When it's just a waiting game...

AlexLK

Perhaps if you do a SOA it may highlight what is happening a bit more? Are you in the position I am, in that whilst you are in debt, you also have a lot of high value assets?

Softlass

Lol no posh pens here

My car was bought for £500 3 years ago. 3 bed detached house worth £140k with 100k on low tracker mortgage so not really. Just need to start chipping away and stay positive I think. Where as we normally spend up to our over draught limits I'm going to reduce spending as much as possible and then clear any leftovers off the debt and hopefully reduce the time left. The rest of the tax back will cover christmas so just got to sit tight

AlexLK

LOL, am I forever going to be associated with expensive pens? :rotfl:

It seems to me like you are just spending an awful lot on day-to-day living?

Scritti

Softlass wrote: »

He's also due a bonus around January but trying to encourage him to pay it straight off a card is impossible especially as he works very hard and in his mind it's holiday money. Is it worth pushing it or should I just let him have his hard earned perk?

Well I get my bonus every March and I CANNOT WAIT for the next one as I'm sticking it all on the debt and it's going to whack it down by as much as 50%. I'm happy to go without the bonus treat, would rather blitz my debt and know that the bonus the following year will, for the first time that I can remember, be all mine - no debt left to pay off and all for spending on FUN after all the scrimping and / or topping up my savings account.

HOK3Y

Lol! Well my hubby will be getting a bonus in February. I say that HE will be getting it but what I mean is HIS employer will be paying it into OUR joint account and then I will be transferring it to the credit card.......I may not have told him this yet!

Igamogam

Hi :wave:

Lots of wise words on here already Softlass - I agree it can get a bit boring this debt busting lark so I made it into a hobby which I dedicate a certain amount of time to each week - actually its a bit of a guilty secret as I dont share the fact I have a lot of debt or at least the real amount - OH has a vague idea but he has some debt of his own he tackles - we just know it has to go and we do it in our own way. Crikey he may well have a DFW diary on here and I dont know it:rotfl:

One thing I do enjoy is taking up a few challenges on these boards - Payment a Day etc - does make a difference with little effort. Spread sheets and grids crossing off each 1% in debt reduction is good too - especially if you are like me a visual kinda person!

As for the bonus only you can make that decision of how to use it.......but I do admire HPK3Y's style;)

Scritti

Forgot to say, my bonus last year went completely on my overdraft and it was the best thing I'd done in ages.

Completely wiped out the £1500 OD and I've been in credit ever since. Psychologically, it was a great move. Any pleasure I would've had spending it on a treat would've long ago subsided and I would have been back being constantly in debt on my current account.

Just staying in credit and seeing ALL of my wages in my account each month has had a tremendously positive effect on me and encouraged me to stick at this and keep going. As others have said, I now get pleasure from seeing my CC debt being slowly but surely wiped out. I now do the PAD thing as well so every single day feels like I'm making some sort of progress towards being debt free. So there's no way I'm going to blow a couple of grand on something that I'll prefer to wait for and enjoy properly once I'm debt-free. At best, I might take a hundred or so out for myself and treat myself to something small but I get so much pleasure from debt-busting now that I'm fully into it that I don't feel like I even need a treat to keep me going. I'm almost getting some sort of masochistic pleasure from denying myself stuff now, knowing that the more I "suffer" now, the quicker my debt will be gone.

Bring it on!

eyeopener2

I'm going to be the really boring one here with this talk of yachts and holidays.....

Do you have any savings or an emergency fund so you don't have to rely on credit to sort out any problems?

If not, that should be your priority and the bonus seems ideal to set aside and to not touch.

Boring I know, but something to think about.

Softlass

Ha ha thank you for all the replies!! My OH is currently ringing the yachting holiday company so I think I've lost that one!! Fingers crossed there's a bit left over. I can't really deny him as he does work very hard and is working even harder since we set out to clear the debt off/get treats after months of scrimping. That said he has no idea how much we have in the bank and only I have his Internet banking password.....

Anyway off to ALDI (list in hand) to cut the food bills down even further.....

sourcrates

Softlass wrote: »

Ha ha thank you for all the replies!! My OH is currently ringing the yachting holiday company so I think I've lost that one!! Fingers crossed there's a bit left over. I can't really deny him as he does work very hard and is working even harder since we set out to clear the debt off/get treats after months of scrimping. That said he has no idea how much we have in the bank and only I have his Internet banking password.....

Anyway off to ALDI (list in hand) to cut the food bills down even further.....

Don't go near a boatyard lol :rotfl: