Getting out of this debt sharknado

EmmaMicawber

I've just looked at the date of my last post- May!! Sorry diary- life got very hectic as in June I finally GOT A JOB
DD1 has now gone back to uni and I'm just beginning to find my feet at work and claw back some free time so I'll post a full financial update over the weekend.

I hope you all had good Summers!

ftbwannabe

Congrats on the job! I’ve enjoyed reading your diary up til now, looking forward to keeping up with your autumn.

EmmaMicawber

It is now over 2 years since that awful realisation that we owed a grand total £97,400 in unsecured debt.
I've fallen off the wagon in posting here but not on our debt-busting- we've paid off another £22,000 since May 2018 when I last updated our totals on page 1 - yay!

Life has been so busy with work but I've decided to be strict with myself anf make time to post here and chart our hopefully last year in getting debt-free.

We decided to concentrate on paying off the loan in full so now that's gone we have 'only' 4 credit cards with a total of £18,700 to clear
- 3 'little' and one 'big'.
The smallest one has a 0% deal that runs out in April so that's my next target and overall we want to be debt-free by Christmas.

I need to go over our finances again as some of our bills have been creeping up as I think they're out of the contracts e.g. BT is regulatly £70 a month! That can't be right can it?
And our gas/ elec is out of it's cheaper fixed rate deal. Some little monthly moneystealers have also crept in- Amazon Prime and MSoffice for instance.
I've a day off today so will get stuck into an audit of our outgoings.

Hello to anyone who was around 2 years ago and welcome and good luck to anyone new who is where we were 2 years ago (though you hopefully aren't in as big a hole as we were!)- a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

ChasingSunshine

Wow that's really impressive progress in the last two years. Congratulations! Hopefully this year will see the end of all your debt.

Honeysucklelou2

Congratulations on your job and on clearing £22k since May. Wow!

EmmaMicawber

I'm feeling very smug this morning - our 9 year old dishwasher has been on the blink and keeps not draining- OH has then tinkered with it and it works for another week or so. I had resigned myself to buying another one imminently.
Well he was away this week and it stopped working again- I had to empty out all the dirty water by hand - eurgghhh! This time I had a good look myself and with the help of Dr Google worked out what it was likely to be- ordered the part for £28- it arrived yesterday and I fitted it myself (the non-return outlet valve in case you're interested!).

It now works like a dream. Several hundred pounds saved!

I haven't finished my money audit yet. Looking back at my old posts I can see that our original target was to have reduced the debt to £8300 by this point so we are quite a bit behind schedule, but I'm not going to let that worry me too much. We're just going to keep plugging away and our new target is £0 by 31 December 2019 (rather than Christmas) so we have an extra pay packet to include.

EmmaMicawber

Well pride comes before a fall- since posting about saving our dishwasher in February my washing machine has died, and two weeks later our tumble drier followed it! Both the same brand (Bosch) and same age- an unfortunate coincidence. Both were around 8 years old and pretty grim anyway so that's £800 gone from my £1000 emergency fund!

Current debt left on 2 credit cards = £14,800
Little card £2,900
Big card £11,900

EmmaMicawber

Things seem to be going so slowly - I seem to have had a lot of bills (car, house repairs) and have an expensive summer coming up (spending on children, not myself!) but am still moving in the right direction.

Current debt left on 2 credit cards = £12,900
Little card £1,950
Big card £10,950

The 0% offers come regularly now, so different to a couple of years ago! It's really tempting to give in and stop paying it all off with all our disposable income as my car is a real clampits car- dents, scratches , frayed seats etc. but I'm determined never to have a car payment again or have a credit card- once they're gone they'll be gone for good!.
My plan as soon as the debt is paid off is to save like mad for a decent car which my daughter isn't embarrassed to be seen in! And also a holiday would be nice. This summer it will be only a long weekend in the UK

EmmaMicawber

I've got back into listening to Dave Ramsey again and it's spurring me on to be more 'gazelle intense'! Looking at the numbers, I'm not going to reach my target of having all the debt (except mortgage) paid off by the last day of this year without doing something else on top of what we're already doing. The main challenge is that our expenses will go up in September by £330 per month as my youngest is off to uni (exam grades permitting of course).
I know that every little helps but I don't think surveys etc. are going to cover it, I wish I was more creative and could come up with some ideas that will pay well. I have a few things I could ebay but that will only be a couple of hundred I should think.
Time to really think... what will people pay for?

EmmaMicawber

Yesterday was payday- yay! My next payments have been made so the debts stand at:

Little card: £1050
Big card: £10,550

Total debt left to pay off: £11,600
*88% of the original £97,400 paid*

Our other car has its MOT coming up and we also need to spend some money on a house repair so I think I'll only be able to manage just above minimum payments next month which will mean I'm further away from our DFD. I'm still trying to think of how to earn the extra money to get rid of the debt by the end of the year- I know lots of people swear by surveys etc. but I've tried them and am not patient enough to spend so much time for so little reward!
Dave Ramsey always suggests pizza delivery..

We had a lovely day at the beach today- and hardly spent anything as we took a picnic though we did have an ice cream with the money we saved on car parking (as the car park was full so we had to park miles away, but the upside was that it was free!). It's almost too hot to eat- no one feels like anything so more saved there