I should know better

chica_fi · 7 April 2007 at 5:27PM

Hello peeps,

I've been lurking here for a while and posting now and again when i can help (i work in a bank but please don't hate me too much for it - someone's gotta do it) but i felt it might help my head for me to start a debt free diary. My debt spiral started when i went to uni and discovered credit cards. I was never exactly reckless but got used to buying clothes and food that i wanted rather than just making do. Then in my third year i studied abroad and booking flights back and forward built up the credit cards (Lloyds TSB and Egg at that point) fairly sharpish. I always worked part time while is studied but the money just always disappeared. In my fourth year I took a loan out to buy a car (just a wee run around and i loved it but i still shouldn't have done it) and to pay off some of the credit card debt.

Then when i left uni i decided i'd rather buy a flat than rent for much longer as i hated the thought of money just draining away. Being scotland i had to pay over the valuation to get the house and it was the fifth one i'd offered for so by then solicitors and surveyor fees had mounted up. The flat i finally got was great but needed work done on it so my mum and dad took out a loan to (a) pay the difference between valuation and purchase prices (b) do the flat up including central heating and (c) to pay off the original car / credit card loan.

THEN i met my dh who is the most amazing thing that has ever happened to me. As we started going out his car died so he took out a loan to buy a new one.

ANYHOW... (this is very long and i'm sorry cos it must be boring) we had our lightbulb moment in March 2005 when we realised i'd got in over my head. It took a lot of talking and stress and upset but we made the decision that we wanted to pay every last spare penny we have toward debt repayment so that we can be rid of it asap. We'd like to be able to afford a nice house to move to and have family in but that's just not an option til we get further down this road.

At the moment we have...

Bank loan £24k (down from £31k)
Tesco loan £6.5k (down from £9k)
Cahoot loan £4.5k (down from £5k)

We have absolutely stopped spending on credit cards and we have set ourselves a weekly budget of £90 which includes petrol, food and everything else. That's worked fine for around five months now.

I'm not going to post a full SOA as my DH has been a star and worked eveything out to the nth degree. This is more to do with catharsis for me as sometimes i get bogged down in the day to day and forget how far we've come. I'm going to get me one of those signature things to watch the figure coming down as time goes on.

If you've made it this far then well done!!! If it's just me that's reading then that's fine too

Cheerio for now x

Mindy_2 · 7 April 2007 at 5:36PM

Well done on just how much you've paid off!

Its so easy to spend money and stick it on a card, most of us have done it for one reason or another and suddenly we realise that not only have we humungous debts (see my sig for mine) but we don't really have anything to show for it.

I'm still in the enthusiastic phase, sorting out how to save money, paying as much as possible off cards and getting that buzz, but you are right it is very easy to get bogged down in just existing from one day to the next and forgetting the big picture, ie what has been achieved.

I'm still trying to cut down my food budget, which is why I have found myself in Lidl - I can't believe how much food I can get for my money, even if I'm not 100% sure exactly what I'm buying (I bought cheese spread this week instead of cream cheese!).