GUEST BLOGGER REDUCES DEBT BY 78%: BACK TO THE BLACK BY MARCH

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Here’s another post from our guest blogger “Ms Silver Screen Suppers.”

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Greetings from a born again penny pincher. There is very good news from my bank account. When I started my project in March to get myself Back to the Black I was £6505.99 in debt. I have whittled that down to £1456.75 in less than 6 months. How the hell have I done that, I hear you ask? By changing my entire attitude to money I reply.

Michael’s book has turned the way I think about dough completely upside down. I no longer have my head stuck firmly in the sand, instead I hold it high, looking out for the reduced section in the supermarket!

The biggest lesson I have learned from Michael’s book is that it is easier to make small cutbacks on spending than to bring in new sources of income. For me this is SO true. The ebay-mountain grows – things have been measured photographed and stuck in jiffy bags, but they have not yet been put up for auction. With the best will in the world, I fully expect all that stuff to still be under my sideboard by the time I write my next update for Michael. Me earning extra dough by selling the millions of things I have purchased on impulse is going to be a slow process.

However, I HAVE cut back on my spending and focused on paying down my debt rather than continuing to spend, spend, spend without having a clue what is going out – and what is coming in. I have got a grip on working out where all my money goes, and I am making tiny changes which mostly involve me being MINDFUL of what I am spending.

It’s true that I have had a fruitful few months in terms of what has come in (some bonus payments from work and a bumper run of DJing with The Shellac Sisters) but before embarking on my drive towards financial security I would have spent all of this extra money on fripperies. Instead, I have been carefully considering each and every purchase and realising that every penny I don’t spend goes towards paying down my debt. Thus, in March I said that I aimed to reduce my debt by 50% in a year and I have already blasted through that goal. So I hereby set myself another one.

In six months time I want to be Back to the Black. For me this means that when my wages hit my bank account on the 15th March 2014 I will not be a penny overdrawn. Can I do it? I’ll let you know.

Here’s what I am going to do to work towards it.

1 – concentrate on spending my money on things I need, not things I just happen to want
2 – reducing my grocery spend by using up the mountains of food I have stashed away
3 – reducing my bar bill by not drinking alone
4 – selling some stuff on ebay
5 – continuing to work through the suggestions in Michael’s book

I will report back. It’s all feeling very good!

Eating and drinking like the stars of yesteryear…
Silver Screen Suppers and The Vincentennial Cookblog

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With apologies to our intrepid guest blogger. She sent us this post at the end of September but as this site has been undergoing some changes we haven’t been able to publish it till now.

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WANT TO KNOW MORE?: If you’d like to read Ms Silver Screen Suppers’ brilliant blog about the recipes (both food AND drink, for you cocktail-lovers out there) of the stars of the silver screen, click HERE.

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