Journey to £0 by 2020, with a few bumps along the way

chelseablue

I think I might have gone mad, just looking at how much money I'll be able to save when I can switch to sim only. My contract doesn't end until October :rotfl:

Best I found was £8 a month with Three, unlimited minutes, unlimited texts and 8gb of data

Currently pay £50 a month

I've put the date I can switch in my calendar

enthusiasticsaver

chelseablue wrote: »

I think I might have gone mad, just looking at how much money I'll be able to save when I can switch to sim only. My contract doesn't end until October :rotfl:

Best I found was £8 a month with Three, unlimited minutes, unlimited texts and 8gb of data

Currently pay £50 a month

I've put the date I can switch in my calendar

That is a great saving. £50 a month is high though so I guess you are paying off a handset?

chelseablue

enthusiasticsaver wrote: »

That is a great saving. £50 a month is high though so I guess you are paying off a handset?

Yes I had to get a new phone in October 2018 as I had my previous one quite a few years and it hardly worked in the end

This was just before we went to Australia and I needed my savings for that

Next time I need a new phone I'll buy one cash and carry on with sim only

chelseablue

Pay day this Friday, cant wait!

Quite a few things to spend out for in February, buildings and contents insurance is due, had the renewal price from the current provider, £126.
Just been on the comparison sites and can get it for £106 with Admiral plus if I go through Quidco I'll get £20 cashback (that will take about 6 months to get!)

Plus its my Dad's birthday

And my son has 4 birthday parties to go to in March so I'll buy 2 presents from January's pay and 2 from February's to spread it out

chelseablue

Haven't done an SOA since we stopped having joint money so here goes:

Income
£2,186 Take home pay
£82 Child benefit

£2,268 Total

Outgoings
£700 to bills account
£800 to my savings account
£200 to my s&s isa
£187 loan payment
£50 mobile phone (until October)

That leaves me with £331 to myself. I spend about £60 on petrol which leaves me with £271. I then try to spend as little as possible and whatever is left will go to the loan

I guess the thing that jumps out is why am I saving £1k a month while having debt?

Part of it is making up for lost time (5 years!) when I didn't save anything due to having joint money and husband spending it all! Currently have £3,800 cash savings so I'm not sitting on a huge amount yet

Also because my car is 14 years old so want to have funds available if that dies, plus my house desperately needs money spending on it so that's what savings are being spent on

Plus an emergency fund of course

Would be interested to hear thoughts if you think I'm putting too much into savings?

The loan will reduce by around £1,600 in March too

enthusiasticsaver

Having a think about your savings priorities may be useful here. I think personally that the car is the biggest priority but to buy a reasonable one would cost you £7 - £10k.

You could pay off the loan ASAP by overpaying then get a loan for a new car if you need to replace it before saving up enough? That is what I would do.

£200 to stocks and shares isa
£300 to savings
£500 to loan plus the £187 which would get it paid off this year. Once the loan is gone you would have £1000 spare each month so you could get the car within 6 months.

What essential repairs need doing to the house and is your DH going to contribute?

chelseablue

enthusiasticsaver wrote: »

Having a think about your savings priorities may be useful here. I think personally that the car is the biggest priority but to buy a reasonable one would cost you £7 - £10k.

You could pay off the loan ASAP by overpaying then get a loan for a new car if you need to replace it before saving up enough? That is what I would do.

£200 to stocks and shares isa
£300 to savings
£500 to loan plus the £187 which would get it paid off this year. Once the loan is gone you would have £1000 spare each month so you could get the car within 6 months.

What essential repairs need doing to the house and is your DH going to contribute?

Our plan this year is to have new lights put in the hallway (DH has said he will pay for this from his bonus in Feb)
Having the hall, stairs and landing decorated (I'm paying for)
New carpet in the 3 bedrooms, landing and stairs (Im guessing I'll pay)

We moved in in 2016 and apart from some furniture and having the bedrooms decorated haven't done anything else. Never had the funds before on the old system

I don't really mind spending my money on the house, if he wants to waste his on rubbish then that's his choice. I've made it clear to him I'll be spending a lot on the house this year so don't come to me when you run out

enthusiasticsaver

Maybe continue as you are until you have done essential repairs and replaced the car then focus on loan?

If you keep the loan for the whole 4 years it will cost you approx £500 in interest. If you repay it in 2 that halves the cost to £250 approx. The MSE way of doing it would be to pay off the loan ASAP and use interest free credit for new carpets and savings for decorating. Doing costings for both the car and the redecoration might clarify it a bit.

You only had around £4500 debt in 2017 and I have lost track of where the additional debt came from. Was it for replacing your husbands lease car which he then wrote off or am I thinking of someone else?

enthusiasticsaver

Maybe you could set out priorities and costings to get it clear in your head which is most important?

So in no particular order

repay loan £8000
You already have £3800 emergency savings which is almost 6 months essential expenses (assuming monthly expenses are £700) so maybe aim for £5k?
Carpets for rooms you decorated last year
Redecorate hall, stairs and landing
New car
Continue to invest the £200 each month (what fund are you investing in?)

So 6 financial objectives in whichever order you think is best for your mental health primarily as the loan is low rate anyway.

chelseablue

enthusiasticsaver wrote: »

Maybe continue as you are until you have done essential repairs and replaced the car then focus on loan?

If you keep the loan for the whole 4 years it will cost you approx £500 in interest. If you repay it in 2 that halves the cost to £250 approx. The MSE way of doing it would be to pay off the loan ASAP and use interest free credit for new carpets and savings for decorating. Doing costings for both the car and the redecoration might clarify it a bit.

You only had around £4500 debt in 2017 and I have lost track of where the additional debt came from. Was it for replacing your husbands lease car which he then wrote off or am I thinking of someone else?

Yes that's me!

Replaced his lease car that went back. Car we bought was written off so used most of the insurance pay out to pay off the car

The thing that increased the debt was paying for the flights to Australia on my card, was £6k for the 3 of us.

I could carry on as I am and pay off the loan this year, £2,500 of my savings are in a 5% interest account. The 12 months for this is up in October so my plan is to send this straight to the loan in October when the interest rate drops to 1%