The road to freedom

lizbristol

Hi and welcome!

This shiny new diary thread is my attempt to thrill and delight you all with my journey to debt-freedom. In the 4 weeks since my lightbulb moment came crashing down before my eyes, I've been hanging around on these forums picking up tips and motivation to stay on track on the road to becoming debt-free - or as I like to think of it, THE ROAD TO FREEDOM!! *switches back from momentary lapse into bad Mel-Gibson-esque Scottish accent*

I'm 27 on Tuesday and haven't had a penny of my own money since I went to university at 19. I've been living in blissful denial of this fact, having long ago got used to seeing minus three grand as my 'zero'.

However, things are about to change! Yes! If you want the full story (or if you just feel like bashing your head against yet another story of hopeless money-wrangling), see my original post in the DFW forum here - otherwise you can make do with the brief summary that I'm a bit crap with money, I don't have any of my own, I owe about 8K, and I want to change all of that in time for when I get married on the 1st Sept 2012. Much as my fiance undoubtedly loves every nuance and quirk of mine, I highly suspect that taking on my debt is not top of his list of 'Things To Achieve in Life'.

I hope that at least a few of you will occasionally drop in to read my inane ramblings and share my joy/despair as I succeed/fail in my journey on the road to freedom.

L

lizbristol

Well it's been a week of ups and downs this week - with my biggest 'up' being my birthday, hooray! H2B organised a surprise trip to London Zoo as a present, and with some clever voucher exploitation and a packed lunch, we managed to keep the whole day v cheap.

The biggest 'down' has been the fact that karma has apparently decided that my punishment for having such a nice birthday was to inflict the flu onto me, which has kept me bedridden since Wednesday Although I suppose the upshot of that is that I haven't spent any money this week :rotfl:

Since I'm feeling slightly less like death today, I decided to do some finance managing (this is something that would, before my LBM, have been just beneath 'scraping eyes out with rusty spoon' on my list of priorities for Things To Do On A Sick Day).

I realised that Barclays are not only allowing me to pay £7 a month for the privilege of having an account with them, but they are also kindly charging me an interest rate of 13.97% for my OD, which usually ends up being a charge of around £30 a month.

So, in a moment of genius, I realised that if I were to get a 0% interest CC and use that for my spending, paying the minimum each month, I would clear my OD faster, close the account sooner and ultimately save myself 100s! Wow!

But, as every savvy MSE knows, you don't just go applying for CCs willy-nilly. You check your credit rating first. Now, never having done this before, I was delighted to learn that not only is it FREE, but also seemingly very quick and easy. Oh, how wrong I was. However, 3 hours, 2 phonecalls, 9 emails and 1 frustrated sick person later, I finally have my credit record available to me.

So now I'm sitting here staring dumbly at pages of information that mean very little to me, increasingly tempted by the idea of having a strop and sulking on the sofa with my lemsip and hot water bottle. But instead I decided to ask you lovely people whether you can help me make head or tail of it, so have posted a detailed plea in the main DFW forum

So, it looks like I'm not going to be applying for any CCs anytime soon, as I really need to get the credit record updated before doing any more damage. Sigh. Oh well, perhaps it's for the best - it's a sensible idea in principle but do I really want to take on new debt, even if it's in order to clear the old one faster and more cheaply?

Have any of you had a similar experience? Care to share whether you think it's worth it?

L

Hightower13

Hi Lizbristol...just popping by to say Hi and I look forward to reading your diay

lizbristol

Thanks Hightower - hello and welcome! Hope my tales of plodding along the road to debt freedom can help motivate some others

lizbristol

So, thanks to some great help as usual from this site (where would I be without it?! Martin deserves a knighthood) I finally made sense of my credit records.

As expected, they're not wonderful, but on the plus side it looks like I can get them improved a little by supplying some additional info, and I generally feel more in control of my finances. However, I think my genius plan of applying for a 0% CC was perhaps a little ambitious, as getting rejected at this stage will do more harm than good. Onwards and upwards, and all guns blazing for getting out of this expensive OD!

I've been a bit naughty with money already this week, which seeing as it's only Tuesday isn't really a great start... A meal out for a friend's bday last night combined with lunch from the work canteen today has eaten up (geddit?!) a whopping £27.50 :eek: Although both of them were bloody tasty so at least it was worth having to scrimp the rest of the week

Continuing on the topic of food and eating far too much, I have been thinking for a while now about losing some weight. A couple of years of being very contented with my lovely OH and drinking my body weight in Merlot every weekend has resulted in a bit too much Liz to love. The forthcoming wedding next year is a good excuse to shed the pounds and return to my natural state of svelte, nymph-like gorgeousness *ahem*

Now, I'm aware that places exist where you can enjoy the privilege of parting with a monthly fee in order to spend your mornings trudging awkwardly on a treadmill in the corner of a sweaty room full of shiny people with iPods on all staring at you disparagingly, but I'm afraid that's not really my bag (frankly I'd rather sit in a boiling vat of lava for fun). So whilst browsing online for alternatives to this dubious option, I have discovered a nifty-looking running programme which promises to get me from 'couch to 5K' in 9 weeks.

This sounds much more my level, so I'm going to give it a shot and see if it can help me to shift this spare tyre and get fit. Despite being the antithesis of a 'morning person', I am going to try to get up in time to do the first instalment of running/walking tomorrow morning. _pale_

I'm a little concerned that trying to get debt free AND lose weight is going to result in brain overload, but I'm going to give it a shot. After all, this MoneySaving stuff actually gets quite addictive, so you never know - perhaps I'll get addicted to running as well... :rotfl:

Wish me luck!

Itsadogslife_2

Hi Liz,

I keep telling myself that weight loss and money saving CAN go together Money saving should be my priority as I owe much more than I need to lose I think the idea of jogging/running is great, but my joints disagree. I walk quite a lot as we have dogs and I enjoy that, but have recently invested £7.99 in a pair of walking poles. Now I may look a plonker trekking over the countryside at the age of 33 with poles but it is definitely a whole body workout :cool: Now if I could just stop eating rubbish I would have the body of a supermodel :T

I have found the easiest way to stay motivated and keep on the right track is to make sure I update my diary as often as possible. I like to think it keeps me on the straight and narrow knowing I will have to own up to my lack of debt reduction at the end of the month when I update my signature.

MrsNotAPenny

You certainly sound like you're in the right frame of mind for debt and weight loss

Good luck!

DawnW

Hello Liz,
Your diary made me laugh at the end of a rotten day at work.
* subscribes *

lizbristol

MrsNotAPenny wrote: »

You certainly sound like you're in the right frame of mind for debt and weight loss

Good luck!

I sound like I'm in the right frame of mind? Or perhaps I just write like I'm in a sound frame of mind? *mind explodes* :rotfl:

Oh dear, it's getting late. Thanks for the post MrsNotAPenny!!

lizbristol

Itsadogslife wrote: »

I walk quite a lot as we have dogs and I enjoy that

OOOH I'm envious, I'd love a dog! Sadly it wouldn't be too happy in our 1-bed basement flat. What a great way to work out - and don't worry about the walking poles thing - my OH and I went hill walking for our hols this year, and after initially chuckling smugly at the people lugging poles around, I had to eat my words after a couple of hours when they were striding past me and my crumbling knees. I was jealous of them all for the duration of the holiday after that!

Good idea re. using the diary as a motivator - it's certainly a good way of staying accountable. I shall follow your progress with interest *runs off to check Itsadogslife's diary thread for hints and tips to pilfer*


DawnW - I'm humbled and delighted that my diary made you chuckle I shall endeavour to continue to cheer up rotten days throughout the world via the medium of MSE diary!

lizbristol

Well, I did it! I actually got up an hour early and went running before work - this is utterly unheard-of for me so am rather chuffed with myself

It was hard work, but unlike every other time I've tried to go running in the last year, I didn't want to cry and/or throw up, so I'm counting that as a success.

Money-saving has also gone well today - I managed to resist lunch from the work canteen, instead making do with a tin of soup I've had in the cupboard for ages, which despite looking like cat vomit, was actually alright. Although I won't pretend I wasn't tempted by the delicious-looking homemade lasagne in the canteen...

Finally our weekly food shop this evening once again came in under budget, even including extra bits like bog roll and fabric softener and tampons (don't even get me started on how unfair it is that we have to pay for those. It's basically a tax on not having testicles.) So all in all, I've been practically saintly today :A

I'm going to try to continue to ride this new-found wave of good-ness by having all NSDs the rest of this week too - the only hard part is going to be keeping away from that bottle of vino on Friday night!