Wanting to be debt free BEFORE retirement!

Snowmoredebt

Good news with the statement the total owing figure will start to reduce really quickly.

planning_ahead_2

grandma247 wrote: »

Planning-ahead I only belong to the cost of living challenge (link on your page 1) I don't have a diary or anything else because I am too busy doing other things. I barely keep up with that sometimes. Something about your post struck a chord so will follow your diary with interest.

Just a thought, did you know that if you pay your mortgage fortnightly you gain an extra months payments ?
We pay ours weekly because dh gets paid weekly. I set it up as a standing order just after a monthly payment had gone out. I asked if it was ok first. I overpay about £30 a week which was hard for us at first ( our income is a lot smaller than yours.) we have now got used to it so I am going to up the amount in a few weeks.

Hi grandma247

Thanks for answering:beer:

I did check with our mortgage provider and we get charged if we do not pay by monthly direct debt:mad: However we can overpay but at the moment we are concentrating all efforts on the CCs and OD. We are just fortunate to not be in a mortage deal at the moment and are following the amazingly low base rate (paying just 1% over base rate:T)

Cialilerin

You are doing so well - you are an inspiration. Been working stupid hours this week (although I did escape for hour this morning to go to Boots - not as disciplined as you ;-) ) so I'll update my SOA etc at weekend. Keep up this fab work!

grandma247

planning ahead we do get charged £25 a year for not paying by dd but I feel it has more than been made up by the amount the interest goes down. It is calculated on a daily basis so by paying more than it should be weekly and the extra weeks when there are 5 paydays in a month means it goes down quite a bit.

planning_ahead_2

Debt diary day 7

Couldn't sleep - numbers (debts:rolleyes:) going round and round in my head. Brain is moving so fast I can't sleep:mad: Mind you - it is all positive brain spinning and not the fretting and worrying about debt. That's a huge change since just last week.

So I've got up, transferred my £1 for the £365 in 365 days challenge, and updated my signature.

Yesterday was another NSD - just can't work out why it feels so easy now and yet we obviously used to spend so much:beer:

Freezer and larder cupboard still looking healthy, but the fridge only has milk, butter (well spread stuff;)) and bottles of flavoured water (which I drink loads of). Apart from that the only other things in the fridge are the bottles of sauces. No food in it though. And yet.......I still don't think I need to go shopping. We have fruit and fresh veg (and frozen veg), and enough stuff in the freezer for several more meals. It does look odd:rotfl:

Cialilerin wrote: »

You are doing so well - you are an inspiration. Been working stupid hours this week (although I did escape for hour this morning to go to Boots - not as disciplined as you ;-) ) so I'll update my SOA etc at weekend. Keep up this fab work!

Thank you for the support. Inspiration - hmmm not sure about that one, more like addicted and demented. I seem totally obsessed by this new found desire to be debt free. I'm not saying that's a bad thing - in fact I wish I had found it several years ago;). Actually, I wish I had never ever applied for a credit card or perhaps that credit was not given out so easily. When we wanted our first mortgage years and years ago (back in the 80's) we had to have an interview and queue for it. We found a house in January and a mortgage wasn't available until the end of October. We had to have been saving with the building society prior to applying. That was just normal back then. Somehow I don't think that's a bad thing, I mean not having instant access to huge debt. I think (hope) credit is getting slightly harder to obtain now (may be wrong because I haven't applied recently).

grandma247 wrote: »

planning ahead we do get charged £25 a year for not paying by dd but I feel it has more than been made up by the amount the interest goes down. It is calculated on a daily basis so by paying more than it should be weekly and the extra weeks when there are 5 paydays in a month means it goes down quite a bit.

I will phone and check again, but the impression I got from our lender is that there is a monthly fee charged if we do not pay monthly by direct debit. I would like to change it if it works out worthwhile overall.

I have managed to almost half my daily electricity usage with my new energy monitoring and delight in monitor the meter reading to check how much each day is costing me (god I so need to get a life:rotfl:).

I made the decision today that I am going to transfer £50 pm into a savings account - I know, I know - Martin says you shouldn't have savings if you have debt. However I really want a small back up fund of about £300 should something go wrong with say one of the cars or the heating etc. I thought it through and I know I could pay this off the CCs now and if something went wrong I could whack it back on a card - but we have decided absolutely not to use the CCs again and if we have to resort to that I feel we would be taking a backwards step. Silly logic I know but there it is - :shhh::shhh::shhh::shhh::shhh::shhh: so don't tell Martin;)

I also made another decision - I am definitely, 100% going to log in and record a note each and every day here in my diary. I will probably drive the rest of you nuts but hey...this is my diary;) I figured that becoming debt free is a bit like trying to lose weight at weightwatchers (well for me anyway). I always go to the meetings for the first 'x' many weeks and have amazingly good intentions, but the time I miss a meeting I start to lapse, the weight goes back on and soon enough I give up. Ok - this is it - I am not going to give up (either DFW or weightwatchers). So sorry you will have to put up with a post on here every day for the next 900 odd days. Perhaps you'd better hope I win the lottery soon then:rotfl:

grandma247

If you have your statement to hand there should be info somewhere either on the back or on a seperate piece of paper that tells you what they charge for different things. We have the together mortgage if that makes any difference.

I thought we had one more year of the seven year fixed rate but it seems that it is now only till this March so the normal payment will go down a bit. We are still going to up what we pay so it will get paid off that little bit quicker than we thought

I don't think it is silly to put the £300 away for problems because they surely will come. Dave ramsey, an american doing similar things to this site in educating people about debt and money says you should "pay yourself first." In other words put some savings aside for emergencies. This is what we are planning to do this year.

planning_ahead_2

Won £10 on the National Lottery today. Usually I would have just bought more tickets in the next draw - but the new DFW me has withdrawn the money from online lottery account tomy bank account - and in anticipation of the funds arriving I have already paid another £10 of a CC.

Slow but sure:)

Snowmoredebt

Hi Planning ahead well done on the lottery win!!!!

I totally agree about the savings as soon as the weddings paid for we will also be putting a bit away each month.

planning_ahead_2

Whoooo hooooooooooooo:j:j:j:j:j:j:j:j:j:j:j:j:j:j:j:j

Not affecting my DFW totals, but I just phoned our mortgage company about the costs of payments weekly instead of monthly and haven't sorted that out yet (ie whether it is worth the penaly fee for not paying by DD but I suspect it is) - but I checked our outstanding balance.

On my SOA I put the balance as £133,000 but when I checked just now it is actually £126,527.40:j:j:j:j:j:j:j

So that is a whole £6,472.60 less than I thought we owed.

Life is definitely on the up;)

elsie52

Hi Planning -ahead.:wave:

I have been reading your diary, and I can recognize the same things in me. I think I have OCD, where my debts are concerned. :eek: We are closer to retirement than you, we only have about 6 years to go, and we started 2 years ago with £74k of debt. After two years we are now down to £37k, and it has become an obsession.!!:rotfl: I am forever turning the gas down, on or off, same as the lights/lamps etc. I scour the supermarkets for BOGOF's, always check what is on offer before buying anything. I watch every penny, and yet we still have a life, (I think). :think: We budget for everything, we pay for everything cash, no cc.! We still go on holiday, not expensive ones but all the same a holiday. We SAVE......something we never did before, I check my online banking every day (sometimes twice) I ebay to raise extra money, whereas before I would have just thrown things away.

What I really want to know, is why did we wait this long to start this.?:question:

Anyway, I will subscribe to your thread, and watch you become obsessed too.:eek: Good luck