My Debt Free Aspiration

Tracker400

Hello everyone. My name is Rob and been lurking around here the past few weeks but thought I'd share goal with everyone. I feel that buy sharing with everyone it might help focus on getting debt free a little more.

Basically due to careless spending and being very impatient I have amassed a total unsecured debt of £15072.33 spread over 2 loans; one of £8398.35 and the other £6673.98. Both have rather high interest rates of 16.49% and 17.9% respectively. The monthly payments for each of these is near enough spot on £600. I also have a car on finance which costs me £265 per month.

I am employed in the Royal Air Force and currently live on station in a barrack block but me and my girlfriend have just purchased our first house together so my monthly outgoings are soon going to be considerably more than I am used too.

My monthly salary is approximately £2100 after tax but with the new house bills and my debts things are going to be tight so I want to get debt free as soon as possible as the extra £600 a month will make things so much easier. I will try and keep this thread updated and hopefully I can work hard at getting rid of this stupid debt sooner rather than later.

So after all that I guess my question is are there any obvious steps I should be taking or is there any advice anyone would care to share?

Kind regards

Rob

crunch_time

Morning rob!

Well done for taking the first step!

How long have the loans got left to run? Have you got a good credit history so you could potentially consider transferring them to a cheaper loan? Are you able to pay off the loans early? I have one loan of about the same value but it's at 3.75% and our payments are £275 a month. Once I have paid off my od and ccs I'm planning to chuck what I can into a savings account and pay it off early. I will then have a savings buffer in case anything goes wrong. That might be something that suits you too with a new house.

The key thing would be to budget budget budget and stick to it.

You'll need to do a statement of affairs - someone please help me with the link here!! You put your income in and all your outgoings. You can then see where your money is going and where you can make cut backs.

If you put 'statement of affairs' into the search on the forum the form should come up.

Hope that helps! Best of luck with your journey!
Crunch

Tracker400

Hey Crunch. Sorry for the late reply. Thanks for the advice. One of my loans is set to end Nov 2017 and the other July 2018. I would love to consolidate them both into a single monthly payment but my credit rating isn't exactly great... Not terrible but I think the amount of unsecured debt is seriously bringing it down.

Would anyone have any advice on where I might be able to go for a consolidation loan with a reasonable APR?

Many thanks

Rob