I'm tackling my debts in 2010

Radish72

:j She hasn't deserted us all, just hiding, how very rude :rotfl:

Congratulations on only having 1 debt to get rid off :T

emmie26

oh sorry guys, life has been pretty boring I've had nothing to report all the debt repayments have been coming out by direct debit, we've got used to living within our means most of the time so its been ok, only drama really has been getting car tax and mot which meant a months debt repayments were sidelined, we will need to remember next year to budget better for this.
Currently we have budgetted:
£300 credit cards
£138 card loan (now paid off)
£100 decorating (now finished)
Total £538
We have also been paying off about an extra £100 a month each as hubbys has £100 direct debit set up for his credit card and I try to match him. So we can probably pay off £700 a month comfortably, which should make us debt free by May - if all goes to plan:D.

InaPickle

Good stuff!

Think you might become a 'Mortgage Free Wanabee' then?

Radish72

InaPickle wrote: »

Good stuff!

Think you might become a 'Mortgage Free Wanabee' then?

Come to the dark side (insert evil laugh)

emmie26

ha ha ha
I don't know about that not just yet I will just be happy to be debt free, maybe we could start overpaying a little bit but really I just want to have a few luxuries like holidays and double glazing, you know really push the boat out!;)

InaPickle

In this weather, I think you can put double glazing in the 'necessity' category.

Brr! :snow_grin

emmie26

Well it seems the members of emmies family have been happily living in cloud cuckoo land for the last few months. Today I thought I would have a little look at all our bills as I suspected that we may have overspent in the run up to christmas and OH's 30th birthday weekend away and just wanted to tot up the damage..........oh me oh my I am shocked to my core here is the damage:

My overdraft 1 - £118.90
My overdraft 2 - £349.00 (don't ask!!)
Barclaycard £3619.96 (this was all I thought we had in total)
Hubbys Virgin card £324.99 (christmas spending I'm guessing)
Hubby's overdraft £597.13 (who knows)
My Virgin card £750 (damn promotional offers)

All in All - £5759.98 What a way to start the new year!

Unfortunately the virgin cards had a promotional offer of 0% on purchases so I used mine to pay for a break at center parcs to celebrate my hubby's 30th, 15 of us went and everybody paid there way, the problem was I spent the money they gave me on.....well who knows:)

In better news I did finally get my tax rebate this month £439 big fat ones and hubby got a cheque for £250 for his 30th so that should take a chunk out of our overdrafts next month. Fixed rate came to an end on the mortgage so we are moving to standard variable which will reduce our payments by £100 a month starting feb 1st and just looked in our joint account and there seems to be £350 in there and I think everything has already come out now so that may be an extra bonus, I'm going to wait until the end of the month and if its still there it will reduce the overdrafts further. I have started to do extra shifts again, for some reason in the winter I don't seem to mind doing them at all probably cause all I would be doing anyway is sitting in the house cause it is too cold to do anything else, so I may as well rack them up while I'm in the mood.

Right I'm toddling off to update my signature, its going to be depressing adding things on instead of taking them off :mad:

InaPickle

:hello: Emmie! It has been a while.

And :eek: to all the spends. On the upside, at least you are back here getting on the straight and narrow (:D), but perhaps it would be a good idea to sit down and figure out where all that money went (as far as you can) to help you figure out strategies to cicrumvent such frivolousness again?

Nice to see you back.

Radish72

2 hours on the naughty step for you

Welcome back, keep posting, hopefully you will have nipped this in the bud before it spirals out of control

emmie26

Today I have been doing overtime at work so feeling very :A

Nows the time to do as you say pickle and try to see what went wrong at the end of last year to leave us overspending to frivolously.

1. the car tax, insurance and mot all fall at the same time in november, we had intended on budgetting for this but in the race to get debt free this money had gone on debt repayments. If I am ever going to sustain a debt free life when I eventually pay it all off then I will need to start budgetting so I have set up a direct debit into my ISA for the mot tax and insurance.

2. Christmas :mad: we had not saved anything for christmas and consequently I am now paying the price, the trouble is I don't really know what is a reasonable amount to save for christmas, I think all in all we probably spent between £50-£75 on both children and about the same on each other so thats £200-£300 straight away. Then there is the rest of the family and friends plus their children, probably the same again £200-£300 then there was the christmas parties for work and a meal out with friends £100 extra food and drink spending £100 have I covered it all ?
Right what does that add up to? a minimum of £600, maximum £900, if I'm being realistic £50 a month would be ok to save, I could probably do that without it impacting too much on debt repayments any more and I'd feel the pinch so to speak, plus maybe if I had it there it would make me stick to a budget a little more. Thats the next direct debit I need to set up.

3. Holidays - We went to center parcs with friends for hubby's 30th - we had an absolutely fabulous time and I would do it all over again even though in all I think that I spent around £500 easily for a long weekend. This is the one area where I know we will need to put aside a large chunk of money if we are to carry on as I would like to. Currently we go to center parcs at least once a year (this year we are going twice ) that is £500 each time. I am desperate to take the children abroad, which will be about £2000 ??? we also like to take the children camping a couple of times, these are really cheap but still probably come to £100 each time. At the moment I can't afford £250 a month but when the debt is paid off this will be more than possible! I could even just put all my overtime money into a seperate account, that usually equals about £250 a month, except as I have already said I only really like doing overtime in the winter.

Sorry for the long message but that has given me some food for thought to stop this happening again .