No-Spend November Kicks Off

Well, No Spend November Starts Here!

I spent yesterday preparing to get off to a good start.

First off - before I did anything else, I made sure I paid off as much debt as I could possibly afford this month. Getting rid of my disposable income to pay off my debts means I will have no chance to spend it!

Here was the debt situation before:

Littlewoods	109
Family Loan	350
Credit Card 1	451
Lovely Boyf	960
Credit Card 2	728
La Redoute	28
Total Debts	£2626

And very gratifyingly, here is the situation after:

Littlewoods	109
Family Loan
Credit Card 1
Lovely Boyf	960
Credit Card 2	728
La Redoute
Total Debts	£1797

I have gone down into the 1000's at least! The Lovely Boyf is thankfully a very patient creditor  - I owe him for a last minute holiday earlier this year (stupid!). He has insisted I pay off the credit cards with the horrific interest rate first, as his loan is interest free.

I paid all of my rent and bills. I got my hair cut at a Supercuts salon, having a dry trim for just £22. They have done a really good job and although would be nice to have the full 'salon' experience and not to have to dye it myself (which I will do this weekend), I can do without the £83 bill for my usual treatment.

This means that I now have my modest budget for food, £20 pocket money and vets budget left for the rest of the month.

After a bit of a stocktake of the freezer, I recon we have more than enough meat and fish to see us through the month, so no need to buy any more. I went to Aldi and did a big food shop, which came to just £54.98. This included a lot of items which were to feed our two sets of guests this weekend, which also came out of our budget, and included a bottle of wine.

I had to top this up at Morrisons with another £22 shop for eggs, milk and dogfood as Aldi doesn't do organic and I find Morrisons dogfood is better quality and still reasonably priced. I have spent more than our £50 per week budget, but I think this shop will see us through for two weeks at a push.

Then, I set about making a meal plan that we can follow this coming week to make sure nothing at all goes to waste:

We may chop and change the order a little depending on the weather and what comes up during the week. I am at a conference for two days and so will be late home and eating lunch out (on expenses, of course!) so it is going to be a busy one.

So come on No-Spend November, lets do this!