£66,512.11 and falling - OK £325,909.93 but still falling!

joanne109

Survived:j
We got a secure loan - I know some of you are going to massively disapprove......I've spent the last 2 days clearing all our debts.
It's just so nice to only have 1 payment to worry about and to have £1,000 monthly to live on.
I checked the paperwork and each overpayment includes a £3 transaction fee so I plan to save up my overpayments and just put in 1 payment monthly.
Now my accounts are in credit I've got terribly tightfisted. There's someone on here going by the name of "tighter than two coats of paint" - that's my mantra.
When I was up to the max on my credit cards and lurching from one temporary reprieve to another money was meaningless and so I just spent it.
Now I've packed the cards away and am paying cash for everything it's taken on a whole new meaning.
Off to Aldi tomorrow...while I love Waitrose, I love cutting my debt even more.
Thank you all for being so lovely, I thought you would all be condemning me for consolidating. I'm off back to give some thanks

Joanne

joanne109

By the way, it's so nice to go to bed and rest without juggling debts and repayment schedules and direct debit dates in my head.

Joanne

joanne109

Awful day at work today. I'm going to talk to the boss on Friday as I need to leave.
Too many petty battles and backbiting. DMT (Departmental Management Team) meeting today was awful. Everybody talking over everyone else, I just sat back and said not a lot.
I'll complete both phases on my restructure (phase 1 goes out to formal consultation in early September) and finish around this time next year then move.
I'm going to ask boss to help me with applications and some of the silly requirements of person specifications it's the least she can do.

I'm too old, too experienced and too valuable for these silly office politics/games.

Joanne

joanne109

We got back last Saturday and had a cracking time. We travelled around the north, stayed with friends (God bless 'em for putting 5 of us up) and only paid for 2 nights accom. at a B and B in Bacup.
We did overspend, we spent probably £800 over the two weeks. We felt obliged to buy all the food and pay for a few meals out with the various friends, we had 2 lovely days out at the seaside in Scarborough and the final day was spent shopping in Manchester.
That's where we had the mishap!
We parked in a garage below some railway arches behind the Arndale. The kids and I got out then DH parked side on against a wall. We then paid for the garage with the warning to be back by 7:00pm when it closed.
We had a smashing day out and then at 6:15 went back to the car. DH couldn't find his car keys, we searched frantically through all the bags but couldn't find them anywhere.
Then we heard the car door open - DH had left the drivers side window wide open and one of the children had noticed and opened the car so we could at least get in and retrieve the B and B keys.
No sign of the keys anywhere. We had been in so many places it was senseless trying to tramp around all the shops etc.
In the end we rang our next door neighbour at home to check the spare keys were in the house - she rang back 10 mins later and said they were.
We decided that I should get the train home to collect them and drive back to Bacup.
I retrieved my laptops (personal and work) from the car and trudged off to Piccadilly station to get a train, DH looked for a bus to Bacup and we had to leave the car unlocked in the car park with the drivers window wide open:eek:
I got to Manchester Piccadilly around 19:05 and almost immediately got a train to London and changed at Kings X to catch a train back to Herts. Amazingly, I walked through my front door at 21:55 - less than 3 hours after entering Piccadilly station.
I had a shower, bite to eat and then got in the car to drive back to Bacup.
I arrived back at the B and B at 02:15.
We got up the next morning and were in Manchester by 09:00 and retrieved the car.
In the meantime DH had decided that he may have dropped the keys in M and S at the start of the day when he went to the loo. We went to customer services and there they were.
After that drove back home to Herts in our separate cars.
That whole fiasco cost around £160 in train fares and petrol:mad:
Lesson learned - in future take the spare keys on holiday as well.

Anyway, back at work, back to debt busting.
I went to Al*i today and spent £70 on 6 bags of shopping - why would I ever want to go anywhere else?
I won't post an update on my outstanding debt at the end of the month - I have £2500 of the secure loan left as I'm waiting for the final credit card statements to come in so I can just pay off what I owe and not overpay any - I've done that before and a credit balance on the card (however small) has just encouraged me to go wild on the spending and run the debt up again.

Goodnight for now

Joanne

timetogrowup89

Hello.

Have just been reading your diary and wanted to say good luck. I know lots of people on here get angry at the thought of moving unsecure to secure, but hey you sound very disciplined about overpayments and much happier with not having the worry of payments going to everywhere!!

Im going to subscribe, sounds like an interesting read!

x

Igamogam

Just read your last post about your hols :eek: And I thought it was only us that had such epics!

debtfreewannabe321

Just catching up with you *ahem* obviously I meant potS :o:rotfl:

:eek: to the extra debt you found I also did this after starting my df journey gutting isn't it! There certainly are people on here who don't like the consolodation route but I think you have to do what's best for you. I've gone down that route before and it worked for me too (only the difference being I hadn't had my lbm so racked up another load of debt!)

I'm sorry I also had a little laugh at the holiday/car incident :rotfl: this is the sort of thing that happens to me all the time :eek::p

cottage_retreatist

Hey joanne109!

What an epic misadventure with the car keys!!! My goodness!!! I'm glad it worked out ok in the end - i agree with DFW321 -this is usually the sort of thing that would happen to me!!

boo to the extra debt - but i suppose now you've found it at least you can start managing it? Eugh! debt sucks!!!!

I'm envious of your A!di btw - wish I had one near me!!

You're doing super as always with your debtbusting!

hugs C-R x