The Longshot route to a new life!

belleandthebudget

Doing great, Itsa!

Itsa_Longshot

Nearly two months since my last update, and it's not been a good two months! Christmas went quite well in terms of sticking to the presents budget, but I've been spending far too much on myself. I've not been having a good time at work and that combined with a recurring health issue has seen me spending to cheer myself up. Food, takeaways, books, films, games, I even bought a dining room table - I'd been thinking of getting one for a while though it was far from necessary.

Anyway, I need to get back on track. Firstly, the monthly updates I've missed:

November: +£114.69
December: -£60.04

This is the total balance change across all my accounts at the end of the month. I'd had five consecutive positive months since starting the debt busting, but December has ended that run. For those six months though, I'm at +£1,404.01, which I'm quite happy with.

These are the debts at the end of December:

Loan: £3,082.04
Credit card #1: £775.44
Credit card #2 (0%): £4,520.00
Total: £8,377.48

Credit card #1 is my monthly spending card, and unfortunately with much of Christmas on here, this is the first time since transferring the balance to the 0% card that I can't pay off the monthly statement balance in full - was about £120 short. But hopefully I'll be able to take care of that next time and only have a small amount of interest.

Once that's sorted out, I'll be targeting the loan, and this is my big financial target for the year - clear the loan! It'll go for another two years if I let it run it's natural course, but I'm going to try and get it done in one. Monthly payments are £170.49, so that'll total £2,045.88 over a year, leaving £1,036.56 plus interest. The interest is currently around £18 per month, so adding on £216.00 take it to £1,252.56. I assume that if I try to pay off the loan early there will also be some sort of interest or charge to pay for doing so, though I don't know how much that'll be. I've therefore set the target at £1,400.00. This is certainly an ambitious target and will be difficult to achieve, but it's the one I'm setting!

Despite the wild spending of late, I'm actually in a really good positive mood at the moment. I've had a very enjoyable Christmas (a couple in recent years haven't been quite so much fun), and in the last few days I've really just been getting on with stuff that I've been putting off. Had a good tidy up at home, given it a proper clean, chucked some junk - the place is looking much better at the moment, and far more homely than it often does. I've fallen a long way behind with my studying though, so that is one thing I need to pick up on and set aside more regular time for. I just hope this current good mood lasts more than a couple of hours once I'm back at work on Monday...

Anyway, if you've read this far through my waffle, a happy new year to you! :beer:

Itsa_Longshot

So the first day back at work wasn't too bad, the other two have been a bore though. Only around 230 more working days until Christmas! :eek:

I've also been a naughty boy and wasted money on two tickets for the lottery tonight. They increased the range of numbers to reduce the chances of a jackpot winner and therefore increase the number of rollovers and jackpot size to sell more tickets and I've gone and been sucked in! :mad:

Itsa_Longshot

So I'm only a couple of weeks late with the January update! For the month I was at +£234.93 which is pretty good after a loss in December, and Christmas is now fully paid off too. Back on track!

A bit if a landmark too, the debt is now below £8k! :j

Short month now and I've resisted a few temptations so far, so hoping for £400+.