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!

My plan for the weekend was to stay home in the warm, read, knit, watch TV and DEFINITELY NOT SPEND ANY MONEY.

Firstly, I get a distress call from DD who has become unwell in Forrin and needs to come home urgently, so I sent her £200 to facilitate that. She has travel insurance but I don't think it will cover stomach flu if she hasn't seen doc...

Then the postie brings my home insurance renewal from Aviva, which is set to be £31 more than last year. I went through Confused.com and got it for £30 less than this years, with Tesco, so I actually saved myself £60 vs this years expenditure, but it was tough spending out £350 on what should have been a NSD.

Had a few spends in the last couple of days of January - bought a sandwich for lunch one day, bus fares, the DD for my prescription pre-payment certificate. Was very grateful when it was payday on Wed!

I’ve just spent the last 30 minutes reviewing my spend for the month:

Balance before payday: -£432.28
Pay in: £1,545.38
Total spend in Jan: £1,528.83
Balance at end of month: -£415.73

The amounts I spent were:

£850 to joint account for bills
£50 to savings
£70 DD art class
£40.65 phone bill
£353.95 groceries / cat food (couldn’t be covered by joint account as we’d gone overdrawn)
£19.46 credit card repayment
£9.64 overdraft interest
£11.16 Prescription pre-payment certificate
Charity/ Patreon £10.50
£38 bus fares (seems a lot!)
£46.25 coffee/ cafe trips
£29.22 Other (birthday cards, sandwiches, bits & pieces)

Both interesting and depressing to see where the money has gone. Nearly £50 on coffees and a few trips to a cafe, and almost £40 on bus fare!

The big issue, of course, is the extra cost of groceries and cat food that couldn’t come from the joint account. DH had topped up the account so we were out of the overdraft limit, so I paid for these costs.

Need to think about a plan for Feb.

i'm alive but not sure where the finacials/budget for this month sits. the plumber has come and gone but no bill yet. in the mean time it's food only spend and fingers crossed.

No spend not going well as husbands car needs 3k of work to it. I'm so pissed off.

My downfall is food. I spend too much on it. I try and budget but need to be stricter in writing a list and sticking to it. I need to cut out the top up shops as I pop in for bread and spend £20+
I also need to make lunch everyday for work.

I’m also trying something different with m budgeting/banking this month.
move moved all my money out of my current account except for a weekly budget of £50.
this is for any extras I want to spend during the week. And then I’ll transfer bill money over as and when I’ve got a bill to pay.

this way I can hopefully see what I’m spending from my weekly budget and it will make me think a little more about whether I need to soend

cuddlebear - I hope your DD is OK when she returns home.

CurlsnSunshinetime4tea - I hope the plumber bill isn't ghastly.

EllieQ - It's good you know where it went so you can think of ways to anticipate, maybe reduce and avoid some of them?

Toooldtoworry - this is the sort of thing we all worry about. You've made me wonder if I need a pot within savings that is for 'maintenance and repairs' IYSWIM.

Lastminutebride - that budget looks like a plan. Is there a reasonable way to avoid the top-up shops and temptations to add in bits?

Still away. Spent around 50 euros yesterday on meal out with our friends here - we rarely eat out at home so it was a lovely treat & come out of our travel pot

I have one but it is much less than 3k.

Tbh I'm a saver. I have a pot for car maintenance, birthdays and Xmas, pretty much anything annual.

@EllieQ even with all that your overdraft is £16 less and February is a short month with maybe no council tax so hopefully by end of Feb overdraft could be -£200 instead good luck

Thanks @Toooldtoworry

She is back home and feeling much better. Such a shame it marred her much needed holiday (romance break up) like that.

I am out tonight but not drinking so it will just be a few quid on Diet Coke.

I'm redecorating two rooms in my house so aiming for low spend not no spend.

Spent £4 today on a grouting pen!
Saturday and Sunday were no spend somehow! Had friends round on Sun and spent Sat decorating and eating pizza bought on the food shop.

I feel like I've set myself up well with my mortgage overpayment and putting money straight into savings at the start of the month. I'll have less money to fritter away on frivolous things.

Forgot the biggest achievement is I now have enough in savings to pay off the credit card! I will continue to take advantage of our interest free period and won't pay it off until that is over. That will give me time to build up some emergency fund savings in my instant access savings account.

@scoopdewhoop that’s great!

I’ve just spent £6 on a Standelli curly-hair brush, recommended on here, but needed a spare/emergency brush in the house (that I keep in one place only) so we don’t have misplaced-brush worries in mornings. It’s a good idea anyway. I’m still plodding on, trying to go as long as I can between food shops as really it’s the only thing now I can do cheaper - the groceries.

We live so remotely, have no access to Aldi/Lidl or Iceland or Poundland/B&M, it makes life much harder…but, I suppose simpler too.

Dinner is mushroom omelettes & carrot, pepper & red onion salad.

£25 fin lunch in Haarlem & £5.75 on coffees and £42 on bus/trains to get there from where we were staying

i'm surviving, just barely. an absolute juggle on the banking front.
yesterday someone hit our car and tore off the drivers side mirror :(
i'll have a better lay of the land in the next 24 hours, i just need time to breath.

@CurlsnSunshinetime4tea Oh, I'm so sorry! How annoying for you, these things always seem to happen when you're just trying to keep your head above water.

I'm doing ok on the no spending, in that I'm not spending anything that's not absolutely necessary. I've got a bit obsessed and irritated every time I have to spend anything now! Today I spent about £18 on dog food - and I know we have to feed the bugger, and I know that will keep him going for a couple of weeks or more, but golly I resented it!

I've always been such a spendthrift and now I'm becoming miserly.

CurlsnSunshinetime4tea - I'm so sorry to read this. Sometimes, it feels as if we start to get up and we get knocked down again. We can only hope we're all Weebles. We wobble but we don't fall down.

Haven’t updated here in a few days but it’s going really well.

this time last month I was overdrawn and now my account is still in credit. No spend day fri, Sat, sun and today. I did spend £17.50 yesterday on a birthday card and some flowers for my work colleague and a valentines gift and card for DH.
I have a trip to the hairdresser tomorrow so will be a spend day but I’m well in budget for that

i walked the university indoor track and counted my blessings and laps ;)
that being said dh and i both had dental appointments which were not fully covered by insurance so another hit on the cc. i look forward to the tide turning.

Ahh still have to do a final review of January. But just looked at my account yesterday and:
1-feb £832 came out
2-feb £308 came out
Weekend- £2043 came out
5-feb £57 came out

Literally wiped clean now!!!

It's a mix of household bills, dc club fees, holiday payments, builder payments and last month's credit card bill.

Way over the top though for one average salary to manage

Yes - my plan is to ignore my daughter’s request to just pop in for one thing! I will buy extra bread and crisps and stash them out of the way until we start running out. Hopefully this will help

First under daily budget day of the month!
All unspent money, transferred onto my cc.
The plumbing came to $500, which was what I had estimated and secretly hoped.
Currently all three home door locks are dead! And while at the quality door hardware shop, someone side swiped our car and took out the drivers side mirror.
Insurance deductible higher than the estimated repair costs.

We're back from our trip to Netherlands - it cost £1100 all in so could hve been a lot worse. Back to frugal ways now as we will be doing a much longer trip either Spring or Autumn (not missong any election so plans are fluid at the moment.

Hopefully a NSD today - the first for a while

Hello all, well done on your NSDs! I need to have a NSW this weekend and am on my own so will try. Hoping I don't go rogue... I've been a bit spendy these last few days but I'm still within my budget. Succumbed to a takeaway last night as felt ill and couldn't face cooking, then also had a Vinted binge but for things I need so don't feel too guilty. Interesting that I started my period yesterday so wondering whether my spending is hormone-related (like every bloody other thing!). Half term next week and might be tricky to stick to the budget. Will be another test!