Debt free by 40 -- 19 Months and counting

clearmydebts

Hi Steph,

Hope all is okay. Am missing your daily updates x

Buffythedebtslayer

Hey Steph X


Came on to check in with you, hope you are ok lovely XX

Verbatim

How are you Steph? I'm guessing super busy with the polytunnel? Hope you're OK.
V

maddiemay

Hi Steph, just back from 3 weeks touring Scotland and catching up on diaries, hope that you are all well and having some decent weather.
MM
xx

sweetpea26

Hi Steph...thinking of you. Hope all ok with you ... take care.

StressedSteph

Hi diary


I can't quite believe it has been over three weeks since I last posted. Naughty me!!.


Life has been pretty hectic. Work has ramped up on the smallholding, we now have a fully filled polytunnel and veg plot, lambs, pigs, geese, hens and 30 meat chicks eating me out of house and home in the barn :eek:. It is truly shocking how much food they eat, but on a plus point they are all looking nearly ready for processing and then we will have tonnes of barn reared chicken in the freezer :T.


Quite abit has happened since my last post. You might remember that I was having problems with the buyer of my daughter Xbox off Ebay. I accept his return of the item but then worried for two weeks thinking he was going to send me a broken one in return and I would lose £150 and an Xbox .
Two days before the deadline he contacted me again and said that he was about to package up the xbox but he was offering me another chance to pay the £6.95!! that he wanted. He also stated that the £22.50 it was going to cost him to return the xbox would fall to me to pay, which I am pretty sure is incorrect but I am so nervous about Ebay lately that it scared me abit.
Anyways....with great pains I decided to be the one and only adult in this transaction and the pay him the £6.95. I made sure he cancelled the claim first just in case he stitched me up AGAIN!. I could have been stubborn and made him send the xbox back but I was so scared it would return broken or damaged and have no protection as the seller that I thought £6.95 was a better option, Even though it made me REALLY mad to give into his pathetic demands.


I have truly learnt me lesson with Ebay and from now on if anything is worth over £30 I will insist on cash on collection and nothing else. I cannot cope with the trauma.


Anyway at least all of that is now dealt with and over.


Hubby had a phone call from the hospital yesterday warning him that he will be booked in for his operation during the month of July. They will apparently call at the end of June to confirm the exact date. It is nice to finally be getting some movement but it makes me EVEN more panicky about trying to get our finances together in time. Scarily both our vehicle MOT's need renewing in July so not the best month for it to happen, but we can't turn it down so will have to stumble through somehow.


My best friend came over the weekend and has downloaded the free trial of YNAB. She asked me to go through it with her so she could try to understand it. She is so lucky as both her and her husband get paid monthly, so at the beginning of every month they can work out the whole months budget and know what they have available to spend etc.


Me showing her how it works really highlighted how lax we have become with the whole system and how I have been spending on things without any regarding to wether we have a budget category for it or not. I am really annoyed with myself, but as money is so short I have not been able to fund any savings pots or anything :eek:. BUT I do think a lot of that is because of my misc over spending on stuff. Nothing major but it doesn't take a lot to overspend with the amount we have coming in each week.


So.....I am wondering about maybe trying to work out a monthly budget at the beginning of each month by estimating (on the low end) the wages hubby usually gets coming in, so I can sort out the whole month in one go. What are you thoughts?


I also thought about keeping my usual weekly budget, but maybe creating another one but calculated monthly so I can switch between the two. Maybe I need to put this post out on a YNAB forum or an different thread on this website to see what other weekly paid people do.


I had abit of success with SKY yesterday. Our SKY box has gone kaput and doesn't record or playback anymore. I really couldn't afford the £65 call out for an engineer. so I spent TWO HOURS!! on the phone to SKY yesterday asking to cancel our Sky as I cannot afford to get it repaired.


As per usual SKY in their fear of losing a customer have now agreed a free call out engineer, Multiscreen - The engineer will fit another box into a bedroom as well as replace our faulty box. Ds will get SKY GO Extra available on his Xbox and our month bill will be £41.25 which is £15 less than it has been lately. Fantastic.


I had better stop boring you all to death now and will do a more up to date financial report tomorrow.


Hope you are all doing well, I promise to catch up with your diaries soon xxxx

snowscreamer

Hi Steph,

Serial lurker here but I'm a YNAB addict which is what has prompted me to finally post!

The idea with YNAB is that you budget using last month's income ie. money you already have. That way it doesn't matter if you have variable pay and/or are paid weekly as you don't budget May's income until June. Read the 4 rules of the YNAB method for more info (this is rule 4) - http://www.youneedabudget.com/method

If you are living month-to-month as I suspect most of us on this board trying to clear debt are, I suggest you work out your minimum monthly income from your YNAB history, make a new "Buffer" category and "withdraw" your average monthly income from that category in June eg. let's say your minimum monthly income is £2000, enter -2000 in that box. That will release 2000 to budget for this month. Then when your income arrives each week, mark in as "Income for July" and then it's not available to budget until next month. Provided you expect to earn at least this amount this month it's no more risky than carrying on as you are. Once you have budgeted for all spending and saving categories, any leftover can go towards servicing your other debts and "repaying" the buffer category so that eventually you are actually living on last month's income. You can budget towards repaying your buffer by entering a positive figure in the box for that category much like you budget for your spending/saving categories. YNAB suggests it takes around 4 months to achieve living on last month's income but with your existing debts and maintaining existing payments it may take you up to a year I guess. But I find YNAB spurs me on to spend less so I'm hitting goals faster than I expect.

Have a look at these two helpful guides for budgeting towards debt repayments which helped me enormously when I was first getting my head around YNAB:

https://www.youneedabudget.com/support/article/paying-off-your-credit-card
https://www.youneedabudget.com/support/article/other-debt-accounts

Let me know if you have any questions as I know my way around YNAB pretty well these days...!

mummytogirls

Wow Steph you have been very busy!!

I think you made the right decision with the xbox, at least you dont have to try and resell it again now.

Yay to sky also, its amazing what you can get when you dig your heels in xx

dawnybabes

Welcome back Steph, missed you !

misstara

Fab to see a post from you Steph, sounds like you've been very busy.