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help required - fed up hamster in wheel
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Katsu - you beat me to it!! I was going to suggest a 'green' approach to the replacement car :rotfl:
Justify your 'new to you' poogoo 206 (or whatever you buy) with making a conscious decision to lower your carbon footprint and help the planet!
Also with living in the city centre there is no need for a big gas guzzler of a car and little nippy beggers get round quickerMags - who loves shopping0 -
I'm the same age as you and my main debt is for my car which I planned very carefully before getting. The payments are over just over two years as I didnt want to be paying it off forever. As a result I pay £463 a month, I also have a little left over on a previous loan. Those are my only debts. My take home is £1550 so the loan was assessed by my bank as being on the boarderline of affordability. I manage this by living relatively frugally. I really wanted a nice car so I make sacrifices. I'm lucky in that I live with my partner however if not I would house share and pay a similar amount. My budget for entertainment and any other non essential items is £75 to £90 a month, this includes clothing, lunches at work (which basically I dont have because I cant afford it!) etc. For two of us we spend £160 a month including welfare/ fairtrade foods where we can. I shop at Asda or sometimes Lidl and add things up as I go around. I found shopping online for food really useful initially as its a good way of keeping on budget. My point is that if you want a luxury item you need to scrimp on other things. You have loads of areas where you could shed money, though a car that expensive to run would feel like a millstone round my neck. By the way, I'm pretty sure that all the research into fuels shows that the 'supers' make no difference at all to maintaining the car. I think your greatest difficulty is going to be if your spending time with materialistic people its not going to happen. I can say to my friends that I can only afford a couple of drinks somewhere cheap and they'll be fine about it. It is doable, but is going to involve a lot of changes. Good luck
Edit I just realised you got rid off the car. Good plan it was costing a lot of your budget, glad its going well so far. The environmental angle makes a lot of sense, I agreeSaving for a deposit. £5440 of £11000 saved so far:j0 -
young-and-free wrote: »Hi everyone i thought i would let you know that the car is away!!, it was easier to shift than I thought and a large BMW dealer bought it there and then no hassles. They held me right over a barrel with it and I only got a grand in my hand, as they pay the finance company off direct. They knew what finance was outstanding and worked up from there rather than worked down from market value, but there you go. I thought I would get a chunk of cash and clear everything else off and just keep paying the 320 but they wouldnt do it as the finance is secured on the car which is fair enough. I am going into town today to get the money for my watch so thats £2k cash pot. I dont know whether to pay off a credit card or use this as deposit for a new car. I can use a pool car from work for about 2 weeks but after that i need some wheels.
Going shopping with mum today in her car now (mini) so looking forward to it. Have sorted clothes out and taken pictures for ebay. The amount of stuff to sell is unreal, some not even worn. I looked at clothing exchanges and stuff on the internet but ebay seems to be the best bet to get some cash. I also need to open a paypal account as well so doing that today to.
Have also got every gadget under the sun so i need to sell 2 laptops that are ok but a couple of years old plus 2 sat navs why oh why did i buy these things.
First saturday morning in a long time where i have got up full of beans and ready to go!
have a good day everyone
:j
Wow you have been busy!! Well done for selling the car and sorting out your clothes; good luck with selling those and the gadgets you've got to sell.
With reference to the 2k; why don't you just buy a car for 2k? this would make better sense at least while you pay off the other debts.
You have now freed up £320 by selling the car which you could throw at your debts. Are the cards 0%? If not try to change as much as you can to a 0% card or LOB card which will help while you're paying them off if you're not having interest added
You've made a great start on your way to a life without debt; well done :T And keep postingMFW 2025 #50: £1139.75/£600007/03/25: Mortgage: £67,000.00
12/06/25: Mortgage: £65,000.00
18/01/25: Mortgage: £68,500.14
27/12/24: Mortgage: £69,278.38
27/12/24: Debt: £0 🥳😁
27/12/24: Savings: £12,000
07/03/25: Savings: £16,5000 -
young-and-free wrote: »Council tax is single person discount
need to look at groceries - not sure what i buy to be honest - i only shop in the marks & spencers food to go place on the next corner - i take it going to tesco would be cheaper?
If you're single do you normally buy ready made meals or do you cook from scratch? I know when I was single cooking for 1 was depressing so I used M&S and Waitrose for the better 'ready made' meals. It's always going to be cheaper to cook from scratch and yes - shopping at tesco will be cheaperbut I LOVE M&S food
Hi Y&F
All this above just sounds like someone that got a good paid job and wanted to live the 'high life'. Nothing wrong with it if you can afford it and it makes you happy however round your mid to late 20s you start thinking everything a little bit empty - Well that's what happend to me0 -
I went to Asda today and was going to buy a tub of mashed potato which comes in at £1.60 but saw 4 on the bargain shelf for 70p each. They freeze perfect, they microwave from the freezer perfect and they last forever. So now and for the next 8 (as I split them in 2 before freezing) times, I can enjoy this item for less than half its cost and with no hassle of going to the shop to buy more, at full price !
Shower gel was on offer in packs of 8 (Radox) so I bought loads. Now showering at 50p a bottle instead of near £2. I've just bought toilet rolls for the first time since October last year as I got masses of them in a closing down sale at about 25% of cost price.
What I am trying to get across is that if you buy in bulk, sometimes huge bulk, when something is very cheap and it will last, then you constantly use and eat things for a fraction of their true cost. The trick is that you cannot do this on a week by week basis as the offers are not there. You have to take advantage of offers which are one offs or more likely periodic (Asda has Fairy liquid on around 50% to 70% off a couple of times a year).
If you eat rice, get a rice cooker. Buy big bags of rice (I buy 25kg ones but I eat a lot of rice) and put the inside of the rice cooker with lid in the fridge with what you don't eat that day. Good for around a week if cold enough but after a couple of days, put portions in bags and freeze (3 mins in micro) and the next day you have fried rice and even if you buy a packaged curry, you don't need the £2 rice accompaniment as you just reach into the freezer. Bread going hard is frozen and fine for toast from the freezer.
I love numbers and I reckon at a push, I can eat all the same things I want for around 33% to 50% of the full price doing this. Other essentials the same. Drop a brand and you save even more.
Bin the car, get something cheap and laugh at your mates going broke running stupidly expensive cars. By the way, if for your job, then where is your money from work to cover the use of your own car ?
Have a weekend in, not going out. You will be amazed at the feeling of having the same money in your pocket on a Monday morning as you did leaving work on Friday. Take out only say £50 a week and live on it, seriously. Set a goal of clearing this debt and maybe buying a place or at least getting a year's worth of minimal cost living as a safety net in the bank.
It is hard, I know and even though I've turned the corner, I still look for bargains and buy in bulk. That is never going to change now and the rapidly rising bank balances are proof.0 -
My partner was very close to a family who until recently had a son in his mid 20's, same as my partners son. The boys were brought up on the same road, played in the same trees, had crushes on the same girls, the usual best mates growing up thing.
That little boy, who my stepson grew up with, was found dead recently. He was in his mid/late twenties too, like you. He had a hell of a nice car you know. Pretty girlfriends. Good job. Expensive clothes. Money to waste. But he's dead now. Suicide.
Turns out he was stealing to pay for the BMW he felt he had no choice but to have. Stealing was so out of character, we can only guess the pressure of expectation caused him to buckle in the end. When the theft was discovered he couldn't cope with the shame, not just the shame of stealing, but also the shame of everyone knowing he was a fraud, that he had not earned that kind of money. He couldn't turn even to my stepson with it, how could he, my stepson had earned his M3. No matter how close you are, how do you confess to your M3 owning best-mate that you are not in his league? You can not earn the spending power he has? You are not "it". My stepson wanted to listen, wanted to be there for him, but I guess the boy couldn't find a place to start, so the boy pushed his lifelong best mate away, and everyone else too, then died alone. When you said you bought a private plate it made me think of the boy who died, and that pointless shame, the shame of being a normal person in a world that demands celebrity.
He left behind a small child, two years old if memory serves, and his mother. The child will grow up not knowing her Dad but she'll adjust. His mother wont though, mothers never do. He was an only child. I can hardly bear to look at her, the pain is wrapped round her like a fog.
A lot of those lads are selling thier BMW's now. My step son just down graded from a M3 convertible to a Honda Civic Type R. He's genuinely happy with it too, says it's nice to feel you have nothing to prove and he doesn't care anymore, this one does 35mpg too I hear. The car park at the wake was like a prestige car dealership forecourt, about half of those cars have gone now. Somehow, no one seems to feel they want them quite so much, certainly a lot have decided they don't NEED them. Golfs, 306's, and Focus ST's are all of a sudden good enough all round. Some of those new cars they all want can't be worth £3k.
It's a bloody shame that kind of wisdom couldn't have come at a lower price. Perhaps though, it has for you. That is something to hang on to. Real friends will appretiate what is good about you even if you rock up in a £500 Citroen shed. Anyone else is a kind of slow poison you had no need of in the first place...
Says the woman with the £500 Citroen shed... and a calibre of friends that money will never buy.I refuse to be afraid of the big bad wolf, spiders, or debt collection agencies; one of them's not real and the other two are powerless without my fear.
(Ok, one of them is powerless, spiders can be nasty.)
As of the last count I have cleared [STRIKE]23.16%[/STRIKE] 22.49% of my debt.
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Oh Hannah
That was so sad to read. It makes me very sad and very angry when i hear on the news about people committing suicide because of money problems. As you said above they feel they have to resort to this as they cannot talk to anyone about it.
Thankfully young and free has spoken to hims mom and caught his debt in time.
He has sold his car (very good move) and sounds like he's on the way to dealing with his debts before they take over his life.
What a meterialisitc world will live in; it's all soooo not worth it.MFW 2025 #50: £1139.75/£600007/03/25: Mortgage: £67,000.00
12/06/25: Mortgage: £65,000.00
18/01/25: Mortgage: £68,500.14
27/12/24: Mortgage: £69,278.38
27/12/24: Debt: £0 🥳😁
27/12/24: Savings: £12,000
07/03/25: Savings: £16,5000 -
Hiya Y and F, way to go, you are doing so well. Keep it up..........Brilliant.
DFGB"Do I need this or just want it"0 -
My partner was very close to a family who until recently had a son in his mid 20's, same as my partners son. The boys were brought up on the same road, played in the same trees, had crushes on the same girls, the usual best mates growing up thing.
That little boy, who my stepson grew up with, was found dead recently. He was in his mid/late twenties too, like you. He had a hell of a nice car you know. Pretty girlfriends. Good job. Expensive clothes. Money to waste. But he's dead now. Suicide.
Turns out he was stealing to pay for the BMW he felt he had no choice but to have. Stealing was so out of character, we can only guess the pressure of expectation caused him to buckle in the end. When the theft was discovered he couldn't cope with the shame, not just the shame of stealing, but also the shame of everyone knowing he was a fraud, that he had not earned that kind of money. He couldn't turn even to my stepson with it, how could he, my stepson had earned his M3. No matter how close you are, how do you confess to your M3 owning best-mate that you are not in his league? You can not earn the spending power he has? You are not "it". My stepson wanted to listen, wanted to be there for him, but I guess the boy couldn't find a place to start, so the boy pushed his lifelong best mate away, and everyone else too, then died alone. When you said you bought a private plate it made me think of the boy who died, and that pointless shame, the shame of being a normal person in a world that demands celebrity.
He left behind a small child, two years old if memory serves, and his mother. The child will grow up not knowing her Dad but she'll adjust. His mother wont though, mothers never do. He was an only child. I can hardly bear to look at her, the pain is wrapped round her like a fog.
A lot of those lads are selling thier BMW's now. My step son just down graded from a M3 convertible to a Honda Civic Type R. He's genuinely happy with it too, says it's nice to feel you have nothing to prove and he doesn't care anymore, this one does 35mpg too I hear. The car park at the wake was like a prestige car dealership forecourt, about half of those cars have gone now. Somehow, no one seems to feel they want them quite so much, certainly a lot have decided they don't NEED them. Golfs, 306's, and Focus ST's are all of a sudden good enough all round. Some of those new cars they all want can't be worth £3k.
It's a bloody shame that kind of wisdom couldn't have come at a lower price. Perhaps though, it has for you. That is something to hang on to. Real friends will appretiate what is good about you even if you rock up in a £500 Citroen shed. Anyone else is a kind of slow poison you had no need of in the first place...
Says the woman with the £500 Citroen shed... and a calibre of friends that money will never buy.
That is a really good reminder to us all that actually there really isn't any possession or lifestyle worth having to take us to that dark place.
Young free - Your diary reads really well and i can relate to alot of it re image. There's loads you can do with the image as well, i bought shirts from tm lewin online in their sale, googled for a voucher code and ended up buying nice workshirts for less then £17 each. I also then took one back and swapped it for a full price shirt and didn't pay any extra!
I have always wondered how people around me can always afford to buy more, or always be out,or always going on holiday etc... I have now got to a point (i'm 26) where i think i have spent my money in different areas and thats my decision.
On the car front have you thought about renting one for a few months, looking at potential disposable income could clear your actual debt in less then 7 or 8 months now not paying for car? Then you can have another look round and buy a car you prefer???
AspiraitonApril 2020 - £102,222 Loans/CC’s.
Jan 2022 - £0
Cleared - £102,222
Jan 2022 - Now time to build suitable investments and a business!0 -
Why have you got life insurance if you have no dependents? Is it practical to have this?0
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