Debt free and buy a house by 35

andymc29

Merry Christmas!!! All my Christmas shopping is done (nearly), and I'm pretty happy with myself. I've avoided spending too much on individual presents. Next year I'll be able to splash out a bit more.

My workmate just bought himself a £1700 laptop, I'm a little jealous, but willl live, my own laptop is plenty good enough for me. I've actually found my impulse to buy new toys has gone down since seriously tackling my debt. All I want now is lower debt figures and rising bank account figures.

Only ten weeks till my annual bonus, then my debt will take a major beating. Can't wait!!!!
I'm not even that bothered about not being able to use my bonus for anything else, I'll do that the following year (probably as part of house deposit).

Obviously I'm not going to never buy gadgets again, I will, but only once out of debt. I'll get an iphone 4 (or android), and probably upgrade my laptop. But only after I've paid my debts, so will have much more free money each month and be able to enjoy buying things without feeling guilty for not paying off debts. I will overpay my mortgage, but only by a set amount, and not cut too much into money for having fun with. Life is about more than just money saving.

Anyway, am off to watch Tron Legacy tonight, should be good, then going to a friends christmas dinner tomorrow in London.

andymc29

Another £50 overpayment, it was an impulse payment. I get frustrated going more than a few days without paying some debt.

Payday very soon!

andymc29

Merry Christmas!!! I just made my last overpayment of the year, and I'm jjust under 15k in debt now!

iwantahome

Congratulations on being under 15k. Thats a HUGE achievement.
:j:j:j

andymc29

Happy new year people!!!! Hope you've all had a good christmas and new year. I'll admit I was watching the london fireworks on TV at midnight and thought "just one second worth of those would have cleared my debts!" Boris must have spent all his budget on the fireworks this year, no bin collection for the hole of the city alll year now!

Anyway, back to Earth with reality. My first Natwest loan payment of the year's come out, so a small update to my forum signature. Added my new challenge for 2011 to get debt free. And barring any major disaster's that's what will happen.

I've got plenty of new years resolutions to keep me busy, which are all pretty cheap to do, such as running or going to the gym more. Going on holiday with the other half will cost a fair bit, but we're not going abroad so it's not looking like it'll cost too much.

Just got today now before going back to work tomorrow (oh no!!!), time to get cracking on my big To-Do list. First off, wash the car!

andymc29

Small extra cost this month, have had to buy two new front tires for the car. Still, better to spend some cash than skid off the road into a ditch. Just one of these costs you can't avoid.

andymc29

New tires fitted, all lovely. car's a bit quieter now too!

Right, where are we? Another nationwide payment coming out at the end of the week, will bring that one down to just over £1200 owing. Can't really make any more overpayments to Natwest this month yet as I need to see what happens about booking this week away with the GF in May/June, it won't cost too much, maybe £250 each but I don't want to have to delay paying or put it on card even for a few weeks if I can help it.

Am really counting down the days to this years annual bonus payment now, I know I should be annoyed that it's all going on debts, but I'm fine with that. I just want to see the numbers drop by a huge amount. It should be paid in six weeks and one day, that only 43 days! the best case scenario is that I get to knock over six grand off my debts, worst case is about 4 grand. Either way that savings from interest payments and will knock my total figure down to under 10k, it wasn't that long back I was getting all excited over owing less than 20k, so thinking it could be anything as low as under 8k in six weeks is really exciting. Not sure the GF would find it exciting, but she's never really had any debts so wouldn't never understand.

andymc29

Another nationwide payment gone out. It's so tempting to pay off the nationwide with my credit card then attack tjhat balance as much as possible. But that'd be stupid, the nationwide loan's only 6.4% interest, so I'm better off overpaying natwest as much as possible as the interest is so high there. Just means that by the time I've paid off my natwest loan, I'll have a small balance on the nationwide to pay off then I'm done. Will probably only have £300 left on nationwide by that time, can't wait.

andymc29

Think I must be mroe stressed out about this debt than I thought.... I nearly exploded at my Dad the other night over something pretty small.

They're looking to go to South Africa this year for a holiday, and Mum said she heard people stay in two places normamly, one week at one, and one week at another so they can see more of the country, my Dad straight away said "oh great, more expense", I just laughed at him and said "you can't go all the way to south africa and then penny pinch", he had a right go and said he's not made of money and has big debts aswell like his mortgage (60k owing on a 235k house), I just said he's forgotten what having no money really is and walked out in a rage, I wanted to thump him, honestly, I'm going to end this month with under £200 in my bank and I know they end every month with over £10k in their current account and another 10k in savings, last year they bought a new car and a new kitchen both cash and have no outstnading loand on anything besides the house. So haivng a go at me saying they have no money just made me want to punch him in the face.

the other thing that winds me up is how much they both keep compaling that I earn so much money compared to their jobs, but the fact is I'm focussin on debt, so I don't get to enjoy any of my high wage, so it makes me really miserable to think of my salary and that I can't use any of it for what I want.

I think I just need rid of this debt before I do something stupid I'll regret.

andymc29

Just had a really good weekend with the GF. we're not living together yet as she's firmly said I need to get debt free before that can happen. I still agree with her on that.
But the problem is we've been together 20 months now, and we both really want to move on with our relationship but my debt's getting in the way. It felt good to be able to say that this year will be the year everything changes. We were even looking in estate agent windows at houses we could see ourselves going for. but again it's all about me getting out of debt first.
I've tried to convince her that the time will fly by and before she knows it I'll be debt free and able to do all these things with her. But I just wish we could be doing them now. It's always depressing going home after spending the weekend with her, wish I could just go to work, then go back to her's and call it home.