Hypno's reminder that she is doing ok, actually!

hypno06

And with alarming regularity, she starts yet another chapter of her diary.........:)

So, briefly, for those who may be new to my life, here is the story so far.....

Bought a house in 1999, and 3 weeks after we moved in we discovered major structural work that needed doing. Like all building work, the costs escalated and by the time we had finished, and furnished, and eaten loads of takeaways because we had no kitchen/water/electricity (funny how we forget about all these additional costs when getting our quotes together!), we had accumulated a significant amount of debt. We had remortgaged as much as we could but the majority of the cost was put on credit cards and loans because that was all that was available to us.

Then started the years of robbing Peter to pay Paul....you know the ones, where you pay the credit cards on 1st July, freeing up £100 of the credit balance, and on 2nd July you use that £100 to do your grocery shop and put petrol in the car, leaving you both with no money in the current account, and maxed credit cards too.

We sold the house, because we hated it (or hated what it had become, ie a nightmare) and cleared the mortgage, but couldn't clear the other debt, and so we continued.

We rented for a year, before deciding 7 years ago to buy again. Of course, we had no deposit, so had to borrow yet more money to give us the deposit that we needed.

By then, on top of our mortgage of £175k, we had over £100k of unsecured debt, mainly on very high interest APRs.

Then in 2005, my Dad died suddenly - only 55, too young to die, in my opinion, and it devastated me.

I inherited some money, and paid it off the debt, leaving me with just (!) about £75k to pay, but giving me something invaluable, a desire to get on top of it and to hammer it down - I was determined to make sure that Dad's money was not wasted, after all, he had worked hard for it. Also, I was not going to get that sort of lump sum again, so if I didn't get sorted at that point, I would never get sorted.

The following year, I found MSE, and my journey really began. The ideas, the support, and just the relief of knowing that I was not on my own, meant that my own determination kicked in and slowly but surely the debt came down.

At the time of writing this diary, my non-mortgage debt is just over £9k, a far cry from just a few years ago.

But it hasn't been easy, and life still throws up curveballs - the biggest being that my husband left about 6 months ago, so since then I have had to manage purely on my own income, which is tighter than a tight thing in lycra which is a couple of sizes too small.

However, I have been reminded today that I am doing ok, I am getting there. Along the way, I am rediscovering other stuff - having stopped running after I did the London Marathon in 2009, I have got back into the habit. I have lost a couple of stones in weight and got down to my goal weight. My children are fit and healthy, and as happy as most teenagers with attitude are, and things could be a whole lot worse.

There is still a lot of "stuff" going on in the background that I will keep away from this diary, because it really only has anything to do with two people - me and him, and because I know that there have been occasions where members of his family have chosen to judge me based on what I have written here in the past.

So, the need to focus continues, the need to budget, to meal plan, to make 1lb of mince last for as many meals as possible......but also the need to remind myself that really, I am doing ok, and in the circumstances, that is absolutely fine!

Thank you, again, to everyone that has stuck by me so far, you will never know how much this has helped me in getting the debt down as much as I have done.

I hope you will stick around for the next chapter

Seaxwyn

doing ok? doing brilliantly more like

beanielou

Happy shiney new diary
Id love to stick around for the next instalment
To me you are doing way better than just ok

hypno06

Thanks beanie and seaxwyn, you guys have been with me since day one, along with taxi and slowlyfading. Thank you very very much x

taxi73

You are doing fantastic and are amazing x

hypno06

taxi73 wrote: »

You are doing fantastic and are amazing x

You're not too bad yourself

seese75

Happy new diary. You are doing amazingly! Every day I read and am inspired, to keep going, by seeing how well you do. Thanks a million.

REDMADCURLS

And so another was born

Wishing you debt busting love and laughter for the next installment!

benbenandme

You're an absolute inspiriation to everyone on here, and for anyone new to these boards make sure you follow this one daily, it moves quickly as does Hypnos existing debt total

REDMADCURLS

You can name the next one 'wasn't I amazing!'

hypno06

REDMADCURLS wrote: »

You can name the next one 'wasn't I amazing!'

No, it will be "wasn't MSE amazing!" :money: