The hilariously over-optimistic goals I am setting myself in 2010....

dalleDF

NEW YEAR, NEW START!!

It is now one year since I began this diary, so it is the perfect time to revisit my goals and see how far I have come, where I have succeeded and where I have so far failed.

These were my targets for 2010:

- Get Debt Free by November! (or before). Total debt today stands at £8468
- Lose 2 stone...
by....meal planning, regular gym going and running, low carb consumption, no eating late at night (if it's good enough for Halle Berry, it's good enough for me).
- No smoking
- Dry January, followed by no drinking in the week for the rest of the year
- Paint the bathroom


In January 2010 I owed a total of £8468. Today I owe a total of £2374. This means I have paid off 73% so far. Unfortunately I missed my debt free date of November 2010, and it is now looking more likely to be April 2011. I have gone off the boil with the money saving and the good habits, have been buying lunch (and sometimes breakfast!) instead of taking sandwiches in, and spent money on shoes instead of debt busting. But am almost there now.

After Christmas my weight has gone back up again, and am now just over 11st, still 2st over my target. But am going to try and make the time to go boxing every week and go to the gym at the weekends. The Trousers of Doom are still in my wardrobe mocking me, but this year will be the year I beat them.

In other good news, I have not smoked a single solitary cigarette since September! I feel great now I am completely smoke free.

Am doing low carb this month but have not bothered giving up alcohol this time. Largely due to work stress. See below…

I have still not painted the bathroom.

Here are some other things that have happened this year:

In April I made a big decision to rejoin my old workplace, and this month some changes came about, and my boss left. I have now been promoted to his job, and it is a very big job. I am finding the stress pretty tough, but I am getting new staff in which will ease the burden a bit. And it is a really good move for me despite being a big responsibility, and I have just been given a pay rise. Yay! I am nervous and feel sick with worry about it sometimes, and fear I am inadequate a lot of the time, but somehow I am also feeling positive that if I can do it it will advance my career immensely and make me feel much more happy and fulfilled in my job, although my work/life balance will become somewhat skewed.

And, last but not least, I stopped kissing frogs (for now!) and fish and bagged myself a boyfriend. His name is Mr Lovely and there are many wonderful things about him. Note to self: do not !!!! this one up.

Ok. Targets for 2011 are:

- - Pay off remaining £2374 to become debt free by April 2011 or sooner.
- - Start saving properly.
- - Remain a happy non smoker.
- - Excel at work and fulfill the potential I know I have.
- - Under no circumstances b*gger up new relationship with lovely handsome man.
- - Get down to 9st and stay there.
- - Move into one bed flat.
- - Start paying into a pension like the grownups do.
- - Drink less booze and more mint tea.
- - Get really good at boxing.
- - Sod painting the bathroom.

I hope 2011 holds exciting things for everyone and this is the year we all get out of debt!

brizzledfw

Good to have you back posting Hannah...you've been missed!!

Great goals and look at how far you've come too. big hugs!!

brizzle

dalleDF

TIME TO RESTART MY DIARY!!!

I have been lurking on MSE off and on since the last time I posted in my diary, but sadly I am STILL a debt free wannabe as I ran up more debt! So I need some support from y'all again to get through this last push before I can say I am debt free and a saver!!

How have you all been doing? Hope everyone has joined the debt free roll of honour by now. Unfortunately I got sick of flat sharing, moved into a one bed flat, totally overstretched myself, and then the landlord raised the rent. So I spent 18 months going from almost no debt to running up more and more. I struggled in a payday loan spiral (so ashamed) in 2012-2013 until I eventually got a credit union loan to pay it all off. So I have been paying that down as well as all the credit cards. This was my signature back in 2011 before I abandoned my diary:

Bank of Daddy WAS £3540 NOW £500 Smile OD £500 MBNA CC WAS £3600 NOW £375 0% finance WAS £2200 NOW £1004
GONE: £2500 Credit union loan £4602 Egg loan £1678 Abbey CC £1359 HSBC CC £1600 Abbey OD

Total = £2374 Debt free date Apr 2011
WEIGHT 10st 11lb 11st TARGET 9st

My current signature shows where I am now. I can't believe I was so close and then 4 years later I am still not at the end of this race! But anyway, no point looking backwards, I am making good progress now. My debt free date is 25th Feb 2015!! So close now, just 2 more payments to make.

I also have savings for the first time ever. I have £1456 in savings but most of it I can't touch as it's in a regular saver with a high interest rate, and the rest is in a stocks & shares ISA and a credit union. The regular saver will run until July, and by then I am hoping to have around £3.5k, which is going to be my emergency fund (I think it would cover 3 months' expenses if I was made redundant - god forbid!!)

Once I have this and I am debt free, my next goal is to save for a deposit on a house. I really don't want to lose my focus and forget my Moneysaving ways, so that is why I am back on here again.

Here were the last goals I set myself:

- - Pay off remaining £2374 to become debt free by April 2011 or sooner. NOPE. But total outstanding debt is now £1012.33 so won't be long now.
- - Start saving properly. YEP
- - Remain a happy non smoker. YEP
- - Excel at work and fulfill the potential I know I have. YEP. Got promoted to the top job to cover maternity leave. Now I'm second in command.
- - Under no circumstances b*gger up new relationship with lovely handsome man. Well, this one didn't work out, but luckily there is a new one, and we now live together and we want to buy a house, so things are getting pretty serious already!
- - Get down to 9st and stay there. HA! No further comment needed on this.
- - Move into one bed flat. This was a total disaster and resulted in me extending my DFD by 3 years.
- - Start paying into a pension like the grownups do. YEP. I am ramping this up to 15% of my salary once debt is paid off because I did a pension calculator online which put the fear of god into me. I don't want to be a little old lady who has to choose between heating and eating.
- - Drink less booze and more mint tea. YEP. I did a long period of sobriety last year and then sadly fell off the wagon. I am back on it now though and planning to stay there.
- - Get really good at boxing. Shamefully, I actually achieved this with a lot of hard graft and then went through a really low patch and just stopped going. I put on loads of weight, lost my fitness, and basically just drank wine. I have been back to the gym since the start of the year though, need to regain momentum. Think juggling this and work commitments will be my biggest challenge this year.
- - Sod painting the bathroom. I painted it in the end! And then I moved out. Lol.

I will set some new goals in my next post so this doesn't turn into an epic. Happy new year all!

juicyjackieb

Fab to see you back! I too need to get on it, your achievements are enviable

dalleDF

Hi Jackie! Hope you are well. What's the goss?

dalleDF

Here are some MSE things I have been doing to bust the debt over the last few months:

Surveys on ipoll. Tried Swagbucks as well but I don't love it.

eBaying literally everything that wasn’t nailed down (reading books on minimalism helped me with this, although it was hard to let go of things like my books and CDs. But now I am in the cloud and living digitally, which will make it a lot easier next time I come to move house!)

Using YNAB has really helped me get control of exactly where my money is going by using the app as a spending diary, and prioritising what needs to be paid first when there is too much month at the end of the money. It is also making me focus on my savings goals, and plan and budget for one-off expenses like Christmas and birthdays rather than being surprised by them every time they come around. It doesn’t let you linger in your overdraft, the budget notes every overspend and makes it so you have less to budget the following month. For someone who was permanently in her overdraft, this has been a massive help to me.

Switching CCs to 0% using balance transfers.

Closing cards once paid off.

Batch cooking and using the slow cooker for things like soups and stews using cheap cuts of meat

Doing Payment a Day - every spare penny helps brings the debt down, and you can see it happening a lot faster when you have a card on 0%. It is very motivating.

Doing the No More Buying Toiletries challenge. I am a terrible hoarder when it comes to toiletries. I could open a Boots! I gave away a lot of them, sold what could be sold, and am gradually working my way through the rest. I have stopped collecting miniatures from hotel bathrooms which I will never use and which just clutter up my house!

Reading What Small DFW Things Will You Do Today? thread has been very inspiring for the little things which add up to the big things.

juicyjackieb

Wow thats brilliant and its impressive how much energy you have plowed into it. And because of you I have set myself a small savings challenge; £600 in 2015. I have a lot of ebay I can list; I have 3 suitcases of clothes that are now too small due to weightloss - 7 stone in 3 years. Plus I have books and some games that I no longer play. £50 per month is doable I think.

I have also just joined ipoll but I tried every survey and after a few questions it tell me I am not eligible which I find a bit suspect. I know surveys and polls will never be a big winner but a few quid a month will all help towards my goal.

I am also a comper and have been slack with entering competitions the last 18 months or so, but I have taken that up again so hopefully a few bits here and there will go towards my fund. Do you blog elsewhere about yourself? I would love to follow your adventures!

dalleDF

That's awesome that you have a savings goal for the year. What will you be saving up for? And how the heck have you managed to drop that much weight? I can't even shift the 1.5 stone I've been trying to get rid of for about 5 years!!
Yeah, iPoll can be a bit like that sometimes, it's annoying when you've already done most of the survey. But occasionally a longer one comes up and you can make a tenner by doing some market research spread over a couple of days. That makes up for all the non-starters I think.
This is my only sort-of blog for now. I was thinking of setting one up, inspired by all the sober blogs I have been reading, but I can't decide what my subject should be!

juicyjackieb

This is link to my progress pic (if it works) - calorie controlled, exercise often, no real tricks apart from not giving up... the odd blip yes... give up no

And I think I just want a safety net really, I have nothing at all and a few £££ in the bank will definitely ease my worries in the event of it all going bump / redundancy.

dalleDF

Wow! You look like a new woman. Am so impressed. You are proof that hard work and eating properly can get you a long way!

Yeah, the feeling of having a buffer in case of a real emergency would be wonderful. I've never had that before and was always quick to turn to credit cards in case of emergency, and I classed an emergency as a new pair of high heels! Not any more!