Tales from the city

Fortune_Smiles wrote: »

Well done on the savings Ani. It does all add up doesn't it.

Fortune x

Thanks for that, Fortune Smiles. Yes it does, and it's a great habit to get in to.

I have woken up a bit frustrated at the debt situation. Saving and trying to pay off debt at the same time is very difficult, as I'm sure everyone on here knows. I wondered if it would help to track everything on here, savings too and the wedding budget, to boost my motivation and think of the bigger picture. So here goes...

Warning: this is quite a long post and mostly for the purpose of keeping myself right!


The debt

Virgin CC £1,550
HSBC CC £5,550
Overdraft £1,800

Total £8,900

This is all at 0% for a long time. Minimum payments are £175 per month.


Savings

Help to buy isa £2631.33

This is topped up by the maximum £200 monthly. An extra £25 to be added for every £100 is too good an offer to refuse. We're very happy with this little nest egg, and property prices are still falling in our area so it's not the right time to buy, even if we were in a position to, which we're not. Yet.


The wedding :j:j:j:j:j

Paid already £4,422.52
This is cash paid to the venue for food and drink for 80 people, and for our outfits, our rings, deposits to various vendors (celebrant, photographer and band), invitations and gifts for the wedding party.

Savings £2,779.49
This is for full payment to our vendors, the cakes (cupcakes) and alterations to our outfits. It's also for flowers, hair and make- up and a car. All of this has still to be costed.

Still to save £1,300
This includes the honeymoon deposit and any other bits we haven't thought of yet or if something that's not properly costed yet comes in a bit over budget. We are asking for honeymoon contributions as gifts from our guests. The figure is achievable by the end of April.

We decided to increase the total budget by £1.5k after our parents very kindly contributed to the cost so the total is somewhere around £8.5k. We've been able to be a bit more generous with things which is lovely. I am confident we haven't overspent on frivolous nonsense and that we have created the loveliest day we could for all our family and friends with the money we decided we could afford.

A small part of me thinks we can't afford any of it and the debt could be gone if we didn't get married. But mostly I'm fully confident the debt will be gone before we start paying interest on it, and that I'm so excited to marry OH I wouldn't have it any other way.

What next?

So after April the wedding will be sorted and paid for. That leaves 5 months when we can overpay the debt by £550 per month before we get married. Adding in minimum payments during that time, and we will start married life with £4,925 debt.

If we can maintain that level of debt repayment and I don't see why not, then I am now in a position to propose a debt free date of April 2018.

I am still trying to sell my expensive thing which I would use to hurry along the debt free date.

I am still waiting to hear from the tax people about this mysterious rebate. If it comes, it can also go to debt.

But even if they don't, I think I may have the finishing line in sight.

Oh my word. *gulp*

Also, by that time the help to buy isa will have £5,400 in it. Still not enough but we will have so much more free cash to save harder.

Well, I'm off work today and thought I would meander on over to my old thread and look for some moneysaving tips. If anyone's interested, here's the link:

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.php?t=3437287

So I realised a couple of contradictory things. The first is that I absolutely loved living in the countryside. There was sheer pleasure to be had every day in the garden, the wildlife and the changing seasons. I would love to have that again. :heart2: Country living is definitely for me.

The second thing is something I already had in my mind, that car- free living is amazingly cheap and reduces stress massively.

Now, OH has some experience of living in the countryside, and there's certainly plenty of it around here, so maybe that house we saw in our street a few months back is not the house for us after all. Maybe we could go much more rural. How amazing would that be?

Problem though, you can't live in the countryside without owning a car. That's a given. Is there a more affordable way to own a car?

I'm away to research it.

hiddenshadow wrote: »

We're really looking forward to more countryside living.

Re: car we bought an 11yo car with 50k miles on it for < £3k cash, even with an unexpected repair it's been pretty economical for a year's running. We're hoping to keep it for at least another 4-5 years, ideally more like 10, at which point we'll have saved up enough for a decent upgrade (£4,500) or a very nice upgrade (£9,000) if we buy used in cash again.

Not sure on ways to keep running costs down, but buying used in cash is definitely the way to go re: purchase.

I would really enjoy more countryside living too hiddenshadow. But I also enjoy the area we are in now, and we're not sure if we were to stay here, whether we would want a house or a flat. Houses are rare around here. It's fortunate we are not in a position to buy yet as we just haven't a clue.

The car situation is tricky. I'd really rather not have one but buying cash sounds like a good plan, and not doing a huge mileage and taking care of the thing would help too wouldn't it? I always ran mine into the ground. It doesn't mean we couldn't use a hire car for long journeys.

It's all food or thought.