Coming Clean

Kitten868

What are you new totals? X

fuzzyduck22

Youre doing so well!!! Well done! I'm not managing to pay off as much this month BUT I have had lots of fun things to do which has been nice for a change!

Love this time of year too
Happy payday

misstara

Merry Christmas rainbowskies, hope you have a great day tomorrow x

rainbowskies

Kitten868 wrote: »

I'm so glad you understood what I said and took it the right way. I was worried you'd think I was being critical. I'm so pleased for you that you're going to turn it all around like the blip it should be.
Don't tackle too much. It's well known that when you quit smoking you gain loads of weight. Just tackle one behaviour at a time x

Kitten868 wrote: »

What are you new totals? X

Thank you, Kitten868. I understand exactly what you meant! Regarding tackling too much, there was a reply by another poster above you read in a book that it's incredibly difficult to tackle more than one bad habit at a time as it can been like too much. It's an interesting read and I'm trying my best to follow that advice!

Current totals are:

MBNA: £1150
Barclaycard: £1094.11
Loan: £7458.78

rainbowskies

fuzzyduck22 wrote: »

Youre doing so well!!! Well done! I'm not managing to pay off as much this month BUT I have had lots of fun things to do which has been nice for a change!

Love this time of year too
Happy payday

Thank you, Fuzzyduck22.

I'm glad you've found yourself exciting and fun things to do. Not paying off as much as you want during a month or so isn't the end of the world. To happiness, health and family! Let's have fun now and think about January a little later!

rainbowskies

misstara wrote: »

Merry Christmas rainbowskies, hope you have a great day tomorrow x

Thank you!

And you as well, Misstara! Have an amazing day full of festive cheer! x

rainbowskies

Merry Christmas to all! I hope everyone has a lovely day tomorrow with family, friends and pets! The good things in life really are free. xxx

I'm off to my parents' house very early tomorrow and I will be spending the next four days at theirs with the rest of the family. I shall be back next week. Take care everyone, bye for now.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!! :j :j :j

fuzzyduck22

Hope you had a lovely Christmas x

Kitten868

So you're down from like 12.5k to 9.5 already! that's amazing!

Merry Christmas! I've just got back from families and flat doesn't even feel like mine anymore lol. Hope you've had a great Christmas xxx

rainbowskies

It never rains but it pours.

I've been away since late December. A lot of things happened one after the other. And they were all very expensive. My car broke down and needed major repairs. I asked the mechanic (an old family friend so I knew he wasn't ripping me off) if it was just cheaper to buy a small, used car with a smaller engine. He told me I had a good car (for the age it is and the way it was built) and that I should keep it and so, I forked over a lot of money to have it fixed. This included four new tyres as my current ones were in really bad condition.

To be honest, I really didn't want to sell it. I had an accident a year or so back. Some idiot came screaming around the corner, jumping the red light and crashed into my car while I was waiting in traffic, It could have been really nasty however, I feel my car had 'protected' me - which sounds silly, I know. The right headlight and the entire right side of the man's car was completely smashed up. His front bumper even went flying through the air because the force had ripped it off. My car only had the tiniest scratch on it - it's a very sturdy little thing! Luckily nobody was hurt.

Anyway, I'm getting off topic here. The point is, I'm fond of the car. I'm silly and sentimental. It needed repairs. I paid for it. I think buying a (new to me) car would have been a little more expensive.

Also, my boiler at home needed replacing. Another expense to add.

Then again with the car. Around came the tax and insurance. Rookie mistake. I forget to include these in my monthly budget. I really need to ensure I remember to include all the annual expenses and not just the monthly ones.

And then there were the little things that added up. To name but a new - having to get a window repaired, travelling to New Zealand to watch my almost-a-sister-best-friend getting married (trust me, I wouldn't have travelled so far for any other friend!) and then of course, spending an expensive week in London, visiting my family. I forget how expensive everything is over there, grrr!

As I was concentrating on debt busting and paying every single penny I had spare towards my debt, I didn't have any savings for things like this. So of course, I had to borrow to pay for all this. I read somewhere on this site that there was no point in having savings that are paying you X% of interest if the interest on your debt is costing you five times that amount.

I think I will concentrate on getting a good emergency fund saved as well as a car fund while slowly paying off my debt. Once I get both saving pots to the amounts that I'm happy with, I will throw everything I have to the debt.

I have calculated that it will take me until August to save £3000 in my emergency fund and £1200 for my car fund. That should cover my insurance, tax and MOT for the next year.

After I have these saved up, I can start throwing £1000 per month towards that hideous debt. So would you like to know the new figure?

£13,791.44 :eek::eek::eek:

The good news is, the interest is fixed and included in that balance. I have no multiple debts to pay. I make one payment of £200 a month to that figure. I realise that's a small amount, but after August, that debt will be going down by the thousand each month until this time, next year at least. After that I shall revise my strategy.

Paying off the £1000 each month will still allow me to pay my other expenses and I will also have my emergency and car fund as a back up.

I have one credit card that is used for my online food shop which gets paid in full by direct debit. I have no other credit cards and no other forms of debt. It's nice having one solid payment to make each month.

Just a set back at the start of the year. Onward and upward!