new debt-free wannabe wants to join in!

chloebelle

Hi everyone,
Feel a bit nervous posting for 1st time, not sure why!! I have been lurking around here for a few weeks to suss the site out and now want to become a part of the community and get debt-free!

I’ll be honest immediately, my situation is nowhere near as bad as some of your members. I still live with my parents, meaning issues of rent, utility bills, cars, insurance, mortgages etc.. are irrelevant. However, I still have loads of debt and really want to break free. The other reason for me joining in this community is that I am angry at the way my attitudes towards money have changed over the past few years. I used to be so careful with money, proud to be debt-free with a fat bank account. Unfortunately this has slowly changed and I have got into bad habits and my spending has got out of control. As well as becoming debt free, I want to re-educate myself about money.

But I’m getting ahead of myself, maybe I should fill you in on my story. My debt problem started 3 years ago when I started my degree. I got out a loan but my only expense was travel costs and general purchases. I worked out that I could easily fund my university life on my monthly wages from a part time job. I pledged to save my student loan, fund myself with my own earnings and then hand back the full loan at the end of 3 years and graduate debt-free!

For the first year this worked! Then things started to go wrong.

Firstly, I lost my part time job and had to get a new one. The place I used to work was literally in the middle of nowhere. My new job was in a town centre – suddenly I was surrounded my shops and had somewhere to go during my lunchbreak. Secondly my OH lost his job and home in the space of a week and fell into deep depression. Times were very hard for me and I found myself comfort buying a lot to cheer myself up. As time went on my OH had no money and I started to support him with my earnings too. This was disastrous – I found myself in the supermarket thinking ‘well if I’ve spent £30 on food for OH, might as well spend an extra £15-20 on stuff for me’.

As time went on I found myself getting more complacent about money, spending a lot of things like lunches, tea and treats. I then got a new job in a clothes shop. Being given a 25% staff discount card sounds great to a lot of people, but when you are surrounded by clothes all day it is terrible! Very quickly I found myself spending £100-£150 a month on clothes.

Final nail in the coffin came as I tried to finish my degree. The workload was so heavy that I couldn’t cope with many shifts at my job. In addition, the added stresses lead me to further comfort buy clothes and nice food.
And so we reach the present day which finds me with a £9,000 student debt a £5,000 sainsbury loan, taken out to help fund a further 4 years of study.

The main reason I am here is that I am angry at how my attitude to money has changed. I used to smugly criticise people with debt, believing myself to be so much more sensible than impulsive people who couldn’t control their purses. It is only in the last few weeks that I have finally realised that I too am a person in debt. I have large debt, no savings and a very low bank balance. My lightbulb moment came a few weeks ago, I checked my bank to find my balance was approximately £100. That was no problem, I didn’t particularly need anything so thought that money would easily last till payday. One week later the balance had dropped to £15. I have no idea what I spent the money on, I just seemed to fritter it away on ‘stuff’.

So thats about it! I want to join this lovely community as I am determined to re-educate my money attitudes, build up some savings and clear my debt. This community is just fantastic, I was so worried that it would be full of nasty bullies who would just say ‘well, you shouldn’t spend so much should you?’.

I really hope everyone here is ready to support me in this journey, I will certainly contribute to the community where I can. Thanks to anyone who has had the patience to read all this, its actually been quite emotional writing the whole situation down and facing up to reality.

penguin83

Welcome to the forum:hello:

Post a Statement of Affairs (see southernscousers sticky at the top of the page). There are many experts here who can tell you where to cut back and save money (much better than me!)

Good Luck with your journey and completing your degree. Keep posting! x

tealady

Hi and welcome. Reading your post I can see you clarly understand the reasons that you got into debt, and I know you are not alone in this. Now you have had your lightbulb moment it will get easier for you to tackle the problem. As well as a SOA think about ebaying/amazoning anything you no longer want and check out pigsback for clicks to earn vouchers. Good luck.

hypno06

simple - you shouldn't have spent so much, what on earth were you thinking about :rotfl:

Seriously, welcome to the wonderful world that is DFW - have a read through of Southernscousers sticky, above, and put together an SOA. If you are able to post this for the world to see, then the wonderful peeps here will be able to come up with ways to get back on top of things.

Today, go and buy a small notebook if you do not have one lying around. Then start writing down everything that you buy every single time you spend money - this will really show you where that cash is being frittered away, and as well as being quite shocking it will focus your mind to cut out the things you do not need, thereby making your money go further.

From your post, it would seem that you will very quickly regain your past good habits. Keep posting here and keep us informed of your progress. When you need support, there is almost always someone here!

immoral_angeluk

Hi and welcome... you have the perfect opportunity to get back to being debt free while you're still at home with no ties or major outgoings. You seem to have a good head on your shoulders but have just lost track of your original aims while you were at uni. With a bit of motivation you will be debt free again in not time..
Welcome to MSE!

chloebelle

thankyou everyone for your welcoming words, I feel very much at home! It is so nice to talk to people who understand and don't sneer with unhelpful comments.

I have joined in the christmas challenge to save £500, £750 or £1000 and I'm determined to do it! Achieving this would give me such a boost!

Mrs_Sparkle

Hello! Welcome, you're in the right place. Clothes used to be my weakness too (until I got pregnant and ruined my figure... but I'm not suggesting that as a solution!)

You'll get loads of support here. Well done for taking the first step.