A new debt free journey

lcc86

Minor update: have paid for my survey on the new property and been to the bank to organise all the finer details of what the monthly repayments will be etc. I DO have enough to keep £5,000 back from my equity to clear my credit card!! Happy times. The balance is actually £5,400, I would normally pay £200 a month but I'm going to do £60 a month until I move to maximise my savings as I need to find £1,200 to pay my proportion of the estate agent fees. Any balance which is left after the move I'll focus on clearing asap. But provided all goes through, I'll be debt free soon! I almost don't want to get my hopes up just in case!


Every day this week has been a NSD, but today I forgot my lunch so will have to buy something. I'll give myself a £3 budget max.

lcc86

Yesterday was rather spendy. Had a pre planned lunch date in London with friends which I'd set aside £60 for. One friend pulled out so me and the other friend decided to stay local. I spent £20 on lunch and then went and bought some new jeans and shoes as mine have all been falling apart, so I have spent the £40 difference but at least it was on things I needed and have needed to replace for some time.

On my way home unfortunately my car was hit by a lunatic on a quad bike who was trying to mount the pavement to get round a queue of traffic. Am really annoyed because it all happened so quickly I couldn't get his details. Reported it to the police but doubt anything will come of it. That's the fourth time in as many months that my car has been hit (although I was at fault for one of those times). Am getting it painted in a couple of weeks so will get the damage covered up, but that's hardly the point... So when I got home yesterday I finally ordered a dash cam, it cost me £30 with a memory card but it's money well spent if I can prevent something like this happening again. Ironically I was waiting until the middle of the month to order it just to see how my finances were. Should've just done it sooner! Ah well.

Today should be an NSD. am in the gym now, all paid for already, then will head home to study. I haven't studied for months and need to finish my professional qualification! I have £44 left until payday in 1 1/2 weeks. It doesn't sound like much but everything is paid for so I'm not too concerned.

lcc86

Have finalised August's budget and placed my shopping order too for payday. It's going to be a tight couple of months. I'll be trying to put £500 away each month towards legal fees until we move. I should still be able to start saving for Christmas (can't believe I'm saying that in July!).

I also figured that over the next couple of months I'm going to buy some gym equipment - kettle bells, medicine balls etc - as I've realised recently that these are the things I use most in the gym so it makes more sense to just buy them and pay the one-off cost then I won't need the gym any more. Any excuse to help find more money towards my horse riding endeavours!

Finally, I paid my credit card bill today, £60. I feel slightly uncomfortable paying so little but it's for a good reason and knowing I can pay it off in full soon makes me feel a lot better about it.

lcc86

Have spoken to my solicitor this morning and she thinks we might be able to complete in 6-8 weeks, which is super quick! She doesn't know for sure yet until my survey is done, which is happening on Thursday. It's great news for us if it does happen, but definitely means those purse strings have to be tightened to the max!! Not great when OH has a stag do in Berlin next month... But that's his lookout not mine I guess!

I also did a car insurance quote today following losing my no claims discount. It's not as bad as I thought. I mean, it's doubled from £270 to £590 but I honestly thought it would be more. Usually I'd pay annually but with moving, I just won't be able to save in time. I have £100 to pay the first instalment but will split the rest monthly this time round. It sucks but it's the way it goes sometimes!!

lcc86

Have just gone through my finances for the rest of the month. I have one more DD to go through and should have £15 spare from my bills account after that's happened. I'll put that towards my electricity bill. I've made a couple of extra payments to that this month to try and reduce the deficit. I would swap but it's not worth it what with moving, by the time they sort it out I'll be moving out! I've upped the DD from next month too to help with it. I've also got £24 in my spending money account. I do need to buy a few toiletries, so will see how much of that I have left at the end of the month and will sweep it into the moving fund.


I bought a new hoover the other day online, it had £100 off so I was naughty and put it on my Very account. I've put £100 aside next month to pay towards it. I need a bigger hoover for the new place as I only have a small handheld and that's not going to cut it long-term. If it wasn't reduced I would have waited but that was quite a good reduction. Plus if I space out my purchases then I find myself less panicky about paying out for things, in my weird illogical way of thinking. I also need to buy a new fridge/freezer and may put that on my Very account but am undecided. If I can save for it before moving day then I will pay outright for it. My budget is £250. Either way, I'll still have a little debt left to pay after I move, so will be writing on here for a little while longer!


Spoke to my mortgage advisor and surveyor yesterday, because the lease on my new place needs to be extended, they think it'll take longer than 6-8 weeks to complete. So that gives me a little extra time to save. After paying out for the survey I'm now down to £300 in the pot - a long way to go as I need to find about £1,000 over the next couple of months on top of that!! Saying that, if I wasn't moving, I wonder whether I'd be quite so stringent with myself about finding the same amount to pay off my credit card... knowing me, probably not.

lcc86

Been a few days since I last updated. Have reviewed my finances for the past month and everything was pretty much bang on what I budgeted. For the second, or maybe third, month in a row the food budget has worked out perfectly so I'm very happy with that after struggling with it for so long.

Will update my targets soon. The weekend was crazy busy with riding and volunteering so everything else got neglected as I was so tired by the end of it! Payday on Thursday so I should be able to see my payslip tomorrow and finalise August's budget.

lcc86

Have seen my payslip now for July and because of various expenses claims I've got £50 more to play with than I thought, which is fab. Have finalised August's budget and it's looking good, should be able to save £500 towards moving.

Time to review July's targets:
1. Finalise everything needed to sell flat - done and dusted. Everything is with the solicitors now so it's hopefully just a matter of time before it all goes through.

2. Sort out electricity bills - also done. It's not worth switching due to not knowing when we'll move but I'll pay more towards it from now until then.

3. Spend less than 75% of unallocated funds - achieved, and all spare funds put into my moving fund. I put £1 every day in plus a little extra here and there.

So I guess I need to think about any targets for August:
1. Spend less than 75% of unallocated funds - as per last month. I have £234 exactly in my unallocated pot. I'm going to transfer £1 a day to the moving fund and £1 a day to my Very account to help clear that down. Little targets :rotfl:

2. Improve my riding - not a financial target but it's something I really want to do. I got to a point in May where I was really progressing but seem to have gone backwards a little bit as I struggled to get a ride for a while and am just getting used to a new place.

3. Finalise as much as possible for the move - I'd like to say finalise everything but that may be a tad too ambitious!

lcc86

Pay day today woohoo!! Always a good day. Have shuffled money around to various different pots. My moving fund now stands at £816. MUCH healthier than it was looking yesterday! I'm less stressed now as I 'only' have about another £600 to find so it suddenly seems a lot less daunting. I went and bought some filler this morning to start taking down pictures/shelves and filling the holes. Not looking forward to it and to having mess everywhere...


I dropped my car off to be painted this morning, that should cost £250. It's money I could do without spending but it's been this way for four months now which is just too long! I got my very first Uber home - it worked out cheaper than public transport, and about an hour and a half quicker! The only downside was the driver said I should've got a promo code to get £15 off my first ride and I didn't. I looked online when I got home and found the code, but it's too late now, I can't enter it retrospectively, and they don't seem to have contact details on their website. So a lesson learned, ALWAYS look for promo codes for these things!


Have also paid £61 to my Very account and will pay an extra £1 every day throughout August to keep that total decreasing!


Have to take all my documents into my solicitor today so am working from home (plus I have no car, and no desire to pay another £20 to get the train to work and back when Southern couldn't organize a p*ss up in a brewery hehe).


Not much else to report really, just quietly plodding along.

lcc86

Last night I made the mistake of starting to read my KonMari book... Well 115 pages, two bin bags and a charity shop bag later and I'm obsessed!! I've tried to do this before just by reading the basics of how it works, but this time I've gone all in. I've also got some stuff I'm going to try and sell on ebay. I'm only about halfway through, have done clothes, books and am halfway through papers... I'll have nothing left by the time I move :rotfl:

lcc86

Finished Kondoing all my stuff today. I was working from home and got all my work done as fast as I could and then spent the afternoon sorting through my stuff. Got rid of another bin bag of stuff and another bag for the charity shop. Also have one big bag to recycle. I sold an old games console for £15, not much but better than putting it in the bin! Have moved that straight into the moving fund. I feel better about tidying the house and having less junk already. Tidy house tidy mind! The only thing I didn't do was make a proper storage space for my clothes because of the move but this is number one on my list of priorities!!

Plans for the weekend are to go to parkrun tomorrow morning, horse riding tomorrow afternoon and then just chill all day Sunday. Can't wait.