The way I see it...

Taylo_2

... I have two options, one is to keep going and get myself in a real mess that I won't be able to sort out, or do this....

I started a diary around 2 and a half years ago titled "living the dream by 30" with the intention of paying off my credit card debt by my 30th birthday. As my 30th looms large it is clear to me that I have done the opposite to my intentions and even though I was doing fantastically well and knocking chunks off my debt on a weekly basis, my attention and focus slipped, my debts have more than doubled and I find myself in a situation that is far from what I had imagined.

Rather than dwell on this and continue to ignore my situation any longer I want to reignite the fire that was in my belly back then and recover the good habits that I managed to get myself into.
My circumstances have changed hugely since then, I have changed jobs twice (in a good way), moved twice, and met a beautiful woman who I am proud to now call my fiance. Below are my debts as they stand, I don't know the APR on the First Direct Card but I think it will be quite high so am in the process of finding a better deal on that one.

First Direct CC £1,884
Sainsburys CC £2060 @ 0%
Barclaycard CC £2696 @6.9%
HSBC Loan £6000 paying around £140 per month and got about 3 and a half years to go on it.

At the moment I don't want to set specific timescales for this debt to be cleared by, but I do want to target this debt being cleared as soon as I can. It is complicated slightly by the fact that in the next year I have to pay for a trip to Thailand, a wedding and a honeymoon. The route cause of most of my debt has been trips away and earning a pretty low salary without really living a low salary lifestyle. I am however older, wiser, in a better paid job and hopefully a little more responsible now!

One of the main ways that I tackled this process in my first diary was to attack individual items on my credit card balance one by one, thereby breaking the bigger figure into smaller more manageable targets. This worked really well for me then so I will endeavour to use this method again.

Anyone who wants to join the journey is of course welcome. I plan to update this ideally on a daily basis in order to keep myself motivated, I get paid on Monday next week (conviniently after the weekend!) so it is likely to be all guns blazing from then!

Ideas and suggestions are always welcome, the first item to tackle is £93.11 for some bits I picked up at B&Q over the weekend. I know my OH is going to pay for half of them and I also have to take some stuff back that had broken too so hopefully I could even make a dent in this before I get paid.

Speak soon

Taylo

J4mes

Welcome back!!

I'll be following your diary as you sound to have had a pretty similar set of events to me!

Will you be posting up a SOA for comment or are you going to be making lifestyle changes to get those debts paid down double quick!?

Good luck and I look forward to following your progress!

James

Taylo_2

Hi J4mes!

Thanks for checking out the diary, nice to have someone else on board so early!

My outgoings are pretty fixed to be honest, the utilities are shared with my OH and are as low as I can make them, we have reduced the Sky package (sacrificed my skysports!), and my mobile phone contract is expiring next week so I hopefully can do something with that once that is done, although my 2 year old iphone is starting to go kaput!

Really my aims are to try to trim down on daily expenses, I think I have around £300 to get through the month on but will confirm once I have been paid again.

Other than that my outgoings are fairly difficult to manouvere.

How long have you been going at your situation?

fermi

Duplicate threads removed.

Good luck.

J4mes

Taylo wrote: »

Hi J4mes!

Thanks for checking out the diary, nice to have someone else on board so early!

My outgoings are pretty fixed to be honest, the utilities are shared with my OH and are as low as I can make them, we have reduced the Sky package (sacrificed my skysports!), and my mobile phone contract is expiring next week so I hopefully can do something with that once that is done, although my 2 year old iphone is starting to go kaput!

Really my aims are to try to trim down on daily expenses, I think I have around £300 to get through the month on but will confirm once I have been paid again.

Other than that my outgoings are fairly difficult to manouvere.

How long have you been going at your situation?

Well I started in about April last year after paying off an old student overdraft, then thought I was doing brilliantly, did nothing for 6 months or so and then had my MSE 'light bulb moment proper' in November, I'm almost there, although, does student debt count?:o

Regarding doing an SOA; for some people I think they have minimal use, you sound like you've already sorted your spending, which is brilliant. When I did my first SOA I was surprised to find that I 'should' have about £670 spare money, that I had absolutely no idea where it was going (well I guess I kind of did, meals out, booze, etc...) and that figure was from my minimum income, not including overtime, eBay sales, etc...
I'm now, budgeting ahead for bills and other expenses, which used to be completely foreign to me, but now feels so refreshing knowing I've 100% got the money sat there.

I'll be saying goodbye to Sky as well once I've moved in with my OH, I really can't justify £78(!)/month:o.


James.

Taylo_2

Yeah, I think sometimes it is just a case of being disciplined and maintaining the focus on an activity that drives success. I think it is too easy to take your eye off your situation if you don't have a way of measuring it or if you don't monitor your progress.

I have had a look at the virtual sealed pot challenge and think that would be a good one to get on board with, I am going to need to split my pots between wedding saving and debt repayments though, don't think OH would be too happy if I spent the money for her dress on repaying my own debt!

Chomping at the bit to get started though, can't wait for pay day to come round on Monday so I can start chipping away at stuff, should be a pretty cheap weekend this week as just taking a load of stuff back to shops that has either broken or we don't need from xmas and then hopefully getting a new batch of stuff uploaded onto ebay.

Taylo_2

Urrrrghh, didn't get up early enough this morning to make myself some lunch so have only had a bag of crisps I picked up out of the cupboard to eat today. Just went to the Post Office at lunch and had to walk past tonnes of people happily eating away knowing that I couldn't afford to wander into a shop and pay for lunch! hometime can't come quick enough today, I need feeding!!

Taylo_2

Right, payday! I have done some back of a fag packet calculations and I reckon I have around £10.48 a day survival / saving money. This gives me an opportunity to make savings / payments each day no matter how small. I have a holiday coming up in the middle of february and my daily limit doesn't change whilst I am over there so if I want more spending money for holiday I will need to make it by saving some before I go. It is going to be really tough to get through this month without overspending let alone saving but I am determined to do it! Today should be a no spend day so at least I can make a start. I brought my own lunch into work and to top it off I have managed to get my phone tariff down to £16.50 a month from £30 a month so off to a good start so far. Will decide what to do with today's money later but likelihood is I will put the majority into holiday money and put a small amount accross to the debt repayments.

Taylo_2

Decided that it will be £9 from yesterdays money into holiday pot and £1.48 into the debt repayment. Although it feels like my priorities are a bit backward there, if I don't have the money on holiday I will end up putting it back on my credit card anyway so I prefer to not add to the debt and build the spending money instead. Have got food with me again today so should be able to do the same at the end of today. Online banking is not working too well at the moment so will have to do these transfers laters. Hope everyone is having a good day so far!

mrsb83_2

Hi Taylo I've just subscribed.

Check out the Payment a Day thread if you're planing on making regular payments - it's a busy thread with lots of support and friendly people. I'm very much motivated by the figures going down (as opposed to moneysaving) and it's been a great thing for me.

Good luck!

Taylo_2

Hey mrsb83!

Thanks for following, I think PAD is a great idea and I will check in on that thread for sure. I have managed to do a bit of online banking this afternoon and transferred yesterday and todays payments, £18 to holiday money and £2.96 to the debt pot. This means the B&Q stuff is down to £90.15 which is progress at least!