How times have changed

[Skippy]

I was looking for something in my diary and I found a list of my monthly expenditure and I was shocked:

Natwest Loan - £383.00
Egg Loan - £280.00
Virgin - £210.00
Amex - £60.00
Mobile - £40.00
Contact Lenses - £10.00
Saving - £50.00
Spending (i.e. everything else!) - £210.00

That all adds up to a grand total of £1243.00, £933.00 of which was on credit cards and loans. That's scary. I have less 'spending' now, but at least I know everything's paid for and anything left is mine.

I could never go back to living like that. I'll be honest, I do owe a little bit - my mum helped me with the car, and where Dave has paid for things for the house or garden I've made a note of how much and I'm paying him my half as and when I can - but it's manageable, and I would never go back to my old ways.

[kallis3]

Skip, mine would have been worse than yours!!!!!! I don't even want to go there.

Each payday now I work out the finances and know that I won't be going overdrawn or have to worry about paying bills.

Never want to go there again!

[Skippy]

I looked at it and thought that I haven't written food and petrol, and then I realised that some of it came out of 'spending' and the rest went on cards.

I actually feel guilty owing my mum and Dave, but I know they aren't going to start phoning me up at all hours demanding payment!

[kallis3]

Most of my food came off credit cards. I even got to the stage of withdrawing cash from the hole in the wall and then walking into the bank and paying it back over. How bad is that!

[Skippy]

I didn't get quite that far, but it was close! I remember trying to work out if I could do a month's shopping for the 2 of us on £100 as I had no cash and that was all that was left on the cards and I didn't want to admit to Dave that I had a problem. It all changed when MBNA put my interest rate up and I realised the minimum would barely cover the interest.

[moretolife]

i keep all my old cash books and like you i would be horrified if i counted up my outgoing and weighed tham against the income,!!!
how on earth did we actually survive soooo long....we must have unofficial degrees in accountancy and also circus skills...ie .JUGGLING.!!LOL

[Skippy]

I know TOL! I was taking home £1245 a month then, so I almost had it down to the last penny! I still do have it down to the last penny, but they are my pennies!

I now have a spreadsheet and I have the balance of my account, add in my salary. I then list of all my direct debits which are highlighted in blue. Once the DDs are taken out I change the colour to black and add the date so that I know they have gone out. I then deduct anything withdrawn from my account as I go, so I know the figure at the bottom is mine, and nothing has been missed out.

[kallis3]

I managed to keep all that from my OH (also called Dave, Skip), by going to work a little earlier and stopping off at the bank on the way. I don't know how I thought I could get away with it.

It came to a head on my birthday (wonderful present!) when both Barclaycard and Lombard Direct rang on the same day when I was at home. To be fair to Lombard, the chap on the phone was wonderful and was trying to help me, and I was just trying to fob him off!!

Hubby then realised things had gone pear shaped! What an awful night we had.

We have no secrets now, and a much stronger relationship.

[kallis3]

I can't be doing with spreadsheets! My figures are just written down in a notebook, then on payday I total up the monthly income (mine does fluctuate), deduct it from the outgoings and that tells me how much of Dave's benefit needs to be paid across. What is left pays for the food and petrol for the month.

[Skippy]

We keep our money seperate (can't blame him really can you!) - I transfer money for the bills across to Dave's account, and I'm responsible for buying the food. This means that buy the time Dave has paid the mortgage and his share of the bills we pay pretty much the same. We've found this works for us, as Dave's salary fluctuates as he's self employed.

[kallis3]

We used to have separate accounts, but Dave never used to keep tabs on what cheques he wrote, so we decided to have a joint account and for me to do the finances - fine job I did of them eh?

[Skippy]

My Dave quite understandably won't have a joint account with me - he's got a good credit rating and I can understand why he doesn't want to be linked to me!

[kallis3]

Mine's record is almost as bad as mine! His debts are all joint ones though, I had credit cards as well!

You can see who the shopaholic was in our house!!!!

[Julie]

My hubby's credit rating is shot, but as I'm linked to him, guess mine is too. Not that I'll be trying to find out [:D]

[Viki.W]

I forgot a few pins on my credit cards so I used to go into my bank and withdraw from a credit card and then pay another credit card bill with the money.[:0]