Drumroll please....

debtdesperado

...today my total debt has fallen below £20,000, from a starting position of £42k in October 2008.

:j:j:j:j:j:j:j

Still a way to go, but am trying to focus on how far I have come as at the moment I am so FED UP of paying debt at the moment. My goal is to get it under £10k by the end of the year.

Have had ANOTHER clear out this weekend for ebay... my wardrobe looks as if it has been Gok'ed and replaced with his 20-piece capsule wardrobe...anything remotely decent and not worn every week is now gone. Am promising myself that the first thing I will do when I'm debt free is buy some new clothes (with cash rather than credit cards!)....:(

Tixy

Excellent, those milestones really help and that a huge amount to have repaid so far :j Inspiring.

DarkConvict

Well done, as the figures fall it gets easier since you pay less in interest every month.

azkaban420

Massive well done and congratulations to you debtdesperado, how awesome to hit such a great milestone....keep it up, and all the best for the next one! _party_ :j:T

Az

niccatw

Woohoo! :j Well done DebtDesperado!

I'm just beginning the ebay clearout - man, it's tediuos isn't it! I hope it get's a bit faster as ifigure out what I'm doing!

Here's to under 10k by the end of the year!

Well done on all you've done so far! :T:T:T

debtdesperado

Thanks all!

Niccatw... you are not wrong there! Boring, but so pleasing once it's all done and out of the house. I still can't believe that I used to think I couldn't live without all that stuff... and that I'm still paying for it...

Thanks DarkConvict - I went the consolidation route for the biggest chunk of it, so interest rates are steady (at my LBM there was no way I could get any more 'interest free' credit cards... at that point I already had 6 cards that were all maxed out, plus two loans) and a good thing too in a way - I was made redundant and spent 7 months out of work. Even now am only in a temporary job, so I would have been out of the cheap interest rates and into the hideous standard interest rates, without being able to get any more cards. So it worked out ok, even though it was a bit hairy at times trying to scrape the payments together.

The hardest thing was resisting putting anything on credit cards - now have two, for 'emergencies' as I have no savings at the moment, but the temptation to do so definitely gets easier as you go on - I haven't used any credit cards for 20 months now. For someone who had been using credit cards each month to 'top up' my income for the last 16 years, that is a serious habit to break :-)