Money Management Boot Camp ..... anyone interested?

[Twiglett]

OK the house of twig has been overspending drastically in recent months, so I'm about to start sorting it out again (took my eye off the ball you see)

I know we do style and healthy living makeovers on here

Anybody want to join my Money Boot Camp? Get control of your money and stay in control?

NB this may be well over my head though but I'm pretty good at this normally

sign-up if you wanna try .. we could start next month?

RIGHT! HELLO again. This is what we have done:

Started meal planning
Stopped buying expensive stuff like Innocent smoothies/organic prawns/smoked salmon/Chablis 1er cru

Our food costs have gone from c£1k a month to c£300 a month. And I'm still buying ALL organic food. Cheaper wine though.

We bulk bought washing powder and fabric conditioner.

I have discovered that 43p shampoo and conditioner are FINE, 29p ones are not. Cheap tampons are fine.

I don't buy Americanos at work any more, I take a jar of instant coffee in and get free hot water. That alone has saved me £2.20/day = 11/week, = £40 a month

I stopped buying magazines = saving of c£60 a month, ? ish

And newspapers, I read them all online

No takeaways or eating out. Actually, we've had the odd one but only when we've hit our saving target.

Presents have been sale items (book people v cheap) or personal things, like a photo mug for stepfather's birthday. Previous spend was £950 on presents in 3 months.

All cards are on 0% and I have alerts set up to let me know six weeks before the deal expires. I will get them onto a new one before I pay interest

I went onto uswitch and switched gas and elec, saving £30 a month

Saving money involves a lot of thinking ahead I find, ie. we have bought dd's party bags for end Nov already, we have some xmas presents already when we've seen something cheap they'd like.

We got rid of the cleaner and made a chore rota. Ds is now responsible for ALL washing in the house and is doing v well. We all pitch in and clean at weekends according to the rota.

The biggest difference is that I've started NOTICING and thinking about cash. I know what's in our account and notice transactions, i.e. spotted RAC had charged us when we cancelled it and got £70 refund.

Cancelled a holiday we had booked in Oct, we need to save instead. Will still have time off but cheaply.

I paid a £60 speeding fine and a £30 library fine last month, won't be doing that again as it incensed me paying it given my new mindset. Previously I would have thought 'oh well'.

Oh and the VERY first thing I did, that made me go woah, was I downloaded 3 months bank statements, categorised the spend, sorted it, subtotalled and then went omfg, we spent HOW much on xyz? Only once I worked out where the major extravegances were could we change it.

Oh and also petrolprices.com tells you where the cheapest petrol is near you.

Thanks for that WWW. Bearing in mind what you said about cheaper shampoos etc, what are your views on supermarket brands v premier brands?

I bought a few supermarket brands last week as a little experiment, and some products I haven't noticed any real differenct and others I haven't noticed enough to want to pay double the price for branded products next time around. Wondered what everyone else thought too

£1K a month on groceries? Just about to go do spreadsheet now (not prevaracating, me) and then will report back.

I'd agree with you there Madlab.

We started buying supermarket own stuff last month. The onyl thing I have noticed so far was economy toilet roll.
Not good

Rips your bum to shreds and theres not very much of it!

Done s/sheet - apparently I have £200 spare every month.

Message withdrawn

I will join too, if I may? I'm usually okay with money management, but has all gone to pot since house move -- too much chaos.

Nbg, are you interested in the pocket life book? Do CAT me or post an email address here and I'll mail you back.

i went into boots today and mooncups were full price. So I will have to stick with my 4yo one.

TIP FOR TODAY

If you drive a car, look at your car insurance. Mine is up for renewal and I've just saved £112 on the renewal price. BUT you can change at any time, generally a month's notice, so set aside an hour to look now.

Use comparison sites. I used Tesco.com and confused.com to do all the work. Tesco.com was better in my view as you could compare the benefits on screen.

G'wan you've got nothing to lose. Its only inertia stopping you (imagine what you could do with £100?)

Frogs I CAT you last night, thank you

It turns out we have just under £200 a month left after all the bills are paid. So out of that we have to buy food for 4 and petrol
Although petrol isnt that bad as dh doesnt work very far away.

Dh spent just £45 on petrol yesterday and thats it.
I will have to nip to the shop for basics like potatoes and bread.

Also while I have my statements out, I'm going to check out Uswitch.

Oh and confession time......

Credit card bills came this morning.

In total we owe £2538.50 and [vomit]
But this is in 2 credit cards, £248 on mine and £2290 on dh's and theres a holiday on dh's.

i did the budget thing, and we are 300 down each month...thats where the debt has come from.

taking off all the non-essentials we are still at least £150 down each month! [gulp]

well, i had my avon lady come yesterday and im now up and running with that so hopefully some extra money there, and im having a lady come round about being a partylite consultant, so hopefully il be able to earn the extra cash!

so my plan is:

Consolidate debts (through my lovely father)

Not spend money we dont have!

We'r not doing xmas for anyone but the kids as we cant afford it and got all the kids xmas/bday pressies already (£20 max each for both)

no more, clothes, shoes, books, dvds etc.

no eating out/take aways unless my parents are paying

we only shop once a month anyway but now will do that shop online after meal planning, will save a lot of stress at the supermarket too!

will only have a max of £10 a week spending money taken out as cash, this week i have £7.50 left which isnt bad, seeing as went out and brought milk yesterday and had to get a bottle of water at hospital tues, while visiting dad!

think thats it for now! will start money diary and check in later!

Can I join in late? We have £8,000.00 on our credit card (at least) and I can't stop spending money.

Have just spent £70 (which we don't have) on a coat from Boden.

Must say that I think I saw a link about a month ago where someone had managed to claim back some mortgage redemption fees.

I think that we have had at least 3 mortgages in the last six years so I am going to try that this morning.

Ok, so only spent £3 yesterday.

Can I recommend gobudget . com for car insurance quotes - I got some ridiculously cheap quotes from there and they grade them against your requirements (note, I didn't actually take a policy out through them BUT they quotes were excellent)

I'm going to look at uswitch now.

Reckon I can do without a full shop this week - just need dairy & fruit as have enough in the freezer for eveything else

Thursday is shopping night so I am going to go to Tesco with a list so I don't impulse buy.

I just phoned up my current gas/electric supplier - was on the phone ~10minutes and have reduced my gas/electric payments by £25 a month without even changing supplier.

I could seriously get into this!

well after getting £158 worth of charges on my account iv just phoned halifax and had £90 of it refunded, which is good going as it was me in the wrong not them, i just cried at them!

Mascara, how did you manage that?

I looked on uswitch - and saw my provider showing a cheaper annual cost so I just called them and asked them to check if I was on the best tarriff because I was shopping around.. two minutes later I was on a cheaper tarriff (paperless) and saving ~£300 per year

thats really good.

I think I might go and do that.

I just wish I could change water as my provider is Anglia and they are ridiculously expensive!

I dont think we can change water providers.
We're with Yorkshire water.

I don't think anyone can.. to be honest.

Going to shop round for a 0%card instead of using my o/d this afternoon.