Debt free by 2018

Well I made it through May with my pots mostly in tact, I did overspend in my food budget, I think this is going to be a difficult area for me to change and I don't want to focus on cutting it down too much as I think this will have a negative impact, the overspend was around £50 for the month. I will work on this gradually and will also try to meal plan a lot more and actually stick to it.

Looking at the positives, I have reduced my debt by over £700 in 2 months and still have a (small) pot to still go towards debt repayments, once I am back on my ebay selling I will send this over to my card.

Well I have just made my second overpayment, this time to bring my debt to below the £6500 mark! I am feeling proud of myself so far and I'm feeling much more focused now that my finances have settled. New figures:

Loan 1: £2626.78
Loan 2: £2793.31
CC (0% until Oct): £1079.25
Total: £6499.34

enthusiasticsaver wrote: »

Excellent progress to almost pay off 50% debt in just over a year. How long until you graduate and are you able to do some part time work to boost your income? I would also put some money into emergency savings each month or towards your car insurance so you can pay it off in full.

The gifts figure is quite high. That is almost £780 per year. Is that for birthdays and Christmas and can you cut down the number of people you buy for? We only buy for immediate family now. Just our daughters, each other, son in law, my brother, granddaughter and a small something for my mum and stepdad. It has made Christmas so much easier now I don't have to think what to get my niece and nephew who we hardly see and are now late teens, early twenties and my sister is pleased she no longer has to buy for our daughters and just buys for my granddaughter.

Thank you for taking the time to reply. I have a couple of years yet, I don't think it would work out much better financially to work part time and it would also take time away from my LO as I would have to work in the evenings. I considered going back to work over the summer as my old workplace would happily take me back but I've decided instead to enjoy the summer with LO before he starts school full time in September, some things just aren't worth losing regardless of the money.

The gifts figure is for absolutely everything, birthdays, christmas, mothers and fathers day, easter, including cards and gift wrap etc. I'm not sure if I can cut this down but it is certainly something I will look at. I already have around £200 in my Christmas pot and I have £300 in my car insurance pot, the monthly figure is savings to pay it off annually as I did this last year.

NSD today, going to have an ebay clearing spree over the next few days as I have had tons of stuff sitting in the spare room for a while that I need shifting! Hopefully it should all bring in some extra money to put towards my card, determined to get that below the £1000 mark by the end of this month.

I have some money in a holiday pot which is to be used for a holiday with one of my best friends celebrating our birthdays but this has now been postponed, I'm tempted to send it over to my card but I don't know how long it will be postponed just yet, I might reassign it to my emergency pot which will then make me work a little harder to find the holiday money from other things (ebay for example) as any extra funds I have get distributed between various pots.