Starting my Journey

Ashamed_2

The_Goatreich wrote: »

That's brilliant.

Also - £6500 engagement ring?!?!?!?!?!? Holy $%&£!!!

Yeah, but she's worth it

Ashamed_2

Has anyone had a new batroom recently?.

Ours is 30 years old and needs a bit of a revamp as we are starting to develop leaks. We have held it off as long s possible but really need to do something about it now. Quick fixes and teporary solutions are no longer feasible.

I need quality at low costs. Any suggestions or websites?

Ashamed_2

Monthly Results:

Paid Off this month...
Credit Cards & Loans - £867.49
Mortgage - £293.28
Total Debt Paid Off this Month = £1160.77
Total Debt Paid Off so far = £12,974.37

Kepp

Well done Ash, figures are looking good

Ashamed_2

Thanks Beccie, It's getting there very slowly.

I'm very impaitent as I've got all these things I want to buy once we have the money LMAO !!!

Ashamed_2

Car insurance just renewed for both cars .

I think I'm going to struggle to break even next month.
I did allocate X amount a month for things like servicing, MOT, TAX, Insurance etc. But then I thought to myself, If I'm going to save it up for a year to pay for it, why not put that money towards the debts. Surely it would work out cheaper in the long run. Has anyone worked this out. i.e. Savings v debts. I know they say you should never have savings if you have debts, but I'm not sure how clear sut it is.

Kepp

Some people choose to do a budget so that by the time these things come up they have the money saved but it will mean that they have paid less on their debts per month, other people will throw all they have at their debts on the months they can and then pay less on the months they have other things to pay for.

Saving is good for a sense of security and good if what you are saving for you couldn't afford all in one month, but throwing all you've got when you can should save a bit in interest.

Think it's probably what suits your situation best!

Ashamed_2

Yeah,
We are putting away a little each month for our holiday in April, but other things like: Christmas, Birthday, weddings, new baby presents, car servicing, tax, mot, insurance, home improvements etc. I've allocated a yearly allowance for all of these and worked out how much a month it would need. This money was then going to go in a savings account so I had it there when we need it. But I'm thinking that that's a lot of money that could go towards the debts.

So only holiday money will be put aside, everything else will be offset.

Ashamed_2

Monthly Results:

Had a bad month as the car insurance was due. £1000 . Dam ripp off and that's the cheapest I could get.

Paid Off this month...
Credit Cards & Loans - +£103.95
Mortgage - £294.13
Total Debt Paid Off this Month = £190.18
Total Debt Paid Off so far = £13,088.58

Ashamed_2

Just to keep the motivation up rather than ending on a bad note. I've worked out my debt free date and it's been moved to Oct 2013 now rather than Oct 2014.purely because of the changes made. i.e. quit smoking and nursery fees to mention a few. This is not taking into consideration any overtime or bonuses we get. But then it's also not taking into consideration any emergency spends that we need to make. (things like insurance, tax, petrol, mot, servicing, holiday, birthdays, christmas, weddings etc have all been planned in).

My spreadsheet is starting to look a bit professional now .

I have 6 tabs.
Instructions - how to use it (for my wife and refernce)
Transactions - split by month and and has 85 rows of various monthly transactions (everything you could possibly think off). They turn red if you are over budget and stay green for under budget (conditional formatting rules).
Christmas & Birthdays - Lists all the people we need to buy presents for and how much we budget on each of them. The total is then divided by 12 and populated into the transactional tab. I have a fair bit of sum's and macro's going across all these tabs to make it easier to keep track.
Savings Account - This lists All the money put into the savings account including holiday, car money and christmas and birthdays. It details how much is in the account and also lists the allocation to each rescourse.
Actual Payments - This is where it all started. This is the list of debts on the credit cards, loans and mortgage. It gets updaed automatically from the transaction tab. It works out the minimumpayment for each card, it automatically adds the interest on each month and deducts the amount you enter into the transactions tab.
Predicted Payments - The same as actual payments but this sheet lets you play around with the payments you make and shows you what you coudl achieve if you increase or reduce the monthly payments. This is what I use to get my debt free date.

Oh on another note. I broke both my 5km Personal Best time this week and also my 10km personal best time last week . Lost almost 2 stone now \o/