Debt Free by 40, best Birthday present ever!?

[Deleted User]

Do you not get child benefit, it does not show in your income on your SOA.

You have done really well clearing your debt, heres to you being in a position to start paying down extra on your mortgage and getting the house fixed up.

Mrs*Spendalot

Hi, thanks for both your comments. Yes, exactly! Self sabotaging and a monthly unexpected cost. Plus, however much we earn, we seem to spend. My husband is earning £700pm more than he was this time last year, plus we've paid a loan off that was £300pm. Where is that extra £1k going?!?

We don't get child benefit as my husband earns over £60K. It was gutting when we lost it, with 5 children it was about £250 a month wiped off our monthly budget. To be fair, I can see we don't 'need' it, but I don't appreciate how the government managed it. We have friends who earn £49K each, so have a household income of £98K but still get child benefit!

Hiddenidenity

Do you keep a spending diary? There's free apps to use or if you're like me I prefer pen and paper

It really does show where every penny goes, and the odd couple of puns doing something you think oh it's only x £ really does add up over the month.

You're doing fab keep going x

Mrs*Spendalot

So... minimums paid off loan and credit card and £700 put into savings towards paying car off early. We're focusing on that as the credit card is 0%. That's £1k total towards paying off debt this month. No chance we can do more as having to pay for extra surveys to satisfy council of our planning....grrrrr!

Definitely doing better with keeping an eye, managed to keep costs down over half term and am saying 'no' more regularly to the children....

Mrs*Spendalot

We've been trundling along and just paid off credit card! So pleased... car loan is down to £7600 and that's the only debt we have now.

In other news, planning permission has been granted. Such an expensive process, has cost £3.5k in total! Rude... on the plus side we've managed to absorb these costs and continue to repay our debts...

Next mission is to save the £6000 we need for the balloon payment on the next card. It's due in April, so should be doable.

Unfortunately, I doubt we'll make the debt free target of January, but we're still pleased with progress :-)