Hello Dear Reader,

If you did just one thing that I suggested yesterday to get rid of debt, then you are on the road to freedom. Here’s the one thing I want you to do this week. I want you to stock take your house.

Go to your wardrobes and drawers and check all the items of clothing that you have. What can be sold? What needs laundering and hanging up ready to wear. What do you have that you can alter to make into a new outfit? Pair up all your socks, repair your tights and turn anything grey or baggy into dusters and dish clothes. Now assess what you have and take a make do and mend mentality. Create outfits and photograph them with garments side by side. Play with this and add a scarf or a darker t-shirt and look for more variations. ‘Shop’ your own wardrobe and make the most of what you have. If you really need something then take a look in the charity shops first. A word of warning about charity shops, do not use them for retail therapy - only go in them if you genuinely need something!

Check your furniture. Does it need a steam clean? Does it need sanding and waxing? Does it need a coat of paint? You are going to ‘shop’ your house and make do with what you have. Do you have curtains you will never use? Try making loose covers or cushions to give your sofa a new look. Try sewing two sets of curtains together to have a two tone or cut into strips and sew together to get a totally new look altogether. Do you have any paint in the shed or under the stairs? Clean down and sand down the woodwork and freshen the place up. All this going to keep you busy? That’s the point, busy people are never bored and don’t have time for shopping.

Dig out your books and check what you have. Sort into those you will not keep and those you will read. Take all your cookery books to the kitchen and find space on a shelf for them. Underline the simple and affordable recipes and try them out. Now build time to sit and read your books. All those wasted hours in shopping centres will now be replaced with reading.

Tidy out your airing cupboard and check your linen. Sheets make useful dust covers for sofas to save them from wear, tear and pets. They also make good curtain liners to add extra warmth in the winter. You can use sheets as quilt backs and they also add extra insulation to your bed in the winter and I often use two bottom sheets along with a fleece blanket under them to keep us warm in an unheated house. Check your tea-towels and cut any down into napkins or dish clothes as you won’t be buying any more kitchen rolls or paper tissues. You’ll line dry them too! Check all your towels. The tatty ones can be cut down and made into wash mits - see here for instructions or flannels. Old towels make great door mats by doubling then and sewing them together like a quilt. On a wet day then can save any footprints that the door mat doesn’t absorb.

Stock take your kitchen. Over the next few weeks, you are going to use up that stir-fry sauce, you will use up those packets of rice, you will soak those pulses and use them. You are going to eat down your freezer and any stockpile you have. These are going to be difficult times and a perfect time to use up what you’ve been storing ‘just in case’. Your mission is to eliminate food waste and use up whatever your have because it’s good food and waste is a real shame. You are also going to menu plan with what you have first. If you have a mass of cous cous, rice or pasta then you don’t need to buy any potatoes or oven chips as you have all the starch you need and you are going to make do.

Stock take your shed or garage. Is there a bike languishing in there? Have the children out grown their’s? If so, either freecycle them (always someone worse off that you) or sell them. Learn how to service a bike via Youtube and sort your bikes out. You won’t need a gym membership (never had one whilst I was in debt) as you are going to get out and about and ride that bike.

Check out your garden. Do you have any growing space for any veggies? As a word of caution, if you were starting from scratch, buying tools, wood for raised beds, netting, bean poles ect. then this can prove more expensive than vegetables from Harrods unless you are going to keep this us. It can be great fun but you are also at the mercy of a wet summer and shortened growing periods. Why not check out your garden and keep your lawn weed free, your hedges clipped and tidy, your borders can be bulked out with cuttings and by lifting and dividing plants. Keep your garden in order to maintain what you have.

Check out your empty spaces. Is that back bedroom empty? Rent it out on weekdays to folk working away from home. Is that shed empty then offer it for storage for payment. Is your garage or driveway devoid of any car? Then rent the space, especially is you live in a city where car space is hard to find. More and more uni students are mature students and they don’t want to live in Halls and they are willing to house share in term time only and are looking for somewhere quiet to study.

If you’ve checked everything out then sit back and count your blessings. You have plenty of clothes, serviceable furniture, plenty to do, plenty to read, a small income source and a welcoming garden. Now total how rich you feel and marvel in the fact that you need next to nothing.

You won’t be shopping for years and this spirit of making the best of what you have will sustain your through debt repayments. Tomorrow, I will be focussing on the kitchen and cooking on a tight budget.

Over to you Dear Reader. Who has sent an email to Radio Cornwall on [email protected] Who is on their way to debt freedom? Who is taking the first steps? Who is scared to reduce their lifestyle and equally scared of the next bill they can not pay? There’s no judgement here as I’ve been in debt and know how hard it is to get out of debt. Share your thoughts on debt busting week so far.

Until tomorrow,

Love Froogs xxxxxxxx

Hello Dear Reader,

Ok? Let’s get started! I want to share debt shredding advice. If you walk away from here and do one of these things then you will have taken the first steps to financial freedom! So, where do you start?

What debts do you have? Find all the paperwork, all the online statements and create a list, a note pad, or spread sheet of every debt. The car finance, the credit cards, the home loan, student loans, the furniture on finance, the mobile phone contracts, the Sky TV/cable contract and work out what you owe in total. People often think of debts as just credit cards but that £35 a month for 24 months for that i-phone contract is a debt. Now you have the list, you can have a got at any of the following, and not necessary in any order.

Cut up credit cards! You have got to stop racking up any more debt. To begin with, you will find this quite scary. Here in the UK, all medical care is covered so I can’t think of anything that’s a life or death emergency so you don’t need credit. After you’ve cut them up, burn them! You can’t see the long number, the expiry date or the security code on the back…………there is nothing you can buy with this now!

Stop Spending! You need food and to get to work! There is no need to buy another thing for a very long time. Wear the clothes you’ve got and don’t worry if you’ve got nothing to wear as you’re not going out again until those debts are gone! You will need to learn to mend and make do, to do without and to say no. In truth, you can’t afford it. You won’t be going to the cinema, to the theatre, to restaurants, on holiday, to parties, to weddings, to engagements to birthday parties as you are going to have a financial fast! You are going to go financially cold turkey. You will get the shakes, you will feel sick and you will be in pain but there is no experience on earth like being financially clean!

Included in this is the elimination of everything you pay for that doesn’t keep you alive! Sky TV does not keep you alive, Spotify does not keep you alive and nor does Netflix. Do not kid yourself that you NEED a mobile phone contract! You don’t! Give notice to your TV and phone providers. Get a Freesat box or just use the desk top box and get digital for nothing more than the cost of your TV licence. Get a pay as you go sim card installed and set yourself a limit. That mobile phone contract that you pay for your kids? Most of it will be spent on snapchat, posing picture in the mirror in full war paint for Facebook and BBMing pointless messages to their mates! Get them a pay as you go card too! But really? They don’t need it?

Cut your home running costs to the bare bones! Get a water meter installed and have showers instead of baths and only wash dirty clothes. Hang clothes up to air and wear them again, the same with towels! Turn the heating timer to an hour less a day and turn the thermostat down to 17 degrees. Wear more clothes indoors and keep the curtains closed when the heating is on. Turn off the lights in any rooms you are not in and make sure you don’t leave anything on stand by. Make sure your freezer is full, if it isn’t fill 2/3rds full plastic milk bottles with water and fill up any gaps in your freezer. Vacuum the back of your fridge freezer to get rid of dust so it’s more efficient. Look after what ever you have because you won’t be able to buy anything to replace it for a very long time. Get rid of your tumble drier and hang clothes up, either inside or out. In the winter, I accept that laundry can take 48 hours to dry. That’s ok!

Sell everything you don’t need. You’re 46 and you are not having any more kids so get rid of the baby stuff in the lost and the toys your children (who’ve left home!) don’t play with any more. Clean everything, photograph it and get it on ebay. You’ve used that kayak twice and it’s faded on once side and you are not going to use it! That strimmer, that you’ve never taken out of the box………..get it on eBay. All those clothes that don’t fit, all the CDs you don’t listen to, all the DVDs you don’t watch, get them on eBay. Make sure you cover your delivery costs but get rid of it. Any of the items that might go for 50p or £1, then sell at a car boot sale. If you found £10 in a pocket, you would be glad of it, so any money you make at a car boot sale is a bonus.

Set a realistic budget You will need two running totals on a spreadsheet or in a note book. All the money you have coming in. That’s all you have. You then start to deduct everything going out. Mortgage or rent, utilities, debts (yes….debts third!) and food. That’s all you are going to allow for. You’ve stopped the papers, cancelled the holiday, you can’t afford any of the kids clubs, you won’t be having a cut and colour and Christmas will be homemade! You will need to budget for a maximum of £20 a head for food and sundries including toiletries and yes I will be blogging how to do that. If the children need anything, this is the only place where you will be able to cut back and for a family of four, that means a budget for everything with £80 a week, which I think is incredibly generous and way more than anyone needs for food!

Plan for expenses Your car will need servicing and new tyres, the boiler will need servicing, the house and car will need insuring, Christmas and birthdays happen every year as do school holidays, dental check ups and Stronghold/Frontline for the pets. We know these happen every year at the same time. Ring round for boiler servicing quotes and keep the number and add 25% to the figure for increases. If that figure is £120, then you need to set aside £10 a month. If you plan to spend £200 at Christmas, then you need to set aside £16.66 a month. You need to lock this money away and don’t touch it! It is not for ’emergencies’ (like what?) but for planned bills. You can pay for home, car and boiler insurance monthly until you are debt free and again, pay it by DD on pay day.

Take control of your debts - How much are you paying in interest of each debt? Try to move debts to 0% balance transfer credit cards. We started off with £7.5K in credit card debts and were paying 14.5% at one stage and cleared them on 0% balance cards. Every time the deal came to an end, we would move them to another card. When the balance was zero, then we moved the remaining £4K on the car finance to two 0% cards and paid the car off as quickly as we could. Currently, 50% of our income goes to the mortgage payment and over payment and we live off the rest. When we were in debt, 25% of our income went to our debts and we just paid the minimum mortgage. Every penny that didn’t keep us alive went to debt repayment.

Snowball your debts. Take a look at this debt snowball calculator. Gather up all of your statements and be prepared to just pay the minimum payment on all but one of your loans. It could be argued that you should pay off the loan with the highest interest rates first but we paid ours off from the smallest to the largest. We started with the overdraft and ended with the home loan. Now you have chosen which debt your are going to pay off first, you are going to throw every spare penny at it. You are going to set up a standing order or direct debit, or make payments online and you will pay this on the day your salary goes into your account. You are not going to ‘wait until the end of the month’ to see if there’s anything left as there never will be! You are now going to stick at it, month after month after month and it will go eventually. On the very next month, you are going to take the minimum payment you were paying and the overpayment you were paying and add that to the next debt you are going to attack. Remember, whilst you’re doing this, you are not spending any money and not racking up any more debt! At the end of every month, if you have £4.26 left, then you are going to go back online and transfer that to a debt.

Keep trying and don’t give up - At this stage, you might be feeling low, feeling bored and have some urge to have some fun and spend money. You might replace shopping centre shopping with charity shop shopping and money might start to dribble out of your house on things that do not keep you alive. Go for walks, go back to your local church or worship group that you’ve neglected for months/years, go running, dig a ‘victory’ garden and grow veg, read the books all over your house, watch the DVDs before you sell them at the car boot sale, learn a new skills such as quilting and relish the make do and mend mentality.

Be of the same mindset as your partner - Dearly Beloved and I did this together. When he needed a ‘new’ jacket, he scoured the charity shops. He became an eBay expert and bought vintage radios and cameras at local auction houses, split the lots and sold them on eBay. We became the ‘pallet king’ and kept us warm by splitting down pallets. He became my very own lumber jack and split logs. He happily didn’t spend money and made do and mend, just as I do. Don’t keep any financial secrets from each other and never spend any money with out the mutual consent of each other. Be each other’s financial guardians and do everything you can to convince each other that you don’t need it! I’ve had some sad stories of a frugal wife and spendthrift husband and sometimes the other way round. If you’re not communicating then you might need to seek advice to get through this but do all you can to support each other through the debt repayment battle.

I’m going to be back tomorrow to try and help those of you to cut back your food costs and to find the joy in home cooking. If you want any advice, then feel free to email me at [email protected] and title it ‘Frugal Queen’ and I can discuss this on this Sunday’s programme from 11- 12. I won’t mention names if you don’t want. You can also call in on 01872 22 22 22 on the Sunday and leave a message or speak to me. Send in your stories of life with debts or maybe stories of life after debts. To what lengths did you go to pay off debts or are you going to.

Until then,

Love Froogs xxx

Hello Dear Reader,

I know what it’s like to watch the month ticking away without a penny in my pocket. I know what it’s like to no money for anything but basics and I know what it’s like to be in debt. You see Dear Reader, those of you in debt didn’t get that way by wanting to put yourselves on a financial precipice. You probably bought that car, or had that holiday or bought new clothes fully capable of paying for them eventually and then the cost of living rose and took away those ‘easy payments’ and made them extremely difficult.

We moved to our current home when diesel was 85p a litre and a loaf of bread was 30p (for the value stuff). Our energy bills could be paid with £75 a month and I could run the washing machine and tumble drier and afford both. Then, 2008 occurred and the world tilted on it’s financial axis and we’ve been out of kilter ever since. Suddenly, houses lost value, prices of everyday commodities, including food and fuel went through the roof. I was one of those people left in a very different financial place. I was in the position where I had to cut back and cut back, not to maintain a lifestyle but just afford my debts. Does this sound familiar to you? Then you are either in debt or you’ve been in debt.

I blog every day and I do so in the hope that I can give just one person the encouragement to pay off their debts and live a simpler life. If just one person cuts up their credit cards and says ‘No more spending on credit’ then I will be a very very happy woman. We keep hearing the word ‘austerity’ and we think of life being austere. My life is not austere but overflowing with riches. When you strip your life back to what you need then you really do start to listen to bird song, savour in season strawberries and appreciate a crackling log fire. There is so much joy in having less and living more. Retail is not therapeutic, a walk on the moors and hill top view for free is all the therapy I need after a busy day!

I know some of you reading this might have found me because you’ve googled ‘debt busting’ and this week, every post will be full of advice about getting rid of debt…….one pound/dollar/rupee…..at a time! On Sunday, I’m going to be on Radio Cornwall and I’m going to be talking about debt busting. My knowledge is about paying off debt with two jobs and both of us finding extra work to get more money in. I have no knowledge of the misery of spiralling debt that we couldn’t control, couldn’t pay back and couldn’t cope with. I will be signposting agencies and charities that offer free debt counselling and advice and if you’ve used any, then I would be appreciative of a recommendation. I will be able to give budgeting advice and won’t be afraid to share what I did to cut back and if people want to do likewise, then they are free to do so. I’m happy to give advice too if that’s what folk want.

I would love you to email your: debt has gone and how we did it stories, up to our neck in debt and barely coping stories, what it’s like to be in debt and struggling to pay it off stories to [email protected] and to title if for Frugal Queen on Sunday. I’m more than happy to mention no names to respect privacy. Please email [email protected] if I can give you any advice or encouragement on debt repayment. Please feel free to email [email protected] with any budgeting tips that would help folk keep their finances under control.

Remember Dear Reader, I know what it’s like to lose sleep over financial worries and I know what it’s like to have to turn the heating off and leave it off because I just couldn’t afford it. I also know what it’s like to walk tall knowing I’m now debt free. Please share your stories here in comments, email me confidentially if I can help and come back for the rest of the week when I’ll be sharing some advice about getting rid of debt and getting on with the rest of your life.

Until tomorrow,

Love Froogs

Ingredients

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/sifr/formata.swf

• 250g plain flour
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 50g butter , chopped
• 2 eggs
• 3 tbsp milk

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/sifr/formata.swf

• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1 green pepper , quartered, deseeded and thinly sliced
• 4 rashers streaky bacon , chopped
• 5 spring onions , thinly sliced (the white and green parts)
• 2 tbsp tomato ketchup mixed with 2 tbsp tomato purée
• about 6-8 cherry tomatoes , halved
• 85g mature cheddar , grated
• 
  

1. Heat oven to 220C/fan 200C/gas 7. Mix the flour, salt and baking powder in a bowl, then rub in the butter until it disappears. Mix the eggs and milk together, then stir into the dry ingredients to make a soft dough. Shape into a round on a lightly floured surface, lift onto a non-stick baking tray, then press out to a circle about 24cm across to make the pizza base.
2. Heat the oil in a frying pan, then stir-fry the pepper and bacon until the pepper is soft. Take off the heat, then stir in the spring onion.
3. Spread the ketchup over the pizza base, then evenly tip over the pepper and bacon mixture. Scatter over the tomatoes, followed by the cheese. Bake for 15 mins until golden. Serve with a salad or coleslaw.

Hello Dear Reader,

Here’s my sewing room! I’ve tidied it and sorted out left over fabric. When I started quilting, I would cut some fabric and sew a few blocks and then went back and cut some more. I now make life easier by cutting every thing I need to start with. I don’t like doing it, it’s the boring bit of quilting. You can see that these are not the greatest fabrics. They are old pillow cases, shirts, pyjamas, there’s a few odd nice bits, but the rest are what I have. If you go to Bonnie Hunter’s blog, you’ll see my next project as I take a scrappy trip around the world. I’m going big next time and will be making another queen sized project.

Sorry for another quilting analogy but if you want a simple life, then you have to:

3. Get the big jobs done first.

I’m writing this in response to a dear reader who said they’d never had a budget, what was a budget? and where did they start? If this is you then you’ve got a really big job ahead of you. You’ll need to come back to this as you’ll probably need a clear day and then a lie down in a dark room when you’ve finished. How, and well you may ask, does getting the big jobs done first help me live a cheaper and simpler life. My life is simple. I pay all the bills the day I get paid, I know exactly how much there is for energy, food, clothing, days out and anything I need. There isn’t any money for anything else. That’s good or bad depending on your perspective, remember….by now I’ve paid all my bills, I owe nothing more than my mortgage and I have all I need. In these times, that makes my life very simple and I have a clear budget.

Hello Dear Reader,

I spend most of December thinking ahead. I think of everything I want to achieve in the forthcoming year. I want to pay another £18,000 off my mortgage capital. To continue to pay off my mortgage whilst prices and the cost of living continues to rise means there will be further cuts to our household budget. There will be less money to spend on energy, less money to spend on ourselves, no money to spend on our home and no money to spend on any day trips or holidays.

I want, weather permitting, to get some of my garden producing food again. I want to get a room renovated by using nothing more than I already have and that includes ingenuity. I want to start making some quilts to sell. I want to start holding more workshops and spreading the frugal word by teaching scrappy quilting. I want to do more online tutorials to help people save money. I want to answer more emails and help more people. I have the feeling it’s going to be a busy year.

There have been times in my life, and I’m sure in yours too, where you just feel you can’t do something. You just feel you can’t change something. Maybe you’re scared of how you will react, how others will perceive you or how they will treat you. Sometimes we’re just scared of being scared. We worry that people might not like us, or might not respect us or even want us there. I worked out a long time ago that life really is too short to worry what other think of me. I now take what ever kindness I find on my travels and believe it to be genuine and believe people to be kind. I also believe people do most of the things they do with good intentions and they genuinely mean well. Armed with that thought, I really know there is nothing I can’t do.

Food prices will continue to rise, as will fuel prices, as will mortgage rates, as will all living costs. None of us can ignore this and we’ll all have to live through times of austerity. You will have to own Starbucks to not notice that times are hard! In the depths of all this toughness there are so many ways we can decrease debts, increase earning and saving, even in these challenging times. This is going to be the year we make it when all the odds are stacked against us and we have to try harder, go without more and keep at it for far longer than we ever have before! This is not the year to give up but the year we try harder and when we try, we don’t give up because: you only live once, we all deserve a holiday, a night out won’t hurt or the children really must have it.

This is going to be the year we say yes to every opportunity, whether it’s overtime, selling craft items, working through our holidays, taking in a lodger, selling the clothes we don’t need, delivering leaflets for the takeaway or leaving one job at five to start another at half past! This is also the year that we will resolutely say no, to wasting, to spending what we don’t have, to buying what we don’t need, to children’s pleads of every kid on the street has one but me!

I was in debt once, I was trapped once, I was unhappy once and I changed all that. I’m not stopping there and I’m going to keep going until I have made a difference to my future. Really, if I can do it, anyone can.

Until tomorrow,

Love Froogsxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Hello Dear Reader,

I’ve received emails asking me how you face the initial daunting prospect of getting rid of debt. I was asked how I started and then how did I keep going. Here it is.

I started by acknowledging that I would never get out of debt if I kept spending so the first thing I did was stop spending. I cut our credit cards into the tiniest shards and then burnt them! I told myself then and I tell myself now, if I can’t pay cash for it then I can’t afford it. We then sat down and worked out a penny by penny budget where household expenses came first and next was debts. There was nothing left when we worked out that budget. To begin with, that was enough.

We then started to snowball our debts. We took all of the debts except one and made the minimum payment and then we paid all the money we had onto one debts. We cleared our first debts which were overdrafts really quickly and then the bug bit us! We felt that we were in control and started to get more and more frugal so we had more money to pay off debts. We changed our energy providers, we gave notice to Sky TV and our mobile phone contracts. Within no time at all, we had an extra £60 a month (£720 a year!) which meant we could pay off a further £60 a month to debts. We tackled our debts by getting rid of the smallest first.

As we improved our credit rating, we were able to switch borrowings to 0% credit cards and would be ready to move money as the 0% rate was coming to an end. Our last ‘small’ debt was our car loan and we moved the £4500 outstanding balance onto two 0% credit cards and paid that off really quickly too. In the end, we were left with a low interest home loan which we overpaid every month. By now, we were feeling euphoric as we could see the end in sight. We set the target of paying off debts by the 2012 Olympics and managed it a year early.

We used public transport instead of the car as fuel prices rose before train fares did, although they’ve caught up now. We switched to a water meter and sold our big American washer and separate dryer and with the money bought a AAA+ rated washing machine. We used a half the water and energy. We bought three clothes racks (I still have them) and dried all our washing in the garden or inside. We started sniffing clothes and looking for marks, if they didn’t look or smell dirty then we put them back in the wardrobe to wear again.

We became intensely interested in our energy consumption. Even a cup full spare of hot water was saved, even if I just added it to the washing up water. We learnt to ration water by timing our showers and spending less time in there. We found that a quick wash programme got our clothes just as clean.

I learnt and still practise home beauty treatments. I have mastered home waxing, pedicures, facials, deep cleansing and moisturising and I haven’t set foot in a hairdressers or beauticians in years. We learnt a lot in the early stages and became good at spotting good clothes, bedding, curtains at charity shops, jumble sales and car boot sales (I still do this). If we needed to buy anything new, such as our washing machine, we scoured the internet and then bought locally by getting them to price match. We’ve learnt to buy insurance at the right price, then buy it through Quidco, with our cash back debit card and get some money back after two months. We always buy our diesel from Tesco(poly!!) to get points which we save through out the year. Even though we are totally debt free, our frugal habits still continue as we pay off £18000 of mortgage capital a year. Next year will be the first year where we pay in excess of 10% of the balance and we’ll soon start to see the debt reduce.

It is hard to keep going. We have lost touch with people and we can’t attend social events. We simply don’t have the type of clothes to wear to a posh do and to be honest, I don’t miss the needless worry about social niceties and the silly expense. I don’t miss eating out and most take away food is bad for us so we don’t miss that either. We don’t miss the pub as we rarely went any way. We didn’t miss holidays and as I’ve had two this year, I won’t be having one next year. We enjoy a week off work at home as it’s an opportunity to get our teeth into a project at home that we’ve usually put off for a whole year.

To answer another question, yes it’s incredibly hard to stay on track, but so is dieting, giving up anaddictive behaviour, living mindfully and consciously but it’s certainly not impossible. Did I ever get fed up or depressed, yes I did and I did before I was frugal. Some of us are like that. I soon learnt that negative days were few and far between when I went back and read my blog. I saw a woman who lived in the sunshine and even if she wasn’t smiling, painted a smile on her face and got on with it.

We both rose to the challenge of making extra money. We had a lodger, we sold items we bought in auction house (vintage cameras and radios) on ebay. I would buy clothes at jumble sales and then ebay them. I marked exams, I worked in the evening tutoring. I worked in my holidays cleaning caravans. We foraged for fruit and made jams and chutneys, which we’re still eating. I made soap, which we’re still using. I made quilts from scrap fabric, that we’re still using.

I’ve certainly had a lot of blessing from getting rid of my debt. When I wanted to change jobs, I could. I wasn’t tied to an income. I could move to a job I really wanted to do and to be able to follow a career path of my own choice is certainly something to be very grateful for. There are people who hate their jobs but are financially tied. I’ve learnt a great deal more sense over the last few years. I’ve learnt to really prioritise, to budget, to make do and mend, to get creative, to quilt, sew, make clothes, make bags. I’m a better cook. My gardening didn’t improve but my home improvement and DIY skills certainly improved. I’m far more financially astute and now look at how I spend in a thrifty way and ask at every juncture, do I need it? If I do, can I make it? If I still need it, am I buying the best quality I can afford? Will I wear this in two or three years time? Will this mix and match with what I already have?

The process of getting rid of debt started with us both deciding that working our collective bits off to pay interest and keep fat cat bankers in offshore bonuses was something we were not going to do any more. We worked and the only people who benefited were the banks. Now we benefit!! We will have paid our mortgage off in eight years or less (or more if the interest rate shoots up). There are those who belittle our efforts (I’ve often told them to ‘jog on’ and continue to do so) telling us we could die tomorrow or pay off our mortgage and then keel over. Neither of those are likely, I know one thing, I can’t spend it now and live comfortably later if it’s all gone. I’ll continue the frugality as it’s fun. I love a challenge. I hate waste and consumerism and I want to give banks and the multi-nationals as little of our money as possible.

I hope that answers your questions. Yes it was hard, sometimes really tough but it was worth it. I am solvent!

Until tomorrow,

Love Froogs xxxxxx