The little things make all the difference

When you're trying to cut back and reduce your spending it's the little things that can make all the difference.

Take my grocery budget for example; I got lazy with my food shopping. I started to use just one store for everything and yet I can reduce my spending by over £9.50 a month if I simply buy milk from Aldi and not my normal supermarket; that's a saving of £114 a year. Not a massive amount of money, but better in my pocket than anyone else's.

What about you, are you analysing the little things?

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Financial Action Plan to Achieve £100k Net Worth

On Sunday I blogged about how I'm spending far too much time planning and not enough doing. Well since becoming debt free I've gone on a little 'money focus' hiatus; it's not that I want to be thinking about money all the time, definitely not, it's more about how I've switched off a little too much. I stopped tracking our Net Worth, I've lapsed with my spending diary and I've generally not paid as much attention to our money as I should do; I got financially lazy. Financial laziness does not get you where you want to be, so I've kicked my own butt and got busy; I've written an Action Plan to help us achieve a six figure net worth before December 2011 and everyday I'll be doing something, however small, to move us further towards this goal.

Financial Action Plan:

1. Do a Net Worth Snapshot; update monthly to track progress {% increase}
2. Maximise Interest; move money, make sure all savings in best paying accounts
3. Amex; max out cash back, use for everything
4. Money Wasters; what are they? eliminate them
5. Sell last remaining clutter
6. Get a job {me}
7. Insurances; search for cheapest deals
8. Menu Plan and stick to it
9. Eliminate food waste

That's it for now. Is there anything else I could be doing?

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Financial Action Plan

It's funny how a couple of simple things can bring about such a change in attitude and motivation. I'm talking about a comment left on my last post and a change of wording for our short term financial goals; these two simple things have got me really fired up.

The comment, which was from an anonymous commentator, said 'How about doing a bit of a business plan for the B&B in Portugal?'' Simple, why didn't I think of that? Instead of sitting here thinking about how I'd love to run a B&B in Portugal one day, I wrote a business plan for running that B&B; I also documented the steps we need to take to achieve this; so thank you anon, whoever you are, progress has been made :-)

The short term financial goals {the next 21 months} have just had a simple name change; we are now calling these our Financial Action Plan; things we need to action to achieve our goals; action is the main word here, not plan.

I feel really motivated. It's time to take action.

What about you, do you spend too much time planning and not enough time doing?

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Working on a new 5 year plan

I hope you are all having a good weekend! I'm spending mine alternating between painting our back door and working on my 5 year plan. My current plan is too wishy washy and I wanted to firm up some of my goals.

I'm starting by thinking about where I see myself in 5 years. What am I doing? Where am I living? What kind of lifestyle do I have? What have I achieved on the way?

Only when I have the answers to these questions can I start to plot the goals and how I'm going to get there.

How about you, what are your plans for this weekend?

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How It Started: My financial free fall

I haven't blogged too much about how I got started with credit cards and debt; mainly because it seems such a long while ago now that I don't think about it. Anyway, my finances started to go wrong when I was 19; I had this notion that I had to be a property owner and at the time I worked for a bank and it was {very} easy for me to get a mortgage.

I  found a small studio apartment in the town where I lived and set the wheels in motion to buy it. I can't remember the exact amount of the mortgage, I think it was less than £20k {a lot of money in those days} and I think I put 5% down, but this was the start of it all going wrong. I couldn't afford to socialise, eat, and pay the bills, so I got my first credit card. I took a second job three evenings a week just to get by, but I still struggled. I never missed payments; I just kept increasing my limits and getting cash advances {the worst thing to ever do with a credit card}

This carried on until I sold the flat {about 2 years later} but the credit card habit was well established by then and it took another twenty years to break it.

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Savings Snowballs

Sometimes I write a blog post, put it up on my blog, read it back later and wonder why I ever posted it in the first place. This morning's post makes it seem like I feel sorry for myself, and I really don't; I have nothing to feel sorry for myself about; being consumer debt free is the best feeling ever and I should remind myself of that all the time!

As for my savings goals; perhaps I need to approach them more like I did my debt payoff; tackle each goal one at a time, like I did each credit card or loan, and keep snowballing and snowflaking until one of them is saved for; then I move onto the next one. Hopefully this makes sense.

So first things first I'm going to attack the mini emergency fund goal of £1,000. This money is to go in a savings account attached to our main joint checking account and the money will be there in case the washing machine breaks etc.

Balance £28.20/£1,000

Once a spender, always a spender?

I've realised something over the last couple of weeks; I'm still a spender! It may not be on credit cards or with money I don't have, but I can still spend money, lots of it.

I'm not spending money on stuff; I'm spending it on experiences! I'm spending money that should probably be going towards our long term savings goals; instant gratification is something that I thought I was over; it's not!

Or could I possibly have set the bar to high; am I not allowing myself enough slack? Why delay something that you're going to do anyway, after all who knows what tomorrow will bring!

Almost clutter free

I'm a little behind on my posting and blog reading, however I'm hoping to catch up over the next few days. We've had a quick mini break to Paris over the weekend and now I'm busy getting ready to sell my clutter at a car boot sale {similar to a yard sale} this coming weekend; this should make my house about 95% clutter free.

The trick to keeping clutter free is to stop buying stuff; there is no point editing your possessions and then adding to them again {which I have done in the past!}

Have you done this, cleared out your stuff, only to add to it again?

Extra Money Earned: February £118.93

Overall from different sources my goal is to generate at least £2,010 of extra income in 2010. This money can either be passive or alternative.


January was better than February, but still some progress was made; I'm not counting my tax refund as extra money earned as I knew that I was going to get one, just not quite so much; I put most of it straight into a savings account and want to forget about. It's only there if I ever really, really need it.
 
February Earnings:
 
£13.51 Amazon
£34.13 Savings Interest
£71.29 Site Sponsors
 
If you are trying to make a little extra money, how did you get on?
 
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10 Simple Get Out of Debt Tips

This post originally appeared on No More Spending in November 2008

My Top 10


1. Stop using your credit cards - cold turkey

2. Keep a spending diary and examine every area of your spending

3. Reduce your grocery spending

4. Menu Plan

5. Sell anything and everything - snowball your debt

6. Educate yourself about personal finance - borrow books from the library

7. Start blogging or join a forum - this provides extra motivation

8. Organise yourself -missing payments only adds to the debt

9. Live frugally

10. Increase your income
 
What about you, what others would you add?
 
 
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Accomplished this week

I've realised this week that I've been focusing too much on things that I haven't achieved, opposed to things that I have, so I'm starting a weekly feature on things I have done.

This week I've..

Had my haircut and it feels great. I feel so much better about myself and its make me feel even more motivated about the whole lose weight/get fit goal I'm currently on. The cost was £35, including tip, so not too bad.

Booked flights to Lisbon in July. The flights were a little expensive £269 for three; it's my own fault I left it too late. I had a chance to book in January and didn't, so this has cost us £100. I've also put a deposit on an apartment on the Lisbon coast, which was 165 Euros; travel wise this has been an expensive week.

Walked every day. It's becoming a {free} habit. I'm wondering if I'll ever get to enjoy it though! I could walk around cities forever, but I find the area near my house quite boring :-( Proof again that I'm a city girl!

Sold one item on eBay. I think I'm finally over the whole selling stuff on eBay gig. I made £10 though.

What have you accomplished this week?

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A Tax Refund

Yay I got a tax refund, a £1,067 tax refund. So happy. I'm going to put £1k into my personal savings account, and £67 into my clothing fund account.

A Rollercoaster Ride

I've been reading back through some of my old blog posts and they make funny reading; the highs and lows that I went through paying off my debt are well documented and I now realise just how much of a rollercoaster ride I was on; not that I would change anything. I needed to go through it all to change my habits and move on.

The same principals now apply to my weight loss goal; there is no quick fix to twenty years of overspending, like there is no quick fix to twenty years of over eating. What I have to do is resolve to change things and work towards my ultimate goal bit by bit - so this is what I'm doing; resolving to change.

Re-solve: verb (used with object)
1.to come to a definite or earnest decision about; determine (to do something): I have resolved that I shall live to the full. source: dictionary.com