The 300k debt-free diary!!!

chocaholic110

Ooh, congratulations!

Recognition from on high, very impressive!

pandapaws

I know! Just checked, and it's still there - how exciting!!! Was dying to tell friends (everyone I know gets Martin's emails) but that would waive my anonymity and I'd never be able to keep an honest diary if I thought that people from real-life were reading it!

Well, we got paid yesterday and the direct debits should all have come out by Friday. I'm so excited (how sad?!) at the thought of going through them all and seeing how much of our debt has been reduced. Can't wait to actually reduce some of the amounts in the signature!

Sold an old mobile phone last night for £30 from an ad I'd put in preloved. To be honest I only posted the ad because Quidco were offering a few pence for signing up, so I was really surprised to get a result - had totally forgotton about it! Will use that cash for spends/groceries and see how long we can last without a trip to the bank.

I'm at work 12 hours today, but have made good use of the time and put another matched bet on which should make about £40. I think we're about £100 up in total plus about £90 in Quidco as well which I'm quite pleased about for a week's work, but will know for sure after tonight's match.

DH has also cleaned the house today (or so he claims anyway!). Got the valuation tomorrow with potential replacement agent and still don't know what to do re using them or self-marketing. I got some great advice on the house selling board, but still undecided. Trying to decide if we could manage a drop in price to bring it under the stamp duty threshold, which would hopefully ensure a quick sale, but that would be a very bitter pill to swallow and leave us with no profit to pay off debt (we'd planned to clear 20k) and barely enough to pay the fees, deposit etc.

Oh, and we jsut realised when the post came that it is our 4th wedding anniversary today as well - true romantics or what?! My all-day shift followed by OHs night tonight will at least stop us from using the anniversary as an excuse to go out and spend too much on a meal! Might get a Chinese or something for dinner, if we share it will be under a fiver!

pandapaws

Hooray - just got 2 cheques for 2x£73.50=£147 in the post as our bi-monthly cashback for our mobile contracts! That'll go towards NatWest card!

We had quite a productive day yesterday: went to HSBC to talk about bringing our banking back from Halifax, and saw a lovely girl in the branch who has filled in an auto-account transfer form (telephone banking told us that service was for brand-new-customers-only, so that was a bonus!), and we've set the date for the switch for 2nd Oct as that's the quietest time of the month on our account. Can't wait to be rid of the Halifax (although we'll still have to pay their overdraft back - d'oh!)

She also opened us a No2 account, which we want to use as a save-up for debt account, to see how much we can get together each month and pay towards whatever debt we're tackling at that time. I'll pay the 2 cheques we received today into it, and Quidco are due to pay me soon so I've changed the bank details there, so that should be a healthy start! It will also be good to keep the matched betting seperate from our normal account - I don't think it looks particularly good on our account to have so many switch transactions to bookmakers, especially since we'll be applying for a mortgage fairly soon!

Had the house valued by replacement agent. They're a smaller firm, very respectable/not cheesy/sleazy, and deal in bigger houses and farms mainly, and have a very professional approach. She said the value was spot on, and that if we weren't in a hurry we could market it for more - she confirmed that it is just a very slow market at the moment and that the price probably isn't causing the problem, just the lack of buyers. She lives in a smaller house just around the corner by the same builder, and was really enthusiastic about ours, so hopefully that enthusiasm will pass on to her staff and we'll see results! Have to give the old agents 7 days notice, so will speak to new one next week about dates etc.

Also had another appointment for a scan/midwife booking from my preferred hospital (the local one is filthy!), so will do that on Tuesday and then tell the local one that I'm off! If we move, we'd be using the new one anyway and it is much nearer work. Will be good to see how much bigger baby is in the 2 weeks since 1st scan!

Hope everyone has a good weekend!
xxx

redfaced

:rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:
pandapaws that is so funny about forgetting your wedding anniversary, me and my dh did exactly the same thing this week!!! my family were appalled but we thought it was quite funny. glad we're not the only ones though, was starting to feel a bit like a freak!!

pandapaws

:j :j :j
Ok, result of the year:

Was at work bored earlier, so though I'd look through Quidco, TCB etc to see if there was any decent cashback I'd missed. Found Littlewoods Bingo offering £20 if you deposit £10, so gave it a go...

AND I WON £134!!!

Here was me just trying to get rid of the £10 deposit as quickly as possible by buying loads of cards for each game, and I went and hit some kind of mini-jackpot! It let me withdraw it straight away (I had to forfeit my £1 bonus - even better!), so that's well on its way to the NatWest find. Things like that never normally happen!

We're off out this evening for dinner as the in-laws have taken DS so we can get out to celebrate the anniversary (they were more upset than us that we'd forgotton! Glad you've done it too Redfaced!). Will probably go to the pub for a cheapie!

lunar

ive just read through your diary. You have made so many changes in such a short space of time. It feels so good to see that total debt reducing at the end of the month.

I was also gulity of spending whad i thought i had, not what i actually had. not quite sure how i managed to ignore the rising sum on all my cards!

congrats on the win today, enjoy your celebration tonight

MUSTBEFUNNY_2

Just read through your thread (better than the telly) GOOD LUCK :money::T:rotfl::rotfl:

pandapaws

MUSTBEFUNNY wrote: »

Just read through your thread (better than the telly) GOOD LUCK :money::T:rotfl::rotfl:

You should get Sky!!! :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:

pandapaws

lunar wrote: »

ive just read through your diary. You have made so many changes in such a short space of time. It feels so good to see that total debt reducing at the end of the month.

I was also gulity of spending whad i thought i had, not what i actually had. not quite sure how i managed to ignore the rising sum on all my cards!

congrats on the win today, enjoy your celebration tonight

Thanks Lunar!

We had a nice meal out last night although we spent a bit more than we wanted (my pregnant tastes wouldn't settle for less than the fillet stake at £11.95). After the bingo win (never thought I'd say that) I felt we deserved it anyway, and because I'm obviously not drinking the total was about £30 instead of the £70+ it would have been normally!

When we got home, we sat and talked about money, which is all we ever seem to talk about, but it was so nice and refreshing to be talking about it positively for the first time in ages. We've worked out that if we stick to it, manage to sell our house and get something about for under 200k (have seen one we'd like to buy, and its only £180k!) then we can not only be debt free by 2012, but potentially mortgage free by the time we're 40 (2016). We NEED to do this!!!

SarahNeedle1872

Hi Panda...

Just found ur diary and read from start to finish.... Congrats on the baby and the lbm, and well done for your positive attitude.... and ur good start at debt reduction.
Look forward to more updates

Sarah x