weekend. I'm starting to catch up a little in the veggie garden now. I keep thinking of all that lovely fresh food I will be picking in the not too distant future as well as all the calories I'm burning off by clearing, digging & raking, so there'll be plenty more gardening activity in the week ahead, also plenty of admin,as I get prepared for my Big Budget Day on Friday. Oh, & Ziffit paid me for that small consignment of books & CDs I traded with them the other week......only a small one, around £9, but 'better than a slap in the belly with a wet cod' as my old granny used to say.
    Best Wishes for a great debt-busting week ahead.
    F x
    "For each of our actions there are only consequences" (James Lovelock)"For in the true nature of things......every green tree is far more glorious than if it were made of gold & silver" (Martin Luther King Jnr)
  • foxgloves
    foxgloves Posts: 11,027
    First Post Name Dropper First Anniversary
    Forumite
    edited 23 April 2018 at 3:10PM
    Hi all,
    Oh, bloomin' ebay! It's a mixed blessing, isn't it?! I've made some good sales in the past, just little mostly small value items, but it does sometimes feel like a hassle, to end up with £1.50 or £2.00 on those tiny items. I don't list anything for less than £1.50 now, absolute minimum, as I factor in all the fiddling about & will not give my time for less than that.
    I've got quite a few items listed at the moment. Most of them are the usual decluttering sort of items, which tend to be low value & usually require re-listing a few times to get them sold. It surprises me how items in which there has been absolutely zero interest, even to the point of no or very low numbers of viewers, suddenly sell. This has happened overnight, as 2 items I listed for the final time, but were defo destined for the charity shop next time, have sold. I also awoke to an email from a potential buyer who has made an offer for multiple items. This has been quite fiddly, finding a box, weighing everything with packaging/padding, etc, to see if I think it's an acceptable deal or not. I've decided it is ok. I lose 49p on each item, but there haven't been any other bids & I've re-listed 3 times, so I am 'up' on the deal in terms of having a lump sum which I wouldn't otherwise get, plus another box of stuff is decluttered. Just waiting to see if this interest progresses into a sale.
    The best things we've sold on ebay have without doubt been plus-size clothes. A few years ago, I lost 6 stones & my partner lost 4, so as you can imagine, we had a lot of 'too big' clothes. I took some stuff in at the seams for a while, but I sold our better things & waas amazed at the level of interest. One of my coats sold for £36, another for £20, another for £10 and even the smaller things like skirts, jeans, tops, etc, sold. I think just 2 T-shirts failed to sell & went off to the charity shop. I even sold 5 bras!! I wouldn't ever have thought of buying a 2nd hand bra until I realised just how little some of these had been worn....just 2 or 3 times in some cases, & everyone seemed pleased with their purchases.
    As my weight drops (working hard on this!) from the 16 - 18 I am currently, to the 14 - 16 I aspire to be, I will probably have more garments to list, but for now, it's those smaller decluttered items we all have - books,magazines, CDs, etc. Yes, many of them are for small amounts (that's why I often favour Ziffit) as it cuts down the faffing around, but one thing us debt-busters know it that every little helps. Why wouldn't we turn stuff lying around at home into a few extra quid to chuck at the debt? That's what I'm doing, anyway. And as soon as our Paypal account reaches £50 again, it will be whipped across to the Loan Pay Down Fund asap. Here's to more unexpected overnight sales!
    My bullet diary is packed with this week's task lists.....many of them money-saving. I'm hoping for a good week, & wish the same for all debt-busters on here.
    We can sooooooo do it!
    F x
    "For each of our actions there are only consequences" (James Lovelock)"For in the true nature of things......every green tree is far more glorious than if it were made of gold & silver" (Martin Luther King Jnr)
  • foxgloves
    foxgloves Posts: 11,027
    First Post Name Dropper First Anniversary
    Forumite
    1LuckyLady - I do too! I don't manage it all within a day, as I only ever iron once a week (one of my worst jobs), but I do love the reduction in the weekly ironing pile from clothes getting a good blow outside, & of course, most of all, the fact that I've dried them for free, my favourite 4-letter word!
    F x
    "For each of our actions there are only consequences" (James Lovelock)"For in the true nature of things......every green tree is far more glorious than if it were made of gold & silver" (Martin Luther King Jnr)
  • foxgloves
    foxgloves Posts: 11,027
    First Post Name Dropper First Anniversary
    Forumite
    Hi all,
    Well all that faffing around with ebay yesterday was worth it in the end, as the potential buyer became an actual buyer. It took me a while to get a load of my auctions taken down to replace them with one lot containing multiple items, & I've made a bit less on each item, but on the plus side, I've sold all of them, which I don't think I would have done as individuals, as there had been very little interest. Also, as soon as I can get to the post office, I will have decluttered another box of stuff from our spare room. That's aside from the money, which I've already received & which will be heading for the LPDF as soon as our Paypal hits £50 again. Hopefully not too long, as several little payments have been trickling in.
    Great morning in the veggie garden, planting my lettuces out. There are 27 in total, from this first sowing, but I'm counting it as a dozen, as I shall probably lose 2 or 3 to slugs....though the worst 'pest' here by far is sparrows! I love that they live & nest around our house, as I know their numbers have declined such a lot since the 1970s, but oh my days, the damage they do to unguarded lettuces & beans with those naughty beaks!! Lettuces all netted & fastened down with old bricks. We eat a lot of salad all year round, so keeping a crop of lettuces going for as long as possible is a good money saver. I am going to sow just a pinch of seed every couple of weeks, then pot them up into modules & then I'll do my usual method, which is as soon as I cut one to eat, I plant out another baby one in its place. Red & white spring onions also sown last weekend, plus radishes, & I already have some lambs' lettuce left from my autumn sowing. Watercress sown too, so just a trough of rocket to do, & that should be a really good contribution to greenery for our salads this summer. There's basil in the greenhouse nearly ready to pot up, but it's a bit small as yet, so will leave it a few more days.
    Well, it's pouring with rain now, so no more garden jobs today. Next on the list is turning out the fridge. We have a zero food waste policy in our house & I know there are some things in there which require eating in tomorrow's packed lunch or freezing, so I had better get cracking. Then I'm going to mix up a sourdough loaf to bake tomorrow morning. As for spending? I may order my bicycle today. But that's not a 'spendy spend', as it is a gift. I have done lots of research & have hopefully chosen one which will last 20 years. Last time I chose a bike was at the beginning of the Spendy Decades. I chose it based on its colour & its pretty flowery design. From a practical point of view, it was the wrong size & style of bike for me - it looked lovely but I was very wobbly on it, despite regularly using it around the city centre - & when it was eventually sold, it was at a considerable loss, considering the price paid & its great condition.. Have learned from that & am being Mrs Sensible of Common Sense Non-Spendy Land with buying this new one!
    Hope all readers of my ramblings are ok, & not getting bogged down with life.
    F x
    "For each of our actions there are only consequences" (James Lovelock)"For in the true nature of things......every green tree is far more glorious than if it were made of gold & silver" (Martin Luther King Jnr)
  • joedenise
    joedenise Posts: 16,480
    First Post Name Dropper First Anniversary
    Forumite
    You've made me feel tired with all that gardening! I only grow a few herbs and that's enough for me. I'd rather sit in the garden with a cup of coffee or a glass of wine, reading a book, lol!

    Denise
  • foxgloves
    foxgloves Posts: 11,027
    First Post Name Dropper First Anniversary
    Forumite
    Hi Debt-busters,
    Well, I've had 'Budgetitis' today. mr f is on leave & we did our grocery shopping this morning & enjoyed a (free!) coffee together in our favourite indie coffee shop, then it was home for my Big Budget Day. I'd been raring to go this month. Do you find that as the month progresses, you are just waiting for pay-day to juggle with your different funds to see what can be paid off? Well, that was me all morning, then when I got home & tried to sign on, our online banking was down. Aaaaaagh!! (not TSB, another bank!) Tried again about 5 times, same message, so I did all the peripheral admin jobs until finally it was back online & I could get going.
    I knew this month would be quite challenging. We had a £100 plumber bill to pay (or rather, to pay back the Holiday Piggy, which is where I borrowed the cash from), plus a one-off annual bill & together with a few smaller additional payments, I soon saw that I would have to jiggle things around & prioritise.
    Yes, I know my old pre-LBM solution would be to make minimum payments on credit cards, but I am no longer that person.....we really only use cards for planned purchases to maximise points for vouchers....so I did my usual thing now of getting an A4 sheet of paper & writing balance after bills at the top, then a list of all the other payments where there is wriggle room....either things that can be cut altogether or reduced. Having a budget in place doesn't mean there's no flexibility. If there's no room to be a little bit flexible, I think that could actually be a door back into low-level debt. After trying a few options through, I found I could do a perfectly workable budget by slightly altering when we start June's grocery budget (it just means making May's last for 1 extra day!), by cancelling our fresh fish box this month (a shame, but I don't like the safety-cushion in our bank account to dip too low - I think of it as our budget 'armbands!) & by not paying into 2 of our Savings Piggies. I've prioritised the 4 which I would be least happy to leave 'unpaid'. Just these few tweaks leave sufficient to pay our other CC in full when the bill arrives, my usual monthly level of 'safety cushion, re-pay back the plumber money to our Holiday Piggy, all bills as normal & to leave our grocery budget & personal spends untouched.
    I think it's easier to see solutions when you actually have a budget in place. You can't make changes & tweaks unless there's something tangible to alter, but seeing it all written down somehow helps you to see what adjustments can be done when necessary to make things work within the funds available. Because that's the key, isn't it. OUR money is what comes in every month. There isn't any more. Any extra, unless its from savings, is straying into use of someone else's money, & those 'someones' are going to need paying back. Such a simple thing which I wish I'd cared to grasp decades ago!!
    Anyway, another month's budget done......I don't want to sound as though I'm moaning about the plumber - he did a job which really needed doing, as it was causing damage elsewhere, & I didn't need to dip into our emergency fund this time, which was a bonus. After all the tweaking, I was surprised to see I was still able to make a little payment to the Loan Pay Down Fund - Just £40, plus a little extra from selling some of my home made preserves, but ANYTHING which goes into that fund brings the day closer when that last bit of loan has gone.
    Anyone out there who is at or nearing pay-day....good luck with the number-crunching. We can do it!
    F x
    "For each of our actions there are only consequences" (James Lovelock)"For in the true nature of things......every green tree is far more glorious than if it were made of gold & silver" (Martin Luther King Jnr)
  • Sounds like a good plan foxgloves. I absolutely believe that once you have something on paper it's much easier to juggle. So do something first, then iron out the wrinkles.

    I also love budget day.
    Outstanding mortgage: £23,181 (December 19)
    MFW 2020 Challenge Member #10 0/£2318
  • foxgloves
    foxgloves Posts: 11,027
    First Post Name Dropper First Anniversary
    Forumite
    Dead right, Wish.
    My budgeting system is now well & truly established. It took a couple of tries to get something sustainable that I could work with, but now, the way I do it works. I think that's one of the reasons I now like budget day. It"s proof I can do it & when it's all done & set up for the month ahead, I feel in control.
    F
    "For each of our actions there are only consequences" (James Lovelock)"For in the true nature of things......every green tree is far more glorious than if it were made of gold & silver" (Martin Luther King Jnr)
Meet your Ambassadors

Categories

  • All Categories
  • 342.4K Banking & Borrowing
  • 249.9K Reduce Debt & Boost Income
  • 449.4K Spending & Discounts
  • 234.6K Work, Benefits & Business
  • 607K Mortgages, Homes & Bills
  • 172.8K Life & Family
  • 247.4K Travel & Transport
  • 1.5M Hobbies & Leisure
  • 15.8K Discuss & Feedback
  • 15.1K Coronavirus Support Boards