the maccas Debt Free Diary - 20K to pay in 18 months

themaccas · 6 January 2007 at 2:58PM

Thanks MM, this is so very true, I am feeling better about waiting, next year will be so much better and the last thing I want to jeopodise are our debt repayments this year. We have never had such a good opportunity to pay these off and we do, after all have a great holiday to look forward to so it's not like we are depriving ourselves. I think we need to remember that. Now just need to persuade OH and he's not back home yet and I can't reach him on his mobile!

chevalier · 6 January 2007 at 5:57PM

If he has to have xyz car, then remind him about depreciation, and how silly it would be to get a new one.

But then as someone else said, once you have paid off your debts, if you can offer a car firm, cash for a car, you will be amazed at how much you can get off the price, AND what extras they will throw in!!

However, if my OH went ahead and bought a car on finance without getting my agreement, he would be taking it back!
chev

themaccas · 8 January 2007 at 9:17AM

So that crisis has been diverted....for now! We have spent much of the weekend talking about it and the crunch time came when OH and I were discussing what we would be prepared to forgo to get the car. I said I would be prepared to give up very little and I would absolutely NOT reduce our debt repayments to pay for a new car. I asked him what he would be prepared to give up and pointed out his lovely Breitling watch he was wearing worth nearly £3K and that really bought it home to him ....at last. He would not be prepared to get rid of that (or his Rolex) for anything. So what we have decided to do is try and start a car fund and see how much we can earn/save between now and next March when we will have paid off our debts.

themaccas · 8 January 2007 at 1:49PM

Well I've just paid off another £745 onto our Sainsburys CC and I feel chuffed to see it going down so quickly, hopefully we'll make our last payment on this in May and then we can snowball the amount to one of the 2 AMEX cards we have which both owe around £5000 at the moment. Feels good to have done that after the weekend blip.

themaccas · 8 January 2007 at 2:08PM

OH and I have had a couple of days of eBay and Amazon listing crazed days and now I'm finding myself almost as much on ebay as I am on here. We've listed around 25 books and CD's and 15 items on Ebay, one of which we have just taken off as someone has offered £115 for the item to be taken off and will pick it up this evening. We've already sold 3 books and currently will be recieiving £21.90 for those after Amazonfees and quidco have just informed me I am going to get £137. This is excellent and will help to raise our holiday funds a little higher by £273.90!

themaccas · 30 January 2007 at 5:34PM

I'll be glad to see the back of this month, money wise it has been pretty awful although we have still met our debt repayments and paid the usual overpayments. I have had some holiday this month and was sick so lost a lot of overtime and weekend bonus pay. I am taking another couple of weeks off at the moment to use up my annual leave so I am am back at work this week to earn some extra money for our holiday. By the end of this week I hope to have raised another £500 which is great but I am now feeling really drained. Yesterday I worked an extra shift and it was extremely busy and I'm back doing a night shift tonight then another one on Saturday night. I'm sure I'll be happy when I get paid for it but right now I wish I didn't have to do it. We raised about £500 from Ebay and amazon this month but we are trying to pay so much off our debts and save so hard for our holiday that we have hardly any money left for everything else - weekly essentials. We ran out of money last week and although I got paid last week we don't use that money as it covers all our bills/childcare/mortgage, however we have dipped into it which makes me question as to whether we are trying to overpay/save too much. It's only now that I sit down and think that if we hadn't decided to go on holiday we would have been able to pay another £5k-ish off our debt. STill it's booked and paid for and I'm sure I'll not regret it when we are there or when we come home.
So I'll look forward to seeing our debt total go down to sub £15k next month, that'll feel nice.

Verbatim · 31 January 2007 at 1:49PM

Keep on keeping on! January's a notoriously depressing month.

Look forward to your holiday with pride. All paid and saved for, even the spending money. I bet it's been a great motivator too over the year. We all need breaks in the slog and treats to look forward to.

themaccas · 31 January 2007 at 5:11PM

Thanks Verbatim, you're right I feel a bit better about things today, helped by the fact that OH got paid today so feeling a bit more solvent. We have decided to start another savings fund which will carry on from the holiday fund for a new car which OH wants to buy. I know it seems a bit mad but OH (and I) very nearly bought a new car earlier this month so this is a compromise I have made with OH, we'll see how well we do! We've got a bit to start us off.....

clarab_3 · 31 January 2007 at 5:15PM

maccas I just wanted to say that this was the first time Ive seen your diary and I'm seriously impressed! What you've managed is inspirational - I'll be reading a lot more in future.

January is such a slog... remember February is a good short month!