Has 'moneysaving' genuinely changed anyone's life here?

mrsspendalot

I think this site has changed my attitude to money and bills significantly. We have been in debt for years - well, I got a credit card at 18 and my hubby had a car on finance from 18. Both those accounts defaulted nearly 6 years ago and we are still paying them off.

Our attitude before was to pay as little as possible off the debts so that we could live how we wanted. We were behind on council tax, gas, electric etc. but spent a fortune on clothes and food and going out. It was just a case of priorities being all wrong. We appled for new credit cards, all high APRs because of the previous defaults. We maxed them. Then we tried to get a loan to consolidate and were turned down. That was last April.

At that point we were over £15000 in debt and had run out of credit options. We had a baby in march 06 (our 3rd) and then in August my husband was made redundant from a job he hadn't been in long, so no redundancy entitlement.

He got another job with a week, which was good, and it was about then that we realised we needed to address the spending and debts so that if something devastating happened again like job loss, we would cope better. We managed to clear som debt between August 06 and March this year, when we had our full lightbulb moment and joined this site.

6 months later we have paid off over £3k of debt through cutting our outgoings (food, utilities, etc.) and earning cashback, selling things on ebay, and basically living to a budget. When hubby has done overtime, the extra has gone to debt. Years ago it would have paid for clothes or another night out instead. We now have a DFD of December next year, 11 months earlier than our DFD when we joined the site 6 months ago.

has moneysaving changed my life? I will only truly be able to answer next year when we pay off our last debt - but I imagine that the answer will be a resounding YES!!!!!

Jolanta_Nowak

It's been interesting to read about people's differing experiences. Thanks for all the contributions, folks.