Drifting in a Sea of Debt

I finally pulled my finger out and did a car boot sale yesterday. Profit after paying £10 for the pitch was £65 so that's another £60 (4%) paid off the Tesc0 CC :T and a cheeky little £5 for me to fritter.:j Payday is almost upon me (Thursday) and I'm thinking that I might just have a wee little break from debt busting and not pay anything this month except the minimums :eek: I know, I know... I shouldn't really but I've got 2 weeks off in the middle of August and I really want to forget about work, get out, enjoy the sunshine and not have to think about blinking money/debts. A break from it all is what I need. So I'm going to have a play around with the budget and see if it's do-able. Roll on payday...

Your post made me double check my plan just in case I've missed something! Like you, I pretty much sit and crunch the numbers every day to make sure I'm on track and, as long as no curve balls come my way, this is what should happen over the course of the next 10 months... If I stick to my budget, the tax credits debt will be gone in the middle of September, the first Halif@x debt will be gone at the end of November and the second Halif@x debt will be gone at the end of April (or end of May if I decide to take a break from debt busting for the whole of August. That just leaves the balance on the Tesc0 CC, which I'm slowly chipping away at by making little bits of extra money here and there (car boot sales, selling unwanted stuff, expenses claims etc) That's been going really well so I'm confident that this will also be done and dusted by the end of April, maybe sooner.
In the meantime, I've been putting £50 a month into a separate savings account since the beginning of last year. This has just reached £1,000 and by the end of April will be sitting at £1,450. The balance to pay on my cruise by the end of April is £1,250 so this leaves me with £200 for cruise spends (although cruises are all-inclusive so I don't actually anticipate having to spend that £200. But it's nice to know I'll have it to spend if I need to). Once the tax credits debt is cleared in the middle of September I then have a 'spare' £130 per month to do with as I please, it's not needed for my other debts as payments for these have already been budgeted for. If I saved it, this would equate to an extra £1,040 that I would have in the bank come cruise time to either spend on the cruise or keep in the bank until I come back. This would be coupled with money left over from my June payday which I would receive 4 days after I cruise off into the sunset. As I would no longer be paying anything to debt at that point I would have around £700 left after all the household bills are paid. So in a nutshell, I should have somewhere in the region of £1,040 - £1,740 to either spend on the cruise or have in the bank on my return Unless I've miscalculated somewhere.
I will of course have a few extra things to pay for along the way. Xmas of course, which I currently have a £2 pot on the go for (that has £92 in it so far) and DS occasionally wants me to pay for something that his pocket money won't stretch to but I can use any money left over from my £30 a week 'entertainment' budget for these. You can probably tell that with all this debt busting I haven't been out much for quite some time so there's always something left over from that particular budget!:rotfl: The only things that happen before my cruise which I haven't really allowed for are MOT (£40), road tax (£20) car insurance (£140) and service (£170). But again, I'm pretty sure that I can cover these as and when they happen next April.
So that's pretty much it. Once I return from my cruise I should be debt free, have a bit of money left in the bank and have around £700 + expenses each month which will be mine all mine. All I need to do is keep my head down, stick to the plan and hope no unexpected bills come my way in the meantime. Fingers crossed

Hi Mila, :wave: I'm very goal orientated so I have to have something to aim for and a robust plan in place to get me there. Although it's difficult at times, I know that as long as I stick to the plan I've made and don't let anything derail me then I'll reach my goal. Simples!

Hi everyone :wave: I hope you've all had a lovely August and managed to enjoy some free sunshine So after taking the whole of the month of August off (shocking behaviour I know but it had to be done) its back to work for me tomorrow and time to get back to the debt busting. Friday was payday so I made a start, paid down some debt, sorted out my September budget and this is the latest summary of where I'm at:

Debt totals last month:
Tax Credits: £261.02
Capital One CC: £0.00
Santander CC: £0.00
Halifax CC1: £2,100.00
Halifax CC2: £3,090.00
Tesco CC: £1, 205.00
Total Debt: £6656.02

Debt totals this month:
Tax Credits: £130.66
Capital One CC: £0.00
Santander CC: £0.00
Halifax CC1: £1,575.00
Halifax CC2: £3,090.00
Tesco CC: £1,175.00
Total Debt: £5,970.66

A double celebration this month... I've dropped below the £6,000 mark and I now only have one more payment to make to HMRC. Woohoo!!! The £130.66 needed to make this final payment is currently sitting in my bank account and I'm dying to just ring them up tomorrow and get it gone but I really don't want to engage in any conversation with them. Knowing my luck they'd check my account and decide that I owe them even more! So I'm going to just let the payment go out on the 14th Sept as scheduled and then quietly cancel the direct debit.

In the meantime, it's just head down and get back to trying to stick the budget I guess.

Happy debt-busting everyone x