Daily update + bill update 26th June

I've been so busy and tired I haven't blogged for the last few days. I seem to have hit a nice vein of freelance work at the moment. Unfortunately, it has also coincided with me starting work. Tres knackered.

I thought I'd do a stats update for this month as I'm sitting here working out my bill money for the end of the month. Hubby will once more have to lend me money but not so much this time thankfully.

Mortgage + buildings and contents insurance £631.77
Council Tax £125.00
Credit card 1 ~£165.00
Credit card 2 £ 11.75
Loan £189.08
Charity £ 18.00
Savings £ 5.00
National Insurance Contributions 2 £ 10.40 do not know if still paying due to new job
Interest payments on current accounts £22
Float of £10 in each current account £20
Sponsorship charity payments £10
Birthdays and anniversaries £50

Total £1258

I have £146.52 in current account 1 and need to transfer £300 from current account 2. This gives me £446.52/1258, so I am short £811.48 assuming the cheque from project 1 clears.

However, that does not take into account I have an overdraft facility which I use every month. Currently, I am not in my overdraft on Current Account 2, so I have a £200 facility to use there. As tempted as I am to say that now I'm out of it I should stay out of it, I am only on step 1 of Dave Ramsey's plan and need to accumulate an emergency account first, so I am going to continue using that account as normal.

That gives me £646.52/1258 and I am short £611.48.

Instead of asking for the full amount from hubby, I am going to take into account that my loan, which makes up £190 of that outstanding amount, is due on 15th July so technically I could wait another 10 days to see what money comes in and I might be able to pay that myself. If not, hubby will have had another two wage packets then and can give me it.

So, for now I need £421.48 from hubby. Call it £425.

This is the first time I have budgeted for forthcoming expenses in this way, which has made it all look a lot worse. I have yet to receive the £30 for the rock I sold on ebay, which is annoying me now as this could have been used to cover birthdays.

Update 23/6

It's been a long old day.

I was out the door again with hubby at 5:30am taking half of the fridge with me to avoid buying any food. Amazingly, we were told we could go home to watch the football as long as we made the time up, so I was gone by 2:30pm and hubby picked me up. But I'm still up and have just finished a leaflet for a freelance client.

So far I've managed to avoid spending any more on fares so far this week. However, we did splash out today and spent £2.70 on 8 small bottles of french beer to watch the football and the tennis this afternoon. It was lovely to have a treat, but tonight we had ANOTHER pizza as I was writing. I still haven't been shopping or done a meal plan so tomorrow's dinner is a mystery, but I am fearful for my dietary diversity. I console myself that on the nutrients front today I had tomato and sweetcorn in my pasta, a banana and two glasses of apple juice plus a multivitamin and a fizzy vitamin C.

But in a moment I'm going to enjoy something completely free - sleep!

First day over - 22/6

Well, I survived my first day back at work.

I drove in with hubby at 5:30am, us having a matey cup of tea in the car together, and sat in the car park from 6am until hubby was ready to go on his rounds at 8:30am. I took a flask of tea with me, a sandwich, some biscuits and fruit so I didn't spend any money on food from the local shops.

Just for once, as I was starting at 10am, hubby drove out in our car to his area which he normally doesn't do. There's normally a work's van so he doesn't incur wear and tear on the car, but today I was to be his companion so he opted for the car. I spent 40 minutes walking around with him so I got a little exercise and then he broke from work and dropped me off at the office.

Lunch was bought for me, I finished off some other bits of food I had left over and then a text message from hubby at 3:30pm to tell me he would be in the area at my finishing time of 5pm meant I managed to spend no money at all today!

Yay!

We did a little shopping in the supermarket on the way home for some essentials such as milk and a couple of things for lunch for the week but also ...naughty, naughty...pizza. Hubby wanted to cook tonight so I could had a lovely relaxing bath this evening and read a magazine (bought as part of a subscription for me at Christmas) but he was also tired so he bought a cheap ready prepared one!

Shortly I will go in the kitchen and cook some pasta for my lunch tomorrow so I can aim for one more NSD!

Reflections on work

It's very, very early and I'm sitting here trying to get my head round the fact I'm going back to work again. Part of me is disappointed, but part of me is very proud. I'm getting my act together and doing what's best for my family, for me and hubby. I'm injecting a nice solid £16k into my annual pre-tax income and that is nothing to be sniffed at.

I can't help thinking though that part of reason why I've had to go back to work is a scarcity mentality on my part. I've realised I've been charging less than I should have been and that has created a snowball effect and attracted clients with less money to me, so now I have to run faster on the wheel just to keep up with where I used to be. Instead I should have knocked back the low paid work and let my writing speak for itself. In fact, really this job has been taken because of a scarcity mentality on my part. Should I have held out for a full-time contract in London that would have paid me more? Yes I think I should have. I took this because I was worried I wouldn't have any money, and the low annual pay could come back and bite me in the butt. The jobs in London would have given me an annual salary of up to £47k. Mind you that is paying me for my six years science training. This job is £27k pro-rata and really doesn't use much of my science background at all, so maybe it will work out in the end.

Anyway shortly I'll go in the kitchen, get lunch our lunches together, and start to get ready to head out the door by 5:30am. I will be without my laptop for three hours while I sit in the car at hubby's work so it will give me some time to reflect on what I'm doing and why.

Update 21/6

It's been a weird day.

I've just lost a client, but am not upset. The fact I'm not upset surprises me, but thinking about it I feel a sense of relief. He made me feel uncomfortable. Not every encounter, but enough that my red flag radar would go off a couple of times a month. Last year he went very over the top about a contract offer I had from abroad, talking over me and dismissing me what I was saying. Apparently I am so like him I wouldn't like it and wouldn't go (I am nothing like him). I found that insulting. He was pleased when it fell through and I really didn't like that.

Anyway, this time he was very passive-aggressive and didn't want to pay extra for extra work. Just not possible when you are a freelancer - you can't not charge for writing. I guess that eventually familiarity breeds contempt. Just to show how passive-aggressive he is, he didn't bother to send me notice that he didn't need my services any more - just kept quiet until I contacted him about the week's column then gave notice. I pointed out the value of what I provide hasn't changed just what he can afford and left it at that.

I intend to charge him for the last three columns though, which for a while I felt guilty about as he had provided me with a reference for this part-time job. Then I realised this was silly. He agreed to do the reference before this matter had sprung up and had given me testimonials before. I had to think how I was going to get around this, so in the end I decided to ask the Office Manager over there to withdraw that reference and ask a standby contact that I had provided last week. In all conscious I can't accept a reference from someone who is no longer happy working with me. At the same time that I wrote this email to the Office Manager, I was copied in on an email from my standby reference. He had been asked last week to do a reference and provided one of the most glowing testimonials I've ever seen.

Then, within 10 minutes of getting his email, I get a call from a lovely gentleman in London who wants me to write a sales letter. Cost? Just shy of the same amount I was getting from the ex-client. The universe works in weird ways. I really do feel good about things at the moment.

Meal plan
I haven't been shopping for food yet this week so the meal plan is bit up in the air. Tonight I can throw together an omelette and chips I think and I will make up some dough tonight for pizza tomorrow night. After that though, I'll have to sort a meal plan and some shopping.

I've had a NSD so far

Update 20/6

Well the day started well and continued - that's a rarity!

Naughty cuddles, pancakes for breakfast and on my daily walk I found a whole bag of books, two of them published decades ago about the air war of the WWII which hubby was dead excited about me finding. So now I have a lovely lot of books to read during the mornings if hubby gives me a lift in.

We went to visit my parents for Father's Day and zoomed by the tip on the way. I managed to find a brand new double sheet, all clean and starched, plus a leather handbag that needed only a quick skim over with leather polish to bring it up good as new. Then my mother gave me a nearly new bra and some lovely facial refreshing mist and a few minutes later my father dug up a huge bunch of lemon balm from his border. Apparently the stuff grows like wildfire there. I have plans for a herb bed in the garden so this will really help me get it started.

Yet again I forgot to put something in the slow cooker before we went out, but I'm determined to not cook it on the stove so I will be throwing everything for the curry into the slow cooker and whacking it up on high for 90 minutes to see how that does. So we haven't had a NGD, but we have had a very low GD.

To stretch the food pennies a bit further, I cut down the bolted rocket and stripped off the lower third of each stalk's leaves with the intention of making a spicy rocket pesto. There should be a good two portions once whizzed in the food processor with oil. I've never done it before so I hope it is nice and not too spicy.

June's mid month spending update

In a previous post I set myself a Grocery Challenge of £100 a month for June. I actually did this without checking the existing receipts. Come to think of it, we haven't checked our spending in any category. So, with my fingers crossed, here's the totals of our spending so far this month.

Food
£33.13

Household
£3.10

Petrol
£77.04

Non-car travel
£17.35

Cats + hedgehogs + chickens
£19.30

Birthdays etc
£5.50 (cards for Father's Day and BIL birthday)

Takeaways, treats and entertainment
£10.00 - KFC (see this mornings post)
£7.60 - beer and snacks, Le Mans gathering at BIL

Renovations + garden work
£31.62

I'm really chuffed with the food budget. It makes me feel a little better about the KFC last night.

Finally managed to get some meter readings done and its provided food for thought. Since Thursday we've used twelve units of electricity. We've used no gas.

Hmmm...actually we must have used gas because I had a shower yesterday and the hot water has to be heated by the boiler. I think perhaps that the last unit on the electric meter - which isn't used for the meter reading as it measure 1/10th of a unit - must have been near zero and the shower didn't use enough gas to use a full unit. I washed the dishes using the dishwasher, which I assumed took water from the boiler, but it may just have a thermostat that heats the water. Hubby and I rarely run the hot tap long when washing so the water we use is barely hot and the boiler hasn't been running that long.

If I'm honest, I'm really pleased. I might try and go for a NGD again tomorrow and do a curry in the slow cooker. Mind you, I'm thinking about pancakes tomorrow morning which will be done on the stove top. I'll see how I feel in the morning. After dinner at my parents-in-law, hubby now has some leftovers tucked away for lunch on Monday and there's some leftover saladings for the chickens which they will love.

And finally, frugal find of the day someone was giving away free tomato plants at the end of their drive. I took six and hubby is going back tomorrow with half a dozen eggs for them to say thank you. The chickens will be delighted - they do love their tomatoes on a hot summer's day and it seems to refresh them. And they look very cute with tomato seeds all over their beaks.

Update 19/6

It's Saturday morning and I have so much to do I'm not quite sure where to start.

The food budget went slightly wonky last night. I had planned to make us a curry and went out for a 40 minutes walk at 6:30pm before starting it. Then I got back in, lay on the bed and fell asleep. The next thing I know it's 8:15pm and hubby is waking me up to tell me he's going to KFC. He was so hungry I couldn't persuade him otherwise.

So that's £10 spent that didn't have to be because of my lack of planning. I could have put the curry on in the slow cooker earlier that day or put the curry on that evening, turned it down low and gone for my walk so it would be ready when I got back. The only golden lining is it ended up being a NGD for us and a NSD for me, plus we have an invite to a Father's Day buffet for tonight so I don't have to cook. That makes it another NGD today and, as I'm in today, another NSD. I will do the curry tomorrow.

Lesson learned.

I have some writing to do for a project today I have to begin roughing out a post with my budget and current grocery spending to date.

"Winners do what losers don't want to do."

"Winners do what losers don't want to do."

I read this today and it struck a chord.

The loser in me wants to spend £2000+ on building a wall out the front of my property with the wonderful reclaimed stone we were given for nothing. The winner in me knows when you've got one foot in the financial grave and you nearly didn't make all your payments this month you don't continue to dig by spending out £2000 plus on a wall.

The property crash has resulted in the house dropping in value. Add to that it is an ex-council house with restrictive covenants so it doesn't rise in value at the same pace as others. There is a ceiling price. We don't think we'll get the money back if we built the wall, and we're looking to move in the next few years to downsize and release a chunk of equity to reduce the mortgage.

We've told the neighbours about us building the wall so now we'll look like idiots.

We've told our families about building the wall so now we'll look like idiots.

My pride is stinging. But I'll get over that. It will do me good to have a dose of humility. What I'm having problems with is our families.

Our parents have been attempting to force the money on us as loans but we've refused because even though there is no interest rate with them we'll still have to pay them back. None of them seem to understand or respect our decision, and I'm finding it tough now to carry on keeping a brave face in front of the onslaught of their very vocal opinions. My father told me yesterday if he were a neighbour he would have put in a complaint about the stone on the drive looking a mess. I guess that's his way of trying to force us to take the money and get it done quickly. Aren't family horrible? My sister doesn't seem to comprehend the link between spending money on a house and not getting it back. Every time we try and explain they poo-poo what we're saying and come up with reasons why we shouldn't.

I'm struggling. I really don't like my family very much. They want to make me a loser.

The stone has to go. I'm ringing a reclaim yard today to get it gone.

The Dave Ramsey plan

I've become a great fan of Dave Ramsey lately. Unlike many gurus this one actually makes sense. How rare is that.

He solved for me one of the great mysteries of paying off debt - everyone says there's no point having savings when you're paying off debt. But what happens when the car blows up. Or the boiler breaks down. How do you pay for emergencies? On credit? Then what's the point of paying off the debt in the first place?

Dave's plan makes a lot more sense.

Step 1 - First you start paying the minimum amounts on your credit cards. As quickly as you can you build up an emergency savings pot. Dave recommends $1000, although if you earn less than $20,000 drop this to $500. I'm working on worst-case scenario and assuming that I will bring in only part-time income for six months - which amounts to £16,200 before tax - so I intend to have an emergency account of about £500. If I earn any extra I will add my estimated self-employed tax payments (30% of my income) into this as an extra buffer. That means once business expenses are taken into account I should have some leftover at the end of the year and I can use it as an extra debt payment.

Step 2 - Then you take the smallest debt and pay that off. Once that's gone, you add what you used to pay onto the next debt. This starts a snowball. Dave suggests starting with the smallest debt so you get a quick win under your belt. Again, a lot of debt payment plans suggest paying the debts with the highest APR first, but for me that's the biggest debt. If I started by doing that I'll be paying that thing for months and months. I'm someone who needs a reward now and then, and Dave's way I would get a reward more often in the beginning when my debt-paying muscles are weak. By the time I get to the biggest, ugliest debt I'll be stronger and desperate to see it go. If you have an emergency, you use the money in the savings account. Then you go back to baby step 1 and minimum payments on the debts and build that emergency savings up again.

"When you pay off a nagging $52 medical bill or that $122 cell-phone bill from eight months ago, your life is not changed that much mathemetically yet. You have, however, begun a process that works, and you have seen it work, and you will keep doing it because you will be fired up about the fact that it works." Dave Ramsey

Step 3 - Once the debt is gone, you then start building up your savings to cover 3-6 months of living expenses, so if you lose your job or need money for medical expenses etc you can afford it.

Step 4 - Once that's done, you then increase your payments (or start paying) into your retirement plans. Dave suggests 15% of your income should be put into this in addition to what your employer pays in but exclude any State pension. Do not rely on this in any way, shape or form.

"I don't count on an inept government for my dignity at retirement, and you shouldn't either. Getting older is going to happen. You must invest now if you want to spend your golden years in dignity." Dave Ramsey

Hubby has a pension at work he has been paying into for the last 16 years. It's not a lot, but it's a start (I have to check what he pays and what his employer pays). I don't have one but will need to sort something out when I start work next week otherwise I will be enrolled into the company's scheme. As the job is only a six-month contract, I think that would be a waste to leave the money sat there after I go so I've got to sort out a stakeholder pension. I will be putting in 3.75% every month and the company will be putting in 7.5%.

Step 5 - The next part of the plan won't apply to us - college funding for your children. We have decided not to have children. We can't rule out the possibility that one of us may go back to university, but at the moment I can't see that happening unless hubby is twiddling his fingers when he retires.

Step 6 - Pay off your mortgage early. We are already paying extra this off to the tune of £150 a month. We are breaking with Dave's plan on this point and carrying on doing it all the way through. We've been doing it for nearly four years.

Step 7 - Build wealth and give. This is a long time in the future ad I can't right now even imagine what this would look like.

I want us to have paid the debt off and be working on baby step 3 within 3 years.

I want us to be at baby step 6 within 5 years.

We have life insurance so if anything happens to one of us the mortgage is covered. We have wills, although I'm not 100% happy with how they have been written so I need to check and see if they are fully legal.

Update 17/6

Well, I managed my NSD and No-Gas day yesterday, but forgot to take meter readings and that liver left me with a bit of a queasy stomach to be honest.

Very irritatingly, I discovered that the client who wrote me that cheque on Tuesday postdated it to the 24th June, which I am very angry about. I do not accept post-dates cheques and I forgot to look and make sure it wasn't. He won't get away with that again. He's been stalling paying me on both occasions I did a job for him with a number of different excuses (he actually did "the cheque is in the post" one and of course nothing turned up). However, one client has now paid £100 deposit for a project, part of which I did last night and this morning and the rest is to be delivered next week, so hurrah!

Mumble, mumble, moan, moan. Grin and bear the piss-takers through gritted teeth.Only a few more days before I can get my teeth into some new projects and be paid a salary at the end of the month.

Ok, fresh shiny new day.

Another NSD for me today, which shouldn't be too tough.

I will take meter readings today

I will finish darning hubby's socks tonight - only one to go but the hole is large and his other socks are sprouting holes faster than I can darn them. I think some preventative darning is in order.

I will spend a few hours roughing out the sections for the booklet. I did a lot of reading yesterday and some emailing back and forth between Italy and Belgium with questions. I'll definitely be working on this at the weekend but it is worth it for the amount of money involved.

While sitting here this morning I've decided to spent the first part of the day tuning into Dave Ramsey's radio broadcast from the previous day. Dave's show airs every day for two hours and it always kept in the archives on his site. It might help me focus a little more on paying off my debts.

Today's income looks like:

Project 1 - outstanding invoice £200 PAID BUT CANNOT BANK CHEQUE UNTIL 24TH
Project 2 - outstanding invoice £337 PAID BY BACS 17TH JUNE
Project 3 - outstanding invoices $200 past due
Project 4 - £100 deposit PAID BY BACS 17TH JUNE

Project 4 - work to start when deposit clears to be billed £100
Project 5 - work in progress to be billed £1150
Project 6 - work in progress to be billed £200

This means I have £637/£1145.85 so far towards July's bills.

Frugal meal - homemade pizza

About a year ago we decided to have a treat and rang Domino's Pizza one Friday night. The treat turned sour after we had ordered a basic pizza and we discovered one pizza was going to set us back £17 without any extras like garlic breads or drinks. That put the kibosh on that. I can make two medium-sized vegetarian pizzas for about a £1. A luxury pizza with all the trimmings I can do for about £2.50 - £3.00. No brainer. No Dominos. Order cancelled.

Basic dough recipe (dough mixed in bread maker for convenience)

250ml water
2tbsp of olive oil
1lb of strong bread flour
1.5tsp salt
2tsp sugar
A 7g packet of fast-acting dried yeast (If I want thin and crispy I leave it out)

Sling all the ingredients in the bread-maker in the order stipulated by the manufacturer and run it through one dough cycle. If doing a thin and crispy, leave out the yeast and just let the machine mix and beat the dough around for a while until it looks smooth and elastic.

Now I know it sounds very lazy to let a machine do something I could do by hand but I'm on the go and working full-time. When I'm retired I'll mix by hand and enjoy the process. Right now, I just want dough while I'm getting in the washing, writing press releases, talking to clients, mowing the lawn and having sex with my husband. In fact scrub all of the former and just stick with the later. I'd rather use the time to have sex with my husband than mix dough by hand. Call me strange.

Split the dough into two and roll out thin. Now I have a silicone baking tray that I use to roll the dough onto and, once topped, put straight into the oven. Saves vital minutes and a lot of swearing later. Why? Two reasons; 1) because rolling takes time and the elastic nature of the dough means it doesn't want to stay put where you left it. It will keep contracting itself back, but persistence is the key. That and grasping the edges and pulling them out gently. Once you've got it there, you don't want to have to peel the dough off the surface of something and try and move it somewhere else 2) if you use a baking tray you have to add extra oil to make sure the pizza doesn't stick. I try and use as little oil as I can get away with to take pity on the old arteries.

Right topping: I currently use chilli sauce on the base of our pizzas to give them some real zing, sprinkle over some grated cheese and then top with chopped or sliced onions, peppers and mushrooms. If I have it in the fridge, I might add some bacon and chicken (roast leftovers are good for this) or if I really want to push the boat out, I buy pepperoni, ham and some minced beef (which I season and fry) and add that. Then I top with more cheese. That's my luxury "hey honey it's our wedding anniversary" pizza. ROFL.
(As Dave Ramsey says, you have to live like no-one else, so one day you can live like no-one else.)

Then I stick each pizza in a hot oven at about Gas Mark 7 until the cheese is browned. If you use a silicone tray, slide the pizza off before cutting. Food resistant they may be; resistant to sharp cutting implements they are not. Ask me how I know.

Weekly meal plans

Nothing terribly exciting for meal plans for this week.

Breakfast for me is usually a bowl of bran flakes with sultanas, a couple of boiled eggs or toast with marmite and a banana. Hubby starts works at 6:15am and takes some kind of sarnie in at the moment, although this week I know he's been sneaking off with jam sandwiches. I'm convinced he's a cousin of Paddington Bear - he loves jam sandwiches so much and they are so not healthy. He claims they are because a) the jam is made with fruit b) the fruit in the jam is homegrown with no pesticides and c) I made the jam. he ignores the fact the jam is made with an equal weight of sugar to fruit. Can't fight that kind of twisted logic ;-)) He also takes with him either satsumas or bananas. I know he has food stashed at work that he doesn't want to tell me about until I get the thumbscrews out, which usually means he's scoffing cheap biscuits and sweets. he has such a sweet tooth, although at this rate he won't have any teeth at all.

Anyway, lunch for him is essentially the same as my breakfast choices; bran flakes with sultanas, a couple of boiled eggs or toast. At the weekend if we're extra good I'll do sweet pancakes and dark Italian coffee for breakfast.

Dinners this week are pretty boring with only one meat and one fish meal but I'll try and spice them up with chillis or herbs.

Monday - vegetable omelette and chips
Tuesday - tuna arrabiata with pasta
Wednesday - liver and onions with potatoes
Thursday - homemade vegetarian pizza
Friday - chickpea and kidney bean curry with couscous
Saturday - mushroom and courgette pancakes with potato cakes and extra veg
Sunday - naughty treat of either fried egg sandwiches with token salad or the whole hog; fried egg, chips and beans. Then we lie on the floor and groan with the indulgence of the whole thing.

Occasionally I might do desert, usually of the spotted dick variety (another food hubby is obsessed with) but usually I do enough dinner that desert is not required.

Frugal meal - liver and onions with red wine

I never used to be a huge fan of liver until I discovered this baked recipe. My previous attempts using a pan on the stove top were ok, but resulted in liver that was a tiny bit too hard and stodgy at the end, and had a thick feel in your mouth. Once I started baking it and adding red wine, the liver became beautifully soft with no thick taste. In the past I've added some bacon if I've had it, but unfortunately at the moments tasty little extras like this are outside my budget unless I have some money left over at the end of the month.

Recipe for 4 (although we eat the lot!)

Two medium onions (around 7.5p)
One pack of lamb's liver (92p for 400g)
A generous glug of red wine (I usually use 'cooking' wine, that is wine that is a bit too vinegary to enjoy on its own. Friends and family are only too willing to let me have theirs so for me this bit is always free!)
A palmful of fresh thyme (free from garden)
Plain flour for coating the liver (so little it's less than a penny)
Salt and pepper

Total cost: 99.5p

Slice the onions and lay on the bottom of a lightly greased baking dish. Coat the liver in the flour which has been seasoned with salt and pepper. Lay this in the dish. splash over the red wine and add the fresh thyme. Take a spoon and mix it all together, then shake the dish until the ingredients settle into a layer. Cook for around 30 minutes in the oven at Gas mark 6, covering with foil if necessary if it looks like it's cooking too quickly.

Now, tonight for a change I decided to try and cook this in the slow cooker and make today one of my No Gas days. I've also added some extra veggies - some mushrooms and courgette - that are getting a bit old in the bottom of fridge.

After an hour on high, I can honestly say this is a no-go. It has cooked too quickly - far quicker than the veggies - and has that thick taste that I'm not keen on. I've had to rescue it by adding more water, half a stock cube and some cornflour to make a casserole served with boiled potatoes. It was ok, but I wasn't overly keen. I won't be cooking liver like this again!

Update 16/6

Right, the plan for today is to earn money.

The last two days I've spent arranging things by phone and email and I've earnt barely any money. I need to put my head down and power through some work so I can get billing asap. I may not get the money this month, but will have it there for next month's bills.

Today is a No Spend Day (NSD). Hopefully that should be pretty easy to achieve. At some point over the next few days I'm going to start undertaking some challenges such as a Grocery Challenge, Clothing Challenge and a Utilities Challenge.

Grocery Challenge
At the moment we are spending about £100 a month in food and household items, and that has to continue so for June the Grocery Challenge is to stick to £100.


I used to keep a tally of cat food in with our grocery budget, but realised that we have no real control over this so have removed it. It adds up to about £35 a month to feed them. Two of them eat tinned Kitekat and the third is a senior now and has developed a sensitivity to normal tinned food so we've had to switch her to senior pouches. If we can get this on offers, fine. If not, we don't skimp and try and save money.

We cannot alter the brand they eat to save money, as previous attempts have resulted in uneaten food lying down for days and complaints from neighbours that they are stealing food from them. What we have done is found a cheaper brand they will eat and stopped feeding them ad lib as they were putting on too much weight.

Clothing Challenge
This actually won't be so hard as I don't spend much money on clothing. Martin bought me an shift dress for interviews a few months ago and I intend to team that with items and use that for my new job. I have enough clothing in my wardrobe to mix and match if necessary and my mother keeps giving me bagfulls of stuff every now and then when she has a clear out.

So the challenge is to not spend any money on clothes this month.

The only thing we really need is new socks for hubby, but I sat down last and darned all the holes in his socks to try and keep them going a bit longer. I also have holes in my Levi jeans, which are on the inside leg seam of the thighs so i need to look into patching that, and a hole in the elbow of one of my jumpers so somehting has to be done about that.

Thank God for old books about sewing. I have a 1935 copy of The Art of Needlecraft by Polkinghorne and that has a great section of darning and repairing clothes.

Utilities Challenge

Our last gas bill was shocking. Part of that was the usual winter heating bill, but part of it is my range so I have to find ways to cut down the amount of gas used for cooking. I used to read the meters about a year ago but got out of the habit. I know in the winter we use about 10kwh a day. When we had the range out of action for three months one winter that dropped to 3.5kwh a day, yet the electric bill only rose by £25 over this period. part of that is because I used electrically-efficient gadgets to cook with - the slow cooker and the microwave.

The challenge for the next seven days is to a) read my electric and gas meters every day to get an idea of how much we use and b) have two 'gas-free' cooking days. I'm also going to look at switching our gas account to someone cheaper.

As for water, we are already in credit with the water company to the tune of about £27. I'm very frugal with water in the garden and use water butts a lot. Also we tend to have a quick shower every other day and have a bath only about once a week. My washing machine is new and very efficient, plus I have a dishwasher that helps me cut down the amount of water I use. I would like to look at using rainwater to flush our toilets with, as I really object to using drinking water to flush them. A lot of people don't understand that - they think there is a separate supply for drinking water, but in reality it all comes in from the street through one pipe.

Frugal meal - tuna arrabiata

Tonight's meal I stumbled upon by accident when I made pasta and forgot to buy the jar of arrabiata sauce. Sometimes when I'm busy that happens, so I threw together anything I could to make a passable red chilli pasta sauce that I could add tuna to. We liked it so much it stuck and now I no longer buy jars of sauce. This is also much cheaper - I would buy a supermarket branded 350g jar for 88p. This I get 400g+ for just 44p.

Basic red sauce recipe for 2
One onion (from a pack of about 20 for 75p; 3.75p)
Smidge of garlic (1p - usually from an ancient tube I have in the fridge. It's so old it has pricing in farthings ;-))
400g tin of chopped tomatoes (31p)
2 scant tsps of sugar (1p)
Good glug of chilli sauce (5.8p - bottle cost 58p and I can get 10 good glugs)
Squirt of tomato paste (1.2p - 36p for the tube and I get about 30 squirts)
Cost of sauce: 44p

Small tin of tuna in brine (54p)
12 oz pasta twirls (18p - £1 per 1kg. Hubby is a very thin manual worker so eats A LOT of food every day)

Total cost for two: £1.16

Fry garlic for few seconds and add onion. Fry gently until transparent Add the chopped tomatoes, sugar, chilli sauce, tomato paste bring cover and simmer for 15 minutes. In the meantime cook the pasta, drain and set aside. Drain the tuna and add to the pan, stirring gently. Heat through. Serve.

Planning ahead

Hubby and I have been forced for the first time to think ahead and plan our finances. I believe in the real world this is called a budget ;-)) As Dave Ramsey says, your first budget is a mathematical confirmation of your suspicions. LOL.

I know that I have some expenses coming up that we will find tough to cover if hubby has to once more cover shortfall at the end of the month so I'm planning now. We are determined we will NOT default on anything at the end of the month.

We split our expenses pretty simply - I pay the fixed costs (the mortgage, buildings and contents insurance and the council tax) plus my debt payments and hubby pays all the irregular expenses, which is pretty much everything else. It all evens out at the end of the month, but it means I get to pay the fixed expenses so I know what I have to pay and by when. I simply couldn't face juggling all the little bits and pieces throughout the month with an irregular income.

My expenses look pretty simple:

Mortgage + buildings and contents insurance £631.77
Council Tax £125.00
Credit card 1 ~£165.00
Credit card 2 £ 11.75
Loan £189.08
Private health insurance £ 23.87
Charity £ 18.00
Savings £ 5.00
National Insurance Contributions 2 £ 10.40

Total £1169.72

This morning I canceled my health insurance policy as the new job will provide me with that so I can strike 23.87 off my budget, and I intend to cancel my charity contribution. There's no point giving to charity if it tips me into an unauthorised overdraft or is rejected by the bank and I end up charged. That means my expenses are reduced by £41.87 to £1127.85.

I only realised last night that life would be sweeter and I would only need to work part-time if I had no debt payments, hence the LBM. My essential expenses are £756.77. My debt payments are £371.08. That's 33% of my income. I have become a stupid goober, as Dave Ramsey might say.

Over the next two weeks until the end of the month I have the following expenses cropping up:

Current account 1 interest ~ £20 on 19th PAID
Father's day ~£10 - card and present on 19th
Brother-in-law's birthday card due 18th
Travel expenses for new job unknown but due next week
My mother's birthday ~£20 due on 26th
Sponsorship for family fund-raising efforts ~ £20 payable after 27th
My sister's birthday ~£15 first week in July


Tonight I transferred the only £20 I have in a pathetic savings account to current account 1 as there is not enough to cover this interest payment. It's just pure luck I haven't looked in here for four months and ravaged this already. That's one bank charge averted.

Next, Father's Day. I currently have a few pennies around the house I will scrape together and I usually get lucky when I raid hubby's trouser pockets before washing them ;-)) However, I have a feeling my father is going to ask me buy him a book or DVD from amazon, which will entail a card transaction. A potential disaster looms. I intend to head this off with a bottle of wine or horribly lie and tell him the book or DVD is out of stock. Doesn't debt force you to make horrible decisions...

To cover the next thing due - my travel expenses next week which I would usually 'charge' - I put a set of rockery stones on ebay tonight which I'm positive will go for at least £30 - they are very old and of historical interest. I have plenty more sets where they came from so for a while I have some money for travel. The tentative plan is that hubby will be taking me in with him very early (6am) on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday next week and I will sit in the car and read until I have to leave and walk to the office nearby. My friend works in the same office so I will try and get a lift home. If I cannot, I will use the money from the rockery stones I sell on ebay.

As for the sponsorship money and mother's birthday...more thought required. I have more than two weeks for the former and a week for the latter.

Now to income - the crucial part

Client 1 - outstanding invoice £200 PAID TODAY!
Client 2 - outstanding invoice £337
Client 3 - outstanding invoices $200 past due
Client 4 - £100 deposit being transferred by BACS now

Client 4 - work to start when deposit clears to be billed £100
Client 5 - work in progress to be billed £1150
Client 6 - work in progress to be billed £200

That's around £737 if the money from the US client comes in leaving me short £390.85. I cannot say whether the clients who have work in progress will pay anything promptly if I bill before the end of the month.

I have no idea if I will be paid at the end of June for the three days I do next week or whether my first salary will be at the end of July. If it's next week, I could be looking at about £250 according to this nifty little salary calculator, making me short around £140.

Of course the word is IF. And this planning doesn't include taking 30% for taxes and class 4 NICs, which should be £221. I simply can't do that this month.

Update 15/6

Less than 24 hours later and I've had to put some money on the credit cards.

I had to go to a meeting today, where I picked up £200 project but I had to find a £12 train fare to get there.

Onto the egg card it went. Then an email came through that a monthly subscription to an online networking community had gone through. Another £4.99.

However, I did pay for my bus fare to the station and then to the meeting in cash (£4.65) that hubby ruffed from his top pocket, and the client paid for my cups of tea. Hubby picked me up after so no expense there except for some mileage to record for business expenses.

On a good note, I picked up an extra bit more work today - an additional £50 from the client that I was waiting for a £75 deposit from. That takes his job from £150 to £200.

So at the end of today credit card 1 has gone up by £17.69 to £6,835.44.

However I've picked up an extra £400 of work to do before the end of June, £100 of which is being paid by BACS into current account 2 as a deposit.

Debt-busting and wealth-buidling weapons of choice

www.moneysavingexpert.com

www.daveramsey.com

The Complete Tightwad Gazette (vol 1,2 & 3) by Amy Dacyczyn

The Simple Living Guide and newsletters by Janet Lurs

How to Feed Your Family on £5 a Day by Bernadine Lawrence

How to Simplify Your Life by Tiki Kustenmacher

A bit of inspiration

The Millionaire Next Door

The Millionaire Mind

By way of introduction...

The wind is whipping up a storm outside my office-cum-hobby room window. I can see the small saplings on the green almost bent double under the constant onslaught. I know how they feel. Yesterday there was a storm in this room, except it was the wind of change ripping through and I was bent double.

It was the day of my lightbulb moment.

Last month my bills and minimum debt payments just about crucified us. We were within £20 of our overdraft limits on our current accounts - that's £20 for the three of them or an average of £6.66 away from a bank charge. Next month we don't think we are going to make it. We think for the first time we will default. We are no longer liquid.

Five years ago I went freelance in January 2005 and we moved house in April 2005. That was the start of the slide. A bigger house that cost more to live in, a much smaller income for one of us. I had a couple of thousand on my credit cards, a persistent little leftover from a holiday to Australia three years before I just couldn't shift on my pay since then.

I built my income up to cover my bills then illness hit me in September 2005 and my £1600 of savings didn't last long. Then there was no income but the credit cards for four months. I got back on my feet and carried on. I relapsed a year later. A reduced income for three months and the credit cards supplemented the rest. Then I took on a business coach. Three £1200 payments later I realised I was a mug and canceled the contract. All the time I pretended I was ok to my spouse.

The next year a client went bust owing me just under £10k. The credit cards funded some of the missing income and, for the first time, the tax payments. My monthly expenses were increasing to cover the interest. The recession hit me and work dropped off over the next year. Every job I pitched for I lost to someone massively undercutting me. The credit cards were being trojans - they covered work expenses, travel costs, birthdays and Christmas. They covered meals out when I was too embarrassed to tell friends I was skint. They covered my share of the new conservatory when I didn't have the guts to tell my husband I didn't have the money. They covered vets bills when my current account clearly couldn't and I couldn't bear to let the animals suffer because of my stupidity. I still maintained I was ok, but I was hurting.

Strangely through all this, they rarely saw a sniff of consumer goods. I don't buy things for myself. I never have. I hate shopping and I've always worn clothes until they were holey. To me this lack of money felt wrong. Surely me, the person who seemed so conservative, so anti-consumerist, shouldn't be suffering like this. In reality I wasn't conservative. I just didn't have clothes or TVs or make-up to show for my spending. Just because it was spent on bills doesn't mean it was noble or justifiable or acceptable. Debt is debt.

I should have got a job at the end of year 3 but I was stubborn. I was going to turn this around. I refinanced everything into a loan and vowed to stay off the credit cards. Now let's cut to year 5.5 shall we? Two more years of expenses on the cards, even less work than before and another year's taxes, not to mention a balance transfer of an overdraft along the way. Oh and a mini breakdown on January 4th 2010 where I realised it was my 5th freelance anniversary and I'd never been more miserable. I cried solidly for three hours. Then got up and carried on. Just slap me.

So where are we now?

Every month we're around £700 short on living expenses that would usually have come from my side of the deal. My spouse is bravely stumping it up, but he works a manual job and his income has reduced during the recession. He is in debt now with a loan and credit cards but he has kept hold of one glimmer of hope for us. Through everything he has overpaid the mortgage. Our mortgage term has reduced in half. We feel stupid in a way, that we're in this position yet we're overpaying the mortgage but we can't stop. It's the only one damn good thing we're doing and we must keep doing it.

Next Tuesday I start a new part-time job - I posted off my acceptance of the offer earlier today. I've swallowed my damn pride and am going back to work. I was in line for a full-time position somewhere else that would have seen me earn around £2,200 a month, but they lost a client just as they were about to offer me a job so everything is on hold. That money would have solved a lot of issues, but clearly the universe wants me to learn a lesson and it's not going to make it easy for me. It's going to make me work my little arse off.

This job is only contracted for six months and I'm continuing to look for full-time work, but in the meantime it will bring in around £1000 a month. It's not enough. Not if I want to stop the tax bills going on the credit cards. I still have to work freelance on the remaining days of the week to get the money to pay those (while incurring more tax - ahhhh!) and generate enough to pay the debts off and for the first time in my life budget.

But that's a post for another day.

So now you have my "how I got into debt" story. What's yours?