We’d like to remind Forumites to please avoid political debate on the Forum.
This is to keep it a safe and useful space for MoneySaving discussions. Threads that are – or become – political in nature may be removed in line with the Forum’s rules. Thank you for your understanding.
📨 Have you signed up to the Forum's new Email Digest yet? Get a selection of trending threads sent straight to your inbox daily, weekly or monthly!
LosingMyDebt's Diary - Rio Olympic's Countdown
LosingMyDebt
Posts: 43 Forumite
Hi everyone!
I've been a long time lurker on these forums, battling with debt but in total denial about it until fairly recently.
Last year I had an epiphany (thanks to Martin it has to be said!)
I was just about to retrain for a new career and so I spent the best part of a week renegotiationg and switching our bills in order to save us as much cash as possible each month. As well as me retraining, my wife wopuld be on maternity leave which meant that after 6 months our income would be extremely tight, at least between January and Easter.
It was a successful, and satisfying, process to go through. My car insurance went down from around £800 to just over £200 (yes we always auto renewed - never agin though!!) I also made savings on energy bills and TV & Broadband (Sky TV went!) as well as cancelling various DD's which were a waste of money.
However, what I didn't deal with was our debt. Between me and my wife we have 4 credit cards - and although we stated paying more than the minimum on 3/4 of them - we ended up spending more on them to get through that tough January - April period I was telling you about.
So here is where we're at debt wise:
Credit Cards - £10,000
Car Finance - £6,000
I foolishly thought this wasn't to big a deal until I looked into the detail of what we pay out each month.
Our car payment each month is £250 and we still have 2 years left to pay on it. That's annoying but me and my wife have made the decision that
a) we'll never buy a car on finance again
and b) we'll keep the car and pay it off in two years and then that'll be £250 a month in our pockets.
This is just something we have to suck up and bear for two years.
As for the credit cards well our (slightly higher than) minimum payments mean that we basically service the cards for another £250 a month. Each month we pay off probably around £30-£40 max. I will look into this in more detail when I look in detail at the finances and post it on here. But at the current rates the cards will take between 5-50 (yes 50!!) years to pay off in full.
I'd estimate that before I retrained as a family we'd have around £500 disposable income per month. So with our debt payments being another £500 per month we will double our disposable income!!
When I realised this it made me so annoyed with myself that I hadn't realised this earlier - all those thousands of pounds wasted when we could have paid this debt off years ago.
Anyway, we didn't and this is where we're at.
However it's not all bad news:
We're in the fortunate position that come September my wife will be working full time again after maternity and I will begin my new job after retraining (YAY!!!) We will have a decent monthly income, certainly the most we've ever had by a long way.
Now I'm not 100% sure how much we'll have of course until that first pay day - however I know that our outgoings will all be comfortably covered which is something I haven't always been able to say!
With that being the case me and my wife both agree that our priority now is to pay this debt off - in particlaur the credit cards.
Now - using the MSE credit card tool - I worked out that by only paying around £100 a month more off the 4 credit cards each month would see us paying them all off within 2-3 years.
However this is our goal:
To have paid off the car debt AND all the credit card debts off - around £16,000 - within 2 years before the Olympics begin in Rio in 2016!!!
As well as paying more each month - we have decided that we will pay off a few pounds here and there whenever we feel we can spare a few pounds to do so to hit our target!
Anyway - that is our situation - the good thing is we're at a point where we should be able to shift this debt relatively quickly.
The reason I'm keeping this diary and NEED your support is because me and my wife have never been great with money - if we have it we spend it. We have no savings (yet) and three children who we want to save for [but that will come after Rio 2016 once debt free ;-)]
And ultimately we want to buy our own house. So we need to get our accounts in order ASAP so we can start saving for a deposit.
Cheers for reading this and I'll be back over the weekend once I look at the finances in more detail.
LMD
I've been a long time lurker on these forums, battling with debt but in total denial about it until fairly recently.
Last year I had an epiphany (thanks to Martin it has to be said!)
I was just about to retrain for a new career and so I spent the best part of a week renegotiationg and switching our bills in order to save us as much cash as possible each month. As well as me retraining, my wife wopuld be on maternity leave which meant that after 6 months our income would be extremely tight, at least between January and Easter.
It was a successful, and satisfying, process to go through. My car insurance went down from around £800 to just over £200 (yes we always auto renewed - never agin though!!) I also made savings on energy bills and TV & Broadband (Sky TV went!) as well as cancelling various DD's which were a waste of money.
However, what I didn't deal with was our debt. Between me and my wife we have 4 credit cards - and although we stated paying more than the minimum on 3/4 of them - we ended up spending more on them to get through that tough January - April period I was telling you about.
So here is where we're at debt wise:
Credit Cards - £10,000
Car Finance - £6,000
I foolishly thought this wasn't to big a deal until I looked into the detail of what we pay out each month.
Our car payment each month is £250 and we still have 2 years left to pay on it. That's annoying but me and my wife have made the decision that
a) we'll never buy a car on finance again
and b) we'll keep the car and pay it off in two years and then that'll be £250 a month in our pockets.
This is just something we have to suck up and bear for two years.
As for the credit cards well our (slightly higher than) minimum payments mean that we basically service the cards for another £250 a month. Each month we pay off probably around £30-£40 max. I will look into this in more detail when I look in detail at the finances and post it on here. But at the current rates the cards will take between 5-50 (yes 50!!) years to pay off in full.
I'd estimate that before I retrained as a family we'd have around £500 disposable income per month. So with our debt payments being another £500 per month we will double our disposable income!!
When I realised this it made me so annoyed with myself that I hadn't realised this earlier - all those thousands of pounds wasted when we could have paid this debt off years ago.
Anyway, we didn't and this is where we're at.
However it's not all bad news:
We're in the fortunate position that come September my wife will be working full time again after maternity and I will begin my new job after retraining (YAY!!!) We will have a decent monthly income, certainly the most we've ever had by a long way.
Now I'm not 100% sure how much we'll have of course until that first pay day - however I know that our outgoings will all be comfortably covered which is something I haven't always been able to say!
With that being the case me and my wife both agree that our priority now is to pay this debt off - in particlaur the credit cards.
Now - using the MSE credit card tool - I worked out that by only paying around £100 a month more off the 4 credit cards each month would see us paying them all off within 2-3 years.
However this is our goal:
To have paid off the car debt AND all the credit card debts off - around £16,000 - within 2 years before the Olympics begin in Rio in 2016!!!
As well as paying more each month - we have decided that we will pay off a few pounds here and there whenever we feel we can spare a few pounds to do so to hit our target!
Anyway - that is our situation - the good thing is we're at a point where we should be able to shift this debt relatively quickly.
The reason I'm keeping this diary and NEED your support is because me and my wife have never been great with money - if we have it we spend it. We have no savings (yet) and three children who we want to save for [but that will come after Rio 2016 once debt free ;-)]
And ultimately we want to buy our own house. So we need to get our accounts in order ASAP so we can start saving for a deposit.
Cheers for reading this and I'll be back over the weekend once I look at the finances in more detail.
LMD
Overdraft #1 £1300; Overdraft #2 £400; CC#1 £7258; CC#2 £978; CC#3 £812; CC#4 £330; Car Finance £6000;
Total Debt August 2014 £17,078
Total Debt August 2014 £17,078
0
Comments
-
I forgot to add another debt which is often overlooked - our overdrafts which we want to pay off total another £1700!
So our overall debt is over £17000.
Today I begin saving us a few more pounds as I plan to switch out TV broadband and phone deal which will save us £8 a month and actually give us more channels and better times when we can use the landline!Overdraft #1 £1300; Overdraft #2 £400; CC#1 £7258; CC#2 £978; CC#3 £812; CC#4 £330; Car Finance £6000;
Total Debt August 2014 £17,0780 -
good luck
You've a similar amount of debt to myself and are starting about the same time, I'll be sure to keep an eye on your progress Started signature in July 2014
Credit Card 1 18% WAS £3795 NOW£3120.
Credit Card 2 0% WAS £3680 NOW £3602.
Very.co.uk acc 0%: WAS £2200 NOW £1444.30
NationW Loan 5.6%: WAS £7000 NOW £6466
TOTAL DEBT IN JULY 2014: 16555 NOW 146320 -
f_Anna_tastic wrote: »good luck
You've a similar amount of debt to myself and are starting about the same time, I'll be sure to keep an eye on your progress
Thanks Anna!
I have just found your diary and will be sure to follow it too - not only do we have similar amounts of debt we're also the same age!
Good luck to yourself too :beer:Overdraft #1 £1300; Overdraft #2 £400; CC#1 £7258; CC#2 £978; CC#3 £812; CC#4 £330; Car Finance £6000;
Total Debt August 2014 £17,0780 -
Good luck LMDNSDs January - 3/8 2017 total - 3
declutter challenge 67/2017
Goodreads Challenge 0/300 -
Thanks penguins!
Good to get it written down so I can keep focused!Overdraft #1 £1300; Overdraft #2 £400; CC#1 £7258; CC#2 £978; CC#3 £812; CC#4 £330; Car Finance £6000;
Total Debt August 2014 £17,0780 -
Well what an idiot I am!
Rang up BT to see if our contract was 12months or 18 months. Turns out it was 18 months so not up until November.
The guy on the phone then managed to persuade me to sign up for Infinity broadband for just £3 extra per month.
And I said YES!!!
For goodness sake!
I was looking to switch to Talk Talk as we could save £8 a month with them and still have the same package (plus a few sky channels too)
So all in all we'll actually be paying £11 a month more than we could be.
The good news is I have 14 days to cancel the order, which I will do.
As my wife said "that is £11 we could be paying off the credit cards"
I can't argue with her, she is spot on.
We don't even need Infinity broadband - we stream movies and Iplayer all the time and we never struggle for a connection so it'd be a complete luxry we don't need.
I'll be happy when I cancel that order now.
Not a good start to the day....Overdraft #1 £1300; Overdraft #2 £400; CC#1 £7258; CC#2 £978; CC#3 £812; CC#4 £330; Car Finance £6000;
Total Debt August 2014 £17,0780 -
Good luck look forward to following
I wouldn't recommend talk talk we had nothing but problems!Time to start again
0 -
Olivia-Louise wrote: »Good luck look forward to following
I wouldn't recommend talk talk we had nothing but problems!
Thanks!
Tbh we had all kinds of issues with BT when we first joined last year too! But that's a story for another thread I think :laugh:Overdraft #1 £1300; Overdraft #2 £400; CC#1 £7258; CC#2 £978; CC#3 £812; CC#4 £330; Car Finance £6000;
Total Debt August 2014 £17,0780 -
Good luck on the Journey! :j(Debt Jan 2014 LBM £34,000) Current 2016 "Problems" as follows:
C Cards 1,2,3,4 WAS £18,333 NOW£0 :j...Overdraft WAS £2700 NOW£0 :j
Secured Loan WAS £4113 NOW£0:j.......Loan WAS £8864 NOW £6,000
DEBT TODAY = £6,000 (£28,000 PAID OFF SO FAR!)0 -
This discussion has been closed.
Confirm your email address to Create Threads and Reply
Categories
- All Categories
- 352.1K Banking & Borrowing
- 253.5K Reduce Debt & Boost Income
- 454.2K Spending & Discounts
- 245.1K Work, Benefits & Business
- 600.7K Mortgages, Homes & Bills
- 177.4K Life & Family
- 258.9K Travel & Transport
- 1.5M Hobbies & Leisure
- 16.2K Discuss & Feedback
- 37.6K Read-Only Boards