Time to be a proper grown up!

dysarty

Hello All,

I often lurk and have very rarely posted on here however I think that I need to take the bull by the horns.

Background - I had loads of fun with a student overdraft many years ago and finally paid back via debt collectors.

Since then I have always been fairly careful - I've not missed any payments or anything but we are looking to move next year and I need to clear my debts and finally be a grown up! My credit file is clean but I really just want to get out of debt.

The debts I am looking to clear are as follows:

£4554 Virgin 0% until Feb 2018
£ 94 Coop 18.9%

I've been clearing my coop card each month but I need to stop relying on it at the end of the month.

Both myself and the OH have probably above average salaries but I'm starting this to stay on track.

It is so easy to say "Blow it - just stick it on the plastic!". We've already decided we're not having any big holidays next year and will be visiting family throughout the UK - which will save some cash.

We're to have a proper grown up chat about cash - only been married 5 years!!

But I think we both need to reign things in and actually understand our finances before we move. At the moment we don't have mortgage / rent payments which I think skews things as all house bills (not food) come from the joint account and monitored carefully.

We're going to follow a lot of the advice on here and actually keep our receipts for the next month to find out how much we spend on food - being honest we have no idea.

Total Debt - £4648
Desired Repayment Date - December 2017

Anyway wish me luck. Will update on here.

Bobarella

Good luck with your journey!

EssexHebridean

You're sounding pretty grown up about all this already! Really big well done for thinking about this before you take the plunge before you move - that's a really sensible way of dealing with things!

First step I would say is to do an SOA - in fact I'm going to suggest you do two of them - one for your situation now - that will show you what you should be spending and what you should have left over. the other for your situation as it will be when you move - that will show you where you might have problems.

Keeping receipts/spending diary is a good plan. To give you an idea, for the two of us we have for years budgeted £150 per month for food - often we spend less. This doesn't include an occasional meal out or takeaway - that comes under entertainment, for us.

Get a proper budget in place - with no rent or mortgage you really shouldn't need to be relying on CC's to see the month out so that's the first area to look at I think.