2013 - Luckier for some?

KirstyO

Hi Everyone,

Let's start at the beginning shall we?

I'm Kirsty, I'm 26, I live in Lancashire and I work in training for a national supermarket chain who seem to favour the colour orange. At the moment I work at store level, but I'd love to work on the region or nationally, probably as a field trainer in relation to some element of food safety. I love my job, my boyfriend and I love to sing. I also play the flute, clarinet and saxophone and music is my thing.

I've decided that financially I want to make 2013 my year. I've dabbled around here on MSE for a while, but reading the work of some people in their debt busting efforts has really inspired me to get through Christmas and then make debt busting my lifes aim, until my debts are gone.

On the whole my debts are fairly small, but still causing me a lot of grief, especially as my parents are wanting to help me get a mortgage but my chances of getting approved are reduced by a) having debt (and a default) at all and b) the slow rate at which it is shrinking.

At the minute, I have a £130 argos card, a £1300 overdraft, and two credit cards which amount to about £2000. I'm on a StepChange DMP and my monthly payments feel like they are making no difference at all...my current DFD is somewhen in 2019, but i'd like to make it somewhen in 2014!

I know my mum told me never to get in trouble with money but I guess I didn't know how many problems it would really cause until I tested the water. but once this is sorted, the only future debts I can foresee are my student loan (which we don't talk about....at least not for now!) and my anticiapted mortgage sometime in the next few years.

I am laying down a list of things to do in January and then I think I'll update these as the month goes on, and eventually update with the following months to-do lists...

So we'll start with the obvious (and sometimes smallest and easiest) ideas...

So, in January 2013 I will...

1) Sort out my bedroom and raid for items to sell on ebay (I have some time off work so this can be my project for then)
2) Have a minimum of 5 NSD's...i've never really done this before, so we'll start low and build up!
3) Walk to work every day, no matter what the weather, unless I'm out at a different store.
4) Use weekly cash envelopes to manage my outoings as I've tried this before and it worked but then I stopped doing it and things got tight again!

Recently my parents have been ill, and even though they've been patched up for now I know they won't last forever. Even though they are both relatively healthy with no long term illnesses to contend with, they've both had some nasty scares in recent years so I want to get things straight so that if, heaven forbid, one of them was to be gone next year, they'd see that I was going to be OK, and that they'd succeeded with their baby girl.

Any further suggestions or success stories will be gratefully received as support! I feel like a little girl again in this big scary world of debt. Just want it to go away now

On a lighter note, wishing you all a merry, low-spending festive season, and a happy new, hopefully debt-free year.

K x x

Want-To-Fit-In

Look forward to reading

*Subscribes* x

Elmly

Good luck!
DFD 2019 :eek: it may be worth posting up your SOA coz I know everyone here is very good at helping pull in the purse strings.
I look forward to hearing how you get along
Subscribed :beer: