The Debt Free Roll Of Honour

LexieLou

Squirrelz92 said:

The date of your lightbulb moment
Originally it was the 22nd May 2022 but bizarrely I ended up fully committing again just over a year later on the 24th May 2023 to crush the debt demon once and for all!

Debts at their highest
My debts at their highest were £7,402.10. This was my starting debt balance on the 24th May 2023 too! 

Debt-Free Date
TODAY! The 24th October 2023! A day I will forever remember as the best thing I ever did financially and the marking of the beginning of my FIRE journey

Your one pearl of wisdom
Be brutally honest with yourself and in turn be brutal with your spending! I went without for 6 months. My children went without for 6 months. Yes it sucked! Yes I felt like the worst parent on the planet because I had to say no to stupid inexpensive things such as doughnuts after swimming lessons. BUT that determination, grit and 100% effort of being as stringent as possible paid off for me after 6 months! I originally had a goal of December 2024 and I have blown that out of the water and crushed it 14 months early! Anyone can do this, you just have to KEEP YOUR HEAD IN THE GAME! It's all too easy to spend that extra £10 here or there. That soon adds up and before you know it, you could have finished your journey a month earlier if you hadn't have spent it! Grit your teeth, keep your eyes on the prize and power through!!! 

I made a spreadsheet which I had open and tinkered with at least once a day. It was my pride and joy and I couldn't have kept my optimism without it. Each of my debts had a tab which replicated my monthly CC statements. I could play around with it throwing different overpayments into cells which then provided me with different 'CC CRUSHED IT' dates! This was motivation in itself and was one of the reasons as to how I managed to beat my debt free date. Alongside this I had a tab for mortgage overpayments, an SOA and a monthly day to day budgeting tracker. This allowed me to see what the 'pay day eve' balance would be each time I spent or receive funds throughout the month. Again, it was a game changer for me. That plus having a Starling account allowing me to open a pot for anything and everything really helped me gain extra control over my money. 

Which forum threads helped you
I have spent years reading so many inspirational people's diaries before I even decided to tackle my own debt head on. One that sticks out for me was Third time's the charm. Thoroughly enjoyed reading @LMD's highs and lows and it truly was inspiring as to how much she got done in such a short space of time. 

And if you had a debt diary on the Debt-Free Wannabe board (DFW), a link to it
I kept a DFW diary on the forum and I really found it both helpful and encouraging. The link is Washing Away My Debts By 2024. I would 100% recommend to anyone in debt to keep a diary, as the feeling of having a whole community of people who you don't know and will never meet having your back through the thick and thin of your DF experience meant the world to me and pushed me harder than I could have pushed going it alone. 

Future Plans
Naturally I shall be moving onto greener pastures in the form of tackling the next element of my FIRE journey. I shall save up 3 months EF and then its full steam ahead to renovating my home, before finally tackling that all important mortgage!!! So excited for my next financial adventure and shall definitely continue to linger on the MFW board to help and encourage others as so many of you all did for me!

Gemma xx

OMG You Rock!  Go You,  loved some of your tips about the spreadsheet.  I might copy your idea as I want to buy a diamond ring for my 50th and this is a great tip to use to save.

LL xx

enthusiasticsaver

Announced to bump to top of category. The thread seems to have got lost since last year.  

Quantifier

Debt free day for us today. We had two mortgages, one in France and one in the UK. Originally, 15 years ago, they were £450k between them. We cleared the French mortgage last summer and made the final payment on the UK mortgage today. I’m 53 and my wife is 50. We have been careful with money and not wasted a penny of any pay increases from promotions or bonuses. Luckily a few years ago I had a big promotion at work. We didn’t change our lifestyle one bit, we used every extra penny to invest in pensions and overpay the mortgages. Feels good today, just raising a glass to having no debt whatsoever as of today (we have no car finance or credit cards, zero debt). 

vampirotoothus

@Quantifier well done on clearing your mortgages. Your approach with not allowing lifestyle creep with increased salaries is absolutely the way to go. It can make such a big difference to your debts, with you even noticing. Congratulations V x

Keedie

Congratulations @Quantifier, such a massive achievement and with so many working years ahead of you to be able to truly enjoy your financial freedom whilst you're on the younger side of retirement.xx

BadBookkeeper

🤩🤩🤩🤩🤩Debt Free Day🤩🤩🤩🤩🤩

Introduction:

Thank you so much to everyone who has ever posted on debt free diaries, monthly challenges, roll of honour.  I'm a long time lurker but the tips on here helped me massively on my journey.

I'm a book-keeper and a long time budgeter.  So embarrassed to have found myself in this position of owing £17,033 in credit card debt.  I had a well paid job but after the birth of my son in 2011 and 1 years paid maternity leave I took an attractive redundancy package to be a stay at home mum.  Something I will never regret.  My redundancy pay stretched for a further 2 years but it was another year until my son started school so I used credit cards to cover the gap.  I'm still quite angry at the level of credit I had access to but that's just me trying to find excuses!  I then took a part time low paid job and carried on using cards to top up my income until my lightbulb moment.

Lightbulb Moment:

I was only just covering minimum payments over 3 maxed out credit cards then Barclaycard increased its minimum payments to 3%.  I am thankful for this now but at the time I was very worried.  I knew I was in trouble and now my debt was higher than my annual gross salary.

Debt at Highest:

I owed £17,033 in August 2017.  It was a shock and at this point there was no magic wand so all I could do is stop using them and try and find a way out of the mess.

Debt Free Date:

I promised myself I'd be debt free by my 50th birthday in May 25.  Played around with figures and then reduced it to Dec 24 but then with extra focus by 31st July - TODAY 🥳

Pearls of Wisdom:

I went through my credit card statements for the last 3 years and categorised my spends.  These became my mini goals and saving pots.  So Christmas/birthdays/holidays/car repairs/school uniform/trips.  I paid a small amount in each pot and then paid minimum plus rounded up to next £10 to each card each month.  I also moved my overdraft to a 0% card to make my bank account easier to manage and budget easier to use and never used the overdraft again.

I tracked everything and paid off any spare received from bank switches, cashback sites, surveys etc off the cards. I used Christmas/birthday money to treat myself, I sold things I wanted to declutter to pay for son’s birthday parties or days out.

I was made redundant from my low paid job in 2018 which was a blessing as I could only find a full time job not ideal but a much higher salary.  I used this to set up an emergency fund and started buying premium bonds.  

MSE guides/Forum Threads:

There is so many good threads on this forum.  My favourite are No spend day challenges NST monthly challenges and of course the diaries & roll of honour.  The best tips I had were setting burner accounts for bank switches & buying a 1 day uk travel insurance policy to get 2-1 movie tickets codes and discounts on meals out.  It also helped me realise I wasn't alone, being debt free was do-able and there is a lot of support and advice out there if needed.

Final words:

It's not easy, I had a very supportive DH.  I would have drowned in debt without him.  Of course he wanted to help me more but he had his own debts and took a loan to cover most of my bills whilst I was a stay at home mum instead of me working to pay for childcare & he paid a lot of extras and bailed me out when the money wouldn't stretch as far as I needed it to.  I wanted and needed to do this to ensure I never got in this mess again. 

I hid my debt from everyone except him, so although I'm extremely happy & relieved today it will be a quiet celebration.  I still use a credit card for cash back but pay it off after every single transaction from the appropriate pot.  I do not want to use credit card company money ever again!

So my £350 a month towards debt will now go towards a big family holiday to celebrate being 50 and debt free!  I've paid back the past, it's now time for the future - we live our lives by numbers, we need to understand them, respect them and control them not them control us!

Steps:

• Gather all balances on cards, loans, overdrafts etc with percentage rates, expiry dates, monthly minimum payments.  Also helpful to set up online accounts for them all for easy reference.  List all of your income and dates received. Either keep a notebook or use spreadsheets on a computer.
  
• Make a budget.  Include everything, use SOA template, go through old statements to learn how you got to where you are.  My budget was not accurate for the 1st few months as things kept coming to light, even now I do an annual budget, and review/adjust every month.
• Set realistic goals like a DFD then see how much it would take to reduce it by a couple of months.  Concentrate on paying off each category/balance at a time, paying just minimums on others, then move to the next.  Try & pay even £5 more off each month, round up payments or pay off more to tidy your balances to nice round amounts. It will keep you motivated.  Set up pots for things for emergencies or Christmas to stop you relying on credit cards again.  Don't try to do everything at once you didn't get into debt overnight so allow yourself time to pay it off.  
• Analysis- where does it all go?  What are needs, what are wants? Can you reduce groceries or fuel? Cheaper supermarket? Get better deals for household bills? Better interest rates on borrowing? Are you too generous with birthdays/christmas/rounds at the bar?  It all adds up.  
• Improve how you do things - what can you do better? Saving pots, use cash envelopes, different way of banking, amend dates bills go out of your account, weekly food shop or every month.  (Remember if you budget £400 a month for groceries and expect to spend £100 a week, what will you do when your shopping day has 5 in that month instead of 4? I tend to spend £100 a week so I budget £434 a month to cover it) I also skim £10 a month off the groceries to keep in a pot for the Christmas food shop.
• Review regularly- every year take a day to go through everything again.  Refresh yourself with what's going on and amend or rein it in if needed.  Look for better deals, increase debt payments, cancel unused subscriptions.  Update your budget sheets.

Thank you if you read this far, I included everything I possibly could to try and help anyone else on their debt free journey feel hopeful.  It can be done!  Good luck if you are on yours, stick at it, you will get there and it will be so worth it.  Sorry for the long post but I've been desperate to post here since reading other posts in 2017!! 

Ex_welsh_borrower

BadBookkeeper said:

🤩🤩🤩🤩🤩Debt Free Day🤩🤩🤩🤩🤩

Introduction:

Thank you so much to everyone who has ever posted on debt free diaries, monthly challenges, roll of honour.  I'm a long time lurker but the tips on here helped me massively on my journey.

I'm a book-keeper and a long time budgeter.  So embarrassed to have found myself in this position of owing £17,033 in credit card debt.  I had a well paid job but after the birth of my son in 2011 and 1 years paid maternity leave I took an attractive redundancy package to be a stay at home mum.  Something I will never regret.  My redundancy pay stretched for a further 2 years but it was another year until my son started school so I used credit cards to cover the gap.  I'm still quite angry at the level of credit I had access to but that's just me trying to find excuses!  I then took a part time low paid job and carried on using cards to top up my income until my lightbulb moment.

Lightbulb Moment:

I was only just covering minimum payments over 3 maxed out credit cards then Barclaycard increased its minimum payments to 3%.  I am thankful for this now but at the time I was very worried.  I knew I was in trouble and now my debt was higher than my annual gross salary.

Debt at Highest:

I owed £17,033 in August 2017.  It was a shock and at this point there was no magic wand so all I could do is stop using them and try and find a way out of the mess.

Debt Free Date:

I promised myself I'd be debt free by my 50th birthday in May 25.  Played around with figures and then reduced it to Dec 24 but then with extra focus by 31st July - TODAY 🥳

Pearls of Wisdom:

I went through my credit card statements for the last 3 years and categorised my spends.  These became my mini goals and saving pots.  So Christmas/birthdays/holidays/car repairs/school uniform/trips.  I paid a small amount in each pot and then paid minimum plus rounded up to next £10 to each card each month.  I also moved my overdraft to a 0% card to make my bank account easier to manage and budget easier to use and never used the overdraft again.

I tracked everything and paid off any spare received from bank switches, cashback sites, surveys etc off the cards. I used Christmas/birthday money to treat myself, I sold things I wanted to declutter to pay for son’s birthday parties or days out.

I was made redundant from my low paid job in 2018 which was a blessing as I could only find a full time job not ideal but a much higher salary.  I used this to set up an emergency fund and started buying premium bonds.  

MSE guides/Forum Threads:

There is so many good threads on this forum.  My favourite are No spend day challenges NST monthly challenges and of course the diaries & roll of honour.  The best tips I had were setting burner accounts for bank switches & buying a 1 day uk travel insurance policy to get 2-1 movie tickets codes and discounts on meals out.  It also helped me realise I wasn't alone, being debt free was do-able and there is a lot of support and advice out there if needed.

Final words:

It's not easy, I had a very supportive DH.  I would have drowned in debt without him.  Of course he wanted to help me more but he had his own debts and took a loan to cover most of my bills whilst I was a stay at home mum instead of me working to pay for childcare & he paid a lot of extras and bailed me out when the money wouldn't stretch as far as I needed it to.  I wanted and needed to do this to ensure I never got in this mess again. 

I hid my debt from everyone except him, so although I'm extremely happy & relieved today it will be a quiet celebration.  I still use a credit card for cash back but pay it off after every single transaction from the appropriate pot.  I do not want to use credit card company money ever again!

So my £350 a month towards debt will now go towards a big family holiday to celebrate being 50 and debt free!  I've paid back the past, it's now time for the future - we live our lives by numbers, we need to understand them, respect them and control them not them control us!

Steps:

• Gather all balances on cards, loans, overdrafts etc with percentage rates, expiry dates, monthly minimum payments.  Also helpful to set up online accounts for them all for easy reference.  List all of your income and dates received. Either keep a notebook or use spreadsheets on a computer.
  
• Make a budget.  Include everything, use SOA template, go through old statements to learn how you got to where you are.  My budget was not accurate for the 1st few months as things kept coming to light, even now I do an annual budget, and review/adjust every month.
• Set realistic goals like a DFD then see how much it would take to reduce it by a couple of months.  Concentrate on paying off each category/balance at a time, paying just minimums on others, then move to the next.  Try & pay even £5 more off each month, round up payments or pay off more to tidy your balances to nice round amounts. It will keep you motivated.  Set up pots for things for emergencies or Christmas to stop you relying on credit cards again.  Don't try to do everything at once you didn't get into debt overnight so allow yourself time to pay it off.  
• Analysis- where does it all go?  What are needs, what are wants? Can you reduce groceries or fuel? Cheaper supermarket? Get better deals for household bills? Better interest rates on borrowing? Are you too generous with birthdays/christmas/rounds at the bar?  It all adds up.  
• Improve how you do things - what can you do better? Saving pots, use cash envelopes, different way of banking, amend dates bills go out of your account, weekly food shop or every month.  (Remember if you budget £400 a month for groceries and expect to spend £100 a week, what will you do when your shopping day has 5 in that month instead of 4? I tend to spend £100 a week so I budget £434 a month to cover it) I also skim £10 a month off the groceries to keep in a pot for the Christmas food shop.
• Review regularly- every year take a day to go through everything again.  Refresh yourself with what's going on and amend or rein it in if needed.  Look for better deals, increase debt payments, cancel unused subscriptions.  Update your budget sheets.

Thank you if you read this far, I included everything I possibly could to try and help anyone else on their debt free journey feel hopeful.  It can be done!  Good luck if you are on yours, stick at it, you will get there and it will be so worth it.  Sorry for the long post but I've been desperate to post here since reading other posts in 2017!! 

Superb and well done you!! Hope you enjoy the holiday much deserved

londoner2019

BadBookkeeper said:

🤩🤩🤩🤩🤩Debt Free Day🤩🤩🤩🤩🤩

Introduction:

Thank you so much to everyone who has ever posted on debt free diaries, monthly challenges, roll of honour.  I'm a long time lurker but the tips on here helped me massively on my journey.

I'm a book-keeper and a long time budgeter.  So embarrassed to have found myself in this position of owing £17,033 in credit card debt.  I had a well paid job but after the birth of my son in 2011 and 1 years paid maternity leave I took an attractive redundancy package to be a stay at home mum.  Something I will never regret.  My redundancy pay stretched for a further 2 years but it was another year until my son started school so I used credit cards to cover the gap.  I'm still quite angry at the level of credit I had access to but that's just me trying to find excuses!  I then took a part time low paid job and carried on using cards to top up my income until my lightbulb moment.

Lightbulb Moment:

I was only just covering minimum payments over 3 maxed out credit cards then Barclaycard increased its minimum payments to 3%.  I am thankful for this now but at the time I was very worried.  I knew I was in trouble and now my debt was higher than my annual gross salary.

Debt at Highest:

I owed £17,033 in August 2017.  It was a shock and at this point there was no magic wand so all I could do is stop using them and try and find a way out of the mess.

Debt Free Date:

I promised myself I'd be debt free by my 50th birthday in May 25.  Played around with figures and then reduced it to Dec 24 but then with extra focus by 31st July - TODAY 🥳

Pearls of Wisdom:

I went through my credit card statements for the last 3 years and categorised my spends.  These became my mini goals and saving pots.  So Christmas/birthdays/holidays/car repairs/school uniform/trips.  I paid a small amount in each pot and then paid minimum plus rounded up to next £10 to each card each month.  I also moved my overdraft to a 0% card to make my bank account easier to manage and budget easier to use and never used the overdraft again.

I tracked everything and paid off any spare received from bank switches, cashback sites, surveys etc off the cards. I used Christmas/birthday money to treat myself, I sold things I wanted to declutter to pay for son’s birthday parties or days out.

I was made redundant from my low paid job in 2018 which was a blessing as I could only find a full time job not ideal but a much higher salary.  I used this to set up an emergency fund and started buying premium bonds.  

MSE guides/Forum Threads:

There is so many good threads on this forum.  My favourite are No spend day challenges NST monthly challenges and of course the diaries & roll of honour.  The best tips I had were setting burner accounts for bank switches & buying a 1 day uk travel insurance policy to get 2-1 movie tickets codes and discounts on meals out.  It also helped me realise I wasn't alone, being debt free was do-able and there is a lot of support and advice out there if needed.

Final words:

It's not easy, I had a very supportive DH.  I would have drowned in debt without him.  Of course he wanted to help me more but he had his own debts and took a loan to cover most of my bills whilst I was a stay at home mum instead of me working to pay for childcare & he paid a lot of extras and bailed me out when the money wouldn't stretch as far as I needed it to.  I wanted and needed to do this to ensure I never got in this mess again. 

I hid my debt from everyone except him, so although I'm extremely happy & relieved today it will be a quiet celebration.  I still use a credit card for cash back but pay it off after every single transaction from the appropriate pot.  I do not want to use credit card company money ever again!

So my £350 a month towards debt will now go towards a big family holiday to celebrate being 50 and debt free!  I've paid back the past, it's now time for the future - we live our lives by numbers, we need to understand them, respect them and control them not them control us!

Steps:

• Gather all balances on cards, loans, overdrafts etc with percentage rates, expiry dates, monthly minimum payments.  Also helpful to set up online accounts for them all for easy reference.  List all of your income and dates received. Either keep a notebook or use spreadsheets on a computer.
  
• Make a budget.  Include everything, use SOA template, go through old statements to learn how you got to where you are.  My budget was not accurate for the 1st few months as things kept coming to light, even now I do an annual budget, and review/adjust every month.
• Set realistic goals like a DFD then see how much it would take to reduce it by a couple of months.  Concentrate on paying off each category/balance at a time, paying just minimums on others, then move to the next.  Try & pay even £5 more off each month, round up payments or pay off more to tidy your balances to nice round amounts. It will keep you motivated.  Set up pots for things for emergencies or Christmas to stop you relying on credit cards again.  Don't try to do everything at once you didn't get into debt overnight so allow yourself time to pay it off.  
• Analysis- where does it all go?  What are needs, what are wants? Can you reduce groceries or fuel? Cheaper supermarket? Get better deals for household bills? Better interest rates on borrowing? Are you too generous with birthdays/christmas/rounds at the bar?  It all adds up.  
• Improve how you do things - what can you do better? Saving pots, use cash envelopes, different way of banking, amend dates bills go out of your account, weekly food shop or every month.  (Remember if you budget £400 a month for groceries and expect to spend £100 a week, what will you do when your shopping day has 5 in that month instead of 4? I tend to spend £100 a week so I budget £434 a month to cover it) I also skim £10 a month off the groceries to keep in a pot for the Christmas food shop.
• Review regularly- every year take a day to go through everything again.  Refresh yourself with what's going on and amend or rein it in if needed.  Look for better deals, increase debt payments, cancel unused subscriptions.  Update your budget sheets.

Thank you if you read this far, I included everything I possibly could to try and help anyone else on their debt free journey feel hopeful.  It can be done!  Good luck if you are on yours, stick at it, you will get there and it will be so worth it.  Sorry for the long post but I've been desperate to post here since reading other posts in 2017!! 

What a great post! Congratulations

Dizzycap

Lightbulb moment: January 2024
Debts at highest: £2500
Debt-Free Date: 12th August 2024.

Pearl of wisdon:

Set a budget & date you want to achieve being debt free.

MOVE your debt to a 0% Interest Offer.

Only spend money on food shopping / filling the car with petrol, if you have one, along with couponing and discounts available.

** FREEZE ALL your cards in your Apps and only carry cards & unfreeze in your Apps when you are doing your weekly food shop or car fill up and then freeze again before you leave the shop or garage - works wonders xxx

I still freeze my cards now, so no impulse buying in shops or online. I think about every penny I spend and it has to be a total need & NOT a want, and now savings in the bank.....

the-mrs

DEBT FREE DAY!!!

It's taken 6 years and 4 months but I have paid every penny of the £26,835 back. I have learnt so much in that time and have come out of the other side a stronger, more sensible person.