As you may have noticed by now, I’m a girl who woke up one day and realised that she’s in deep s***load of debt.

Three weeks ago, a week after my payday and a morning after a night out, I woke up with a weird moral hungover (let me spare you the details here). Well, let say that it could’ve been a facebook picture of “sort of an ex” standing in front of his new property that him and his new girlfriend (who is gorgeous by the way) had just purchased . I wasn’t only hungover, hungry for food but also HANGRY for change. I sat on my bed, cried for about 20 seconds and started thinking what to do with my life.

I went into my online banking to check how much the last night cost me (apart from my dignity) and I was surprised that it was only £50. My smirk of achievement quickly disappeared as I’ve noticed that in about a week prior to this “frugal” night out, I’ve wasted around £300 and have nothing to show for it. My balance was as low as my self-esteem and there were 27 days till payday.

The survival instinct kicked in, I decided to do something about it….then I cried for another 20 or 30 seconds. In normal circumstances the crying would last longer, maybe because of the dehydration or overall realisation of how pathetic I was, I run out of tears pretty quickly.

The first step was to take control of my finances. I’ve added my debt (you can see what it is in my previous post). I also calculated how much I needed for my bills and other direct debits. With limited budget and 27 days till payday I had literally no room for mistakes. Whatever was left was the money to survive on.

I didn’t want to be too ambitious at the beginning, I needed to survive till payday so as a first step, I decided to use cash only for the next 27 days. My plan was to survive by withdrawing £10 a day. So I did and I was good at it…so good that in the week two I started to withdraw £10 in the morning and then another £10 in the afternoon. But I was still happy – “I’m winning, I’m only using cash – no more credit cards” – I would say to myself going through £20 a day.

Weeks went by and I reached 21 days of cash only fun. With a glass of my “over the budget” cheap wine, old calculator and my mobile banking app, I started adding my £10 withdrawals…what I found was that in 21 days of my £10 a day budget, I’ve spent £390.00.

There were no tears I must assure you, I had a brilliant thought instead. I was curious to find out what was my spending over the same period (21 days) last month…and a month before…and a month before that. It took me more than an hour and a more than a glass of cheap rose to find out that:

• in July 2016 I wasted £751.28 (£622.00 using my debit card , £36.86 and £92.42 in credit cards)
• in June 2016 I wasted £712.95 (with my debit card only)
• in May 2016 I wasted £533.99 (£484.72 using my debit card, £5.45 and £43.82 in credit cards)
• in April 2016 I wasted £443.67 (£381.32 using my debit card, £3.02 and £59.33 using credit cards)
• in March 2016 I wasted £735.92 (£687.00 using my debit card and £48.92 using credit cards)

Just to clarify, my monthly spending sample consisted of 21 days only – the same time of the month each month. I also didn’t buy anything special during these months (no shoes, clothes etc.). I didn’t include my bills and other direct debits – just so called “disposable” income.

Although, I went over my budget…significantly, I’ve done so well. Using cash really works. It’s early days but I feel I’m in control – yaaay me!!!

What do you think?