Wake up call time

Broke_Kitty

Zoology_Dragon wrote: »

Well done!

Regarding hair colour, that's brilliant if you can just grow it out (I did and have no regrets!) but if you feel yourself starting to cave go for just parting/hairline highlights in a colour that's close to your natural colour. You'll probably find you can manage to grow out then without too much pain.

That is actually what I did when I last had it coloured, I said I wanted to actually leave a bit of my roots, and just have a few highlights put through to blend them in. They're growing out quite seamlessly thanks to that which is great!

I'm feeling really proud of my financial situation right now. I have a 'buffer' of a couple of hundred pounds in my current account to cover any 'oh no, my bills have gone out early!' situations, a little emergency fund building up, and it's car tax month in Jan so might buy the full year, rather than 6 months, and £108 in my 'loan overpayments' account which I think I will ring up and pay today so I've done it before Christmas.

Got reimbursed nearly £100 for travel expenses from work, which is great! Can't decide whether to put it straight in my petrol tank to save me worrying about petrol next month, or put it in my loan repayment account.

Broke_Kitty

Just realised that £100 covers my two CC bills due out on the 23rd perfectly, so I shall leave that where it is and let it go to those!

Just about to ring up and pay the £108 off my loan (which I shall round up to £120 as a Christmas present to myself).

Broke_Kitty

Just cancelled my Experian trial, but had a little look at it before I did and I've gone from 'poor' to 'fair' this month, woohoo! As I pay off my cards it should eventually improve even more, I've never missed a payment in my life and it's only really the fact that I'm quite close to my limits due to only borrowing what I needed that's having a negative effect.

Obviously it's all still only as important as what each individual lender cares about anyway, and I've never had trouble getting credit in the past.

My only reason for caring is if I need to finance anything in the future or for when I want to get a mortgage!

Also I've just realised that at my current rate of payment, I will only owe £5500ish this time next year. My aim to to earn as much as possible extra on top of this between now and then, doing surveys, swagbucks, clixsense etc and just see if I can bring that right down and bring my DFD forward from October 2015 to maybe June or something. It's so addictive, this paying off debt thing. Much more fun than ignoring it and letting it run it's horrible course.

Verbatim

Well done Kitty. You're doing incredibly well.

Broke_Kitty

Verbatim wrote: »

Well done Kitty. You're doing incredibly well.

Thank you very much! This place is a real motivator, and also so helpful for realising extra ways I can make money too, which I would otherwise have had no idea about.

I wish there were more Field Agent tasks in my area, I have only seen 3 near me, managed to bag myself £5 for one and I wish I could do so more often!

I think the biggest thing for me is, not beating myself up if I had a bit of a slip up above budget, as long as I'm still overpaying my loan each month, to the amount indicated by the snowball calc, and making sure that all extra money I make goes STRAIGHT into the 'debt overpayment' bank account I've set up, I'm still doing a lot better than I was this time two months ago when I was making minimum payments!

The payrise helped too, I couldn't afford to live AND do overpayments before that, so I think that made me a bit depressed and inclined to spend money on myself to make me feel better, never a great idea. I spend less now that I'm earning more, crazy!

Also, updating my signature today made me VERY happy, having paid off so much in just two months!

bdon

Kitty - do you brush and floss your teeth every day? This simple prevention will save you a whole heap of money in dentist bills.
If you have complex dental problems then check out student dentists: http://www.dentalschoolscouncil.ac.uk/uk_dental_schools.htm - if you have time they will fix you for free. And you're training the next generation.

Now the "tough love":
Why the !!!! did you buy eyeliner and christmas presents - you're broke, in debt and you will never get out of debt while you continue to spend.

If your friends don't love you because you don't buy drinks - they're not friends.

Debt is TOXIC - it's like cockroaches or ants - it will never go away unless you get nuclear on it. STOP SPENDING MONEY.

Pay down those debts as fast and as hard as you can.

Broke_Kitty wrote: »

Had a bit of a bad day today for spending, I had a dentist appointment, then I did the majority my Christmas shopping, bought eyeliner cos I'd run out, and met my friend for tea because I hadn't eaten all day and also hadn't seen her in a while.

Relieved to have my Christmas shopping pretty much done though, and not too expensively. I have spent £50ish (in total, not each) on my mum, boyfriend, and boyfriend's mum, I get my dad the same thing every year (turkish delight) and I have a model of the Starship Enterprise I think I'll give him cos I don't really need it and he'd enjoy it more, so that will not cost me much. Then I thought I'd pick up a cheap but not tacky bottle of booze to take to my boyfriend's dad's as we're going there for Christmas day, I'll keep my eye open for deals for that one.

I've been doing pretty well really so far, my things budgetted for came to around £100 a week for everything including fuel, food, and socialising, and I've been managing to stick to this more or less (one week I was under, the next slightly over, so I'll give myself a break).

My hair has started to grow out, but actually my roots don't look bad, I think I'd be happy to just let it grow and not get it recoloured. I haven't had it cut or coloured since October, and I think I could go til Feb before I get a trim to deal with split ends, so that's pretty good for money saving. I used to get my hair cut and coloured every 8-10 weeks but I think I'm finally at a stage where my natural colour is grown out enough to not bother, yay!

I have £108 in my debt overpayments online account, which is exciting, I think on Friday I'll ring the bank and whack that towards my loan.

Brb, off to do some swagbucks surveys!

Broke_Kitty

bdon wrote: »

Kitty - do you brush and floss your teeth every day? This simple prevention will save you a whole heap of money in dentist bills.
If you have complex dental problems then check out student dentists: http://www.dentalschoolscouncil.ac.uk/uk_dental_schools.htm - if you have time they will fix you for free. And you're training the next generation.

Now the "tough love":
Why the !!!! did you buy eyeliner and christmas presents - you're broke, in debt and you will never get out of debt while you continue to spend.

If your friends don't love you because you don't buy drinks - they're not friends.

Debt is TOXIC - it's like cockroaches or ants - it will never go away unless you get nuclear on it. STOP SPENDING MONEY.

Pay down those debts as fast and as hard as you can.

Thanks, but I'm feeling pretty positive about the changes I've made so far. Completely avoiding everything isn't realistic and will only lead to binging.

I think £50 for all my loved ones for Christmas presents is pretty good, and I've managed this without going over budget in general each week too.

Yes I do brush and floss every day, my dental problems unfortunately go back decades when I had poor dentistry done and there isn't much that I can do about it. The dental school here is oversubscribed because everybody is struggling to find a dentist in my area, I had to wait a year and a half for an NHS dentist and the dental school wouldn't have me because they were full up.

As for the eyeliner are you serious? I kinda hope that's a joke... it's like saying don't buy soap, and it cost under £3... it's an every day necessity. I got the cheapest eyeliner I found in Boots, it's not like I ran to the most expensive makeup brand out there.

I don't want to seem ungrateful, but I'm making progress here and I'm very conscious that being realistic is a big part of it and it's a big learning process too!

I've paid off £1500 in two months and I don't think that's bad at all!

Katzen

Hi Kitty. I think you've made a great effort these last few weeks. Its good to see you maximising the good stuff like the payrise, rather than just treating it as spare money and wasting it. I reckon you could be debt free by next Christmas you know, if you really put your mind to it. I don't mean going totally cold turkey and eyeliner free either, but a bit of extra income here and there and you would be away! Good luck

Broke_Kitty

Thank you very much! Yes that was a biggie for me, I wanted to make the change before I got my payrise so I wouldn't feel the difference of 'having extra money' because the debt is really where it needs to go!

Being debt free by Christmas next year would really be amazing, I'm going to work at it as hard as I can!

rubywhatashmoo

Just caught up on your diary - I think you've done fab with the tweaks you've made so far - not sure why you should have to cancel xmas altogether if you can manage to budget for it and still be overpaying - keep up the good work, you can't cancel the rest of your life til you've cleared your debts, it's just nonsense!!