My Moment of Realisation!

bigrob2

Hello All!

Well, like many people I have been lurking on these boards for some time, never quite plucking up courage to venture out of the shadows and admit the state I am in. So at 11pm on a Friday night when arguably I should be out socialising with friends, I find myself 'enjoying' yet another night in front of the TV.

For me my debts started more so when I left Uni than when I was there, I went crazy the summer I left spending heavily on credit cards and living constantly in my overdraft. 6 years have passed and many things have changed. Ive progressed well with my career and now hold a senior management position at work and 3 years ago I was fortunate enough to get onto the property ladder. One thing that hasnt changed in my favour is my debt. Whilst my debts feel high to me, I have never been in a position to miss payments as these are the first things to come out of my account each month, however once all my DDs have been paid I dont seem to have much left to play with.

So, now the ever so popular Light Bulb Moment has hit me and I have opened my eyes to the real situation I am in. I will be posting a SOA in the coming days as Im currently too tired to think about that but I suppose a list of my debts will be the first step. I am in the process of 'refinancing' my debts with a new 0% card and will update this diary as soon as this happen but in the meantime here goes anyway

Loan from bank of Mom and Dad - £6190 - Borrowed to purchase a car - Paying £160 per month.

Tesco CC - £3700 @ 0% but not much longer, going up to 16% in Sept/Oct - Paying approx £117 per month minimum payment

MBNA CC - £1840 @ 16% (I think) Paying £25 approx per month - Waiting for new CC to transfer both the old balances at 0%

Halifax Overdraft - £2500 @ 19% Has been like this for 3 years.


My aim is as follows:
1st - Allocate a minimum of £400 per month towards debt payments
2nd - Transfer CC balances onto a 0% card, this will have 13 months at 0% giving me a little breathing space.
3rd - Initially make minimum monthly payments onto the new CC, rounded up to the nearest £50 (I anticipate this to be about £150-200 to start with, very rough estimate)
4th - Continue paying £160 per month to my parents. This was the monthly figure on the finance package I was going to take out until my Dad saved the day and stepped in with some of his savings. Doing this has saved me over £1700. I could afford the £160 so I am keeping my repayments at this amount as it is only fair they get there money back asap.
5th - Reduce my overdraft by £50 minimum each month.
6th - Use the remaining balance of the £400 to reduce my overdraft further.


All these payments/amendments will be made every pay day as I do now. By my very basic calculations this should mean about 3 years of payments however I plan to reduce this time as much as possible. I work in sales and my pay varies monthly dependant on how successful we are. At the moment things are looking good and I am getting decent commission, so each time I get this I will be using a good chunk of it to pay off debts further.

Well thats me for now, its out in the open ad now I just need to pad out with a SOA and get cracking at paying it off!

Buffythedebtslayer

Welcome to diary land BigRob!

good to see a man with a plan! i am sure once you post up your SOA there will be lots of things you can do to pay the debts off quickly!

good luck xx

Chrisblue1962

Good Luck Bigr!!!, its going to be a long road but at least you have started taking steps towards being debt free.

kissjenn

Sleepy time buffy - I'm just off night.

Oh - 27 Fling would make a grand cocktail name

Buffythedebtslayer

kissjenn wrote: »

Sleepy time buffy - I'm just off night.

Oh - 27 Fling would make a grand cocktail name

Yes Kissjenn, on both counts, I was going to bed about an hour ago!

see you tomorrow bigrob

xxx

bigrob2

I've just figured out how to change my Signatures on MSE and have now added mine. The signatures on here are one of the big motivators for me, I feel really motivated watching everyone else debts shrinking, hopefully watching mine shrink each month will keep me on the straight and narrow everytime I want to spend money!

No movement on my debts since my last visit here but it is only 2 days lol, I did have some luck today though. My brother gave me £40 that he owed me from Birthday presents Id bought a few months ago on his behalf, I had completely forgot about this money so it was a pleasant surprise. Ive used about £10 for my weekly shop and have stashed the rest ready for the weekend (im off to the V-Festival, my only real spending this year, just a shame its likely to be 'V' expensive when Im there!)

bigrob2

Well my new Halifx 0% card arrived this morning so I am now in the process of shuffling around. The limit is £5100 so this should pay off all of my tesco card and most of the MBNA, I will then throw as much at the MBNA card as possible over the next 2 months to clear that too.

This time I wont be making the mistake of keeping one of the cleared cards for emergencys! Ill be cutting them up as soon as the transfers are done and writing to close the accounts when I see a zero balance!!!

bigrob2

Well ive had a 2nd LBM recently (if thats possible). I started my original diary in August and things have gone so fast since then. Ive kind of been hinding from my debt recently, perhaps a little scared to own up to going backwards.

So this morning I checked all my debts and set up a basic spreadsheet and found that I am at present at £14,166.59 in debt. I suppose there is a good and bad side to go with this, my debt rose by about £1000 from August to October, however since then I have managed to get it back to below my original starting point.

My aims for the remainder of 2009 are
a) To buy xmas presents for everyone without touching a credit card
b) To get through a number of Xmas parties without over spending (think i will be driving a lot in December)
c) Find enough spending money for a weekend in Berlin (I promised someone I would take them and cannot get out of this)

I will be happy if I can keep my debt static between now and 1st January and then push on as part of my new year resolution.

Fingers crossed folks!

savingholmes

Good luck on your journey - sorry you had a blip - hope you manage to stay on track. It is possible to have more than one lbm - in fact I think most people do...

bigrob2

Thanks savingholmes, id like to think my 2nd lbm is going to be my final one, im sick of living in debt! Once I get Xmas and New Year out the way I will be reassessing and setting some real targets. I think my first target will be to get below £10k and Ill be aiming for this by 1st July 2010, but until I know what effect Xmas has had I wont be setting any targets.

Until then I will be trying to keep track on my spending and sit tight.

savingholmes

Hi I think as we get further on the debt journey - we become more aware of what we spend - and realise we have more potentially spare money to throw at debt than we thought we did and things like that!

Goo dluck