My debt free diary - getting my life on track

rexelpink

I’ve just cancelled deezer through the ap. another £9.99 a month savings!

rexelpink

Evening diary

On a roll today!

Managed to do both my morning and lunchtime walk, ending today at 14,131 steps. Meeting at work also went really well, got some great feedback from the session I ran, with a clear plan at the end for how my project will run.

Monthly savings made this week:

Vanquis gold membership (cancelled) £20
Equifax membership (cancelled) £15
Amazon prime (cancelled) £7.99
Deezer (cancelled) £9.99
N power (reduced) £42
O2 (reduced) £28
Sky (reduced) £21.96

Total monthly savings: £141.94!

Feeling pretty pleased with that.
Although - I’ve decided to keep Netflix. The irony is not lost on me that if I cancelled then that would take my monthly total up to £150 (give or take a few pence) but honestly for now I do use it and want to keep it.

The only reason we’re so low this past week is that I’ve saved more than I planned and stubbornly refused to move the extra back from my savings into my current account.

rexelpink

Pay day tomorrow :j

I must remember that there are 33 days between jan and feb paydays and plan accordingly.

Off out tomorrow evening so not sure how much I will be able to post, however I will need to think over the weekend about how I proceed now that the initial rush of knocking money off my bills every month has been done.

Might have a browse over the rest of the site and see if there are any challenges I can join. I did like the PAD challenge before, I wonder if that’s still running?
Problem is I’m not very good at replying to messages etc and always worry that I will end up offending people if they think I’m ignoring them.
Won’t lie I’m also a bit ashamed that in 18 months I am basically in exactly the same place I was.

I also badly need to do some major decluttering. I’ve got this mentality that I need to keep stuff ‘just in case’ I’m now at the stage where I can’t find the things I actually need as they are hiding under piles of stuff I ‘might’ need one day.
With postage fees I’m not sure if it’s worth putting things on eBay anymore?
I do know that my local Facebook selling groups have really run dry lately. No-one seems to sell anything, they’re just full of adverts from ‘yummy mummy being my own boss pm me if you want to earn millions from my pyramid scheme’ wow I sound really negative there. Everyone’s just trying to earn money I guess.
Anyway point is Facebook selling is a no go
Not sure where else I can sell things? Gumtree? I might look into that along with the postage fees.
Otherwise I will probably take stuff to the charity shop.
First though I need to actually bring myself to get rid of some stuff.

I’m getting ahead of myself now. Will formulate a plan then come back and update.

Non MSE plans for weekend:

Friday night- dinner and cocktails in London (dinner paid for by Work)
Saturday afternoon - take DD to a party, need to buy a card and small gift (budget £10 for both)
Saturday night - no plans (might use this time to make my plan for next week)
Sunday - friend coming over to discuss her upcoming wedding (I have a feeling I’m about to be asked to organise another hen night)

Off to bed now, good night

rexelpink

Evening diary.

Just checking in at the end of a very busy (and a bit spendy) weekend.

Did spend a bit on travel and drinks Friday night, roughly £40 - £20 travel and £20 drinks. I knew that would happen though, and to be honest a brilliant night out in a central London nightclub for less than £50 is a win. Total steps for Friday: 23,992! My legs were aching a bit Saturday!

Spent £25 Saturday, £11 on card and gift for the party DD went to and £14 on McDonald’s for me DH and DS whilst we waited for her. My budget for the party was £10 so I did go over by £1 but only because I brought 10 cards for £1 in the shop, so I’ve saved myself some future spending for other kids parties throughout the year.
I wasn’t planning on buying McDonalds but was feeling a bit hungover and it was raining so somewhere to sit and eat seemed preferable then walking round the shops. Total steps for Saturday: 7,464

Been raining and snowing all day today so not left the house. Friend came over and asked me to be her maid of honour and DD to be her bridesmaid, so spent most of the day drinking coffee and looking at wedding websites. Plus side has meant a nsd but total steps only 4,100

I haven’t made much headway with my plan for February, transferred some money into my savings, and have decided to make a £1 payment to vanquis every day via the app. I did try and find the PAD thread, but I’m finding this site difficult to navigate on my phone.

Off to bed now, will post again tomorrow.

rexelpink

Evening diary.

Well no wonder my finances are such a mess, just realised that I can’t even read :rotfl: it’s laugh or cry right now!

I had posted before that my current balance on my Lloyd’s credit card is £215 - turns out it was actually £287!

Paid off £30 today. Balance now stands at £257

Also paid and additional £20 on my vanquis card, keeping an eye on the payments screen to see the new outstanding amount as it didn’t update straight away. Will keep an eye on it and post when it does.

Ending today at 12,712 steps.

rexelpink

Vanquis- Current balance: £1,352.85
£20 still not showing will check again in the morning.

rexelpink

Afternoon Diary,

Just checked the balance on my Vanquis card and its still not showing my £20 payment. It is still in the 'pending payment' section of my online banking, and according to the FAQs on Vanquis website, payments take approx 3 days to go through.

Working from home again today, have managed 4,919 steps this morning but its cold and I am NOT feeling motivated to go out for a walk now its lunchtime.

Have transferred £48 into my savings as per my 2018 budget plan, current savings total £1,258

enthusiasticsaver

rexelpink wrote: »

I just can’t get over that interest!

If my interest is £7 MORE then my min payment every month then they card would have never have cleared!

Looks like I’ve found my diary again just in time!

If you only pay the minimums on cards and the interest rate is high or even just average you will never get out of debt. Glad you have realised that now. Also vanquis has always had high interest rates.

rexelpink

enthusiasticsaver wrote: »

If you only pay the minimums on cards and the interest rate is high or even just average you will never get out of debt. Glad you have realised that now. Also vanquis has always had high interest rates.

Hi enthusiastic :wave:

I know, I am such a tool! I was so shocked when I realised that, a real light bulb moment.
The worst thing is that I wasn’t even supposed to use the card! I was hoping to use it as a ‘credit builder’ (is that the right term?) basically I applied when DH wasn’t working, figured that I could fill up £40 petrol once a month, then pay it off in full every payday. Then I used it once to buy shopping, then again to cover petrol, then again to pay some emergency dental treatment I needed... Well you get the gist!

The Lloyds card is minimum payment of £5 and I always pay £30 it’s only the loan I pay min for now, and I’m hoping that by the end of the year I can either add that to the mortgage to the house (Broker thinks this should be possible as I am having to look at subprime mortgages anyway due to debts) or to have enough in saving to pay it off in full.
The reason I’m paying min is because Lloyds have now referred it to moorcroft debt collections and it’s only been in the last 5 months I have managed to stop them calling everyday. I had done a SOA with them and £15 was the max I could afford.
Technically now we’ve had a change in circs we could afford a bit more but I can’t face the daily calls (they were ringing up to 12 times a day at one point) they’ve frozen the interest so the amount owing is correct.

rexelpink

Evening diary.

Total steps for today is 6,987. Will get to 7,000 by the time I’ve gone up to bed. This is the problem with working from home.

I wrote a long post earlier about my savings plans for the next few months, but after 3 unsuccessful attempts to post it I gave up.

During lunch I signed up for a Facebook group about house cleaning. A few mins after my request was accepted someone posted some photos of their house, stating they were bipolar and needed some tips to help get tidy and organised. I was looking at the photos thinking ‘ah it’s not too bad - mine looks like that somedays’ (most days actually)
Anyway I’ve just logged back on to the group and there are roughly 200 comments now from people - all of them along the lines of, don’t worry my house looked like that when I suffered from depression- to - Omg I would be embarrassed to let people in if my house looked like that!

Feeling like a total failure now! Not only are my finances a mess, so is my house... to be fair I did know the house was a mess, which is why I join d the group in the first place. But some of the comments were HARSH!