Dear Diary - I need help to stay focused!

Lou85

Hello all,

I've just come across this thread and thought I really should join as I'm currently trying to pay off debt in order to secure my first mortgage.

It would seem that doing it all on my own means that it's very easy to fall off the wagon and reach for the credit card instead of the debit card so I've decided I need to document publicly what I'm spending so that I am accountable to someone. This approach is working with my food diary/exercise group and I find that if I say I'm going to a class on there then I will as I'll be too embarrassed to say I couldn't be bothered so here's hoping the public shaming will be enough to sort my debt out once and for all!

The back story for me is I graduated from university in 2007 with a little debt (not including student loans as that will NEVER be repaid). I then went travelling for a bit and returned to a well paid job and saved like mad to go travelling for a full year. Once I got back from travelling in 2010, the recession had hit and I was working two minimum wage jobs and spending on my credit card just for the essentials as my jobs did not guarantee me a set number of hours per week so I had no idea how much income I would have.

Fast forward 5 years and I've since run up and paid off credit cards numerous times and I'm on my second car. I'm now looking to buy a house with my boyfriend who when I met him had a terrible amount of debt from a previous relationship meaning I took on a lot of the expense of our relationship. I knew what I was getting into so I'm not blaming him in any way. If anything, it was me who is at fault as I wanted to buy him everything he wanted or should I say WE wanted.

So now I have a car loan which I'm not too bothered about as I have no intention to own a car outright and the payment is only £130 per month, I have just paid off both my credit cards (however that money has come from a 0% money transfer from my boyfriend's credit card so need to pay him back) and a loan which has 2 years left and is £200 per month.

By December I plan to have paid back the £3000 to my boyfriend as well has saving £200 a month for my deposit. By June 2016 we plan to put a deposit down on a house. I'm estimating that I will be able to save £5500 by then as well as paying back the debt to my boyfriend. I had looked into paying the loan off early but they want to charge an extra £90 on top of the loan amount so I'm sticking with the monthly repayments for now. I will look to change my car after we have moved but only if I can get a car for the same monthly amount.

I'm worried that we won't be able to get the mortgage we need whilst I still have the loan in place but I don't want to have to pay extra money just to pay the loan off early!

If anyone has any tips for staying on the wagon or just wants to share, well, anything really, I'd appreciate it. I don't have a lot of time to dedicate to personal replies as I work two jobs but I will most definitely do my best to reply and keep you updated on our journey!

PS cannot wait to move into our own place, hopefully this year will pass as quickly as the last has living with the in-laws! Initially we only wanted to live with them for one year but realistically it must be two years. I bet they can't wait to get rid of us too!

Thanks

Pennypurse

Good luck with your journey and well done having 2 jobs wish I had the strength for that I know how you feel about the student debt I am just forgetting all about that! Have you seen the 1% challenge I think it's brilliant!

Lou85

Hi Penypurse, thanks for your post. I seen the 1% challenge mentioned on someone else's diary but I have no idea what it is. Sounds interesting though! Haha, yes two jobs is tiring. Hopefully once I'm settled into my own house I won't need a second job but I've been doing it that long I won't know what to do with myself!

Lou85

Well what a difference a few days make!

We had called about a house last Monday to find that it was sold so that is when we decided that we were sticking to our original time frame of summer 2016 for purchasing a house. On Thursday we got a call to say that the house was back on the market so the last few days have been a mad scramble to gather a 5% deposit and money to pay off my personal loan.

The mortgage is going to be in my name only (if I'm approved - still waiting on that part) just because my boyfriend is still named on his old mortgage. We might be jumping ahead of the game a bit here but the house is a good investment as it's being sold at £20000 less than the market value purely due to being acquired during a part exchange. If it had been a house being sold at the market value, I wouldn't have entertained it but we're guaranteed to make money to it, it's in good walk in condition and the mortgage will be affordable along with repaying debt so although it may take us longer to pay off the debt, we'll have our own house at the same time so we're going for it!

Just need to play the waiting game now to find out if I'm approved for the mortgage and take it from there.

There is just so much to think about when it comes to mortgages!

Eek!