23,443 reasons to get out of debt

Mrs_Stony-Broke

...and each one of those reasons is nothing more than a simple pound coin. Just one pound coin doesn't seem like a huge amount, but 23,443 of those babies makes for quite a pile.


Sadly, that huge pile of £23,443 is our total credit card debt. Spread over six cards, this is the awful reality that has just hit home - our debts will soon become unmanageable if we don't make some changes. And fast.


So, just a quick first post to start a diary and to say Hi Our situation is that we are just about keeping our heads above water at the moment, making minimum payments and holding back the wolf from the door. However we have no real savings, a house that we own and our income will be reducing over the next three years. One vet bill, one house repair, one huge bill - any one of these would be disastrous for us.


Last night we had our light-bulb moment and it wasn't fun. We now feel scared about what could happen and a mixture of anger with ourselves and shame that we have got so deeply into debt. We are sitting down later today to go through our income and outgoings in order to get a full picture of where we are right now. I'll update later when we have a better idea of where our money actually goes, I just wanted to get a diary started up so I had somewhere to post as we get started!

BEAT_THE_DEBT

Hello and welcome. x

endoftheostricheffect

Welcome! And well done on your LBM and shiny new diary! :j:beer:

Mrs_Stony-Broke

Thank you for the friendly welcomes

We've spent the last couple of days gathering up info on all our bills and credit cards, alongside getting a workable budget up together. I've also spent a lot of time on websites such as Mr Money Moustache and Dave Ramsey. Not too sure about some of Dave Ramseys thoughts, but it does make a lot of sense to get an emergency savings buffer behind us.

We wrote out a budget and then went through it to see where we could save some money - I've cancelled Now TV Movies as we rarely watch, given an up to date meter reading to Eon which gave us a refund of around £200 plus our monthly direct debit has now been reduced by £40. We appear to have around £200 leftover each month to throw at the debts. I'm not all that sure where this money has been going in the past, as we have not had any money available at all. I suspect that the several trips to Tesco during the week to buy milk and bread are the problem as we rarely come back with just the things we went down for.

Our first aim is to get £1000 in savings, so that we have something to fall back on and wont need to use our cards. We have a Credit Union account that we were paying money into a few years ago, I don't think there is much in there, but it can be the start our savings. I'll have to hunt the book out today, I have no idea where it is. We also need to get on top of the money that we are frittering away each time we pop out for a top up shop.

I think I may join in with a couple of the forum challenges - start to see saving money as fun

dottydebts

Good luck with your journey

I'm also trying to build up my emergency fund, so that when more of my debts are paid off I don't need to fall back into using my credit card if something arises! It is really motivating for me to see the money in the bank and to have no intention of spending it!

chevalier

Here is the copy of the link to an SOA http://www.stoozing.com/calculator/soa.php. You can format it for MSE at the bottom of the page. The good thing about doing this is that it gets you to think about yearly as well as monthly expenses.
chev

Former_E.ON_Company_Representative:_Malc

Mrs_Stony-Broke wrote: »

Thank you for the friendly welcomes

We wrote out a budget and then went through it to see where we could save some money - I've cancelled Now TV Movies as we rarely watch, given an up to date meter reading to Eon which gave us a refund of around £200 plus our monthly direct debit has now been reduced by £40. We appear to have around £200 leftover each month to throw at the debts. I'm not all that sure where this money has been going in the past, as we have not had any money available at all. I suspect that the several trips to Tesco during the week to buy milk and bread are the problem as we rarely come back with just the things we went down for.

I think I may join in with a couple of the forum challenges - start to see saving money as fun

Afternoon Mrs Stony-Broke and good luck with your journey. Hope you don't mind but thought I'd stop by with some tips about your E.ON account that might help. Sorry if you already know this stuff.

If you've registered with our website, there's a couple of tools you can use to help keep on top of things. There's 'Real Time Billing' and the 'Direct Debit Manager.' When you give us meter readings online, you'll have the option of seeing what balance they'll result in or actually being able to issue a bill. It's a great way of seeing if you're paying too much or too little.

Should things need changing, there's the 'Direct Debit Manager.' This lets you take more control of the arrangement including being able to alter the payments. Comes in handy should circumstances change. Provided the account is billed up to the latest meter readings, payments can be changed by up to 20 per cent up or down. By up to 5 per cent up or down without readings. Before confirming the new amount, we'll let you know by how much we anticipate the account will be in credit/debit by the time of the annual review if payments are changed but usage doesn't alter as expected.

Have you opted in to receive Reward Points? If you have, you can earn up to 1500 points each year. These can be exchanged for Tesco Clubcard points or High Street Shopping Vouchers. It's free but you'll need to opt in to earn the points. This can be done online or over the phone.

A great way to save money is by saving energy. There are some useful tips on the 'Saving Energy' pages on our website including information about the Energy Company Obligation (ECO). This is a Government led scheme that aims to cut usage by helping with energy saving stuff like loft and cavity wall insulation.

Sorry once more if you already know about this stuff Mrs Stony-Broke but hope you find some of it useful. Let me know if you need any more details as happy to help. Good luck again with your journey.

Malc