Secretly Poor

Secretly_Poor

Thanks all - some great ideas and tips there

I have just run through the snowball calculator and was very pleased and surprised to see that I could be debt free by June 2014

Obviously the more I can cut back and apply towards debt the better !!

isy1011

But you need to make sure your expenditure is correct e.g. nothing for haircuts, Christmas, what about house maintenance, what about holidays or weekends away etc?

tryingveryhard_2

It might depend who you are with but I have successfully suspended my contact lens plan with D and A for 6 months (this means you keep the free eye check). It gives you a bit of breathing space without cancelling the whole thing.

Secretly_Poor

Thanks for all your posts

Got paid today and took great pleasure in ringing up creditors and paying debts (cleared arrears on a few cards). Now time to get my life back!!

miggy

Secretly_Poor wrote: »

Got paid today and took great pleasure in ringing up creditors and paying debts (cleared arrears on a few cards). Now time to get my life back!!

Excellent!
My advice for you would be to get to know people on here: read diaries, ask questions, grab ideas. There is a lot of friendly, knowledgeable and helpful support around.
Sorry if I've missed it, but I didn't see details of your other half's income - or are the debts just in your name? Also children - are they pre-school, school-age, teens?
While you can get away with nothing spent on clothes for a little while, it's wise to factor in something because eventually you will have to get some! Remember you can buy cheaper brands, or go to ebay or charity shops if you are looking for 'labels'.
As has been said before, have a look at the 'old style' board for lots of ideas on cutting the food budget - if you both work I appreciate you will have to plan and take lots of care to cut food costs and cover the cleaning yourselves, but there are big savings to be made here. A weekend of cooking batches of meals for the freezer can pay dividends in savings for weeks ahead (mince and lentils come to mind!), and you could make up and freeze sandwiches or soup to take to work at the same time.
Learn to be critical when you buy - work out what is best value, don't just buy items at eye level (where the supermarkets make the most money), make and stick to a shopping list, plan menus.
You won't learn all the money-saving tips in one go, but you'll build a skill base that will be useful to you and your children for years to come.
Enjoy the journey.

winner12

Well done you but what happens next month when the interest is added again I did this for months waited for a nice bonus etc you do need to sort it out sooner or later but same as already advised a proper budget needs to be done figures need to be put in all the columns what happens if your tv or cooker or worse still you need central heating system breaks down in the middle of winter these are things you may face I would advise speaking to National Debt Line because you are seriously in Debt and just getting by