Debt free ME!

Hello,

Decided to start up a Debt free diary. I'm hoping the debt journey will be short and sweet but money saving to continue for a very long time. This will be my space to make note of successes and failings/lessons to be learnt and hopefully inspire others too.
I recently joined MSE and had my lightbulb moment on the 8th Jan this year. I was previously spending £££ 100s each month on stuff we didn't need and we just got further and further away from saving for a house. I wasn't getting into debt from spending as we do have alot of spare money after bills but we were just paying minimum payments.
Since my lightbulb moment we have cleared almost 50% of our joint debt (with Husband/DH). I was actually debt free in 2015 however my DH kindly pointed out that he used some of his OD and CC to pay towards 'our' wedding so I opened up a 0% interest card and transferred some of his debt to me. So theres 1 CC in my name, hubbys OD has been cleared since Jan, his other CC cleared last month and a finance deal for our bed is whats left . This adds up to £3296.95!

I can not even to begin to say how much MSE has changed our lives already in only 2 months. We have stopped spending on non-essentials and in just two months we have saved £5, 747.88 per year just by calling up energy suppliers, cancelling subscriptions to magazines we dont read, calling up tv and broadbabd supplier, calling our mobile phone providers, not spending at our local coop and clearing nearly half our debts (1,800 minimum payments and we still wouldnt of cleared them).
Just seeing that figure written down makes me feel sick as I havent even included the savings we have made from shopping in Aldi instead of Sainsburys, M&S etc ( approx 200 saving per month), and that doesn't include the savings I've made by not spending approx £300 per month on stuff we didnt need.
I am embarrassed that my spending got so out of hand. It was my spending that ws the biggest issue although DH has seen that he was carelessly spending too. We must focus on the futurr though as we are flying through clearing the debts and we're constantly finding ways to save more money every day. We recently got a smart meter installed and I have a little secret competition with myself to spend atleast 20p less than the day before. Pennies make pounds!!
Anyway, today has been another eye opener- where we would have usually gone out and spent £80, today we spent £13 including city centre parking charged (£6).
We havent felt deprived once and I just cant explain the freedom I feel from not spending. I'm also marking today as AMAZING as we got home to find that my DH has been awarded a rebate from his employer due to new case law. We checked his payslip and its an extra £851 after tax!!! Its going straight towards clearing our debts. So our debt free date was 29th June but this will bring it forwards.

I/we now also have an Emergency Fund and we will have reached our initial £1,000 goal by this Friday. I have been earning extra money from completing surveys - so far it stands at £3 but its better than nothing.

I will keep posting updates as and when and really cant wait to be DEBT FREE!! X