Major reality check this evening

glentoran99

Wimbrel wrote: »

You absolutely can fix this. Get the snowballs rolling and everything speeds up amazingly. In 2012 I was pretty much where you are today. I just did the sums to update my sig and I'm looking at debt free by the end of January 2017 and with, for the first time in ever, a decent emergency fund.

Dont mean to jump in and derail the thread but your emergency fund is double your debt, why not pay off the debt and be rid of it?

glentoran99

brokebirdy wrote: »

So tonight I finally faced up to the mess that I/We are in. We owe 45k in unsecured debt. I am shocked. I knew it was a lot but didn't think it was quite that much.

I am going to talk to my wife about it over the weekend. She knows that we have a lot of debt but not the totals.

I will do a proper SOA at some point but in a nutshell....

Income ( joint) - £4200
Outgoings ( all bills, mortgage and minimum debt payments) - £2500
Food/fuel - 400

Surplus - £1300


I am in a state of panic/shock at the moment. Can we fix this or are we screwed?

You need to do a proper SOA, i suspect you dont have a surplus of £1300 in reality otherwise how was the debt racked up? You need to be honest and if need be write down every penny spent for a couple of months

Wimbrel

Dont mean to jump in and derail the thread but your emergency fund is double your debt, why not pay off the debt and be rid of it?

Perfectly sensible question.

The remaining debt is at 0% so I'm knocking it down on the very last snowball.:j

And to be frank, it's so wonderful to have some money in the bank finally and at last that I didn't stop at the £5k I had planned but just kept going.

chevalier

Welcome to the boards

just reposting the link in case you missed it

http://www.whatsthecost.com/snowball.aspx

Good luck with your journey. Once you have a full picture of you income and outgoings then you can startt moving forward.

chev

MyLastFiver

Congratulations on your lightbulb moment. The good news is that, with your £1300 monthly excess, you'll see the debt off in no time.

The bad news is...well, do you really have £1300 left over after expenses? And if so, how did you get into debt? Do you do your monthly shop at Fortum & Mason?

Post a full SOA so you and we can get a true picture of your income & outgoings.