Lightbulb Moment

coxj2901

Hi David,

Thanks for the response. As my signature would imply I'm certainly no expert in managing my personal finances and I'm happy to take on board all the advice I can. I really appreciate people taking time out of their day to help others.

I posted a revised SOA on page 2 I think which includes Council Tax, MOT etc.... I don't have any credit cards as they were consildated into the secured loan (A Mistake I know)

The spending diary is a good idea and I need to do this to see where the other "bits and bobs go".

My house was valued today at £155k so assuming I get between £148k and £155k then with the sale of my car aswell I should have circa £11k - £18k worth of debt left which I estimate I will be able to clear between 11 months and 18 months depending on the balance.

Rgds, John

david_hellier

John,

The revised figure is now £108.45 per week.

Good luck. Are there definately no CCs?


income weekly monthly
self 2640.00
partner
tax cred 40.00
FA 60.00





total 0.00 2740.00
632.31 divided by 4.33

632.31 total weekly income

spend weekly monthly
rent/mortgage 875.00
council tax 100.00
elec 50.00
gas 50.00
water 22.91
secured loans 219.68
TV licence 10.99
fines 0.00
NR loan 75.00
MBNA loan 337.00
TSB loan 150.00
car ins 1 27.00
car ins 2 30.00
bt bb 27.00
nursery fees 80.00
petrol 100.00
bt phone 25.00
od payoff 50.00
life 12.08
0.00
bank fees 10.00
road tax 1 9.20
road tax 2 9.20







total 0.00 2270.06
523.86 divided by 4.33

523.86 total weekly spend

Start= income - spend = 108.45 per week

coxj2901

david_hellier wrote:

John,

The revised figure is now £108.45 per week.
Good luck. Are there definately no CCs?

There are definitely no credit cards as I consolidated these into a secured loan with Firstplus prior to "seeing the light"

Here's an update of how things are progressing.........

1. I have recently paid off the Lloyds TSB overdraft of £500 after I queried the tax office and got a rebate of £450 from backdated money they owed. So that's one debt gone :beer:

2. I have just had a rise and my net monthly income is now £2,743 :T

3. We have had 2 viewings on the house and board hasn't gone in yet so I am hoping for a failry quick sale.

4. We now have one car after selling our main car and am considering getting my old bike out from the shed to bike to work. I need to get the tyres mended first though.

There's a long way to go but I'm feeling positive that I can do this......

Rgds, John

bluezone

what can I say? - Well done so far You have certainly change your life around. That light at the end of the tunnel is getting closer to you day by day

chevalier

Can I also bring to your attention https://www.freecycle.org? It is a great place for getting things you need for free. And if you have things that don't sell on ebay you could put them up on there too.

I am a bit confused about you selling the house. Surely with the savings you are making, you will be able to pay off the debts. I know you were saying you could rent and then save for a mortgage, but house prices are not standing still, so you may find it difficult to get back on the mortgage ladder again.

With regards to the loans, if you have been paying these off properly every month, how about being cheaky and phoning your creditors up and seeing if they will decrease the interest? I have heard that other forum members have done this and had their interest on their debt lowered.

regards


chev

LewisC_2

You don't need two cars when only one of you works - get rid of one. You should not be saving at a rate of around 3% when your debts are costing you around 30%! It doesn't make sense! Use the money in your savings to pay off your debts.

If you really want to be debt free, you're going to have to really work hard on cutting down your outgoings. Good luck

coxj2901

chevalier wrote:

Can I also bring to your attention https://www.freecycle.org? It is a great place for getting things you need for free. And if you have things that don't sell on ebay you could put them up on there too.

I am a bit confused about you selling the house. Surely with the savings you are making, you will be able to pay off the debts. I know you were saying you could rent and then save for a mortgage, but house prices are not standing still, so you may find it difficult to get back on the mortgage ladder again.

With regards to the loans, if you have been paying these off properly every month, how about being cheaky and phoning your creditors up and seeing if they will decrease the interest? I have heard that other forum members have done this and had their interest on their debt lowered.

regards


chev

Thanks for the link I will check out freecycle,org.

I am going to hold out for the full asking price on my house and If I don't get it then I will simply continue to try and pay off the enormous debt. If I do sell at the asking price then I would hopefully be debt free around Aug-07 which is just after my 30th birthday.

After being debt free I would then have circa £1k per month spare to save which would be an enormous turnaround given then situation I'm currently in.

I realise that house prices may well increase during this time but from my calculations it wouldn't outweight the cost of borrwing (interest) that I'm currently paying.

vodkabarbie

Fantastic- this is really inspiring! And good decision about the BMW. My OH & I need to replace our car and after a string of expensive status mobiles that have cost loads he's reluctantly decided to go with a 'boring' sensible motor....so I know how hard that decision can be

jobbingmusician

By the way, about your eye test. You said you'd save £25 by doing a MS on this. Far be it from me to discourage MSing, but do you realise that if you work on a computer regularly (which I guess you do, as an accountant,) your employer has an obligation to pay for your eye tests?

If you haven't sent the receipt off to the MS company, I would claim this £25 back from your employer pronto!

DontDoDebtKids

All I can say is well done John.

You've made some big, and probably very painful, sacrifices from my reading of your thread.

I wish you the best of luck when selling your house, moving and paying off your remaining debts!

Keep us up to date. It's inspiring to see how quickly debts can go down if a person is willing to be organised and to sacrifice things that society brainwashes us into thinking we couldn't do without when, in fact, it's just stuff or a money pit!