The Debt Free Roll Of Honour

Hi, this is my second time on the Debt Free Roll of Honour & hopefully the last . I paid off my debts and then built them up again ...

a. The date of your lightbulb moment: 2011
b. Debts at their highest: £10,000
c. Debt-Free Date: 29 January 2018
d. Your one pearl of wisdom: Stick at it ...even tiny amounts help. Keep a track of all your spending.

I'm a bit late as I've been debt free for some time but wanted to share what helped (mostly this forum!).
a. The date of your lightbulb moment: 28 Jan 2008
b. Debts at their highest: approx £16K
c. Debt-Free Date: Jan 2012
d. Your one pearl of wisdom: Do a realistic budget using the SOA and stick to it. Log all expenditure, every penny so you know where your money is going. See money saving as an every day challenge and aim to spend less of every day!
e. Links to the MSE guides that helped you:
I really enjoyed the support of the debt free wannabe forum, 'no spend days', saving challenges as well as generally using the MSE guides on utilities, council tax checker, phone and broadband, insurance guides et al.
Like a diet, being debt free is a lifestyle choice. Everything I learned from the website/forum and its members I still do today. I scour mysupermarket for prices before I step foot in a grocery shop, I use MSE energy club to look for tariffs, I use charity shops, I buy basics and second hand, I research for weeks before big purchases and I always look for discounts.

Lightbulb moment: September 2005
Debts at their highest: £54,000
Debt-free date: May 2017
Boards that helped me: Debt-free wannabe and Old style

After years of struggling with debt, I saw a mention of MSE on another website and decided to look into it. I started out reading the debt-free wannabe board and suddenly it hit me, I was reading about my life! The credit cards, the loans, consolidation, changes in circumstances, spending to ease depression, more debt causing depression. My lightbulb moment came and I felt sick but determined.

At first I tried snowballing, but another change in circumstances made that impossible with the amount owed, so I turned to cccs/stepchange and started a dmp and 11 years later (with a few bumps in the road) I was finally debt free.

Fast forward 9 months and, for the first time ever, I have just paid a years car insurance up front in one go, such a simple thing, but a great feeling (made even better by using MSE guides to cut it by nearly half :money: ).

I still love attempting some of the challenges on the Debt-free and Old style boards (not always successfully ), I find that they have refocused my mind from spending to saving and make it fun.

A massive thank you to everyone on MSE.
And to the person that posted about MSE several times on the Gene's site in 2004/5 (I am sorry, I cannot remember their name), I cannot thank you enough for guiding me here :beer:

Sproggi

Lightbulb moment: September 2012
Debts at their highest: £29,000
Debt-free date: Feb 2018
Boards that helped me: Debt-free wannabe / Debt Free Diaries

The feeling of being constantly in debt is now at an end as I have just made the final payment that covers my Halifax Credit Card where the balance once stood at £11,000.

The lightbulb moment happened when my partner found a credit card bill with the above balance on it (she had no idea we owed that much), we had been borrowing from Peter to pay Paul pretty much since we got married (around 20 years), yes we never missed out on holidays and getting new cars and things for the house but it meant that over time the debt kept growing. A couple of times we took out a consolidation loan but still kept using the cards so things just spiralled out of control

Being in debt is a horrible feeling, you get paid and all the pay does is cover your overdraft(s).

Considered Snowballing but really didn't think we were strong enough to stick with it and it would simply keep spiralling so we went down the DMP route with CCCS, which later became StepChange.

First thing I did was set up a new Bank Account and changed all the Direct Debits. Used to have an account with Barclays and an account with Halifax. Now have one with Nat West that all Direct Debits come out of and my pay goes into and one with TSB that the wife's pay goes into.

There is a small overdraft of £200 with the Nat West account but very rarely use that.

I have an Ocean Finance Credit Card purely for work expenses, credit limit started at £1000 but is now up to £2750, presumably because it gets paid off in full by Direct Debit every month without fail as soon as work reimburse me for my previous month's expenses.

The card has an APR of 34% but no interest is ever accrued on the account so it doesn't bother me. I didn't really want to get a new card but had to as the one that my employer previously supplied was withdrawn when the company was sold to a different firm and the new company didn't issue them. Fortunately I was able to take out a card with Ocean or it would have been a real struggle as my expenses regularly total between £500 and £1000 so to manage that from the current account would have been tricky.

It's not been easy, wife lost her job, she spent 18 months in prison (which was when I nearly chucked it all in) but somehow managed to struggle through.

Didn't do many of the things that lots of the Debt Free Wannabees did like No Spend Days etc, although did have some but more by luck than by judgement.

It was difficult as there were times when we were lucky enough to have parents who gave us (not lent) money for a new car, which we are forever grateful for. The fridge packed up so needed to buy a new one, which we dipped into the emergency budget for.

We will try to save around a minimum of £200 a month now towards Christmas, holidays and an emergency fund etc.

Not sure if I qualify for the Debt Free Role of Honour as I still use a Credit Card but hoping that as I pay it off each month, that will be allowed.

It's good to finally be here, now on to become a Mortgage Free Wannabee once we've let this sink in!