Debt tracking

Wonder_Girl

After my recent light bulb moment I’m eager to get cracking on the solutions, OH and myself have come up with plans but no I want to be able to track our progress. I was wondering how all keep track of your debts?

Any ideas? Suggestions? Any motivational tools you use? Anything you think you might do that others don’t?

Any ideas would be great as we have none and I’m all for [STRIKE]stealing [/STRIKE]sharing ideas

WG x

Brassic

I'd be interested in this too.

At present I track mine in my sig, in my new blog <proud>, and in my snowballs. But day to day living I just can't seem to get under control. I have redone MS Money god knows how many times, but dh never fills it in so I get discouraged and forget too and then it's so out of debt I don't even want to look at it!

Look forwards to the replies.

MascaraMinx

I have an Excel spreadsheet that I designed myself and a mortgage calculator to keep track of my overspend there.

The spreadsheet has one page listing all our current debt balances, monthly payments, and % interest rates. The second page shows our outgoings and the third shows any savings - none as yet I also have a page recently added to keep track of the best deals going at the moment so I know what to switch to when I can.

I update this every month so I'm on top of it all and so we can make overpayments if we have extra one month.

I know quite a lot of people here use spreadsheets. The mortgage calculator motivates me the most!

grown_up_girlie

I have several methods of tracking all of my finances, the most basic of all is my 3 monthly financial planner - I simply have to hand every single payment I need to make over the next 3 months, I list my incomings and outgoings, all debtors, direct debits, utility bills, tv licence etc and for which dates they cover etc etc.... I also list birthdays, clothes, food so I ALWAYS know where I stand. All guarenteed incomings go down on the planner so that I can see what I have spare every month. I then incorporate this extra money into my debtors.... this really works for me. In fact I would be lost without this now.

I also invested in a good scanner for the computer and scan all of my bills and letters into one documentation folder (Make sure you back up), with this I have a word document that I track creditor payments with, you can see payments going down gradually which always makes you feel better. I also list amount outstanding before payment, date of new payment, how much this is for and the new balance. I then place this into the documentation folder with the letters/statements (which i've scanned in) from any given company/creditor. I then file away any paper bills that need to be kept.

What are the pro's of doing this.... well you have everything to hand in one place for starters, no missing letters or bills that you may just shove in a drawer normally. It also keeps your head clean and organised - you can look at things in black and white which is always easier to understand rather than having mental notes and there is no risk of over looking a specific bill and getting a nasty bill/letter through the door.

The only con I would say is organising it all.... like I said you need a scanner, word processing package and a small file which you can buy from tesco for about £3. You need to take a few hours and literally get all your documents in one place, make a relevant documentation folder and individual folders inside that to which you rename with the relevant creditor/company name. You then have to go one by one and scan any documents into your computer - but once you've done it you simply only have to do it as the letters/bills come through the post.

Also I should add that your financial planner should include all dates for every bill and direct debit and dates for all incomings. By doing this you can see when you are going to have to be more tight in a given month/week and when you are going to have spare pennies to incorporate into your debtors. It also means that if there IS anything unexpected that crops up you can the incorporate that into your planner easily and make relevant adjustments.

Hope this has helped someone as like I said I would now be lost without doing this now.... i'm actually in advance with most of my bills and have budgeted now up until January so as long as you keep to what you write down in your planner then you will never be confused or lost again.



Oh its also worth me mentioning I don't bother with spreadsheets like Excel as its just complicating matters for me, a nice simple word document that can have notes added to it is nice and easy.

lazy&indebt

Don't start 'em off!
If you have a look on the thread entitled 'Obsessive or normal DFW Behaviour' there's loads of ides on there too!
You cannot beat Excel IMO

Wonder_Girl

lazy&indebt wrote:

Don't start 'em off!
If you have a look on the thread entitled 'Obsessive or normal DFW Behaviour' there's loads of ides on there too!
You cannot beat Excel IMO

See I want to have my own spreadsheets but I can’t make it work for me! I was hoping to steal somebody’s methods

natlie

Hi
I have excel, I also use microsoft money - came with pc

I also use egg money manager and I always reduce my limit on my cards as soon as I make payments minus interest so my debts can only go down, I get the bank to take money off my overdraft every month.

Nat
xxx

notmyrealusername

EagerLearner has designed some great spreadsheets...

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=238575

tesuhoha

What I do is quite simple. I have each cc name listed with the current debt next to it and the running total at the bottom so that each time one changes the total debt goes down too. I also (separately) list the total debt on the last day of each month so that I can see how much I have paid off in one month and I can look back and see how much I have paid off altogether.