Are we really in debt? YES WE ARE

Karmacat

Hi Tolip
Yep, I'm glad to see you pop back - how lovely to hear you're doing so well, and you're in it together with Mrs Tolip, I think it can be very strengthening. Do give us updates every now and then - I'm one of those that are on practically every day, I find I need it, and to find threads like yours that I got interested in and the poster comes back for an update, are reallly the icing on the cake. Good luck.

tolip

Hello Everyone

wow, we are overwhelmed with the response, and peoples kind and encouraging comments.

Solventguy, i guess we have been overspending for around 4 years. When our son came along we bought everything, irrelevant of the price, then we purchased another house, for investment, funny we didnt even have the deposit! so be paid the deposit on the credit card!! strange old thing, because of my salary we never thought we were in debt, but financially we were never in a position to purchase the second house, we were only kidding ourselves. However we still have the second property and its rented out.

I am searching my brains to see exactly where we went off the rails spending wise and i cannot find a definite time that i recall overspending, so its just be an accumulation, holidays, car, just not living within our means. There is no doubt that the loss of the second income when children arrive hits you hard, but we did not adjust our lifestyle, maybe that’s where we went wrong.

We extended our house, we didnt have the money, but like other we had access to money, via loans and credit cards.

asp 746, your story is amazing and very true, children are an inspiration and the time to sort the debt out is now when they are young and dont miss things, nor understand that you are cutting back.

We have cut back totally on spending, we have a very modest budget, which I am finding difficult, Mrs Tolip is very focused and that is the key. After never having a budget its hard to limit yourself, especially at Tesco!

By having the budget, snowball etc we have really made great strides in our repayments, but we have a long way to go with our total debt still around £94k. I receive an annual bonus next month, which is 12% of my salary, generally we would just blow that on a holiday! not this year. I cannot wait to get the bonus so I can knock off some more snowball debt!!

I cannot explain the importance of the snowball sheet to us, it details our debts in black and white, its accurate and up to date, but more importantly it shows us what we have achieved, which spurs us on.

I sometimes wonder does anyone notice that we are not spending what we used to? Before i would go to the cash machine and take out £60 just whenever I needed it, now I count all the change and use it !!

I hope to post on a monthly basis, the encouragement from this site is fantastic, Mrs Tolip cannot believe it, how kind people are.

We honestly felt bad when we sat down and had our lightbulb moment, we felt ashamed of our debt, but this forum has taken all that away, not only has peoples advice in this thread shaped our decisions, (remortgage) but encouraged us.

Please keep posting!

Thanks everyone, you are stars!

Remember, if you are flying on holidays this year, it just might be me who is your Captain!

beanielou

I flew Ryanair Prestwick - Marsailles!!

Eupho

tolip wrote: »

I receive an annual bonus next month, which is 12% of my salary, generally we would just blow that on a holiday! not this year. I cannot wait to get the bonus so I can knock off some more snowball debt!!

Awww thats just brilliant! I feel like that too now when I know I have extra money on the way.. like you.. before I would have blown it on something instead.

WELL DONE Both of you!! :beer:

Errata

Congratulations on getting a grip of your finances. Your bonus will come in handy to reduce the debt, but it's always worth remembering that everyone is only one or two paydays away from disaster.
You've got Plan A sorted to take you into the sunny uplands of NoDebtsLand, and perhaps it could be a good idea to create a Plan B to cope with any adverse weather conditions you may hit.

Karmacat

Hi there
I'm glad the shame has gone, and I doubt anyone else notices you're spending less. And if they have, tho, so what? Think about it, what difference would that really make to your life? You can get a new perspective on this!

seven-day-weekend

Well done, what an inspiration!

Just my comment; I think in some ways it's easier for people with large salaries to get into debt because those of us on more modest incomes usually realise that we have not got 'bottomless pockets' whereas someone with a large salary doesn't always realise this and just spends regardless.

Driving from Spain to the UK this year as both of us hate flying (!), but we are always picking people up at Malaga, Almeria and Granada airports, so next time we go I'll think of you and your snowball calculator!

tolip

Errata, you are quite right, whilst we are really moving on the repayment of debt, we have no contingency money at present, a hic-up in a few months that might require some cash would be a problem.

Seven day Weekend, i just wish I could arrange for you to come with me on a days work, to experience what we do, sometimes that helps get over ther fear, but since 9/11 its no longer possible to have guests in the flight deck.

I have over 7000 hours in the air, with only a few problems !! The arrival into Almeria's westerly runway is fantastic once you come over the rigde of high ground to the north. I have been to malage nearly every week for the past 4 years !!!

Seven Day Weekend, I think you have a very valid point, my salary made us feel that we had a bottomless pit, but as you say, we just didnt realise that were had money problems and kept spending.

As I said in an earlier post, we were always able to pay all the bills, but we never had a handle on how much debt we had.

Seriously though we could never have done this without everyones kind comments.

Roll on pay day, the bonus will be slapped towards the snowball!!!!

Zulu_Dawn

tolip wrote: »

Errata, you are quite right, whilst we are really moving on the repayment of debt, we have no contingency money at present, a hic-up in a few months that might require some cash would be a problem.

Seven day Weekend, i just wish I could arrange for you to come with me on a days work, to experience what we do, sometimes that helps get over ther fear, but since 9/11 its no longer possible to have guests in the flight deck.

I have over 7000 hours in the air, with only a few problems !! The arrival into Almeria's westerly runway is fantastic once you come over the rigde of high ground to the north. I have been to malage nearly every week for the past 4 years !!!

Seven Day Weekend, I think you have a very valid point, my salary made us feel that we had a bottomless pit, but as you say, we just didnt realise that were had money problems and kept spending.

As I said in an earlier post, we were always able to pay all the bills, but we never had a handle on how much debt we had.

Seriously though we could never have done this without everyones kind comments.

Roll on pay day, the bonus will be slapped towards the snowball!!!!

Hi Tolip

Just wanted to say hello. We have similar salaries and similar debts though I come from a different business.

The great plus we have against a lot of people here is capacity to earn good money which makes this process far less painful. However the way the credit card companies work is that if you show yourself capable of paying off £10k, they will lend you £20k so you have to have self-control- something I certainly lacked!!

At my peak, I had access to well over £200k of credit with 20 credit cards and a number of loans. That's on top of a large mortgage in excess of £300k. That's half a million pounds of debt. Unbelievable. I've managed to clear around £20k over the last twelve months which is great but there is a long way to go.

I have gone down the DMP route as it means I have been able to get all my interest frozen, but your interest rates already look fairly reasonable so this may not be worth considering as it will damage your credit file. I certainly look forward to the time when I have one credit card, one debit card and nothing else.

Anyway best of luck and feel free to PM me if you need any additional support.


ZD.

PS A bit of a cheeky request but ff you can explain about the two sectors at Geneva airport, I would be grateful. I'm picking up a car and driving on to Italy. should I go via the Swiss sector or the French one or does it make no difference.

hypno06

ZD, from my recollection it is cheaper to get the hire car from the French bit! Happy driving!!