Anyone else starting to get their ducks in a row to leave their marriage ?

[Bookaholic73]

Married for 6 years, total mistake.
He changed the minute we got married and is not the same man I fell in love with.
No abuse or infidelity that I’m aware of.

I can’t afford to leave him yet, so I’m getting my ducks in a row so I can leave. Estimate of time, probably 8-10 months.

If anyone else is in a similar position, feel free to join me.
I’ll be saving as much money as I possibly can for the next 8-10 months.

Good for op i wish you the best.
My only advice to you would be when your out of this dont go back, and if you meet someone else in time to come dont do marriage again.
Enjoy being on your own for a while before meeting anyone else.

Thanks @Tolong i don’t think I’ll ever live with anyone again, let alone get married again. And I certainly won’t be getting involved with anyone who has kids.

8-10 months is a looong time, but I just need to be laser focused

@Bookaholic73 8-10 months will fly by the end is near focus on that.
I myself would never live with a man again either i love my space love to do what i want when i want no questions asked.
I never get involved with anyone that has kids i dont have any myself, but for what i see irl and read online its to much drama.

Ok so this morning i have wrwitten a budget and on paper it says that i should have £900 a month left over after all of my expenses! WTF. I barely make it to payday with any money left in the bank, so i am very clearly doing something wrong.

After looking at my bank statements, there are a few easy things i can do to save a lot of money.

1. Less takeaways
2. Spend less money on food.

So those are my 2 areas of intense focus starting from now.

I need to clear off my OD this month, so that's £500 gone from my pay straight away.
I get paid twice a month so am not really sure how to budget it. I know my income and expenses, thats not the issue. But i am not sure what expenses come from which payday.

Ok, I’m back and in the 2 months since I’ve posted I’ve been paying off my credit cards slowly.
2026 is going to be the year we separate, hopefully divorce.
So I need to get a whole lot more ‘on it’ with saving money.

The main area I’ll be saving from is food shopping. I can easily save a few hundred a month. Plus less takeaways, less Starbucks etc.

If you want to be laser-focussed for your goal, literally think about EVERY purchase. If it's not a necessity or you can make do with an alternative, don't buy it - plus immediately transfer that amount either to a separate savings account (or cash / jot it down) or debt repayment.

Do you have an app or a spreadsheet to keep track of your spending @Bookaholic73? I think it's hard to do it without one.

Good luck.

My advice to you is

on pay day is pay yourself put £800 straight into a savings account, a fixed ISA with a limited 3 times you can remove money - look at Coventry building society or Atom bank for decent interest rates

Then once you have paid yourself, the rest of the money is for bills and groceries, if there is anything left then pop it in the iSA at the end of the month

By October you'll have £8000

There’s an app called Accounts by Graham Haley that might be useful to you OP, especially as you’re not paid aligned with monthly bills. You put in your pay and bills, and set the correct frequency for each, then you can see how the monthly bills fall in which pay day. You can then see for years ahead if you wish (useful focus when you have a plan you want to work towards). Of course you can also add the discretionary spending and extras too as they arise. I’m not affiliated with it at all, I’ve just found it to be very useful in getting my head around the non-monthly pay days I have now.

And then you'll need to hand over £4k as part of your divorce ... unless you lie

I’ll be saving as much money as I possibly can for the next 8-10 months.

the thread is about saving in the next 10 months