£67,031.92 is a frightening number indeed....

DawnW

Are £50 toilet brushes really a thing? :eek:

PositiveBalance

Treadingonplaymobil wrote: »

I have excellent news for you :T . Elsa's plait is intact once more! And I changed my license address, so I am basically Winning At Life today.

*Cracks open bottle of virtual champagne* Woo hoo!

I was half worried I was going to have to get onto the RSPPDEHDE (Royal Society for the Protection of People who Don't Exist with Hairstyles that Don't Exist!:rotfl:)

Treadingonplaymobil

Week 64: Day 2

Morning! A new month, full of lovely topped up budget pots and promise.

I promised to update the debt totals, so here they are:
£2,780.62 Virgin
£11,194.31 Barclaycard
£20,000 parental loan
£33,974.93 Total

As well as that, the mortgage is currently standing at £193,009.83 (May's payment has left my account today, but not been credited to the mortgage yet, so that will go down about 8p once the payment is removed and the monthly interest is added in its place :T ).

It still feels like a massive massive amount of debt, and I find it so depressing to actually type out the full numbers - we are so far away from being debt free. I know that all we can do is keep slogging away at it, but it is a bit grim at times, working so hard and bringing home really quite a lot of money (getting on for £4k per month between us) and still not being able to afford to buy decent clothes for the children, do more exciting things on the weekends, or buy them a little something just because. I know that it's not doing them any favours to always be spending on them, but I do look at their friends who always have some little extra toy, treat, activity or whatever, and think they are a bit hard done by sometimes. I hope they can all remain as excited about the extension as they currently are, and that helping to design and decorate their rooms will feel like a really exciting process. I was listening to a vlog yesterday where the woman said that she always tries to create a sense of abundance for her children even though they don't spend much, so she gives them decent pocket money and encourages them to go wild in the charity shops, and I was sat there thinking 'well, I don't want a load of charity shop tat in the house so I don't want to do that', but wondering whether I could do something similar to create a feeling that they can have what they want/need and eliminate any feelings of scarcity. Not sure, need to turn that idea over a bit.

Dragging things back to reality and positivity again, today is the 1st of the month, which means my daily earnings target begins today. Remember I said I was breaking down what I need to earn for the rest of the year (to meet our extension savings goals) down into daily chunks? Well I've worked out the total remaining for the year after the boost of the bonus etc and broken it down into a daily net (post tax) profit goal. Each day that I earn over the goal, the daily goal will reduce, and each day that I don't earn anything, it will increase. As of today, the daily earnings goal stands at £28.69 for each of the remaining 245 days of the year. As an example, if I earn nothing today (which is likely), then tomorrow it will go up to £28.81, as I will need to earn fractionally more each day to cover the days I haven't earned. I'm hoping that the pressure of seeing it go up with incentivise me to come up with some new earning ideas and selling those few things we have kicking around the house that are worth something, and generally do everything I can to keep things on the straight and narrow!

Lots of fun work to do today, the things that I never normally get round to - blog writing for my own website and social media posts. I really need to get back into spending at least a day a week on it to try to grow that audience and create a business that can make me some money without being client facing.

Three things to do today:
1. cook chickpeas for carrot and chickpea salad and houmous.
2. make leek and potato soup to freeze (the leeks are looking a bit sad, they're not going to last much longer).
3. cook black beans for tomorrow's dinner.
4. make some kind of tinned sardine pasta dish for tonight's dinner.
5. photograph, write and schedule a week's worth of social media posts.
6. plant potatoes.
7. check birthdays this month and write cards.
8. plan out and begin a blog post for my website.

Mini goals:
- £10.11/30 April rounding down pot.
- £2,074.64/£5,000 2018 debt repayment goal.
- £28.69 daily earning goal.

wishingthemortgaheaway

Morning TOPM:

Please please please tidy up the ugly £9 something at the end of the mortgage. Or are you just teasing us all?

How do you know the friends can afford to do what they are doing? (This is going to sound harsh I'm trying to be loving, but it's the internet, so it does make us all seem mean) isn't that what you were doing 18months plus ago? Treats & magazines at the supermarket? Expensive days out etc. And remember how happy you feel seeing the positive amounts in the bank account.

Yes, you do earn a good salary between you, but you also live in an expensive part of the world - you have a 2 bed house, so do we, but if we sold ours tomorrow we'd get £110,000 maximum.and that's without overspending previously. The lifestyle you had when you were building up your debt caused the debt was sadly unsustainable.

But... positive hat on:
You are moving forward, pu have less debt now than you did. Your consumer debt isn't actually that high, if you weren't saving for the extension, you would be able to tackle the consumer debt in only a little more than a flash.

You will do this, you know your situation is not a quick fix, and you have accepted this. But, each month you keep 'doing the right thing' your situation improves.

Keep swimming TOPM.

Treadingonplaymobil

wishingthemortgaheaway wrote: »

Morning TOPM:

Please please please tidy up the ugly £9 something at the end of the mortgage. Or are you just teasing us all?

How do you know the friends can afford to do what they are doing? (This is going to sound harsh I'm trying to be loving, but it's the internet, so it does make us all seem mean) isn't that what you were doing 18months plus ago? Treats & magazines at the supermarket? Expensive days out etc. And remember how happy you feel seeing the positive amounts in the bank account.

Yes, you do earn a good salary between you, but you also live in an expensive part of the world - you have a 2 bed house, so do we, but if we sold ours tomorrow we'd get £110,000 maximum.and that's without overspending previously. The lifestyle you had when you were building up your debt caused the debt was sadly unsustainable.

But... positive hat on:
You are moving forward, pu have less debt now than you did. Your consumer debt isn't actually that high, if you weren't saving for the extension, you would be able to tackle the consumer debt in only a little more than a flash.

You will do this, you know your situation is not a quick fix, and you have accepted this. But, each month you keep 'doing the right thing' your situation improves.

Keep swimming TOPM.

The mortgage payment has gone through, so now it's an even more untidy £192,301.19 .

Treadingonplaymobil

I have just updated my signature, as I feel that the situation was a bit unclear (looks like a massive reduction in unsecured debt when actually it was added to the mortgage). I'm not sure if I'm appalled or thrilled with the result, which shows that we have only paid off £5,614 since LBM in Feb '17. But on the bright side, that's over £5k in just over a year. Have just worked out that even if we didn't add to the debt (which we will, next year), at current rate of progress we are looking at 20 years to pay off all our debt (mortgage and unsecured debt) - closer to 25 if we add what I think we will add doing the extension.

Well that's not very uplifting. Although it is nice to have the numbers clearly laid out, rather than a random massive reduction in unsecured debt when we added it to the mortgage, which makes it very hard to work out how much we have paid off in total.

Ready for that premium bond win now...

Goingroundincircles

Hi TOPM, I'm intrigued by your rounding down pot - how does it work?

Treadingonplaymobil

Goingroundincircles wrote: »

Hi TOPM, I'm intrigued by your rounding down pot - how does it work?

It's nothing fancy. I reconcile YNAB every single day, and each time I do I move any odd pence leftover in any category to a 'debt overpayment' category. So say I have £50 in my weekly food budget and I spend £8.73, I've got £41.27 left in the pot, so I'll move 27p over to the debt overpayment pot. So it's never more than 99p from any one pot, but if I've spent in three or four pots (say, diesel, family kitty and food) then it's the total of the rounding down from each of those pots and can add up to a few pounds. I do the same in my business account and move the money over every week or two. I pay it off the barclaycard every time the debt overpayment category goes over £1, so I can't be tempted to reabsorb it back into my budget when things are tight at the end of the month.

mfmaybe

That's a lovely cheerleading post from Wishing!

You are providing way more fundamentals to your children than many can manage or even (sadly) care about. Home cooked, nutritious meals; camping holidays as a family; days out; activities, generous birthday and Christmas gifts. And in addition, you are teaching them that money doesn't grow on trees, and that anything nice comes at a price. If they learn that saving for things they want is the norm, then that's a huge leg up for their future wealth and happiness. Plus you are concerned about the environment and waste, so it's important they learn that buying well matters - sometimes an organic fairtrade cotton t-shirt will cost a lot more than the primark version, and that means more planning and saving, less immediate gratification.

Chrystal

To help you stay more positive about things maybe you could stop looking at your mortgage as a debt. and more as an investment? If you weren't buying your house you'd have to rent, which would cost more, and you'd have nothing to show for it at the end.

If you concentrate on the £33,974.93 Total, and give yourself credit for paying off over £5000 pounds in 14 months ( whereas before LBM you would not only not reduced that but would have added to it)

Yes the mortgage is going to go up, but the value of your investment is also going up, and when the £33000, is paid you can start to overpay on the mortgage. Looking at things in a different light can make a big difference to our outlook/well being.

Not sure if I've expressed myself very well - I know what I mean

The change in your attitude, from the beginning, is amazing and I really admire the way you've progressed.