No Spend 2024....

[meemawww]

Or at least the first couple of months to make a dent in my credit card debt!
I feel like I need a thread to encourage me and hopefully get some tips anybody like to join? I earn an alright wage but my god am i frivolous with money since my earnings went up!

@BlurpBlorp I think you need the self motivation of a goal. Mine is being able to pay off mortgage quickly and retire earlier (I am 58)

I just realised I made an account error and food spend was £157 and pets £188.

I like the idea of a monthly tot up! Ok here is January's.

I've spend £164.66 on meals/snacks/coffee over New Year whilst with inlaws. That wasn't necessary - but difficult to avoid. Meeting old friends for lunch etc.

£225.64 on petrol. We are pretty rural.
£24 on material to cover two chairs.
£66.50 on Amazon. Some of that was necessary (bulk toilet roll, vitamins, Prime membership. Maybe £20 of it was probably not)
£511.53 on Food. That seems quite a lot, considering I was trying to eat through the freezer and cupboards. 3 adults in the house.
£76 on plasterboard and plaster to repair my collapsed kitchen ceiling.
£210 taken out the cashpoint. I've got about £60 in my purse. The rest has gone on small things at the shops and I've spent £50 in regular massages for a health condition.

£44.96 at Pizza Hut that definitely wasn't necessary.
£21 in Primark that could have probably lived without, but DH bought 3 new shirts for £2 each for eg, so they will get used.
£23 on a haircut (including tip)
£300 gone into savings

Roughly £1600 on DDs that I can't cut down. Mortgage, council tax, gas/electric etc.

That comes to just over £3000 which is basically our income. Obviously we can cut out putting savings aside. And I guess we can cut down on food. But apart from that it's difficult to know what to do. I know New Year was expensive and we could have skipped the pizza. But it is the only junk/takeaway we had all month.

I know my income is going to drastically reduce shortly and it's difficult to see where I can make large enough savings to ensure that I can still cover the DDs and eat!

All comments welcome.

@Hatty65 When your income drops, will your petrol spend drop at all? And will you be able to spend less on incidentals in cash? Obviously if you wfh there is no savings to be had there.

I would focus on your cash spend, petrol (walking is very good for us) and maybe food?

@cuddlebear Sadly, no. I'm currently on long term sick and about to lose my sick pay. When I was working I was commuting 400 miles a week - so I'm actually saving that! (Much of the petrol money this month has come from doing an 800 mile round trip to spend New Year with inlaws). I'm pretty housebound and not really spending anything on 'incidentals' like you do when at work.

So, I can perhaps save quite a bit of the petrol money. Sadly, we are 4 miles from the nearest shop and mobility isn't great, so walking isn't really on. Food seems to be the thing to cut back on, but we do cook everything from fresh pretty much. I mean, we can exist on a baked potato for tea, lentil soup for lunch, etc - but it's not much fun. I can probably cut back a bit on heating too, although we don't have it on in the daytime.

I think it's going to be a case of counting every single penny, sadly,

Oh that’s really tough @Hatty65.

With the food shop, I managed to cut mine right back by signing up to Tesco delivery saver. I pay £6 a month and have just one delivery a week. I have a strict limit on what I will spend each week, and if it’s above that, I go through the basket and throw stuff out. It makes it easier to spot special offers too. I never do top up shops unless something goes badly wrong and I need extra milk for example, but I would say I survive on that weekly shop 45 weeks of the year.

Oh @Hatty65 that sounds difficult, can the car insurance be switched to a lower rate if you no longer use it for business?
last day of the month, I’ll know more in a few days but the plumbing issue nearly mirrors any savings I’d made. Mortgage is down nicely but cc up (due to the plumbing supplies).

Thanks all! Car insurance is just social and commuting anyway, so can't reduce it. What we probably can do is get rid of one car - DH has an old banger for pottering about in, whilst mine is slightly better as I worked 40 miles away. We could save money (a bit) on DHs car, although it's probably only worth scrapping. Still - could save a couple of hundred on insuring it. (He gets PiP and so it's free to tax anyway)

I might try the Tesco delivery though. I do try to stick to what's on the list, but I think giving myself a strict budget would help.

Well January hasn't been a complete disaster but I can see definite room for improvement for February, especially as I have a drop in my wage. I thought I had done well with my food shop this month but now looking at my spending I over spent by about 100. Hopefully February will be better.

@Debtfreeme I haven't used smol but I use splosh for loads of my cleaning products as well as hand wash and shower gel. I really like their products and it does stop you needing to nip out for cleaning products. The only thing I really buy from the shops cleaning wise is bleach.

@CharlieBoo well done! Having that buffer makes emergencies so much more manageable. Hopefully the car repairs won't cost too much.

I'm starting my monthly breakdown-
£546 food shopping
£147 on petrol

Food shopping was bang on budget but I only budget £80 for fuel. We used to have a diesel car that I would top up once a month and I walked to work so that bill was a bit of a shock!

I'm spent a bit more than I wanted to in town on Tuesday but I stopped myself buying a costa and cake and had a Greggs coffee and sausage roll instead!!

My dentist appointment went well and no huge charges in the offing for crowns and whatnot but I've decided to pay £12/month for their checkup and scale/polish plan. I've got a bit of a dentist phobia and this one was so lovely. I am going to look into Invisalign but that was always my plan and I have the money.

I'll do a January totup at some point but I know I've done well simply because my Amazon spend was so much lower.

Had a NSD as planned Tuesday. Yesterday was in office and dutifully took in my wrap/chocolate and used coffee machine at work so avoiding temptation of lunchtime shopping. However, we needed a few things from supermarket so was £15.59. Also had to order an Amazon voucher for nephews birthday so that was £20.

Then invoiced this morning for storage £85.50. Really galls that we are having to pay rent and storage on top of our mortgage whilst these building works are going on.

Wont be a NSD today as we need milk and the blinking shop next door has a lovely variety of tempting muffins!!

The dreaded ping day. My smart watch goes crazy with all the notifications for account transactions for direct debits.

I wouldn't start with Smol. They see good products and used to be reasonable value. They are way too expensive now and it can be hard to cancel.

Epic fail. Just spent £75 on some comedy tickets for later in the year!!

Day out shopping in Netherlands with my friend who lives there 7.59 euros on really nice chocolates, 8 euros on coffees & 25 euros on bright pink reading glasses - just because I really liked them. Lovely day out and we had a lot of fun

Good and bad over the last few days.

I overspent on food shopping. BUT I got wine, beer and some pizzas for the weekend so I don't order Dominoes. Also a birthday present and card.

Filled up the car.

Bought LANX boots for myself for £161 ! 🙈 My thinking is that I wear out boots/ shoes all the time.They only last a year maximum. I walk the dog, walk the school run and go for a walk at lunch time. These boots are repairable and can be sent off for resoling when they wear out. I also just look scruffy at the moment! I never buy myself new clothes and I've put on weight so find most of my clothes uncomfortable.

After this I think I will allow one or two clothes purchases a month so I can build up my wardrobe again.

If that came from a budget allowance, I don't see that as a fail.

But it depends on whether you decided to spend the minimum in 2024 with no outings | celebrations | milestone events at all.

Yes agree that this is good move. You might be feeling fed up of budgeting whenever this comes around and it'll perk you up and keep you focussed (and laughing!) I love when I do something for future me (food in freezer, booked tickets etc) and mentally high five Past BlurpBlorp!

I'm thrilled that I've stuck to my budget for January. I was so tempted to get a takeaway on wednesday eve but raided the freezer instead. February is on track so far (I know it's only 2nd but I get paid on 25th of the month so am about a week in). Hoping I can keep the motivation up 💪

@2024Hackathon it kind of is - as in, we have a budget we set each month for groceries, petrol, kids clubs, clothes, going out etc, but because our outgoings are massive at present we were trying to cut that budget a fair bit. Annoying that it’s for an event in July but we’ve had to but now to secure!

@BlurpBlorp thank you, we don’t often get such a chance so why we were tempted! Well done on January and good luck for Feb!

I’m holding my breath, awaiting the plumber and plumbing bill. Dh unhappy for a few $$ reasons; one unauthorized charge on his cc for a Microsoft product (he will dispute that) having just over 1K of purchases on his cc and me saying we only have $750 right now to put towards that. His frivolous expense this month was a flight…for next month…to pick up a puppy he’s obviously buying.
i really need to have my math magic in tip top form at this point! Several NSD, and hopefully a break with the plumbing charges. I have $500 set aside for that.
i estimate $700 on my cc for the plumbing supplies which were initially $800+.

Today was a more spendy than planned for. Had to buy DS some new school shoes. Bought cheap ones in December and they are literally falling apart. He is a toe walker so that adds to the issue as well. Hopefully the new ones last longer. They are Clarks so should do.

No big spends planned this weekend. Cheapish takeaway tonight but that's it apart from a little food shopping. DH working all weekend so that helps with keeping spending down.

Happy weekend everyone.

NSD for the last two days. Not feeling well and haven't left the house. There's plenty of food in, so no worries there. We are supposed to meet friends this weekend, but I'm not sure if I feel up to it.

Today was definitely not a no spend day as I booked a cruise! In my defence(!) I had a trip to the states planned which I cancelled as I realised the travel was far too much for me (lots of internal flights and layovers). That would have cost close on £5k and the cruise is less than £2k - and will be a lot more relaxing.

I've also spent on a top up shop as I haven't done the shopping this week and needed something for dinner, and I may have bought a book for £1 and two beautiful wine glasses from the charity shop for £3 😳. I had been looking for a beautiful wine glass for ages and I'm very pleased with that purchase. I also noticed that I was picking up things and thinking 'oh it's only £2/£3, I'll just get it' and then realising what I was doing and not buying stuff after all - so I'm taking that as a win.

I really want to go through my spending this weekend from the last few weeks and see where I'm at. I want to open a savings account to move the extra money I've earned this month out before I spend it!

Tomorrow I'm meeting friends for lunch, and then Sunday will be my normal £20 on my sports event with friends.

no break for the wicked :( the plumber has been on the clock for 4 hours and is only now starting to put things together.

I've had lots of NSDs last month but also overspent on the new budget as I needed new clothes due to a weight loss.