9 credit cards, 2 overdrafts, 3 payday loans....oh, and I'm fat as well...

Miss_Blonde

Title says it all really.

I decided to join the forum last night after lurking for the past week on all your diaries. While I am absolutely in the sh*t with debts, a lot of the threads on here have inspired me to try and look on this as a challenge and have a sense of humour about it....a dark sense of humour, but anyways...

I'll start off by saying that I'm 24, finished uni and have been living in denial for probably the last 2-3 years. After making a list of everything that is making me unhappy, it's clear that my debts and my weight are the main issues, so this is what I'll be writing about on here.

I'm 20 stone 8 pounds at the moment, down from my highest weight ever of 21 stone 7 in July. Just looking at those numbers and seeing how much I have to lose makes me feel ill, but might as well be positive and think that I'm not far off being out of the 20s.


The Debt

*deep breath"

Payday Loan 1 - £750
Payday Loan 2 - £667
Payday Loan 3 - £600

Overdraft 1 - £3000 (student, paying £2/day in charges, £1/day if I get it below £2500)
Overdraft 2 - £2000 (graduate, interest is around £2.67/month, doesn't change until August next year and even then interest will only go up to around £6/month until 2013)

Credit Card 1 - £1250
Credit Card 2 - £1000
Credit Card 3 - £750
Credit Card 4 - £550
Credit Card 5 - £400
Credit Card 6 - £250
Credit Card 7 - £100
Credit Card 8 - £450
Credit Card 9 - £250

Debts outstanding:
Council Tax - £1400 (this is up until March/April next year. I've never had bailiffs or anything, I just keep setting up a direct debit, cancelling, phoning up with a sob story, repeat)
Electricity Bill - £477





Income/Month:

Wage - £810-£860 (work part-time 14 hours)


Outgoings: £930/month

Rent - £550
Council Tax - £140(what it should be, I haven't paid last few months)
Electricity - £40(same as council tax)
Mobile - £15 (in contract, but gives unlimited mins, txts and bb internet)
Broadband & phone - £14 (unlimited calls and internet)
Credit card minimum payments - £170
Overdraft fee - £60



The payday loans have increased every month because I keep taking more to cover the payments and it has just spiraled out of all control.
My work don't have full-time shifts at the moment, and every job I look at for full time will only work out at about £950-£100/month for 37 hours, whereas I make £810-£860/month for 14 hours with no travel costs, plus I really like where I work.

In next post, I'll put what I've done the past few days to help some of the debt....

Miss_Blonde

Things I've done so far -

Worked Bank Holiday - extra £150 at end of month

Thursday - Bit the bullet and decided to sell some pairs of designer shoes I have. I know most people will say that I should have done this well before now, but I wanted to keep them for "when everything is sorted and I'm thin etc etc". I realise that I'm never going to get to a good place if I keep up that attitude.

Anyways, I put them up on a private designer listing board (only paypal fees, no ebay seller fees) and 1 pair has sold for definite with £380 gone into my paypal account. Someone else has said they will buy one of the other pairs, so just waiting for money to go in.

Friday - Remembered I had some coffee table books from Amazon that I printed returns authorisations for about 3 months ago, but never bothered to send them back. Yodel came to collect yesterday and Amazon emailed me this morning to say that the return was accepted. Amazingly speedy service and such a surprise that they are giving me a proper card refund and not a credit note. Maybe because I buy a lot from them, I'm not sure, but another £194 going into my account next week.

- Phoned council and set up new payment plan for 1st of every month. First payment has been set at £100, then they said I could phone back after this to increase or discuss it with them.

- Phoned electricity, gave them updated meter reading and they are sending out a recalculated bill. Said to phone them when it came to set up a payment plan.


So up to now, I have made an extra £724 and am not so stressed about those 2 bills.

I don't really know where to go from here. So scared by the enormity of what I've done to myself.

Want_to_be_free

Hello Miss_Blonde, good luck with your journey to tackle your negative wealth.

I don't want to say well done on your weight loss because that would sound patronizing but instead I would like to say you are not alone, and the main thing is you consciously chosen to dealt with both so BIG CONGRATULATIONS

happy_but_skint

Hi Miss_blonde good luck with your debt busting

happy x

The_Golden_Goose

Miss Blonde - congratulations! Welcome to your LBM. From here on in it get's easier. You've recognised there is a problem and now you are dealing with it. Welcome to the DFW club.

fungus_2

Good luck Miss Blonde!

Sounds like you've had your light bulb moment!

Giddytimes

Hi Miss Blonde, Congratulations on facing up to the issue. That's the first step.

If your work has no more hours at the moment could you consider an evening job somewhere? Bar work maybe? So those evil payday loans can be paid off.

I think you're doing the right thing selling your designer shoes. The first thing I did was sell everything that wasn't nailed down or used on at least a weekly basis. You'll feel so much better if that means one debt is no longer an issue.

Good luck with your journey.

I just re read your post and realised you don't have any food costs in there? I think you need to start by making a realistic statement of affairs, so you can see exactly what your deficit is every month. Then you can start to tackle the issue with your eyes open.

kazwookie

Can you increase your hours where you are working? as you say you are happy there? If not you really need to get your self a 2nd part time job.

Join us over here for weight loss:- https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/3446795

Fudgefund

Good luck! I'm currently trying to get out of debt and lose weight at the same time, I've found they go quite well together. Since I stopped buying the entire Sainsburys bakery aisle I've saved loads!

Miss_Blonde

Thanks so much for all your replies everyone! I was kind of scared about posting all that, especially the payday loan stuff, but I feel like it's better to just put it all out there and then I can look back on how far I've come this time next year.

@Giddytimes - I didn't put in food costs because for the past few months, I've honestly just been bingeing and increasing the payday loans to make up for the deficit. Things just felt so crap and the only thing that was making me feel a bit better was eating loads, so my weight and money problems go hand in hand. I've written a bit below about what I've done over the weekend regarding food for the next 5-6 weeks!

@kazwookie Yep, I know that something has to give. I've put off working more because I just find it so hard to put on a front to people. When I'm not in work, I just stay in the flat because I feel like crying every minute and I think I'm making it worse by overthinking everything because I live myself.

What I've done today: Another pair of my shoes sold and money has gone into paypal and transfer has started to my bank, so I have another £443, making a total of £1167 I'll have extra on top of my wage at end of the month. That's almost 2 of the payday loans completely paid off!!!! I should feel excited about that (and I'm trying to, hence the use of the exclamation marks), but I keep getting annoyed at the fact that I'll never wear the shoes. Does Moneysaving cure you from extreme materialism.....I hope so?

I've had an offer of around £350 for the final pair of shoes I have listed, but I don't really want to sell them for less than £450. I don't actually need the money for another fortnight, so will wait and see if any better offers come by.

Food: I live myself and I don't really go out that much at the moment, so I don't have to worry about nights out, restaurants etc. After trying to budget some money for shopping, I realised that I literally have a freezer full of food like chicken breasts, turkey breasts, salmon, tonnes of green veg and 24 kids lunchbox pack portions of watermelon. (these have gathered up from numerous health kicks I've tried and failed at) I also have two tubs of a protein pudding mix, so thinking of setting myself a challenge to use all that up and not buy anything else. I could get a really good diet plan as well, because it's all lean.

Exercise: Doing this in public is out of the question, so I'm going to make myself a modified fat person version of the bodyrock workouts on youtube. I also might take inspiration from MrBloater's diary and try getting up early to go for a walk......we'll see.

Butti

Miss_Blonde wrote: »

What I've done today: That's almost 2 of the payday loans completely paid off!!!! I should feel excited about that (and I'm trying to, hence the use of the exclamation marks), but I keep getting annoyed at the fact that I'll never wear the shoes. Does Moneysaving cure you from extreme materialism.....I hope so?

Well done Miss Blonde on your journey so far. It's not that you are NOT allowed to wear shoes ever again it's just that you need a bit of balance and a bit of perspective. Here's a quote from 'The Tao of Pooh' (pg 144) on the marketing of shoes (to bears) that I hope will help.

"Owl said you wanted to see me" said Pooh.
"All right Pooh. Why the boxes of shoes in the closet?"
"I couldn't help myself" said Pooh.
"How's that?"
"Well first there was the card for Mister Pooh Bear. Then when I got to the store....just for a look"
"Yes?"
"The salesmand was so nice to me. 'May I help you, Sir' he said. He made me feel Important"
"Pooh, you didn't need those shoes", I said.
"I'll take them back" said Pooh.
"That's better".
"Lots of other people will be taking things back, too, I suppose".
"What?"
"I saw lots of people there buying things they didn't really need. All over the store".
"Quite likely", I said.
"I wasn't the only one," he said.
"Of course not Pooh. A lot of peope try to buy Happiness and Importance in the same sort of way. But you can be happy and important without doing that, you know".
"So can they" said Pooh.

Ref. Benjamin Hoff The Tao of Pooh.

This post does not reflect any promotion of Taoism, just that you don't need shoes to be happy. Although 1 pair may prove useful and a bit more comfortable than going BEARfoot!!!

B x