Getting my life on track to a debt free future!

phillipsdj

Hi all!

I know the DFW board has become overrun with diaries lately but I hope you will oblige me in mine as well while I go through the final phase of sorting my life out – I don’t expect it to be very popular and have people anticipating every update like some that I have been reading but I hope it will enable me to continue getting my act together and also act as a spur if I write it down!

A little bit of background info on me: I am 26, have a beautiful wife and son:j , own a flat which we don’t live in (more on that later!!) and is currently sitting empty, we have lived with the in-laws for almost a year and still probably around 4 or 5 months from being able to leave! My wife is currently out of work looking after our son, who is 10 months old, but may be looking to get a couple of days office work a week shortly.

At the height of our debts we owed around £20k:eek: , with the majority of that being mine and at this moment in time we owe approximately £5k with £3.5k on a personal loan and £1.5 on my OH’s CC. A full SOA will follow at some point but I am getting exact figures and rates together at the moment.

The other thing I should probably admit to is that I have the worst luck in the world – if anything can go wrong it invariably does! In fact, my family and friends all blame me for the housing market crisis as it happened at almost the exact time that I put our flat on the market!

Thanks for reading so far, please feel free to ask any questions you may have, many more updates will follow in the coming days and weeks!

Cheers! :beer:

ragstoricheswannabe

welcome to the dfw family!!!!!!!!

i too was at the back of the que when luck was handed out!!!!! Good luck on becoming debt free, how long did it take you to knock £15k off????? well done on that by the way!!!!!!

natsplatnat

Hello!! Well I have subscribed to your diary and will be following with interest...... so no dipping out now I'm afraid!!

Sounds like you have done really well to reduce your debt already!! Hopefully that alone will give you some motivation to see this through to the end!!

Look forward to dropping by and seeing how well you are still doing!!

One other thing - if you think things will go bad, they generally do! Positive thinking does work!!!

Good luck!!!

phillipsdj

Hi Ragstoriches,

Thanks for the welcome!

The £20k was probably around 3 years ago - the thing you should probably know is that although I've been lurking round these parts for a number of years, I only really took control about 6 months ago so everything before that is very vague - we have worked hard to sell anything we didn't need, reduce our outgoings etc and we got married almost a year ago and was lucky enough to receive around £3k in cash which we paid off our debts.

The final sum could well be paid off in around 2 months as my OH's nan unfortunately passed away recently and left us £3k inheritance which we plan to combine with some savings we have and use to pay off the loan. After that we can pay £600-700 a month off her card until it is gone. I don't want to count that as paid off yet though because although my in-laws have very kindly offered to lend us the £3k until the inheritance is received, given my luck in life something is bound to happen to scupper that! :rotfl:

ragstoricheswannabe

hiya nat, with all the diaries you pop onto how do you get any work done?!! can i have your job please??!!!!!

and ditto the no backing out now........n'other subscriber here!!!!

natsplatnat

Hi Rags!!
I am lucky enough to be sat on the phone every now and then and also waiting for reports to run etc. I work hard in between being on here!!! It's addictive I tell you!!

phillipsdj

I promised you more information on our flat, so here goes:

Back in 2004 the landlord of our rented flat decided he wanted to sell up, so my OH had to find somewhere to live quickly!:mad: We decided we wanted to buy a place as we felt that renting property was just like throwing money down the drain……

The problems we had were that we had no savings and earned very little between us, despite that we managed to get a 105% mortgage (which we very much regret now!) over a 30 year term and moved into a small 1 bed flat 40 miles away from all our friends and family. It wasn’t much, but we loved it because it was all ours! Things were going fine, being young and progressing well in our careers we got some pay rises – we now earned enough that when we came to remortgage 2 years later we could reduce our term down to 25 years.:A

However, a little over 18 months ago my OH fell pregnant – like most pregnancies it was unplanned but NOT unwelcome – but our pokey 1 bed flat miles from anyone suddenly seemed too small and we put it on the market. The asking price was £25k more than we paid for it, so we were planning on using that equity as a deposit on a small house back home in Essex. At the same time, we started viewing houses and eventually found a 3 bed end of terrace which we loved and, more importantly, was much closer to our families – we made an offer which was accepted. We tried desperately to sell the flat and although we were getting a lot of good feedback people were being put off by the rumours of a housing market collapse in the news. However, we did eventually receive any offer which we accepted. As my OH was now 7 months pregnant and we wanted to give birth in Essex we moved into the in-laws while we waited for the sale and purchase to complete.

Unfortunately, the flat sale fell through and my owners of the house found a new buyer who was able to move immediately and we were suddenly back at square 1. To cut what could become a VERY long tale short we have still not sold the flat, my wife gave up work when the baby was born and we were suddenly earning a lot less, the property market did indeed crash and the flat is now worth less than what we paid for it!

However, I now have permission from my mortgage lender to switch to a BTL mortgage and we have a letting agent coming to the flat tomorrow with a view to putting it on the rental market! The rental income won’t cover the mortgage payments BUT instead of wasting £650 a month on a flat we can’t live in we should now only be wasting between £100-150 on it and can rent a small house of our own, so that our boy who is fast becoming a toddler can finally get into his own bedroom and out of ours! More importantly, my wife and I can finally get some time alone together as our entire married life so far has been spent at the in-laws, putting up with all their habits and trying to fit into their routines!

Wish us luck!

ragstoricheswannabe

ooh, good luck with the rental agency!!!!!

misselvis

just wanted to wish you and your family all the best with looking at alternative options to become debt free:j

silvadebtfree

hey

just wanted to say good luck with everything, it sounds like you definetly cant back out now, you have another subscriber!

Whereabouts is your flat and have you rented it yet? that will be a big load off

[Deleted User]

Hi Phillip,
Welcome to DFW :j
You have another subscriber here!!
Good luck in your quest to becoming debt free and in finding a house to live in.