JoKay's journey out of debt!

JoKay_2

Well, I've been lurking and occasionally contributing here for quite some time, and am coming to end of my first month of the new 'plan' to get us out of debt, having reduced the overdraft by nearly £400. So I'm feeling very happy and confident that this time its going to work!!

Like many others, I've concocted plan after plan over the last few years to get rid of the CC and OD, all of which have failed. This has invariably led to a 'stuff it, we'll never clear it - lets go out for dinner and commiserate!' attitude, followed by more guilt and worry, followed by 'stuff it, lets go shopping!' and so the cycle continues....

We're lucky in that we've never been in a position where we can't afford out debt, but nonetheless, I want to get rid of it and have some savings and financial security, especially in the current economic climate.

It wasn't however until a friend of mine showed me the spreadsheet she uses to keep track of her savings that a bulb went on in my head. I've taken her simple spreadsheet and turned it into a mega multi worksheet spreadsheet (can't help it, sorry ) which enables me to see exactly what our financial position will be several months and years ahead.

This has undoubtedly been the real incentive that I need to keep us on track - with luck we'll be debt free by the end of next January!! More importantly though, by changing various figures within the spreadsheet, I can see what impact a payrise might have, for example, or what would happen if / when our tracker mortgage goes up.

Anyway, I've just had a major op and will be off work for the next 6 weeks - my goal is to ebay loads of stuff out of the house, so that we might be able to bring forward the debt free date to the end of the December - so watch this space!! :j:j

tiff

I'm similar to you. Our debt isnt unmanageable and we've been reducing the overdraft since January and hope to be debt free by next Jan. I've also been Ebaying which is a great help. Also consider selling books and CD's etc on Amazon and Play.com if you have a number of them to sell as they fetch better prices than Ebay.

Good luck with your journey, I'm rubbish at keeping my diary going but find others very motivating.

jtr2803

Hi JoKay, welcome to the diaries thread

I love spreadsheets - am an accountant so it's my nature (shame it's not my nature to account my own money :rolleyes:)

Here's wishing you the very best of luck on your journey and with the ebaying :j

talisker78

Good luck with the ebaying - anything that isn't nailed down in our house ends up on e-bay. The cat will be next.

Thank you for the message of support on my diary. May I wish you all the best too - with your up-coming op and with your debtbusting. I'll subscribe to your diary and see how you get along. Good luck

JoKay_2

Thanks for your messages of support!

I've had a play around with my spreadsheet today, and can see that with payday only 3 days away, we've paid £333 off our overdraft this month! I thought it was going to be £393, but a quidco payment for £60 hasn't been received yet, much less paid, so I've shifted that into May (though it probably won't be paid to me til June...).

Add in the £375 we've paid off the credit cards (minimums total £150, so thats £225 overpaid - both cards at 0%) we've paid a total of £708 off our debt this month - HURRAY!!! :T:T:T:T

I think the main reason we've managed this is because we've opened another account just for our day to day spending. I transferred £1000 into it on 1st April, and all our spending has come out of that - petrol, food, entertainment etc. One of my spreadsheets track the transactions according to the type of purchase, and keep a running total of all money spent, so I can get an idea of what we're spending in each area.

I've worked out the maximum we can spend in each area for May - at around 5-10% less than we spent in April, and plan to reduce it every month a little. May will be an odd month, though, as I'll be at home on sick leave, therefore the petrol spend will reduce - I just need to make sure the food budget doesn't go up though - I have tendancy to eat when I'm bored!!

JoKay_2

Okay, payday has been and gone, seems my OH got paid his expenses earlier than planned, but we haven't seen his payslip yet, so I can't tell what his new salary is (we both go up a grade on 1st April). This means I can't update my spreadsheet to see what impact his new salary will have on our debt free date.

Am waiting for him to phone once he's got it - can you tell I'm every so slightly obsessed with this debt free business?!!!

I've arranged payment of our two credit cards - paying off £325 more than the minimums!! Unfortunately the faster payments option wasn't working, so had to set them to be paid earlier than I wanted to make sure the money gets there, but that means I'm in the overdraft for longer :-(

Also found out I've incurred £44 worth of bank charges with Barclays, but its all my fault - didn't fully understand (or read!) the terms of the personal reserve. I used my card to pay for a cheap night away for oh birthday, but didn't realise I would pay £22 for the priviledge! I received the letter telling me when I was in hospital, and missed out on their 5 days to pay it off, thus incurring another £22 - so the cheap night at a nice hotel has cost more in charges than the room itself!! D'oh! Never mind, it WILL be a great night away - or else!!

Good luck to everyone else on your own journeys!

Jo_R_2

Wow sounds like you're doing really well with overpaying and keeping on track!

Don't worry about the blip with the card, at least now you know you won't do it again, live and learn and all that!

Karen_30

JoKay wrote: »

Also found out I've incurred £44 worth of bank charges with Barclays, but its all my fault - didn't fully understand (or read!) the terms of the personal reserve. I used my card to pay for a cheap night away for oh birthday, but didn't realise I would pay £22 for the priviledge! I received the letter telling me when I was in hospital, and missed out on their 5 days to pay it off, thus incurring another £22 - so the cheap night at a nice hotel has cost more in charges than the room itself!! D'oh! Never mind, it WILL be a great night away - or else!!

Good luck to everyone else on your own journeys!

Hi,

Just a thought, could you not provide letters from the hosp etc and see if you can't get them to reimburse teh charges?? I'm sure they might give it a thought?

JoKay_2

Thanks Karen - I think I'll do that. I'm a bit of a wimp at these things, but I'm going to phone up on Tuesday and see if I can one of the £22 charges refunded. As my OH would say - if you don't ask, you won't get!!

I'll report back on my progress....!

In other news, OH has taken DD to the gym (no spend as she's a member), he's got a voucher for a free coffee at McD's and then they're off to the driving range for some bonding time and to whack a few balls! Think this'll probably cost about a tenner, which will come out of the monthly spending money account.

An amazing thing happened yesterday - I suggest to OH that we got to Costa for a coffee (I'm housebound at present, so this is my idea of a treat!!) but he refused, saying that it would be a waste of money and couldn't I make myself a milky coffee instead?!

Now this is a major leap forward - in all my previous efforts to clear our debt, my OH has been very hands off, and not too bothered (one of the reasons we've failed so many times :rolleyes:) so this comment is a major thing!! I think its definitely being able to see the impact of this expenditure on the spreadsheet (I make him look at it regularly, whether he likes it or not!) that has changed his attitude, and I'm very happy!!

Anyway, have a good Sunday all!

JoKay_2

Hi all, more money ramblings from me!!

Just discovered that my the £5 for my new halifax reward account was added to my account on the 1st, so have paid it straight off the credit card. As I'll get this every month, I've added it to the spreadsheet - and it looks like we might be debt free by payday in November - YAY!! :T

Am getting very bored being off work, so now that I'm out of pain, and with 5 weeks sick leave left, I've decided I really do need to have a plan and actually achieve something!

I'm going to start ebaying today - I took several photos a couple of weeks ago, but didn't ebay them as I needed to sort out some name issues on my paypal account - that's all sorted now, so there's no excuse!! I'm going to commit to putting 5 items on today, with another item per day for the rest of this week. Should hopefully bring in another £50ish.

Will also phone Barclays - any minute now, as soon as I have the courage....!!

JoKay_2

... to a refund

Still, at least I asked... which is more than I normally would have done.

Anyway, 2 items on ebay, 3 more to go..!