January 2015 is the beginning

Brogden

January2015 wrote: »

Many thanks for your response Brogden. I can see your point of view re. going down the self-managed DMP route and it is something I will take on board.....for the future

At the moment this is all very new to us and being brutally honest (with myself rather than you) I think we need the life lessons of having to pay a single lump sum through a third party (StepChange in our case) and learning to live within an agreed budget. Clearly we didn't have a clue how to do that, hence the levels of our debt.

My concern with the idea of your example of a £500 DMP, paying 5 creditors £1 p/mth each and squirrelling away £495 p/mth to save for a partial and final settlement is that we have not truly learnt our lesson about spending within our budgets yet and hence any condsideration of self-managing a DMP is, for us, at least a year away.

I would love to think we could do this, and we are already saving the money SC allow us each month for things like repairs and maintenance, emergency funds, opticians etc. etc. If we can save for these things for a minimum of a year, and only access those savings when we need funds to pay for any related items, then I will be happy to believe we could self-manage the DMP and potentially decrease payments to creditors and increase the savings element toward saving for partial and final payment offers.

I have to say that using YNAB has been enlightening and made us think more about us income and expenditure than ever before. I have always been a spreadsheet girl I love Excel and am fairly proficient in using excel formula (and VB code), but I needed to logic and thought processes that went into the creation of YNAB to put me on the right path.

Yes January I understand and it is still taking me a long time to fully learn how to live within my means, hence my envelope method. My new investment with BG (A 'Hive') is, I think the most mature money I have ever spent and part of that process - hope it works for me :eek:.

The example I gave was extreme and frankly irresponsible but was there just to illustrate the idea which was suggested to me in a friendly conversation with a lady who worked in a collections team for a payday lender

Some people may question the ethics but as I see it the lenders don't treat us in a fair and consistent way so why should we treat them as such? Also..........the moment interest is frozen we have let the side down so we might as well do what we can to exit with a hopefully beneficial arrangement for all. Unlike a lot of people in society I do think about the morals and right and wrong (is there an emoticon with a halo?)

I do think the FCA has a lot more work in front of it with debt collection policies and approaches! It is the Wild West and I do not believe that is what the regulator would wish for :rotfl:!!!!!

I am sure your DMP will bed down and start behaving very shortly :T

Brogden x

January2015

Brogden wrote: »

My new investment with BG (A 'Hive') is, I think the most mature money I have ever spent and part of that process - hope it works for me :eek:.

Brogden x

I am intrigued - what on earth in BG (A 'Hive')

Brogden

January2015 wrote: »

I am intrigued - what on earth in BG (A 'Hive')

It's a thermostat controlled heating device which works on a wireless internet connection from BG (British Grass) :p:p

I set the temperature and it is supposed to maintain it

I'll be you thought I was selling my own honey didn't you Honey !!

Busy Bee today must buzz on................

January2015

Definitely not a NSD for me The jumper knitting didn't go as fast as planned, the birthday is here and jumper only half finished:rotfl:

So I've been into town today and purchased a lovely jumper for DS. Cost £19.99, but that's okay because we have budgetted for birthdays and have the funds in savings to cover it:T

It is a lovely feeling to purchase a gift and not pay for it on a credit card and not worry that our debt is increasing because we want to buy our loved ones birthday presents.

Also, because we are now using YNAB to budget and birthday costs are included in our budgets this purchase had no detrimental impact on the figures.

I am just so sorry we waited this long and got into this much of a pickle before we found this thread and the light switch

January2015

Payday today - it was lovely to arrive at payday with a positive balance in the bank account. I honestly cannot remember the last time that occured (well other than when a loan had been paid in:o)

I've spent a bit of time setting up the budget for the first two weeks of March on YNAB. I can only set up two weeks because DH gets paid in the middle of the month - so the remaining two weeks will be set up when his salary appears in the bank:T

I love YNAB and totally understand the rationale for building up towards living off of last month's salary, but being on a DMP I cannot see that happening any time soon. We are building up an emergency fund but I am not putting that towards YNAB's idea of living off last month's salary. I would be too scared it would get swallowed up somewhere:rotfl: I know in reality it wouldn't but I am too new to both DMPing and YNAB to want to take the risk.

System

I also got paid yesterday and have to agree it was great to still have some money left and also not for the money to have to go straight into the bank and then straight out to pay CC's etc. I went to Aldi on the way home from work....with my £5 off voucher....and it was great knowing I could buy some food and it was actually with "real" money and not with overdraft! We had been living on overdraft for so long, this is quite an achievement.
Glad all is going well for you.

January2015

It's the middle of the night and I can't sleep - not debt or DMP worries; I have toothache I hope it goes away on it's own. It's Sunday [STRIKE]tomorrow[/STRIKE] today so dental appointments not the easiest thing to organise and I have an event at work on Monday which I have organised and can't get out of. I am leading the event and have almost 100 people coming - so toothache begone :T

What to do when you can't sleep and have toothache. Read the DFW forum, log in to internet banking and check transactions against YNAB - nice surprise is that a relative has paid me back for a loan I gave them before Christmas - extra £100 in the bank :j (to be fair it was a loan with repayment terms of pay me back whenever you can, and yes I know I am so in debt I shouldn't have been lending anyone any money but before Christmas I was still in cuckoo land so it was allowed :rotfl:).

£100 added straight to our emergency fund - I'm off to update my signature Hope everyone else is having a good night's sleep:beer:

January2015

Small update - toothache gone

Only had a checkup a couple of weeks before Christmas so fingers tightly crossed it doesn't come back.

January2015

I've been gradually collecting a pile of stuff to sell and have decided to set myself a challenge of listing at least five items each week for the next 6 weeks.

So far today I have listed 3 items on eBay.

Fingers crossed they actually sell now :rotfl:

January2015

January2015 wrote: »

Not a very debt busting weekend. OHs car broke down - well it went into limp mode - could drive but no acceleration. Fortunately we have recovery to home with AA. Recovery guy said its the engine management system - sounds expensive

I am now panicking about not having enough money to sort this out. We definitely have no access to credit as we've told all the card companies we are working with SC and sent them the first £1 token payment. Oh shoot

I can only hope it's a cheap(ish) fix. We can't manage without the car as DH works over 25 miles away and there is no direct bus/train route, plus he needs his vehicle for his job (and part of his salary is a car allowance)

Following the post above, and after putting the car in the garage and they couldn't replicate the fault (so no charge for just looking :T) we decided to cross our fingers and hope it was a one off event and the car would be alright. Big mistake :(:(:(

The car is limping all the time now. So it must be repaired now. I am not too concerned because we do have an emergency fund (and other small pots of money we have been putting away for repairs/maintenance, Christmas etc.). I'll be sad to dip into the savings funds but needs must and at least we have the funds available to pay for it