Debt repayment budgeting advice for people who don't want to face up to their habits

[squidgy]

At the moment, I'm thinking up rules about depreciation. Since I've just moved from a house-share to a self-contained flat, I'm finding that there are lots of bits of hardware and furniture I need to do routine cleaning, food-prep and storage chores. I simply don't have this equipment, because I've always relied on bedsit communal facilities in the past. So I have to buy it now.

After all, you don't honestly expect me not to buy a mop to clean the floor with, when I don't have one, and the plastic is still good for ten grand, do you?

I think if you buy something that's likely to last a while, it's reasonable to allocate a proportion of the cost to the spending level of each week of its expected useful life, rather than the whole lot in the first week.

But then, you could "cheat", by saying that you expect things to last forever, or for a very long time, when you have no reason to believe they will. I'm conscious of the fact that if you make it too easy to ignore the cost of long lasting items, then you also make it too easy to justify cluttering up your place with useless niknaks and gadgets that you'll never use, and that you don't really need.

If you've used something before that broke after a while, then when you replace it, the length of time it lasted before is the length of time you can be allowed to depreciate its cost over. But what if you have no experience - or if you can't remember how long it lasted before? I need to think up a reasonable way of limiting the time that the cost of something can be depreciated over. Any suggestions? Thanks.

You won't be surprised that my spending in the past seven days has been significantly more than you'd get on income support. And I haven't even claimed sick pay - I might try to make a backdated claim, but I'm not banking on it. I'm trying to justify the high expense to myself. Also, if I merely aim to spend less next week than what I have this week, then that would be a bit too easy! I want at least a bit of a challenge. Hence the depreciation idea.

[squidgy]

I've had an idea. My tenancy agreement is fixed term for six months. If I find I can't afford it, I might move out at that time, back into a bedsit, or in with relatives. If that happens, I probably won't need a lot of the stuff I have now. Of course, if I stay here, great. But I don't want to create a way of budgeting that makes me think that hoarding clutter is a good thing. The more clutter you have, the more difficult and expensive you find it is to move.

So I think it's reasonable to allocate costs over six months.

Just to prove W/L is cooler than Squidgy

Sure ... it's just I don't see what's so cool about analysing till receipts. But it's something I really must make myself do.

You don't all think I'm making a mountain out of a molehill, do you? Or do you think it's good that I'm going into such detail? I think that detail is important here.