Debt Free by 30 Plan

shellyosborne

I have been reading through a lot of the debt free diaries lately and I saw one titles debt free by 40 which made me think maybe I should set my self a strict aim as well so I have decided to aim to be debt free by 30. The main reason being that me and my partner really want to buy a house and there is no chance of us doing that in the state we are currently in.

Our debt at one point was over £20,000 we got it down to nearly £10,000 and it has been shooting back up since then which mostly down to my partner being medically discharged from the forces and us having a baby (who is now 9 months old).
Due to circumstances I am now the only earner in the house and I work agency so my hours are never guaranteed and can be quite erratic.

I am pretty certain my incoming money doesn't cover my outgoings most money and I rely heavily on extra money I make on-line to balance the books but every month seems to be getting harder and I need to get things in check A.S.A.P

Our current debt breaks down as the following :
[STRIKE]Natwest Credit Card : £1226.38[/STRIKE]
Hitatchi Loan : £11,370.85 (settlement figure it will be £15,000+ by time it is paid off)
[STRIKE]Oakbrook Finance Loan: £2145 [/STRIKE]
BarcleyCard : £3160.50
Total : [STRIKE]£14,742.23[/STRIKE]£14.531.35

(The really sad thing about this is that I was pleasantly surprised it was under £15,000)

I am planning on clearing the Oakbrook Finance Loan and with the Natwest CC and transferring the whole balance onto a Barclaycard one I have a 0% on but I can't get hold of them to get a settlement figure, I even cancelled my DD thinking they would phone me but no luck yet.

So my total bills are as following:
Rent : £395 a month
Hitatchi Loan : £265 a month
[STRIKE]Oakbrook Loan: £112 a month[/STRIKE]
Council Tax: £105 a month
BarcleyCard : £90 a month
Gas : £60
Mobiles x 2 : £60
Water Rates : £45
Broadband and Phone : £42
Electric : £40
Car Insurance: £33
[STRIKE]Natwest CC : £25[/STRIKE]
Laptop Insurance : £8
Pet Insurance : £6
Netflix : £5.99
[STRIKE]House Insurance : £5[/STRIKE]Paid annually

Total : [STRIKE]£1207[/STRIKE] £1155 a month

Earnings
My Wages : Roughly £800-£1000 a month
Child Tax Credits £190 a month (I think they go up next month though)
Child Benefit : £80 a month

Total : £1070-£1270 a month

As that doesn't include food shopping it is a pretty scary thing to look at. We bought a chest freezer (which I have forgotten to add to the debt) to save on cooking so we could batch cook and so far it is going well. We spent £260 around 1 month ago and we have enough meals tp maybe last another month, obviously we will need to buy bread and milk but that is pretty much all we need to buy as we go. The £260 included all the baby things like nappies wet wipes, formula etc as well.

I am a member of pretty much every wacky and wonderful money earning website you can imagine but I am going to focus on just a couple of them from now on to try and maximize my earnings on them:
Ciao - I am going to aim to earn £20+ a month on here
Perk - I am going to aim to earn £10 a month on here
GeoLotto - I am going to aim to earn £10 a month on here
Field Agent and Roamler (phone apps) you can't really put a goal on here but I am will aim to complete as many tasks as possible.
Gift Hulk - I am going to aim to earn 10,000 points a month which is $10.00

So far the balances of each account are:
Ciao £59.66 - I have earned around £100 on here since joining but have been really erratic with my usage.
Perk 1980 points (99p I have only just joined this site)
GeoLotto - £5.61 (I joined a week and a half ago)
Field Agent - £0 (I have earned over £400 from this app)
Roamler - £17 (not many paid task but easy when they do come up)

I am also planning on doing some boot-sales at least one a month as I have loads to get rid of and I have totally lost faith with eBay lately.

OK so that is my plan so far, I will update with any progress made on earnings or payments made.

X

shellyosborne

Ok so I made my first addition (all be it very small) to the earnings pot yesterday I wrote one review on Ciao and got a 40p bonus so with my rates I earned £1.28, I made a measly 4p on perk.com (Again I am not sure how good this site will be yet). And I made £3.02 on geolotto's free treasure hunt (that is really good it's normally like 10p a day or something like that). So £4.34 so far of my £50ish target not bad for the first day. I am going to focus on writing reviews tonight as I have a stupidly long list of things I want to review.
I also booked two more shifts for May and one for Suday which will be another £65 each so that's good.

My new totals (for my own record really) are:
Ciao: £60.94
Perk: 2078
GeoLotto: £8.63
Field Agent: £0
Roamler: £17
Gift Hulk: 4310

xx

shellyosborne

So I have made another £1.02 on Ciao, 10p on perk (Every little helps), 64p on Geolotto, £9.50 on Field Agent and 190 points on Gift Hulk making my new totals -
Ciao - £61.96
perk - 2273
GeoLotto - £9.27
Field Agent - £9.50
Gift Hulk : 4500

I am so tempted to cash out my Ciao account but I am trying to wait until the end of the month, hopefully I can get it to £100 and have a nice chunk to cash out. I have got some music reviews I want to do so I am going to try and do them on my lunch break today.

x

shellyosborne

My plan has hit a giant spanner already, my boss just rang me and told me not to complete any more calls until further notice as they need to sort some stuff out with the campaign I am on. She said it's nothing to worry about and that the campaign isn't being pulled but I am not sure. If I loose this work my earnings will literally be about £300-400 a moth which obviously we can't live on. I guess I will be entitled to benefits then but I don't really want to go down that route. Mostly because I have no idea how to. I am so scared I feel a bit sick. I think I need to start looking for something else, the uncertainty of my job is too stressful.

shellyosborne

So after my disastrous news about my job I have spent all morning on the phone to the job centre, I am no clearer now than when I started the phone call but I think I have now applied for job seekers and housing benefit, apparently you can apply for job seekers if you work less than 16 hours which I do now. I have no idea how long it takes or how much I might get but at least it should be something and that will help.

As far as my earnings and debt paying has gone it pretty much hasn't I've been stressing the last few days and not been very productive but I am home now (this is the first day I would have been working but am not) so I need to get going and try and make some extra pennies.

I have made another £3.46, £1.41 on Geolotto and that's about it for the last 2 days but I guess it's still a fiver so I can't moan.

Hopefully will earn a bit more today x

shellyosborne

So I did a bit of debt juggling today, I paid off my expensive loan with one credit card and then transferred the balance onto another which had 6.9% balance transfer for the life of the balance. I was holding out for a 0% but as I had just missed one about a month ago I thought it was unlikely that one would come along too soon.
So instead of having two bills, the natwest CC at £25 a month and the Oakbrook finance at £112 a month I now have a barcleycard bill at about £90 a month by my estimations so £47 less a month and hopefully I will try and pay £90 every month even as the debt goes down so I can pay it off earlier.

As far as earnings go it has also been a good day, I won £5 on the ciao premium fund and a few more pennies on my other sites so my current balances ready to cash out at the end of the month are :

Ciao - £71.42
perk - 2334
GeoLotto - £14.34
Field Agent - £9.50
Roamler - £17
Gift Hulk : 4532

I also had a tax rebate today so I paid next months rent and the water and council tax so I don't have to worry about it so at least for now I am ahead of myself overall I would say it has been a successful day x

shellyosborne

I paid off my home insurance annually instead of monthly with the rest of my tax rebate so that's £5 less a month to pay now.

I earned another £2.32 on Geolotto and another £1.45 on Ciao so an extra £3.77 to the pot.

I think I should hit my targets at least on those two sites x