Today we sat down for nearly 3 hours to do all of our finances. Uh oh.

Things have been tight and we’ve borrowed too much. It has been a tough year with Paul being made redundant, a motor bike being stolen, and my health declining. I can now only work part time or I get really sick so am taking major cuts in funds.

So how do you do it without feeling like its the end of the world?

I guess its being realistic so we’ve decided 3 things:

1) Stick to a budget – writing out what you actually spend is a big eye opener. We always use this tool.

2) Don’t cut out everything – we love eating out and our coffee so we are still doing this but looking at ways to make it cheaper – i.e. not buying from Nespresso but trying Lidl’s brand.

3) Make things instead – we always try to make our presents, this year more than ever for Christmas. Its also fun and means we can hopefully wean ourselves off of our Amazon Prime subscription and spend more time together. I’m not posting pictures here incase I ruin any surprises, but I promise a tutorial soon. In the meantime this is my ‘to make’ board

Fingers crossed we can do it.