Debt Free in 18 months!

es1984_2

Hi guys, I've been a lurker here for sometime, and all your stories have made me decide I really have to do something about my debts! I've put a basic SOA below, it's kinda different to most though! I still live at home with my parents, but own a quarter of the house.

The only household bills bills I pay are mortgage, landline+broadband costs combined and for the Sky. Also, if any large household bills come in, I pay my quarter share (ie in the last 4 months, we've had to replace the boiler, the hall carpert - my dog chewed it, I'm lucky I didn't get landed with the whole bill for that one!, washing machine and tumble drier and I think the dishwashers on it's last legs...)

Income: 1100

Mortgage: 285
Phone+Broadband 30
Sky 30
Travel 100
Food (for work) 40
Eating Out 50
Entertainment 150
Pet Costs 35
Mobile 45
Money to savings for house repairs 50

Evil HBOS Loan (Balance £5860) 150
Tesco Credit Card (Balance £2200) 70
Nationwide Credit Card (Balance 1300) 38
HBOS O/D (780) 5

Total Outgoings £1078

I know that I will be able to cut back on a lot of these outgoings. I currently only see my boyfriend at the weekends as he lives about 150 miles away, so we tend to go out for meals a lot, go to the cinema, take days out, to make what little time we do have even more special. But he's trying to find a job up here and move in with me, so that will help a lot! Both in cutting down my outgoings, and increasing my income as he says he will help out with paying what bills I do have.

Travel will also be reduced as I won't have to take the train every fortnight. I sold my car in Nov last year as I was broke and the bus to work was so much cheaper. And in 3 weeks my current bus bus expires, so will be cycling! So another £30 a month saved.

My major incentive is my work contract runs out in October and I as yet have no idea whether or not it will be renewed. Well, this should be my major incentive, but my boyfriend has also said once we are debt free we can start saving for our wedding! :j His loan will be paid of in under a year, and he says once it's gone he's going to buy me a nice shiney ring!

I'll keep you all posted with how it's all going! Any advice would of course be more than welcome!

es1984_2

well, so far so good today! Instead of going for my usual sandwich at lunch and spending around £5 on sandwich, coffee and cake, I went to farmfoods and got ready meals to do me the rest of the weeks lunches, plus a pack of jaffa cakes (now eaten, oops!) and 3 bottles of juice for less than £3.50! #

And just checked my Nationwide account and they have refunded me some bank charges I asked for, an extra £45 into my account which means I can go to the cinema with friends this evening and have enough cash to stop me going into my O/D before payday in 9 days time. Woo Hoo! Now just to decide on what Ben and Jerry's to have...

lazy_daisy

Well done! Don't forget Orange Wednesday!! Me + DS have just seen Bolt 3D half price - brill!

es1984_2

yep, my friend is on orange, so it's all good! Do you know if the deal works on student tickets?

lazy_daisy

Um, I don't know, sorry.
You can phone the cinema, though, go on their web site, find their contact number then use www.saynoto0870.com to find a cheaper phone number. My local cineworld were very helpful this morning, I phoned to ask if you could use Orange Wednesday for the 3D film as there is a surcharge for 3D films, (£1.50 for kids and concessions, £2 for adults) the answer was yes! We only paid £7.40 for the 2 of us with the surcharge, would have been £5.40 for 2 without.
Hope this helps. x

es1984_2

no matter now, my friend forgot about it, but I did manage to buy a student ticket with a VERY old student card (I left uni 3 years ago!). lol. What film did you see? I was at Benjamin Button, Brad Pitt looking V lovely!

es1984_2

well, on day 3 of trying to become debt free and it's going alright so far. I've not missed any payments this month and I'm still in a credit balance in my current account (but still a week til pay day!).

I've signed up for lots of cash back sites and survey sites, thanks to the guides and forums on this site and should hopefully see some progress soon! I've changed the dates some of my payments are due to the first week of every month, rather than the last week, so I will just have been paid when they are due. This means I should stop incurring as many charges! I've set up Direct Debits to all but one of my credit cards (waiting for the billing date to be changed first). I've used the snowball calculator to figure out which of my debts I should clear first (bye bye evil HBOS O/D!). I've been good lunch wise and stopped buying expensive sandwiches from the deli across from work and started going to farmfoods for ready meals instead. This weekend I'm going to cook a whole heap of meals from scratch and freeze them to save myself even more.

My downfall really this week has been not missing out on the coffee and cake run at work...one sausage and bacon roll @ £1.75 and one coffee+scone @ £2.10. I did also have a night out at the cinema, but this was paid for by unexpectedly refunded bank charges!

Anyhow, my real test will be the weekend. I always seem to spend loads at the weekend doing things with my boyfriend. However, he's coming to visit this weekend and we don't have a car (I sold mine last year, his got written of about 8 weeks ago and still waiting on the insurance pay out, grr!). and as public transport near me is so rubbish, we'll prob be housebound for a lot of the time, so that should save us some cash. we might give the dog a bath, that should kill a good hour or so!

Anyway guys, hope you all have a good weekend, I'll post on Monday to let you know how little (or much!) I managed to spend!