Addicted to spending money?

AgentM_2

I really think I am. I cannot stop myself, and never have anything to show for it.

I earn 28k
I owe about 5k
I don't pay much rent (25 and living with parents) so I should be on top of this

I'm constantly worried when my phone rings / letters come and i'm kind of taking a "head in the sand" approach to paying off my debts. I feel like a total failure! I don't know how to stop my compulsive spending.

Can anyone help!?

~Beanie~

£5,000 of debt isn't a great deal and you earn a decent salary so you should be able to clear it pretty quickly if you live with parents.

What do you spend your money on? What is the debt, credit cards or loans?

thevinternet

Hiya, welcome to the boards. :hello:

As Beanie says, £5000 isn't actually too bad (take a look at my signature to get an idea what I mean!!), although I'm sure it must feel overwhelming to you at the moment.

However, it is easily sorted. First of all, as Beanie asked, what is the debt on? Cards? Loans? Overdrafts? Friends?

If cards/loans, are you managing to make all your minimum monthly payments, or are you ignoring them and incurring fees?

The more info you give us, the more we can help. Don't worry - we won't judge you here. xx

TotallyBroke

You have to work out what is costing so much. It could be that you pay everything on a credit card. The interest rate for that maybe extortionate. By telling us these things we can advise about balace transferring etc.

Also I would suggest you look through your last 12months of bank statements and see where you soent your money. Be it on car things, clothes, food, or gifts etc etc.
Then use https://www.makesenseofcards.com/soacalc.html and out in the information. It will show you how you can cut back or make your spending more productive.

Well done for posting, £5,000 is not a huge amount and can be paid off very quickly.

Red_Fraggle_3

Why not start a spending diary to see each day what you spend from now on - after a while seeing it written down does help you not buy the extra stuff - i start and think do i really need it
I'm tight really not much for fancy coffees or glossy mags
IS it expensive lunches at work - could you take a pack lunch there are loads of threads about this ? if your spending £2.5 a day 5 days a week thats £50 per month
Yes just realised I do sound boring :-) Good luck

AgentM_2

The spending diary is a really good idea. I hadn't thought of that. I bet it would help me stop frittering dosh, which I think is my main problem. Three of the amounts are on credit cards, and one is an overdraft. Because they are spread, I don't seem to be able to make any impact on paying them off, but don't know if putting them in one place is a good idea?

Thanks for your supportive words guys. Debt is so hard to talk about to "real people". I just feel ashamed for letting it all snowball.

Red_Fraggle_3

When i had my debts I made an easy spreadsheet - yes very boring
showing the amount, interest and amount knocked off did work for the cards but was really good for the loan
I think its good to see it how much is the smallest amount you have out standing ?

(Land_of)_Maz

there are loads of people here in similar situation to you, you're fortunate that you've realised you need to stop and have come to the right place!

write up your incomings, outgoings, interest rates and so on using statement of account ....

immediately, start tracking what you are spending your money on... a note inside your purse is a good way to stop yourself actually parting with the cash... ! some people use online www.spendingdiary.com for some interesting graphs and totals! i know it scared the bejesus outta me when i saw how much i was wasting... !!

there are loads of ways to cut back on here, from lunches, travel, challenges and so on. You can challenge yourself to have as many no spend days as possible and a lot of people find that useful, is it really worth blowing your record for the day by having Heat magazine?

There are also challenges to generate extra income, you may have things you can ebay and so on....

A great way to bring debts down without feeling the pinch too much is by doing payment a day... so any money you save on coffees or mags for example, you stick onto one of your debts, then at month end you still make the normal payment.... plus you get the added bonus of thinking that you've caused the CC company a little bit of extra work that day for your £4 payment.... does that make sense? there's a thread on it here somewhere too....


you're in a great position still at home, so take full advantage of that and start squirrelling some of that fritterred away cash into your debts...you'll have them down in no time!!!

AgentM_2

Guys, I appreciate these suggestions so much.

Can someone tell me what "Statement of account" is? I don't really want to publish my accounts ?!

TotallyBroke

And snowball is exactly what you should do. have a look at https://www.whatsthecost.com and look at snowballing it will show you if you carry on the way you are how long it will take to be debt free.
Then by working out what you can give up to have spare money and watch the date shrink

~Beanie~

AgentM wrote: »

Guys, I appreciate these suggestions so much.

Can someone tell me what "Statement of account" is? I don't really want to publish my accounts ?!

It's Statement of Affairs - basically you list all the money you have coming in and then all your outgoings. People then look and see if they can spot any areas where you could save some money to use to repay your debts quicker.