The Future Starts Today

RexBanner

After years of excuses (some genuine, others not so much), avoidance, two steps forward followed by one back I've got to a place where I can realistically clear my debts.

Have paid off a £10K loan and transferred most expensive of 3 credit cards onto the 2 others which is a massive saving, so now going to just chip away at the debt til its gone.

Owe £10K in total across 2 credit cards and and an overdraft, and am also paying off a student loan which will be cleared in September.

I don't discuss this with anyone in real life, so aim to post here to mark the way as I go and keep focused.

Good luck everyone.

Bobarella

Well done Rex! Good luck clearing the rest asap!

RexBanner

Bobarella wrote: »

Well done Rex! Good luck clearing the rest asap!

Cheers, you too.

We'll get there in the end.:)

BachSoon

Good luck! :j

GettingOrganised

Good luck, you've made lots of positive steps so far. Welcome

RexBanner

Thanks folks.

Just getting it down has helped clear my head a bit.

I've put aside £300 per month for now to pay this down and will up this to £400 when Student Loan is cleared.

Haven't gone full Moneysaver yet as I'd rather live fairly normally and pay these off over a while longer, but no doubt I'll pick-up some good habits along the way.:)

RexBanner

Got paid yesterday which put me £1K in the black, and should be enough to get through the month in credit. I've been living in the lukewarm bath of a £2,300 overdraft (@ £1/day) for years, so a relief to get it off my back.

Approx £9K left on 2 x credit cards, and 10 student loan payments.

Taking it easy til after Christmas now - not got anything extravagant planned, but not going to be counting pennies either.

Keep it up everyone.

patman99

Every step forward is one step closer to the journey's end as they say.
You have done well by reducing your debt load by over 50%.

Bex296

Hello and good luck! It's tough but satisfying seeing debt go down, though a bit depressing when there are backslides :undecided:

RexBanner wrote: »

Haven't gone full Moneysaver yet as I'd rather live fairly normally and pay these off over a while longer, but no doubt I'll pick-up some good habits along the way.:)

I have to say I'm in the same situation in some respects- I've tried paring things right back but I find it very difficult and then have random spending relapses which set me back much further than a more generous spending money budget would have in the first place! So for me a not dramatically tight budget works best, and I'm fortunate to be in a situation where I can do that - I appreciate that there are some on the forums who aren't so lucky.

barnaclebill

After 2 redundancies in a year I found a job paying in US dollars the rate at the time was 1.58 to the pound, as soon as I started work the dollar started to fall ending at about 1.90, as I had been paid well I had good credit and was able to get loans and credit cards with good rates and used them thinking I'll get a raise or the exchange rate will improve, in the end when I signed up with cccs (stepchange now) we were about £56,000 in debt not counting mortgage, used their DMP advice, took a lot of flack from lenders but got a raise then the company changed to paying in Euros and at age 60 got some small private pensions increasing my payments every time, got clear at age 61. Have had about 6 good years and now have some savings but just retired so will need to be careful, never want to go there again,
Good luck to all those trying to get clear it does happen in the end.

RexBanner

Bex296 wrote: »

Hello and good luck! It's tough but satisfying seeing debt go down, though a bit depressing when there are backslides :undecided:



I have to say I'm in the same situation in some respects- I've tried paring things right back but I find it very difficult and then have random spending relapses which set me back much further than a more generous spending money budget would have in the first place! So for me a not dramatically tight budget works best, and I'm fortunate to be in a situation where I can do that - I appreciate that there are some on the forums who aren't so lucky.

Cheers Bex. Getting a breather from relatively high interest credit has been key for me. Felt I was running to stand still before, and felt guilty spending any money as I knew it should have been going towards paying off the (seemingly insurmountable) total. Now its stabilised I can allocate a reasonable chunk to paying it off each month and spend the rest (relatively) debt free.

9 more Student Loan payments @ £120, then things should be more comfortable still.