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Resourcefulness: The budgeter's friend
Happy New Year to readers old & new! Well, it's time for a new chapter. My old diary ("Put away your purse & become debt averse") achieved pretty much what I intended. I shared the story of how I got into debt at the age of 19 & stayed that way until a pretty enormous lightbulb pinged on during my early 40s, I've shared…
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misstara's debt diary 2024
I've decided it's time to start a new diary as the old one has been on the go for a number of years and I feel a fresh start would be good especially since I have less than £600 left to pay off the credit card. I'm hoping to stay debt free this time and hoping a new diary will keep me focused on this. My first diary was…
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Freedom and Independence.
It’s been a long journey but this year I see the light at the end of the tunnel. After a toxic relationship I had gone from being 20k in savings to 20k in debt. I lost more than that though, I lost myself. I’m nearly back! 20 years later. This year I will be debt free. Have an emergency fund. And pots for savings,…
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Giving Up/Cutting Down Alcohol Thread part 18
Welcome!! Here we are again, time for a new thread, new starts and new challenges. Let's take a trip down memory lane and remind ourselves of In Search Of Me's original post on February 24th 2008 in Part 1: And here's what she started!!! Part 17 is HERE Part 16 is HERE Part 14 and 15 is HERE Part 13 is HERE Part 12 is HERE…
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Moving on
Welcome to my new thread: my old one is here: Cherry takes the reins — MoneySavingExpert Forum and my very old one is here: Coffee and chocolate — MoneySavingExpert Forum Quite a lot changed in 2023, and now it's time to move on. I left the job and career path I'd followed for many years and don't feel I can or should go…
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Debt and Caring
An unprovoked attack on my ankle by a metal workout bench has me lying down with a foot up this evening. Which makes this the ideal time to start this diary. And possibly to declutter some exercise equipment... Yesterday I was £9993.61 in debt. Today I have made a £1500 payment to one of my credit cards taking me down to…
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Struggling along as best I can
Hi everyone, I have just been catching up on my banking and budgets and I am really fed up of getting to the same point of having very little for the last 6-10 days before I get my pension. Don't get me wrong my bills are all paid and I have no debt and I only need to buy just a couple of bits of food (coffee!) But I'm…
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15months to debt free - I hope
Well I thought it was time I started a diary having put my two pennorth into several others. Brief bit about me. I am a retired careworker having done other things as well. I have a husband who has mental health issues and 3 old dogs. A 15 year oldJack Russell X who has heart and kidney failure so I am not sure how long we…
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The Diary Of Onebrokelady Aged 60 And A Half
New Year new diary 😀 erm that's all I've got to say 😂😂
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The Mental Debt Struggle...
I've known that this diary needed to be started... But I've run away from the idea as the accountability made me nervous and I didn't think anyone would want to read it. But then I realised it would be financially and mentally therapeutic for me, and that's the whole point after all. I've read other diaries and gained so…
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Is My Situation Completely Hopeless?
Hi All, It has been almost 10 years since I was last on this forum and I am back here looking for a way out. So basically, I have found myself in around £47,000 worth of personal debt all in credit cards. There are 5 credit cards in total. I owned a business which which did really well for years and I employed staff…
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2020++ - smiling and waving and looking so fine
Hello welcome to my shiny new 5 years (I hope) diary. The title is based on my favourite lyric from the Bowie song 5 years - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bcnO3VQ_fc - I commend you to go and have a listen - its the live Old Grey Whistle Test version and is hauntingly beautiful. Why a 5 year diary - well its is…
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Milann’s mutterings through retirement
I thought it was about time for a new diary. Ive been a member of MSE many years now and got my debt down from £20,000’s to a big fat ZERO. I kept the debts to myself as I was the one who built them up. Dh would have been ok and we’d have worked through them together…..but it was my mess that I wanted to clear myself and…
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Must try harder!
To echo the words of many a school report, I must try harder! My dad often quoted ‘a fool and his money are soon parted’ and it’s taken many years and losing my dear dad before I really took it to heart that I am that fool. My position isn’t terrible, but I’m terrible with money. I often get to the middle of the month with…
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In the Meantime
The meantime is the time between two events. The two events that bookend my meantime are a death and moving into my long term home. In the meantime I will rest, practise self care and kindness. I will be planning and plotting for the next phase of my life. My beautiful relative died and was buried the week before…
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Time to Face The Music
We have decided as a couple that it is time to face the music and start paying down some of our debts. We are lucky that we are both in jobs that pay ok but we have at times been living beyond our means and now it is time to start reining in the spending and making a concerted effort to cut the debt. Moving house last year…
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An in-between phase
I am largely starting this thread so as to not rudely put a long whinge on the lovely @foxgloves and @EssexHebridean threads! I will talk a little more about my slightly unsettled life situation in due course, but for now, just whinging 😂 Today I have been trying to switch to a more money saving phone contract. It has been…
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Muddling millennial - can’t keep on this way
Today is probably the 5000th time of sitting with my laptop and notebook while I’m home alone and going through all of my finances to see if I can do anything to make it just a little bit more bearable. I’m 30 now, but this is all started when I turned 18 and got my first job in a bank. Ironically, this is probably the…
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Redemption - The journey of a recovering gambling addict.
Ok. Here goes. This is my journal on my journey to redemption. First post is to outline my current situation. Salary- £75k + Married Two Children Personal Debts Bank Loan 1 CAR - £20433 - £352 4.3% Debt Consolidation Loan £10,344 £153 5.2% MBMA - £4300 - 0% 14 months NatWest £3000 - 0% 12 months I have told my wife…
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Evasive action! Stop the trench becoming a hole.
I need to take evasive action, and I need to hold myself accountable. I'm not going to call where I am a hole. It's still a rut. A trench. I've got savings, but they are in accounts where they earn good interest rates so I hate touching them. I've just moved house, and I've been doing a money shuffle every month, borrowing…