Snowscreamer's debt reduction efforts

snowscreamer

Quick update - payday for me - I was so excited that I logged onto internet banking and made a £400 payment to my normal credit card - this just about covers what I spent on that card this month so balances out, and a £450 overpayment to our 0% card. Still waiting for OH payday tomorrow and then we have budgeted for him to pay £400 off his main CC which covers spending and a bit more. Then that card can go back to monthly full repayment and we are just left with the 0% as a "debt" card.

So currently after my payments today our total credit card balance stands at £5780.31 - this is down from £7099.54 end of last month, and after tomorrow once we get OH repayments in we should be around £5400. That's a massive chunk off the CC balance and off our shoulders

Budget-wise we've overspent quite a bit this month
Done some whack-a-mole in YNAB by redistributing the odd underspend that we don't need to carry over and also took £50 out of debt repayment to cover but it still leaves us with £178.22 overspend. £90 of that is a wine box which turned up which I forgot to cancel - grrr! Long term it shouldn't matter as if we can try to be disciplined with the wine then we can just cancel the next planned box so it's just planned spending brought forward.

Anyway the overspend will be dealt with next month one way or another. After two such good months it was almost inevitable!!

More updates at the weekend probably when we have finalised April and budgeted for May.

Snowscreamer

beanielou

Good amount off the CC's

snowscreamer

Thanks Beanie, yes I'm happy with that! It's a lot at once - but in reality we haven't saved £1700 over the last month (now that would be nice!!). The truth is we are finally in a position where we have a large enough buffer to cover monthly expenses without risking the dreaded overdrafts so are happy to start paying the CCs down, and £1700 was the figure calculated.
We have built up our buffer from £600 to £3200 over the last 5 months - income exceeding budgeted expenditure by an average of £520/month. We have worked out that the buffer we need is in the region of £1500 so the £1700 excess has gone onto the CCs. From now on we will keep the buffer at £1500 so all surpluses will come straight off credit cards at the end of the month.

snowscreamer

Scores on the doors for April:
March spending: -£3116.02 (hmmm... made up for low spending in Feb and March then!)
In bank end of March: £2936.52 - DOWN £1091.57
Credit cards end of March: -£5380.71 - UP £1718.83 (yeehah!)
Net debt end of March: -£2444.19 - UP £627.26

So... as predicted spendy month. Especially after low-spending February and March. But still less than our first two months of budgeting, and this month we did pay a few big bills: holiday, last term's music lessons, two wine boxes (one of which was accidental).

And the most important thing, we may have spent more than February and March, but we still spent £627.26 LESS than we received in income this month. £450 of that has gone to reduce the debt and the rest allocated for future expenditure. As we had £4655.35 in cleared funds at the end of the month and needed only £3055.81 to stay in the clear for next month's expenditure we put a large chunk of the excess towards clearing the credit cards which means we paid in total a stonking £1718.83 off our credit cards. Very happy with this. We are unlikely to pay off such big sums at once again though - plan to be quicker on the uptake from here on in so we don't let our clear funds pile up whilst the debt is static.

I expect May to be a spendy month again as I have decided to have counselling for the anxieties I've been experiencing re. our remaining cat and the road. It's £45 a session :eek: but if it makes me calm down and stops the anxiety spiral then it will be worth it. And with our spending restraint I'm confident I can afford it whilst still having money left to pay off the debt (budgeted £250 towards the debt next month assuming £180 spend on counselling on top of normal budget). I have been suffering pretty badly from anxiety over the past couple of years after the death of a family member and I was *so nearly back* to my normal self by the end of last year. The beginning of this year has just been horrible with the unexpected death of a close friend (age 23) followed by our cat and the anxiety has crept back. It's not nearly as bad as it was - but I think catching it before it spirals and attending counselling should knock it on the head once and for all. Already feeling much better after my first session yesterday so fingers crossed I will only need a few and then the debtbusting can speed back up! :money:

Tomorrow I've organised a 17.5 mile / 1200ft climb bike ride with some colleagues in preparation for the 45 mile / 2400ft climb charity ride we are taking part in on Sunday 10th. Looking forward to it - fingers crossed for the weather! After that no plans so a chilled weekend :cool:

Happy debtbusting all, and have a great long weekend! :beer:

Snowscreamer

beanielou

So agree about catching the anxiety before it spirals out of control.
Hope it helps.

snowscreamer

Me too - can definitely do without going back to where I was end of 2013 with not only worrying about things that probably weren't going to happen but on top of that worrying about worrying!! No siree, that life is not for me.

snowscreamer

Not such a great discovery today. I knew we were over-using electricity compared to our monthly direct debit of £50 but I thought it would only be about £20/month for 3 colder months and had budgeted accordingly; however looking at the numbers this morning, over the last 12 months we have paid £600 but the total cost for our usage is £794.44. I budgeted £60 extra in total so that still leaves a shortfall of £134.44... gah!

Our bill over the next twelve months for the same usage would be £758.68 as I have switched to a new fixed tariff which is slightly cheaper but obviously I am still going to have to make some additional payments or get the DD increased.

We used an average of 13 units/day last summer and that increased to a maximum of 25 units/day in February. It's going down again now.
Given the seasonal difference I think I have to blame it on heating of some sort...

We have electric underfloor heating and electric towel rails in our bathroom (installed by the previous owners) which are frankly shocking at doing their job as our bathroom is quite nippy in the winter even though I've fiddled about with a control panel in the understairs cupboard - set it to 22deg in the morning and evening and 5 deg during the day. I think it must be controlling the underfloor heating as the towel rails seem to be on all the time and I have no idea how to change that. They warm the towels but not sure how much of their heat actually gets into the bathroom.

The other electric heating we have is a convector heater in our living room as in a 22ft long room inexplicably there is a radiator right down one end near sliding patio doors and nothing in the main seating area where we have our TV, sofas etc (and spend most of our time!). So the heart of the house is the coldest part of the house... We do plan this summer (awaiting quote) to have another radiator added to the living room so at least then we can ditch that convector heater. I can't imagine one radiator adding that much onto our heating bill (which is pretty low at £500 last year) but hopefully it will pay for itself over a few years in reduced electricity costs. And of course is likely to be more effective at making the room a comfortable temperature.

But I don't know what I can do about the bathroom

hummingbird

Your energy consumption looks very similar to mine - my smartmeter is doing wonders in getting me to reduce as I'm able to keep an eye on the daily totals. Wish I'd had it before!

Sorry to hear about the anxiety - I've been having it too recently but I know mine is very specific over the money issues I'm facing - well done for going for counselling. I'm actually considering going to my GP about the anxiety - I've never gone for anything like that before but have got to the point where I think it may help to speak to someone objectively.:o

snowscreamer

Hi Hummingbird,

What did you find on your smartmeter that was causing the extra use? Was it heating for you as well? So cross with previous owners installing electric heating - what a stupid thing to do - costs slightly less to install but with running costs...! Well he was renting the house out so that answers that one. He wasn't paying the running costs. In fact when we moved in the electricity meter was "broken" - I suspect it had been tampered with so that he didn't have to pay the high electricity bill since his tenants moved out.

Funnily enough I don't think I have really been that anxious about the money situation. I don't know if it's related at all but I suspect not really. I think mine is all related to a a couple of rubbish years. Seemed to all start off with OH's aunt dying unexpectedly and then I was dwelling on life being short; humans being fragile and ended up getting really worried about my own health. Then it just spiralled but I got it under control. Just a blip I think with the terrible start to this year and I just want to stay on top of it. I'm actually feeling a lot better this week and not worrying so much about kitty going outside, so hopefully the first session helped.

I didn't see my GP as I didn't want to go down the medication route - I figured it started in my head so it could end in my head. I wanted to be able to control it. Pretty sure I am getting there Good luck with whatever you decide though!

During my recovery from my first bout - which was really bad - I ended up worrying about health, worrying about worrying about health, and was anxious and jittery all the time and unable to enjoy myself, had loads of physical symptoms and was generally a shell of my former self - I read a couple of books which were really helpful and I am so much better now although not quite out of the woods. Happy to share the names of those books if you are interested.

MoneyMission2015

Hi SS, just read your post about your bathroom and just wanted to say that I found when we had a towel rail in our previous house it didn't actually give out a lot of heat to the rest of the bathroom so we also had a radiator in the bathroom - kind of pointless really! Can you get the towel rail removed? Maybe have a normal radiator installed in its place and stop using the underfloor heating altogether. Or if the underfloor heating is more economical than a radiator maybe just get rid of the towel rail & rely on the underfloor heating in the bathroom. You'd also have extra wall space then in the bathroom if you need any extra shelving or anything.


Also, in the long term, if everything is running on electricity have you thought about solar power? I know everybody has their own views on solar and some people don't like the panels, but we have solar panels on our roof and we have halved our utility bills. Also we didn't use one of these 'rent a roof' schemes, so we earn the tax free money on the tariff, but it can cost quite a bit to have installed so you would need to do your research to make sure the upfront costs are worth it. We are lucky because our roof is facing in the right direction to have the panels on the back of the house, so you can't even see them from the front.