I finally did it...

CosmoCat

I finally faced up to my debts today, in an effort to see why I'm always getting into my overdraft and why I've sooo much credit card debt. The answer I came to was that I am incredibly indisciplined.

My income isn't that stable, in that what I make weekly depends on the job I'm doing at the time, if i am in fact doing a job at all. but it doesn't excuse the fact that I spend an incredible amount of money on foolishness and really should be paying off my debts.

So this is my lightbulb moment, not that I was unaware of my debt, but that I am making myself accountable for it. and finally ready to do something about it.

Income - £730 a week (with this new job, until October 2006 unless something goes right)
Partner contributions - £650 per month

Monthly outgoings

Mortgage - £915
Gas - £45
Electric - £34
Phone/Broadband - £55
Mobile - £25
Courses - £63
Charity - £18
Council tax - £81
Grocery - £255
Travel - £89

Unneccessary spend
Misc (shopping and other foolishness) - £750
Food and Drink - £195
Cash withdrawals (for taxis and other foolishness) - £315

Debts

Capital One - £361 at 24% apr paying £50/month
Barclaycard - £3098 at 19.9% apr paying £100/month
Virgin - £3430 at 15.9% apr paying £100/month
mint - £116 at 15.9% apr paying £50/ month
Lloyds tsb - £3000 at 14.9% apr paying £100/mth
Egg Loan - £6756 at 7.7% paying £247/month

There you go. That's it. all listed. Some bills aren't listed as they are taken care of by my husband. I've listed birthday and clothes spend in the miscellaneous section. I know my repayments are achieveable on my salary. but it doesn't make being in debt any easier to stand. So I'm here, holding my hands up, ready to receive (the advice, abuse, whatever). And ready to share my story on my way to being debt free.

Thanks guys.

sanfrancisco

You have £3.5 income and outgoings of £1500 (I have onlty glances at your figures). You could be debt free in under a year if YOU DECIDE TO.

You really need to stop all the foolishness.

When you are debt free you can be as foolish as you want, but at the moment you are just lining the banks coffers.

Get a diary and write down everything you spend. Only YOU can get debt free. You have to be honest with yourself.

Come on!!!

Willsnarf1983

if ur serious but i am not sure, u need to break ur spending down esxactly, ur in a very lucky position with ur income and it shudn't take that long of making minor cutbacks to pay it all of.


do a spending diary for a month and write down every single penny!

Will

beanielou

Is your income really £730 a WEEK or is that a typing error?
I agree with Sanfransisco

Ali-OK

Hi and welcome!

How's your credit rating? If it's good, I'd seriously look at transferring those cards onto either LOB (Life of Balance) cards and/or 0% ones. That'll save you a packet in interest for starters. There are often fees, but if you can get a capped LOB (ie. BA Amex at 4.9%, max £40 fee), you'll still be saving loads. Have a look at Martin's articles on Best BT Cards to help you.

On your incomings and outgoings, yes, as the others have said, you should break down all the bits and pieces.

Items that seem high spend are:

Gas/Electric - have you shopped around for cheapest supplier? And also look at all the different ways to cut down on usage.
Broadband/phone - there are packages @ £21-£25 p/m, you could easily cut your spend in half here
Charity - whilst its nice to do, your debts need to take priority for now, so these should be stopped until you're debt free.
Groceries - how many of there are you? If just 2, then you could easily cut that in half. Have a look on the Old Style threads - meal planning and making the most of vouchers, BOGOFS, cooking from scratch/batch cooking, and moving away from branded items are the key things

Hope that helps!

minnie_the_mooch

Hi melabarrie,

I know exactly what you're going through, I also had a "lightbulb" moment recently and am now determined to get out of debt!

My debt at the moment is just under £15k, my annual earnings are £17k and it just scares me now that even after I get paid every month my bank account is barely in the black. I have tried before to curb my overspending and fallen off the wagon many times. This time I know that I'm going to do it!

What I'm interested to ask other posters is how they work out their debt free dates? My current dfd is sometime in 2012, but there seem to be others with larger debts than mine who are confident of an earlier dfd, how does that work?!

Cheers and good luck melabarrie,

lynzpower

"What I'm interested to ask other posters is how they work out their debt free dates? My current dfd is sometime in 2012, but there seem to be others with larger debts than mine who are confident of an earlier dfd, how does that work?!"

All depends really on individual circumstances, income of course, then things like me getting a lodger in, or having something valuble to sell etc. And of course, how committed each different person is!!

Back to Melabarrie, hun the thing is you are spending wildly, and with the committment, chances are you can be debt free in about a year or so.

Are you temping?

Ali-OK

minnie_the_mooch wrote:

Hi melabarrie,

I know exactly what you're going through, I also had a "lightbulb" moment recently and am now determined to get out of debt!

My debt at the moment is just under £15k, my annual earnings are £17k and it just scares me now that even after I get paid every month my bank account is barely in the black. I have tried before to curb my overspending and fallen off the wagon many times. This time I know that I'm going to do it!

What I'm interested to ask other posters is how they work out their debt free dates? My current dfd is sometime in 2012, but there seem to be others with larger debts than mine who are confident of an earlier dfd, how does that work?!

Cheers and good luck melabarrie,

Hi there and welcome to MSE!

It's all relative : income - outgoings (MSE way of course) = overpayments to debt and if you get low LOB and/or % cards, you're not riddled with high interest. Income varies from person to person. Second jobs, selling on eBay, car boots, etc, will push it up too, creating more money to throw at the debt.

The DFD works by entering how much you can commit to paying off each month - the more you can pay, the quicker the debt goes down.

Might be useful for you to post your SOA (start your own thread for this) and the great people here will help you find savings on your outgoings.

HTH

Sea78

Hi,

Have a look at https://www.whatsthecost.com which is the snowball site...it'll show you how quickly you can pay off your debts if you pay more than the min and also shows how much you pay in interest which helps make you immediately get some 0% cards!! Also gives you a debt free date.

Sea xx

MushyPeas

Well done melabarrie for your post. Good luck with getting out of your debt

minnie_the_mooch

Thanks for your replies

Sea; I took a look at the snowballing site which woke me up to the fact that I'm paying almost 30% interest on that Capital One card!! As suggested by the site I'm gonna concentrate all my overpayments on that.

Ali and Lynz; will definitely look into selling stuff on e-bay, I think I need a new job that brings in a few more pennies too.

Thanks again for your replies, this site is a great idea, I've found it really isolating to be in debt. I feel so daft for getting myself into this mess that it's hard to talk honestly with even my closest friends or family about my predicament. It's a real relief to read other peoples stories and know that I'm not alone in being in this situation.

Nice one Martin!