Pay off as much as you can in 2011 Challenge!

kavics17

My story is rather different-we took out £30k loan last July instead of a mortgage on our flat. As the intention was to pay it back asap and all the mortgage deals we received were worst than a personal loan. We have £5.5k left on it. We are very grateful for having this opportunity but this is still a debt which needs to go!

jwil

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?

Thanks for sharing Sarah.

Mine is mainly due to my degrees. I studied with the OU and for the most part worked part time so was on a low income. However, it was more my spending choices than the degrees themselves. I was not frugal, spent too much etc. My own fault really.

My lightbulb still flickers regularly, so it is a constant battle.

jwil

sarahmonks wrote: »

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

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

£600/£6400

Welcome Sarah! Of course you can join us. £600 in the first month is pretty impressive, well done!

Good luck with the debtbusting

jwil

Ok, at the moment, we have pretty much paid the same as last month. However, that includes a £24k payment from dentonemma, so in reality we are very low and around £16k.

We've only had updates from 30 people this month so far, so hopefully as people start getting paid we will be able to bump the totals up again.

skaps

Paid off another £60 so am now up to £1998.99

Laze

cococoladebt wrote: »

I still can't get my head around people going on holiday, when they have debts to pay off. Surely, it's best for the debt to be paid off and save for a holiday?

People need to wind down and relax.

What's the point of paying off debts if you're going to be in hospital stressed. Life is so short. You can't put all things on hold. I want to get my debts paid off within 2 years. It's nigh on impossible, but I'm so confident of doing it I know I can. That would give me a HUGE buzz.

But I'm still going on holiday this year. Trick is to not pay much and make sure you can afford it and not going back into debt to pay for it.

goodgirl80

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?

Sounds like things got awkward for you when you went on mat leave. That's a shame. I had a few credit cards, but I was managing to pay the minimum, then I lost/ quit my job, and split up with my partner, he went a rented another place and I was supposed to be paying for our house (mortgage, bills, etc.) but I had no job! I scraped by on various minimum wage and temp jobs (and payday loans:eek:) until my ex came back to the house, I moved in with my current partner and built up from there. I now don't owe anything to any financial organisation. The debt I have left is paying back my ex for the time I was living in our house, he was paying his rent, and everything on the house as well, so I'm just trying to be fair really. So that's my very abridged story... oh and I've now got a job that i like and pay is fine.

jwil

skaps wrote: »

£1998.99 paid off so far

skaps wrote: »

Paid off another £60 so am now up to £1998.99

Hi Skaps, you were at 1998.99 on 21st - is this another £60 to be added or did you forget you already updated?

cakelover_2

My debt must have started when I was 18 or 19 (I'm 26 now - that's another small lightbulb moment for me!). I had previously said to myself I will never get in to debt, I couldn't face having that hanging over me. However, it come round to having my car serviced or MOT'd and I didn't have enough money, so I took out a card with a £450 limit to pay for it with every intention of paying it off. I spent that on stuff, not sure what, probably clothes and going out, so I had to apply for another card to pay for my car. Not sure what the limit was on this one but basically I ended up getting hooked on spending on credit, buying stuff like clothes, a Wii, nights out, I even withdrew money on the card to go out on nights with, taking out £50 at a time, buying people drinks (which I would never have done otherwise and I don't get into rounds now). Then I started a law degree and got a student loan and student account with an overdraft of £750. After 3 months I decided the course wasn't for me, but had to wait till the next term to get my student loan through to pay off the overdraft I have spent. I now subsequetly have approx £2400 in student loan which I am paying £22 a month for and so isn't going down fast, and I have nothing to show for it degree wise. I then got more cards and just kept spending until I had 5 cards at one time and I started to almost miss payments. I had always been good at keeping up with them so at that point I thought right, I need to consolidate this before I start really losing track of payments and getting charges. So I took out a loan to pay off all my cards for around £6000 to £6500. Then what did I do? Spent some more on cards. So I ended up with another loan to consolidate the first loan and the cards that with interest and PPI (which I've tried to claim back but they have said no) comes to £10800. After that I was good for ages, didn't spend on any cards for about a year. Then the beggining of last year I wanted to go to a gig and the only way I could pay for it was my cc. I really didn't want to miss out so I paid for it and said that's it, I won't put anything else on it. Then we put a holiday on the card but paid off £900 with some money my ex's dad gave us. Now I have put more on the card again and have about £2200ish left on there. Then in May I split with my ex and due to buying stuff and needing to put petrol on the car (I now live just over an hour from work with my parents rather than a 10 minute walk) and because I had paid all the bills in May I had no money for petrol. I had every intention of paying the money off for the petrol in June but I spent most of it and rather than paying £300 off I've only paid £50. Petrol will keep going on it until the £300 a month I pay off brings it down to zero, then I can start paying with my own money. I have budgeted for £300 a month as I should be using a tank a week, so depending on the weeks in the month I should use around £250 - £300, however I have lots of family and friends I can stay round to save money. However, since May my other cc has gone up to around £400ish, plus it's going to go up around another £200 by the time the month is over. Bit worried about that, but I haven't included it on my target. I want my cc's paid off by the end of the year but it's now halfway through the year almost and I'm not halfway through my target My loan finishes April next year so will be £225.98 a month better off. I want to be completely debt free by then. Sorry for long post! :rotfl:

cakelover_2

£7.61 paid to cc from money from cashback site, balance now

£1928.42/£5423.06 35.55% paid