My Money/saving adventure!

Hey all,

After reading a few threads of others in other situations and finding them interesting and inspirational, I thought it was about time I started putting down my journey with money's so far. Maybe it will help me focus, maybe others will get something from it, or maybe it will just be something that will keep me busy for a bit when I'm bored!

I'll start with a little of my past. I was very unlucky with my family life up until I was able to be self sufficient. I was born into a family with five siblings, with two parents that never worked, and a severely autistic younger brother. We grew up on a rough council estate, I never had any birthday/christmas presents, ever, and never had any new clothes etc. I was also badly mentally and physically abused as a child by my dad, up until i was 18 When he was convicted and jailed for, to put it bluntly, being a (swear filter wont let me type it, but for doing things with underage girls). Life was hard.

Anyway. After I finished school. I went straight into work. As I was the only one working in my household, most my wages immediately went into paying rent etc for the rest of my family. I eventually after a couple of years saved enough to pass my driving test, got a loan for a car, and it is here my debt issues started.

I moved miles away from home to move in with a girl I had met on holiday. I wasn't aware of her money issues though. Over the next six or so years, she made me rack up debts totalling about £18k. That was almost as much as I earned in a year. As I'm not the most confident person for reasons above, I was a pushover.

We then split. Me on my own, miles away from home, no family, few friends, mountains of debt. Over the next four years I worked my bum off, saved like crazy, and paid it all off the hard but decent way. While I did this, I took up running as a free time sink and ran marathons, earning sponsorship for worthy charities.

Just over 18 months ago, I moved back to near my home area. Debt free, new job. I started saving, with the hope that I would be able to put enough away to put on a house deposit by 2015.

The savings have been going far better than I had hoped. My job gives me lots of opportunity for overtime, and because of the job i do and where I live, I was able to get rid of my car, which is saving me a fortune. I've just had my hours extended a little for some extra income, and with all the overtime I'm on a reasonable, above average wage for the area.

As it stands today, I've saved around £19,000 in 18 months. Which is a little over how much I was in debt just over five years ago. And an amount I never thought I would see. I've already done over £1100 of overtime this month to pass £20k.

My goal is just £25k - to put down on a nice house somewhere quiet. I always told myself that this would be for when I eventually met somebody (the right person this time - I'm not so much of a pushover these days!) to settle down with. But I'm getting on a bit now and this doesn't look likely, so I will probably just bite the bullet as my tenancy runs out in November, 2013.

I'll update with progress when I remember. Hopefully this will help motivate and keep me focused.

Thanks for reading!

S