Time to get organised and get on with it!

brizzledfw

Teatime..

You and thousands of others..me - I had my LBM in 2003 and promptly lost it again..found it in 2009..lost it...get the pattern??!!

hopefully back for good now..I have seen the light!:rotfl: (keeping on with the religious theme however am hardly an angel..but its good to have a goal huh:p;))

Brizzle

DedicatedDFW

LAM2011 wrote: »

Hi everyone,

I like the idea of monthly targets like Jwil and peaceandfreedom do. I am going for

Ebay £100
Amazon £20
Creative thinking needed here ?? £30 (surveys, etc)

I want to up my debt busting now. I have today made my regular payment to the loan and an overpayment but then I feel like its just a case of wishing the month away.

DDFW I do have a small savings only started at the beginning of this year but my personal life is a bit of a mess and it make me feel happier / more secure that I have this in case I need to run ... (its equivalent of 2 months of my salary) I am adamant I wont use it on debt until absolutely have to because for as long as I can remember I have felt 'stuck' because I had no money to do anything about it (does this make sense).

My OH has been funny about me ebaying stuff saying I might need it one day - in the beginning he was very supportive of my credit card debt but he is not so of the loan debt. His attitude is it will be paid off eventually but I want it gone now. So, I have to try and sneak things on ebay which is hard and didnt manage to get anything on this last week!

Thanks LAM - it really does make sense and really huge well done! on saving the equivalent of 2 months salary so quickly :T:T:T I hope everything is ok too though x

My OH doesn't know about any of my debt - and it can be hard when i'm listing stuff and he then says 'ooh don't get rid of that' - especially hard the other month when i was selling stuff i wanted to keep but was so short of money that i had to just list everything i could

DedicatedDFW

jwil wrote: »

I think the bad weather this weekend did get a lot of people on the computer. I've got watchers on lots of stuff that's been on several times before, and a bid as well!

I have a gardening question for my gurus - when would it be a good idea to repot my Christmas tree? Is there any preference?

Well done on the bid/sale and lets hope for more :T

erm i'm no gardening guru and am sure peaceandfreedom or brizzle will help out but my lovely little xmas tree got potted on when the roots were at the bottom of the plantpot it was in - wasn't so bad as i'd realised this quite quickly

DedicatedDFW

jwil wrote: »

I have no savings at all I would like to have some, but at the moment, the cards are my emergency fund.

Thank you for your honest reply hon - my emergency fund was the overdraft account i have now closed :eek: Kept my credit cards open mind in case of any need for 0% transfers i feel really silly about those savings i got through - it really shows how much the debt affected me that i couldn't stand back and think i've got £x here and am paying £x month by cancelling i'll be so much better off :o:o Mind you i had no idea how much i had because of the lack of statements :mad:

DedicatedDFW

Teatime wrote: »

DDFW,
I don't have any savings or emergency fund and feel really daft that I don't. It is my priority now. Have just paid off the overdraft. Have two loans but they have reasonable interest rates so I am going to keep paying the minimum and hopefully start saving a small emergency fund.
I have recently realised they my friends all have savings behind them and I am the only one who has taken so long to 'get it'.

I don't know what other people would recommend for you?

Hi teatime - and what a great name

My situation with savings is this i had no advice given to me from anyone about savings - not from family not at school and also had a couple of very bad relationships which didn't help - i spent money to make myself feel better alot

Anyways finally got around to saving on a regular basis bought a house and then got made redundant. All my (small) savings which were easily accessible were used up making up the shortfall on my part-time income whilst keeping up with the house payments Then i used credit to keep going - hence the debt

I will start saving again - but possibly only after clearing the remaining debt - i've not decided as yet But do desperately want that cushion

DedicatedDFW

brizzledfw wrote: »

Hi DDFW

I know you said you knew my answer but can I contribute anyway??;) I know the best option is to have no savings if you have debts..but for me the overpayment pot has been a lifeline..it is a buffer as I know I can get it anytime (so it needs some discipline!) (but its not tied in long term which was key) but its also bringing down my interest spend.

I seem to have found a way that works for me ;-) (well sometimes I follow it!) but I think that yes for some people a buffer is thousands...and for some we'd all just be grateful if we had a few hundred quid tucked away.

best of luck with everything anyway..you always work so hard on all this MSE stuff!!!:T

hey brizzle of course you can answer - thats just what i'm after input and advice

I think after clearing the debt and starting on the mortgage i'll aim for 6months salary savings :eek: - although i *think* if i just overpay on the mortgage anyway and anything did happen i can then request a payment holiday and as i need to reduce the mortgage in order to re-mortgage to a lower interest rate then i'm not sure :think:

Maybe the compromise is 2 small savings accounts - probably an isa as an accessible one and the other - the one i've got now which is like a life assurance ?? type thing - not accessible but reassuring in a morbid way :rotfl::rotfl::rotfl: and at the end of the term i get the savings

DedicatedDFW

Thank you so much for your honest responses everyone It really is appreciated and refreshing Don't get me wrong i wouldn't expect someone on here or in real life tell me exactly what they've got in savings but to have 'friends' say they've no money, skint etc. and me to spend on them as a treat only to discover they've thousands stashed away and i'm struggling like anything *sob* Well i know it's their business but i do feel my generosity has been taken advantage of It would just have been nice to have an honest conversation like - 'well i make sure i put £x or x% away each month' or discuss the benefits of certain savings accounts

I've kinda decided to keep my premium bonds - for me they are like a lottery ticket and i just cannot bear to part with them. So i now need to raise the £200 equivalent for the shortfall - which will start tomorrow as i return some sales items i bought - great bargains but i can live without them - Oh so that will be a little bit of savings for me then - £200 and it will be all i have after i pay for the next major house job x

peaceandfreedom

jwil wrote: »

I have a gardening question for my gurus - when would it be a good idea to repot my Christmas tree? Is there any preference?

If you mean what time of year to repot it - then Springtime (i.e. now!).

If you mean when is the tree ready, then I think you do it as DDFW said - when the roots reaching the outside of the container.

peaceandfreedom

jwil wrote: »

You're not the only one who didn't 'get it' teatime - I never really thought about it until I found this site.

We'll all have nice saving cushions one day

Hope so. How I wish I 'got it' when we were both earning lots of money and still had plenty of options open to us. I could weep when I look at how foolish we've been with money.

DDFW, we have some savings but they are rapidly disappearing because OH isn't working. The savings are 'joint' whereas my debt is mine, so I would never use the savings towards my debt.

I've always been far too quick to 'spend now, earn it later' - spend money I don't have in other words. I still do it sometimes.

peaceandfreedom

OK, so I have one bid so far on ebay. :j

Lots of watchers too on other stuff but at least now I know I've sold something. It's not worth very much but it's nice all the same.

Had a bit of a wobbly evening last night. Things are so worrying at the moment. OH still hasn't had a sniff of work, no interviews no nothing and the money won't last much longer. I have had lots of mornings of waking up early in a panic, wondering what we'll do. Get all breathless and panicky and weepy and feel we've let our kids down.

In my darkest moments I wonder if we'll end up having to sell the house, which would break my heart. The kids have lived here all their lives and even though it could do with updating, they love this place.

But then I tell myself to be more positive, that getting all down about stuff isn't going to help, that I need to be DOING more.

And then I get all annoyed and resentful of OH because all he does is sit on the computer all day doing F**k knows what, when there is so much he COULD be doing. We're not really communicating. He makes no attempt to economise and I reckon he spends more on drink in a month than I spend on the main food shopping.

Today I'm a bit more upbeat, no use moping about, it won't help. But it's hard to stave off the panic sometimes.