Can you help me with my budgeting?

[CaulkheadNorth]

Current salary is £27k. This is after ten years of zero hour/minimum wage or £12k in a previous job.

I have a car on finance with 14 months left, two loans with 3 years and 15 months left. 4 credit cards, all cut up and just paying back. £900 between them.

I have weekly therapy, which is my biggest outgoing but is a non-negotiable.

Main other outgoings are expenses for work, which I can only claim monthly and can be in the £100-£150pm range. Also food. I don't plan what I'm buying and so it's often shopping when hungry.

I think the key will be to plan meals and then buy ingredients so I'm not going to Asda each day but I've never done that and I'm apprehensive about it.

I want to clear debt, then save.

First thing I'd do is write up a full income and expenditure budget to see where your money is going; what can you cut out/back on etc. Think about saving an emergency fund of say £500 then start whittling down the debt using snowball method. I moved to a cash only budget which helped enormously along with meal planning x

Agree with cash only and draw it out each week, when it gone you need to wait till the next week to withdraw more. Focusing the mind on what you really need.

Move any debts on credit card to interest free if you can to save money. Pay the highest interest debts first.

Food shopping, go to library and get cookery books for students, good cheap food. Or keep it simple and cook casseroles and eat for two or three nights. Soup and beans on toast are allowed as a meal. Pasta pesto and cheese is a cheap store cubboard meal to keep into eat before shopping

For cash only, does that include petrol?

I include petrol in my cash budget...

For the meal planning, write a list of all the meals that you like, have time to cook etc. Then cross out the ones with expensive ingredients.

Group together the meals with similar ingredients, for instance you might make spag bol for one night, save half the sauce, and a couple of nights later use the sauce as the basis for chilli or moussaka.
At least two nights a week have something really cheap, soup, omelette, beans on toast or similar.

Write out a shopping list and stick to it!

Cut out extra visits to the supermarket by always having frozen bread and long life milk in the house.

Good luck!

I use my bike to commute or walk, i can do anywhere up to 50 miles and it's quite a saving. I only do this during day lit saving. Over a month it can be 150 miles ( work on different sight so distance vary) along savings on wear and tear.