What will you do with all your spare money after your DFD?

ms_london

dinkylou wrote:

When I'm debt free then I start saving for my world tour!! (well as far as i can get)

I have a strict plan and am determined to do this before I turn 30 - 4.5 years away.

After that, well, I'll just be happy to be debt free.

You'll be able to do it dinkylou!! :T :T :T :T

Now I am debt free I am saving to go travelling (as you all know). When I am travelling, the money I'll be earning will be funding the rest of my trip.

When I get back, who knows!! It depends on where I end up living, what I earn & what I want to do with my life then.

If I want to buy a house I'll be saving for a deposit & then no doubt trying to be mortgage free as soon as I could (within reason).

Otherwise I will probably save a bit, spend a bit & then have a long weekend away each month enjoying life. Who knows really.

I'll always keep my MSE head on though & that is enough to keep me on the straight and narrow!!

xx

lynzpower

Well Ms L, you know many of us will still be here plodding on when you get back

Thriftylady

I think the thrill of having savings will be exciting in itself......I often think how well off we would be if every month the money that goes into e.g. our car loan, was going into a savings account instead....

Katharine

Thriftylady wrote:

I think the thrill of having savings will be exciting in itself......I often think how well off we would be if every month the money that goes into e.g. our car loan, was going into a savings account instead....

Same here, I thought I was poor and I am, but I wouldn't be if I didn't have debt, its quite a surpriseing amount left after essential bills, (if there was no debt to repay) or I will enjoy feeling a bit richer, tho not too much or I wont be!

Molanole

spud30 wrote:

Knowing my luck, the excitement will kill me !!!

:rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: Ooooh, spud, thank you! That gave me a MUCH needed laugh that did :rotfl: :rotfl:

For me it will probably be in this order, help OH out of his debt, save up for our wedding and honeymoon where we want to go travelling and spend some time with his family in the Phillippines, then it's go go go for getting our own place! Stretching far I know but what's the use in having dreams if they aren't big ones!

Gillby1

Yeah, thanks Spud! Unfortunately I've just returned home from hospital where i had my appendix removed, and it hurts sooo much to laugh!

frugglewump

Well the mortgage on this house is one of those hsbc homestart things : 3 years interest only then the rest of the term on repayment.

My DFD is 2 months before this change occurs so I don't think being debt free is going to affect my outgoings all that much. It does mean though that I *really* can't afford to slip up.

ZoeMarie_2

I have 10 paydays till I'm debt free, and my plans are to help my parents out, have a holiday and buy fabulous shoes. Then I will sit back and watch my pennies grow.

I have made a solemn vow that I will never go back to my old ways!

gilly41

Hi
I honestly dont know what I will buy when I am debt free----havent ever been in that position and will be 43 when I eventually get there(Dec 2007 so not too long now!!!).
It will be fantastic----both the kids are grown up(so a lot less expense now) ---- we still have £57000 to pay off on this house----currently 17 years to go but I will be reducing the term once we are debt free!!
I have never had a savings account in all my life

---

hoping to get an ISA sorted!Roll on next year!!!!
x

h4nym

Not normally moved to post (as my count will testify!) but we just reached a milestone today - our debt is now half what it was when finally we had our lightbulb moment. The numbers are :eek: all the way round and I'll post them here hopefully to give some the same encouragement that I have got from this forum. OK - here goes on unsecured debts:

Lightbulb moment - 121,000 :eek:
Made up of:

Tax bills (where they got a series of CCJs out on me - had to pay each within a month to avoid it caning my credit record) 17,000

Amex 11,000 - 14%
Parents 5,000 - 0%
Ex wife 14,000 - 0%
Natwest Overdraft 15,000 9.75%
Natwest Credit Cards 27,500 16.9% and 11.424%
Cahoot Flexible Loan 20,000 - 8.5%
Egg Loan - 7,000 - 9.5%
HFC Loan - 4,200 - 9.9%

Won't bore you with the detail of how we got into this mess, but having run a company quite successfully for 15 years, I decided to buy a completely different business. Old Biz suffered badly from neglect, New Biz drained cash like it was going out of fashion. Lightbulb moment was when I calculated that New Biz would only ever make half the profits of Old Biz, and before then it was destined to lose as much in a month as Old Biz could make in a quarter. Not good! Bought New Biz for 60,000, sold it for 10,000 after 18 months. Put Old Biz in the hands of my wife to manage (albeit not growing, but not dying either) and found a consultancy contract to stabilise finances :j . Consultancy went well, paid well, extended on much higher rate and we found ourselves with about 8,000 per month to pay off our debts.

Anyway - debts were paid off / consolidated as follows:

Egg Loan - upped to 25,000, but at 7.7% - now at £24,482
Cahoot remains @ 8.5%, now 17,593
Natwest Loan - 15,508 @ 6.9%

Total still outstanding: 57,583 :T

Debt-free date: End of November... 2006

We're at the point now where we're thinking about what happens post DFD... planning to put an extension on the house - that'll soak up 60-odd thousand, and then bear down on our mortgage until it can no longer be bothered to resist and goes away! In the meantime, though, we have to provision for the tax bill that will arise from the consultancy.

Good lady wife is massively on board with plan - would be dead easy to take things easier and replace clapped out cars (sold the good ones to pay debts!) and do the holiday thing... but I have promised her a thousand pounds to take down to Russell & Bromley and Monsoon and do her worst when we're done. Silly thing is - it's MY 40th birthday in October and SHE gets to buy HERSELF the pressies! Something wrong somewhere!

Anyway - had to get it off my chest - we've just taken our debt down below the 60,000 level that's half where we maxed out by paying off the whole 11,000 statement balance on the last of the credit cards. That will save us 130 a month on its own! Next month, Cahoot get 10 grand, and 6.5k in August to pay them off altogether. Egg get 4,000 in August too, then 10 in September followed by 8 in October. 2 to Natwest in October too and 11 in November to close out our debts! :T

We're currently 700 per month better off in interest costs alone that we're no longer paying, and well over 2000 per month better off in repayments that we're not paying either. Paying off the most expensive debt before cheaper stuff, rolling cleared repayments into other debts and absolute discipline... and we'll be all done in 18 months! Hallelujah!

Just to bring it back onto topic - thereafter, a grand for the missus to throw and Monsoon and Russell & Bromley then saving for the extension...

H