The Secret Dreamworld of a (Scottish) Shopaholic

MrsSmith2013

Welcome back Scottishspendaholic - its great to see you online again, its like seeing an old friend you've not seen in a while! You 100% have my support - we can kick our debts butt's together

I think we all have points where we fall off the wagon so to speak, the most important thing is you're back on it now, and it sounds like your in a much better place to tackle the debts.

Is that a snazzy new signature I spy?! I will be sure to pop back, and look forward to catching up with you.

Mrs S x

beanielou

:wave: Good to see you.

please-let-me-be-lucky

Welcome back :T Xx

Skinnylatte

YAY :j:j:j
Welcome back Scottish, I've missed you. I fell off the wagon a it too, I think it's inevitable.

Look forward to your posts xx

Emzilla

Nice to see you back

Emz xx

scottishspendaholic

Hello!

Thank you so much to all of you for the lovely welcome 'home'! Its amazing how much more focussed I feel just by posting here and also how helpful it was to reread my diary from last year - rather than thinking 'what a silly fool' (which is how I normally think of myself), I was actually really proud of myself for being so driven and for achieving so much in a relatively short period of time.

So, unsurprisingly, without the support of this place, I fell into bad habits again and my debt has grown. The current totals at the beginning of July (before minimum payments) were:-

July 2014

£2,955.73 Tesco c/c
£2,792.92 Bank of Scotland c/c
£3,960.10 MBNA c/c
£1,152.56 Next directory

= £10,861.31

I will update to new totals including payments and overpayments at the start of every month.

The big (huge) news is that DH knows about the debt. To my utter shame, he found out by accident - very sadly I didn't pluck up the nerve to tell him. Then I continued to lie until he asked to see statements with zero balances on them (as I was saying I had cards but they were clear), which of course I couldn't do. Things haven't been much fun in my house, and I'm certainly not in the good books - but he is standing by me and we are tackling it together. I was very resistent to accepting help to pay it off as I didn't feel he should be punished twice - the debt plan we are already in in his name and with the above - but he was adamant we dealt with it together and I had to accept. By not continuing with my excellent (but perhaps unsustainable?) plan last year and for the first six months of this year coupled with spending on the cards and Next directory continuing, I'm not sure I was ever going to be able to pay it off on my own within the timescales I needed to have. So perhaps this outcome was inevitable.

I wish I could answer DH's question as to where all the money went. He genuinely thought I must have shoes or bags or jewellery or perfume stashed away somewhere and the sad fact is that I don't. I (and I'm not just saying this) don't really spend money on myself, I reckon a good 80% of the money has gone towards plugging the family finances gaps and making everyone happy and the other 20% has been frittered on mainly gifts and charity shop tat. I really have nothing to show for the debt. He's promised me more support with family finance stuff (food shopping, stupid things like buying lightbulbs/batteries, kids' birthday/Christmas gifts and plans etc) - but it remains to be seen how this will work. At the moment he's still very angry so I am grilled every time I spend legitimate joint account money (on food for example), but I absolutely understand that and I hope his support will get better and more constructive over time.

Therefore, we have reworked our finances. I get much much much less money in my own account than before and pretty much all the 'spare' joint money we have is now being thrown at the debt. This amounts to £400 per month which is unallocated to anything else which we were planning to use for DIY/decorating and holidays - all of which will have to wait. Its relatively new to us to have this spare money or certainly so much of it - helped by my son starting school next month so less childcare and a couple of (small but significant) payrises. To this £400, the plan is that I will add another £200-£300 (this is the target) of money I have earnt that month through a mix of eBay, mystery shopping, car boots, Quidco, money I find in the street etc etc. We will be throwing £600 per month at this debt, meaning in real terms, about £500 is coming off the balances and obviously I will be snowballing and overpaying MBNA with the highest interest rate first. If we/I can do this, my DFD will be February 2016.

So that's the big reveal! I'm not proud of myself and am wondering where I could be if I had continued from last October to now on my DFW journey, but I think thinking like that is where madness lies - so I have to move forward. I have tried to look at why things went so pear shaped - we had a very stressful end of last year financially as my (very rich) brother booked us an amazing holiday to south of the equator for 9/10 days but within a matter of weeks we had to come up with holiday spending money (£750), car tax for 2 x expensive cars, pay a £600 car bill and buy Christmas presents for our kids and extended family and pay for all the other Christmas expenses (c. £500). It was incredibly stressful and I think I just dropped the ball on the debt busting and money making. I don't remember conciously deciding to do so, but somehow it stopped being so central to everything. When January came and we arrived home, I kept putting off starting afresh until 'next month' in my head. I would do mad spreadsheets each month (then rework them when I spent on the cards :mad:), but couldn't seem to get myself organised to get started again for lots of reasons. Then, on 12 June 2014, OH found out and everything changed.

I'm going to finish this post here as its massive already and continue with July's progress on my £200 challenge in the next.

Xxx

scottishspendaholic

So July's progress so far...

Over the past couple of weeks, I have made £190/£300 towards July's overpayment. I have paid some of this off already and now have a revised target by 31 July of £200 of which I have £87/£200.

To make the other £113, I am doing a car boot this Sunday (target £30), hopefully will make a bit more cash on eBay (everything seems to be selling for next to nothing!) (target £10-£20 profit) and hopefully sell some children's clothes via another forum (target £30). I'm not sure about the rest but either I'll hopefully smash my targets or come up with another plan over the next week or so.

I would have had a bit more of my £200 target made by now, but recently a close friend of mine aged 39 has been diagnosed with aggressive breast cancer, so I have bought her some things to help her through chemo and made her some meals. I know spending money isn't the aim here, but some things are too important not to do.

In other news, I reversed into my upstairs neighbour's car back in January and obviously admitted it. It was new (to him) so he is asking me to pay for the repairs - just cosmetic damage really. We agreed a top price of £300 and agreed not to go through my insurance. I thought he'd forgotten all about it as it was MONTHS ago but it turns out he hadn't (of course) and will be putting the bill through my door by the end of this month. Luckily this is a local garage so I have some time to pay, but I have no idea how to get this £300 together on top of everything else. When I agreed to pay it I was going to put it on a credit card! I daren't tell DH as he's so furious with me already and everyone's got a breaking point, don't they (I don't mean violence or temper wise, of course, I just mean how much more can I throw at the poor man?) - but I know I have to tell him or I'm falling into my old tricks of hiding things and shielding him from difficult money decisions. I will update on this soon as I have to tell him.

Joint account wise we have overspent already this month due to summer holidays and picnics etc, which may mean I can't overpay from joint account money as much as I'd hoped. If I can't, I'm going to pay what I can and move on. I'm done beating myself up when I know that I am really trying hard.

So I'll try to update regularly with progress. So glad to be back!

Xxx

parsniphead

Just read through your diary scottishspendaholic.

I hope things get sorted for you. As hard as it must be I guess it's better that everything is out in the open, it's hard to keep secrets which eat away at you.

Good luck.

Skinnylatte

It must be a huge relief that you don't have to keep things secret any more.
He is offering help to pay it off which is great. Have you done an SOA together so you can both agree where all the money goes? Could you both sit down and review the finances weekly or monthly to see the progress?
I'm so pleased you're back on track

dd1981

Just read through your diary this morning. Wow. So so inspiring. You have juggled so much, despite some hiccups and debt going up. I really admire you coming back and starting again. I'm bad for just giving up! Well done and I look forward to reading more of your journey

Dd
x

P.S I'm a fellow Scot