Money Mayhems Money Muddles!!

hedgesparrow

I'm waiting for Thursday for payday too!! Credit card companies have all sorts of sneaky ways of trying to keeping you in debt don't they! Will it reduce the minimum payment for the month after?

Money_mayhem

Hi Hesgesparrow, yes, I think it probably will. Now I'm aware of it though I'm going to make sure I keep on top of it.

So....PAY DAY :j:j:j:j

I'd like to say that now Ive been paid Im rolling in money but of course I'm not , still though it means that I can pay off debt and see the figures coming down...we'll be in for a tight month again, no change there then :rotfl:but it'll all be worth it.

So the plan for this month is to pay £127.05 off the cc, that will take it down to £5680.00 and once that is done and the loan dd has come out I'll be owing less than £10k.

I'm hoping that tax credits will go up and extra £300 when I go back to work otherwise me working will not be viable but of course I will have to wait and see.

will update again later :wave:

AllThatStuffIsJustStuff

Hi MM,

Just read your diary and you are doing great. Me and OH have been on our debt free journey for about 18 months now and we've taken our debts down by about 8k and built up assets in that time. For the first time since we've been together (nearly six years) we actually have positive assets between us. It's been such a transformation and even ignoring the actual debt reduction, our lives have been transformed by it, just for the different ways we look at things now.

My wife's OD was the tipping point that started our journey. Month after month she got charged £80+ for going over her limit and then the charges would put her over again. The way we overcame this was to get her a new account elsewhere with no overdraft. We moved her bill payments there but left her pay going in to the overdraft account. Then on payday she would transfer the bulk of her pay to the new account to pay the bills and for her spending money. The amount left reduced the overdraft each month. We made it impossible to spend from the overdraft by cutting up that card. Don't know if this approach might work for you, but thought i'd suggest it.

Good luck with it all. Have you posted your outgoings on the forum? People will give you plenty of suggestions of how to cut them if you do.

Money_mayhem

Thank you for that advice...I think it's something I will consider :T

Money_mayhem

Well I've just been looking at my spreadsheet and I am so overwhelmed...despite my best efforts were never going to have enough money to cover everything. Just got money up for car tax and the next hurdle is insurance in August :eek: I thought about moving my dd's for bill into another account leaving my overdraft but my worry would be that dd's can sometimes take so long to change over that I'd end up making the problem worse. There's just no spare cash at all and this is all because I've been careless with money in the past :mad: I've managed to make £48 from eBay so I've transferred that to my bank...I was going to let it go to the overdraft but I'm thinking now that it will go to cc. From July I'm hoping to pay £300 every month off the balance because the 0% is finished in January 2014 and I'd like this to be the last cc I ever have :whistle: (at least that's the plan) and as well as that, my loan is finished February 2014 so I'm deliberately over paying to try and meet that target date. Between now and then something also needs doing with the overdraft but I don't know what yet :rotfl: I've never paid so much off against a cc before so it's abit daunting, after this months payments are made I'm going to change the dd so there's no going back...I only wish I could win a significant amount on the lottery

HappyNow

Hello MM, I've just read through your diary and wanted to congratulate you on your progress so far . It's always hardest in the early days but it does get easier.

Two things I wanted to comment on, but feel free to ignore me as you will see from my signature that I am not the one to be dishing out financial advice .

Firstly, you said in one of your posts that your snag with your debt-free date of Feb 2014 is that you haven't accounted for Christmas and other big expenses. Well, Christmas WILL come, ready or not ! And with four kids it will be a challenge.

Secondly, but linked into that, you mentioned that you would like to see how other people work their spreadsheets.

I think it would really help you to use the BudgetBrain one off the main area of this site - click on the button half way down:

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/banking/Budget-planning

It is so thorough, but really easy to use and tweak, and it helps you to cover the major annual spends. That, along with using the Snowball calculator and savings 'pots', should help you come up with a realistic, achievable debt-free date that you can keep to.

Good luck, I will keep popping back to cheer you on

Money_mayhem

Thanks HappyNow, I will take a look at the link later today when the sun goes in and see what it comes up with...I almost don't want to for fear of what it will say. I keep hoping that some unexpected windfall (or a well paid job for OH) will come along to help us out.

Money_mayhem

I've made two payments to the cc this morning, one was the minimum and then I paid a bit extra - this extra money had come from selling bits and pieces. So, I've updated my totals and have worked out that since I started this journey I have paid off £853.65 :T. On the one hand I'm thinking wow, that's a huge chunk off my debt, and on the other hand I'm thinking...that could have gone towards someone nice for the family.
I'm pleased I'm making progress with it, albeit small, but the debt is going down and I don't ever want to be in this position again.

My OH has abit of work lined up which is good and he's hoping to save money for Christmas but we both decided that if the money's not there then we'll have to have a very frugal Christmas but I have faith that we'll be ok.

Money_mayhem

Its not difficult to understand why I'm in debt when I cant even get the totals in my signature right! I've actually paid off £862.65 and am under the £9800 mark now. :j

Good job I'm going back to work next week 'cause all this maternity leave has turned my brain into mush!

Money_mayhem

Yesterday's two payments to the cc have shown on the account :j so I have upped next months payment to £300 but hope to pay £500 as I done extra days at work before my maternity leave finished so I will get paid for those. . Ive a fair few things listed on eBay at the moment so if any of that sells its all going to the cc as well. My cheque for £9.16 arrived from Music Magpie last week so that's going in the bank.

I've incorporated money for Christmas into next months budget, although not a lot it's a start. Car Insurance is due in August so that's another non budgeted payment to contend with. Before my LBM I never used to give those payments a second thought until the letter would arrive on the doormat. I will have some money to put to towards it this time around but it won't be enough, OH will have to stump up the rest if he can. :rotfl: