Pay off as much as you can in 2011 Challenge!

jwil

mmikailian wrote: »

Hi ya, Just remember that even though I was being made redundant I was still making payments to my debts so should have been still showing here even though i was not making over payments, finished work Friday need to wait 28 days for my redundancy money may make an over payment then or when I get a new job.

so for Apr/May/June I have paid £868.71

£7048.58/£15,492.37 = £8,446.69 outstanding

Need to start clearing the clutter now and selling stuff on ebay

Hi mmikailian, you are still on the list - no one is removed. I just wait for an update.

Sorry to hear about the redundancy, hope you get a new job soon!

jwil

Thanks for the updates everyone!

sarahs999

How's June looking Jwil? Are we going to beat last month's not very good total or are we getting worse?!

cakelover_2

Hi All

Payments for me so far this month are £225.98 to loan, £50.00 from wages to cc and £5.56 from cashback site to cc making my balance now £1920.81/£5423.06, 35.41% paid.

Need to catch up on thread from some time in May as haven't been on recently so I have a lot of reading to do!

sarahs999

I was looking at my total debt just now and trying to remember, where did it all come from? I know it began in 2005, but I can't believe I'm still paying it off so many years later. I saw a post by Martin yesterday that said most people in debt have got there through bad luck, such as being made redundant or losing a house. Is that true for everyone here?

When I was 30 (I'm 40 now) I didn't even have a credit card - had avoided them all my life as I didn't like the idea of owing. But I'd spent four years abroad and was told by a well-meaning friend that if I ever wanted to get a mortgage I needed to get a credit card first so I could build up a credit file. Which I did. ANd I paid it off every month. I then got my first flat and still managed not to get into CC debt.

Everything was fine - met a man, got married (saved up to pay our portion of it, so STILL no debt) until my son was born prematurely. He was really early (three months) but my work wouldn't allow my maternity leave to be extended/give me sick leave until the time he came home from the hospital. This meant that when he finally came home, three months later, I'd already used up half my statutory maternity pay.

We made the decision that I would take the longest possible time off from work (13 months) and put what we needed to on the credit cards, to be paid off later. Dealing with bringing up a prem baby and giving my son the best start in life was the most important thing. MY DH was then a gigging musician so his income was patchy and not very high. We were also trying to finish off doing our house, having only married and bought the house less than a year before. So a big chunk of money then went on credit cards.

After I went back to work I think we had about 5k on the cards (all at 0% - I've always been an excellent tart!). Then we decided to start up a small business as a sideline which needed £3500 capital. We put that on cards too. That ran for 18 months, at which point we sold it for £10k. You'd think that would have happily wiped all our debts, but somehow it didn't! I know we needed a new car in there somewhere (which cost £3500, which we paid for with cash from the business sale).

So we just couldn't get rid of this perpetual balance - every time we made headway something else would crop up. It didn't help that at that point I think we were not being MSE in terms of shopping etc - always shops from ocado, not using up everything in the fridge etc.

We then realised DH needed a proper job, and he got on a conversion course to be a music teacher. For most people with degrees this would be a simpleyear's PGCE, but because he hadn't finsihed at the Royal College of Music (thought he'd go off and be a pop star, the numpty) he had to do a two-year course that was essentially the same as a PGCE but got him more 'credits'. Normally the government gives people £10k to train to teach. But guess what? Not when the course is an MA rather than a PGCE. So we had to pay ourselves. And we had to struggle on just my salary for two years. During this time we became much more MSE (my DH stopped getting five parking tickets a month just because he coudlnt' be bothered to look for a better spot), I added mystery shopping, surveys, Bingport to my full-time job. But it still didn't clear the debts. It would go down a bit, but then we'd just run outo f money and have to put something on a card.

I have to say, I'm still pretty angry that we didn't get any moeny from the govt to help DH train. He is EXACTLY the sort of person they are trying so hard to attract, someone with a strong life experience in the subject he is teaching, motivated, smart and very very good at what he does.

Which brings us up to date, really. Except we had to buy another car (£2900 this time) after our last one died. If it wasn't for that we'd only have abuot £3k of debt now rather than £6k. But I just wonder, what's going to happen next that will scupper our efforts? The weird thing is that I knew all the way through that credit was not a good thing to get into. I can tell, looking at my pattern of payments now that we're halfway through the challenge, that I won't clear all our debts this year. But they should be clear by about MArch next year I hope. I can't imagine what it will be like to have these cleared - we've never had any time in our married life when we haven't been owing money. A revelation!

Sorry, this turned into a massive post (slow work morning). What about other people? What are your stories? How did you end up in debt? And how did you start to turn it around?

jwil

sarahs999 wrote: »

How's June looking Jwil? Are we going to beat last month's not very good total or are we getting worse?!

We had the massive payment from dentonemma, so the monthly total is probably looking pretty good. However, my gut feeling says it's pretty low in reality. I'll have a look this afternoon and update.

abba1772

sarahs999 wrote: »

I was looking at my total debt just now and trying to remember, where did it all come from? I know it began in 2005, but I can't believe I'm still paying it off so many years later. I saw a post by Martin yesterday that said most people in debt have got there through bad luck, such as being made redundant or losing a house. Is that true for everyone here?

When I was 30 (I'm 40 now) I didn't even have a credit card - had avoided them all my life as I didn't like the idea of owing. But I'd spent four years abroad and was told by a well-meaning friend that if I ever wanted to get a mortgage I needed to get a credit card first so I could build up a credit file. Which I did. ANd I paid it off every month. I then got my first flat and still managed not to get into CC debt.

Everything was fine - met a man, got married (saved up to pay our portion of it, so STILL no debt) until my son was born prematurely. He was really early (three months) but my work wouldn't allow my maternity leave to be extended/give me sick leave until the time he came home from the hospital. This meant that when he finally came home, three months later, I'd already used up half my statutory maternity pay.

We made the decision that I would take the longest possible time off from work (13 months) and put what we needed to on the credit cards, to be paid off later. Dealing with bringing up a prem baby and giving my son the best start in life was the most important thing. MY DH was then a gigging musician so his income was patchy and not very high. We were also trying to finish off doing our house, having only married and bought the house less than a year before. So a big chunk of money then went on credit cards.

After I went back to work I think we had about 5k on the cards (all at 0% - I've always been an excellent tart!). Then we decided to start up a small business as a sideline which needed £3500 capital. We put that on cards too. That ran for 18 months, at which point we sold it for £10k. You'd think that would have happily wiped all our debts, but somehow it didn't! I know we needed a new car in there somewhere (which cost £3500, which we paid for with cash from the business sale).

So we just couldn't get rid of this perpetual balance - every time we made headway something else would crop up. It didn't help that at that point I think we were not being MSE in terms of shopping etc - always shops from ocado, not using up everything in the fridge etc.

We then realised DH needed a proper job, and he got on a conversion course to be a music teacher. For most people with degrees this would be a simpleyear's PGCE, but because he hadn't finsihed at the Royal College of Music (thought he'd go off and be a pop star, the numpty) he had to do a two-year course that was essentially the same as a PGCE but got him more 'credits'. Normally the government gives people £10k to train to teach. But guess what? Not when the course is an MA rather than a PGCE. So we had to pay ourselves. And we had to struggle on just my salary for two years. During this time we became much more MSE (my DH stopped getting five parking tickets a month just because he coudlnt' be bothered to look for a better spot), I added mystery shopping, surveys, Bingport to my full-time job. But it still didn't clear the debts. It would go down a bit, but then we'd just run outo f money and have to put something on a card.

I have to say, I'm still pretty angry that we didn't get any moeny from the govt to help DH train. He is EXACTLY the sort of person they are trying so hard to attract, someone with a strong life experience in the subject he is teaching, motivated, smart and very very good at what he does.

Which brings us up to date, really. Except we had to buy another car (£2900 this time) after our last one died. If it wasn't for that we'd only have abuot £3k of debt now rather than £6k. But I just wonder, what's going to happen next that will scupper our efforts? The weird thing is that I knew all the way through that credit was not a good thing to get into. I can tell, looking at my pattern of payments now that we're halfway through the challenge, that I won't clear all our debts this year. But they should be clear by about MArch next year I hope. I can't imagine what it will be like to have these cleared - we've never had any time in our married life when we haven't been owing money. A revelation!

Sorry, this turned into a massive post (slow work morning). What about other people? What are your stories? How did you end up in debt? And how did you start to turn it around?

I got in debt due to greedy ex hubby who wanted the lastest gadgets, for example a 26inch lcd when they first came out £1700 :eek: a £400 watch that had gps, £400 on a x-box elite when it first came out, whilst me and the kids where wearing charity shops clothes (nothing wrong with it) or i was selling our stuff on ebay just so we would have money for clothes when the kids sprouted. when i left him the BEEP went on a £2k spending spree buying god knows what but stuck it all on my card (lawyer trying to get this back)

since i've left i used my CC once and that was Novemeber 2009, I haven't taken anything out on credit except my catalogue but again i only buy stuff out of it when there is a sale on :rotfl:

so actually I owe my EX a big thank you as if he had been so careless and greedy i would have struggled cutting back on everything, so at least something positive came out of his I WANT attitdue :rotfl:

Plus i have much more money now being away from him as I know exactly whats going in and out of my account, if I have anything for extras like new tyres for car lol

JennyR68

#174 paid £400/2322

debtfreewannabe321

sarahs999 wrote: »

Sorry, this turned into a massive post (slow work morning). What about other people? What are your stories? How did you end up in debt? And how did you start to turn it around?

We got into debt for a number of reasons! BOTH DH & I hated our jobs so i decided to go back to uni and at the same time DH packed in his job and joined the army.........the army paid only £400 whilst he was on basic training so we used overdraft to supplement to buy essentials. i fell pg during yr 2 of uni and also in yr 3 so 2 babies (one big baby-he was 10 at the time) one degree & one fully trained soldier later we were about £6k in debt! we then moved into our own place and we had to buy furniture- we didn't go silly but essentials like washing machines, and beds soon saw our debt go up and up and then we had to trade my coupe in for a family car which added 3k to the debt. I then had no tenants in my house that i can't sell (due to being in the middle of nowhere!) so this tipped us over the edge, we were just managing the payments until 6 months of an empty house, then tenants who didn't pay us anything saw it all go t*ts up! We had also run to the end of the line with 0% cc's ....I was using catalogues to buy our clothes (in sales) and cc's to pay for food.....big mistake! so glad we had our LBM when we did or who knows how high the debt could have got!!! Finally on a DMP and yes it may take a while to pay off, but it has taught me such valuable life lessons along the way and I will NEVER get myself into this sort of state again financially!!! :A

debtfreebyxmas

can i join please?
just started to clear debts this month

£6400 debt and today we have just paid off £600

£600/£6400