My lightbullb's on but so is my dimmer switch!

aliasojo

I love your thread title, I think it's very apt and very clever.

I think most of us who have debt can probably relate to it at one point or other.

Good luck with it all.

mummychicken

Hi, Just read your diary today, welcome to this lovely forum and well done, you have reduced some debt in a very short amount of time

mum2one

Sounds like a good plan there, well done with lovefilm, hopefully Sky will be as productive.

Totally agree a little treat, the thing is if you threw every penny and the debt and didn't have a life, you'd end up rebelling and just having a blow out. whereas a little treat, you know that the debt is being reduced, and you appriciate the treat. xx

MJ41

I can't believe how long it is since I updated - this is supposed to be helpng me to keep on track, but work has been so manic I've not had chance

Updates on goals for March:

Diet - epic fail. It's not happening at all and at the moment I don't see this changing:( No excuses, but I'm all over the country at the moment and so is my husband so we never seem to get chance to meal plan and end up eating rubbish, or eating out when away from home. MUST TRY HARDER!! April should be a calmer month workwise so I'm cutting myself some slack - April WILL be the month the diet starts as we are trying to plan for a holiday later this year - something to be worked into the budget and dieted for!

Not eating crisps - see above!

Not put aditional spending on credit cards - doing OK with this one! I had to put a little on earlier in the month but it was work related and will be fully claimed back and repaid off the card. Not ideal I know, but it was unexpected and needs must!

No takeaways or Starbucks coffee - mixed success here. We HAVE had the occasional takeaway and Starbucks but they have been paid for out of our planned weekend spend so I'm classing this as a success as they were within budget:D

Where we would have had a takeaway/coffee midweek, I have put the money we would have spent in a pot and will be paid off credit card at the end of the month:T

Reduce Sky bill - sadly I was away at the wrong time and missed calling them in time for it to be actioned for my last payment, but is now done. they even gave me free HD for 6 months as I threatened to leave, so well done Sky!

I can't exactly call the month so far a roaring success, but at least I'm trying and we haven't run out of money this month due to actually budgeting so I'm happy

I still have time to go to to the end of the month, but the debt has reduced even if the weight hasn't, so not all bad

I have also progressed PPI claims with HSBC & Picture and things are now moving along nicely, so hoepfully some positive news on this front in the near future.

We have decided we want to have a budget holiday this year (which for us will be a first and probably not conform to most people's budget) but we will only do this if we can save for it and still overpay to clear some debt. I am comfortable doing this as we both work really hard and need a break - as long as the debt is coming down I'm happy to do this (or is this just dimming the lightbulb???!!)

Payday next Tuesday so I can update all my debt position again and see just how much I've cleared this month

mum2one

You've had some really big positives so far for March, I totally agree the holiday, if I didn't have mine Id go spare xx

MJ41

The holiday IS going to happen My HSBC loan is paid off in 2 months and I intend to use the money split 50/50 between paying extra on my cc and saving for a holiday - debt is reduced and we still get a holiday! I would rather take a little longer to be debt free and have a life than throw everything we have at the debt, clear it a little sooner but be totally miserable while we do it! As long as the debt is reducing and we are paying more than min payments I am ok with this

MJ41

I know I've been very slow at updating this, but it's not been a great month - husband is not well and work has been manic so not had an awful lot of time to update, but the debtbusting has been continuing, even if the diet has not:(

On the diet front, today is a new day and I'm feeling much more positive - we had good news from the HSBC PPI claim on Saturday, they have upheld my complaint and have offered close to £800 so just waiting for that to come through - sent acceptance letter off straight away:D

I know this should go towards paying off debt, but we are both in dire need of a wardrobe update so some of it is going towards that - the rest can go to the cards! Also waiting for Deloittes to get back to us - this should be a much bigger claim if it's upheld so keeping fingers crossed for this! The HSBC claim is entirely down to keeping this diary - I kept putting off the call until I wrote on here that I was going to do it, so thanks MSE!!

On the paying debt front, things are still progressing - update below

HSBC Gold Card [STRIKE]9200.00 [/STRIKE] 8840.70
Barclaycard – mine [STRIKE]9100.00[/STRIKE] 8912.79
Barclaycard – husband [STRIKE]995.00[/STRIKE] 950.71
Capital One card [STRIKE]7491.23[/STRIKE] 7302.14
Personal loan – bank [STRIKE]1086.78[/STRIKE] 362.26
Tesco Card – husband [STRIKE]2900.00[/STRIKE] 2852.62
Overdraft 4900.00
Loan to family [STRIKE]9500.00[/STRIKE] 8600.00
Total [STRIKE]45173.01[/STRIKE] 42721.22

5.4% Paid off since starting diary!!:T

MJ41

Ok is it normal to become so obsessed with checking account balances!! I keep looking at the total debt still to pay off and wonder how I'll ever get there, then realise nearly 10% has already gone! I'm going to focus on this number now instead and keep positive! The rest of the week should be all non spending days so something else to be positive over - and there is more money in the bank than usual for this time of the month, so we must be doing something right:)

mum2one

Your doing brilliant, i've done the same as you and the . to the the % paid, as getting that 1% feels like a flipping life time, whereas the 0.1 just makes that difference.

I'm the same thinking will I ever get there, thats why i've gone for baby steps, and broke it into how much i want to pay this year, make the debt look better as I can not look at the total owed! x