Sorting out my life!

GunShotResidue

Hi all I have been lurking on MSE for a while but don't tend to post much as I'm very shy, so please be nice!


We owe £6679.55, £1950 on a 0% interest credit card and the rest is a loan at about 3%. I want to pay off the credit card first and then stop using it (I know that's the wrong way round but I want to make sure it's all paid off before going back to around 20%).


I have a 3 week old son and a 2 year old daughter and I've been doing very little recently. As well as paying off the debt by the end of next year, I want to get back into meal planning, lose about 75lbs, do more with the kids, and get back on top of the housework. I'm hoping this diary will stop me being lazy!

JLS1901

Just wanted to say good luck with your journey 😊
Welly x

enjoyyourshoes

Do a calculation on the 0%, debt/term of offer. Set up DD for this amount each month, and hey presto by expiry of offer period it will be paid off.

We have just done exactly that, 18 months and debt gone by Friday this week !

With the 3%, are there any early repayment conditions?

If not throw more at this each month.

Dependent on 0% deal you could consider a 12 month regular saver at 6% (FD & HSBC) that could pay off chunk 0% (if lore than 12 month left on offer period) plus the accrued interest, thus you benefit from compounding interest.? just a though.

But you have to be confident financially in yourself to make it work.

GunShotResidue

Thank you Welly


Thank you for the advice enjoyyourshoes, I know logically it makes more sense to pay off the credit card first, especially as the loan has no early repayment conditions, and I was doing that for the first few months. But I keep thinking that an extra £50 spend wont make much difference to a £2000 balance, and I have ended up overspending and not paying much off at all! I think I just need to get the balance down to 0 so I'm not tempted. The 0% deal was a transfer and has less than a year left, and I don't trust myself at the minute!


Our income is decent and our outgoings are fairly low, we've just got into some bad financial habits. I blame DH, I am an accountants daughter and was fairly good with money until marrying him! Yesterday I managed to get a few loads of washing out onto the line, I'm trying to use the tumble dryer less. I have made a spreadsheet that I can put meter readings into and it will tell me my monthly average, so I can keep track of electricity on a week to week basis. I've also started looking for cheaper meals, I'm going to start making homemade soup or an omelette for dinner once a week. I want to get the food bill down to £40 a week (from £50ish).

tori.k

The right way is the right way for you GSR.

My place is looking like a chinese laundry at the moment I missed the good weather yesterday, The weather keeps conspiring against me on my days off at the moment.

Food bill is the easy place to make instant savings we've been alternating between simple meals like jacket spuds and omelettes with more expensive antipasti and cheese boards meals.

Best of luck

GunShotResidue

I've turned the guest room into a laundry room! I was doing one load per weekday, but I'm going to try and wait for some sun and do a few lots at once. The kids make a lot of washing, but they've both got huge wardrobes so there's no rush!

GunShotResidue

Just got back from staying with family for a long weekend. On the plus side we didn't spend much money and I've picked up some work, but I am now feeling a bit sad as I miss everyone already!


It's fairly sunny at the minute so I'm going to do some washing to try and clear out the guest room, then clean the kitchen and do an inventory of what food we have. Trying to stay under £40 a week for groceries this month so I can pay off a bit extra.

GunShotResidue

Managed to stay on budget whilst away, so paid a bit off today. New balance is -£6144.42 but it's unlikely to go down again until next month now.

GunShotResidue

Have a meeting today to try and reduce our contents and my husband's life insurance. I think it's the only bill we can reduce, he's forces and both policies are very expensive at the minute.

I am considering going through some old baby clothes and listing a few bundles on ebay, I'm overly sentimental though, so I'm not sure I'll manage it!

Baby is 5 weeks old tomorrow, so I've given myself 8 days to get the house sorted and spotless. Going to try and work my way up to 2 x 30 minutes a day on the exercise bike by then too. I'm aiming to lose a stone by the second August bank holiday.

GunShotResidue

Had a very good meeting and managed to reduce the insurance premiums by just over £50 a month. Also managed to do a food shop within budget, even though my inlaws might be coming up this weekend.

Received an offer to transfer my credit card balance to a different card, interest free until January 2018 with only a 1.4% fee. I'm considering it, as it's a card I can't remember the pin for so I shouldn't be tempted to use it! Then I could focus on paying off the loan. I have until the end of the month to decide.

Tidied all of the downstairs yesterday. Need to put away the 3 baskets of clean washing and tidy upstairs if I get a chance.

tori.k

It's early days if your planning on having more children at some point then it would be worth keeping, I have a memory box for each of my children it has the babygrows that I brought my children home from hospital in with their tags, stuff from school and other pertinent reminders of their childhood. It's hard to break the sentimental value of things but it's something to work on due to the sheer volume of stuff that come's with children.

Don't push yourself to hard with the house, still early days with the little one and it's more important that your getting plenty of rest then if the ironing been done.