The Debt Free Roll Of Honour

The date of your lightbulb moment: When I first joined the DFW forum in Oct 2006.

Debts at their highest: £58,766 between my DH & myself.

Debt-Free Date: Today 31 October 2017

Your one perl of wisdom: It's not a credit card, it's a debt card. Also remember you won't win the lottery, or write a best selling novel, or inherit a fortune, so don't spend as though you might. No one is going to bail you out, you have to do it for yourself.

Links to the MSE guides that helped you: Too many to mention.

Which forum threads helped you: Too many to mention.

If you had a debt diary on the Debt-Free Wannabe board (DFW), a link to it: http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.php?t=5716867

My DH drew out his pension in July. He only had enough to pay half of our debts. We both offered all of our creditors 50% of what we owed them in Full & Final settlement. Eventually they all said yes and today we paid the last one and are debt free. Had we not done this we would have been in debt until the day we died owing to huge debts and a tiny income.

I want to thank Martin Lewis and everyone on this site and the DFW forum for giving me the knowledge, inspiration and motivation to become debt free.

Hi I’m debt free finally!! When do I get my badge?

Oh only just found this (so slow) Been debt free since paying off the mortgage back in 2012. Overpaid for years on MSE advice and saved a fortune. Can I get a badge please!

Hello everyone. Here to share some good news, and to offer encouragement to anyone following in my footsteps.

I left home in 2001 and started out at university. Inevitably I had a student bank account with a gradually increasing free overdraft facility. This is important because it got me into a bad habit at the very start of my independent life. I pretty much lived in that overdraft for the next ten years, with grants, student loan installments, and part-time work only ever topping up but never killing off the debt. This continued through two years out, a two-year postgraduate degree and a three-year doctorate.

A couple of credit cards followed, never more than two at a time, usually sliding debt from one interest-free account to another as the deals expired.

I met and married an immigrant, and therefore traveled a bit more than my bank manager might have thought sensible. She moved to the UK for study, and we eked out a pretty basic living until my first proper job in 2012.

At that point, I had a lot of unsecured personal debt. Maybe not as much as others who are sharing their stories here, but a four-figure sum that I never quite conquered. Since 2012, with the exception of just one six month period, I've worked full time in salaried employment since then.

With the help of Noddle, I've been able to look back at all my open and closed financial accounts and see exactly how much I paid every month to every account. Some balance transfers skew the total (i.e. I paid a lot onto one credit card using another, so if I total all the monthly payments up it ends up duplicating the cost.

But as of this month, I am proud to say that since 2011 I have successfully cleared £35,604 of unsecured personal debt, including the original sum plus all associated interest.

It's all gone. :beer:

For the last three years, out of a pay cheque of around £1,900-2,200, I must have sent £400-700 a month to pay off my debt. It's been a long tedious slog. But it's over now.

To those who are following in my footsteps, be assured that you can do it. It will be slow, it will be boring but it will happen. There will be no quick rewards or quick wins. But you will get there.

Having the right people around you helps enormously. My wife has been strict and forbidden me from easy lapses of discipline whenever something tempting comes up. You don't have to be in a relationship for this to happen. Trust the many debt support agencies and charities and talk to them. If you have a friend or family member, turn to them for moral support, maybe even financial discipline. Yes, there's a small chance that they will judge you, but more likely than that they will be honored that you have shown your trust in them.

Good luck, and I look forward to reading your story here very soon. :T