It's time!

zippygeorgeandben

Hello lonelyrat - I must confess that I read your OP and a few replies but haven't read the whole thread because I was too impatient that I wanted to send a message (even though you aren't currently online!).
Keep it up and keep us informed. I like a diary where everything is spilled out. You won't find judgement here because you aren't using excuses/looking back/ways not to pay, you're moving forward!
Don't look at what your sister now has etc. just control your own destiny. You'll be stronger every day with this mentality.

lonelyrat

Hello again :j

Payday tonight - hallelujah! Got my wage slip today and I'm getting £1242 now as my basic pay (haven't done any overtime this month, which I do regret). The majority of this will go to my debt. I'll technically get paid tonight but I'll leave it until tomorrow to move any money about. Just purely so I can look at my balance and feel rich for once! I keep thinking to the future when I won't have monthly debt payments to make.... I get a funny feeling when I try and imagine what it’s going to feel like the first month I don’t have to pay anything off, like a kind of weird nervous/ butterfly feeling in my tummy. I was thinking about it the other day and I’ve been in debt (not of this magnitude, but still debt) since 2010… and it’s something I’ve been worried about and stressed about the whole time which is so crazy.

Hello debtfreeduo! It was pretty tough sending everything back! I had originally planned to get new clothes with the extra money I got last month from the bonus but then that started running low and it’s scary how quick I reverted to buying something on credit. I think the ease with which I went back to that pattern shocked me into action a wee bit and has refocused me.

Thank you zippygeorgeandben for the lovely comment I think my mentality before I started this journey has always leaned towards that of making excuses. Even at the beginning I was blaming the debt on circumstance (reduced household income and expensive rental) but at the end of the day, while those may have been contributing factors, they are not the reason for the level of debt I got into. That was down to me making bad decisions and failing to budget - plain and simple. I feel like I’ve learned from those decisions now though and as long as I stay positive things will get better and easier.

Having said that … something pretty unexpected happened which sent me into a downward spiral mentally. It’s not the end of the world but it almost felt that way when it happened. I came home yesterday and had a letter from CARS (creditlink account recovery solutions) who I had never heard of before. It was a demand for payment for their client DW Fitness who say I have been ignoring their requests for payment of £83.00 (*). I completely fell apart… I just felt like everything I’ve been working towards has been for nothing and things like this will happen no matter how hard you try and move forward. I was in a puddle of tears for a good while. It was the biggest wobble I’ve had so far and it was rough… my OH was wonderful and talked me down and I’m feeling a lot better today. I think the main lessons for me to take away from this is a) don’t ever get too comfortable/ cocky about how things are going and b) always have an emergency fund.

On that note, on my spreadsheet I have an emergency fund cell BUT it does not receive its 1st payment until December.. Obviously that’s not much help to anyone is it?! The spreadsheet how now been revised and the emergency fund gets its first payment this wage instead. I think it was maybe just a bit naive of me to leave it off, I just really hadn’t expected that there could BE any emergency while living with my partners parents! Just goes to show... One positive to find in this is that, while it may not have been budgeted for I did have the funds available in an overdraft to cover it so it has been paid. If it had happened before I began debt busting in July I would not have had £83 spare. My OH has said he will give me the money to cover it when he gets paid which is really very lovely and generous of him. I am going to update my signature to include the £83 as well… means OD 2 is now back in play but shouldn’t be for long.

I will update again tomorrow once I have done all my transfers and have updated balances. I think I will start a Debt Free Diary as well and maybe try and link to this somehow. I want to try and begin posting more to try and hold myself accountable for more of my little spends as I am still frittering money away (it’s just been budgeted for in the grander scale of things but there's savings I could be making). I’m hitting the targets I’m setting myself but there is definitely room for improvement….

I began this thread feeling overwhelmed and unsure of my next steps and the advice I have been given by everyone has been really wonderful and I’m extremely thankful :beer:

(* If anyone cares for the backstory to the DW Fitness fiasco then read on….

I joined the, then, local DW in August last year. I went twice in the period of that year as I moved away, but I knew I was in contract for the 12 months so I paid £29.99 a month and never missed a month. After August's payment I assumed (why, oh why?) that that was the end of the contract as I thought I would need to renew it for it to continue. I happily cancelled my DD and thought nothing more of it. Until I got an email from them on the 7th September saying they had been unable to claim my DD. I emailed back advising that I thought the contact was up as it reached the end of the term and as such had cancelled the DD. I asked if this wasn’t the case as I was prepared to pay if I had to give a month's notice or something. They never replied to me so again, foolishly, I thought nothing more of it. Fast forward to yesterday and I’ve got this threatening letter from CARS claiming that I’ve been ignoring DW. It really isn’t very fair as they in fact ignored me but hey ho. I could have handled the situation better and continued with my efforts to contact them following their email. I just really did think that they would have responded to me if I still had something due.

I am concerned about it though as I’m worried it will leave a blemish on my credit history - something that I’m trying to improve, not worsen! Also feeling pretty frustrated as if I knew I could have gotten out of the contract by paying £83 I would have done it about ten months ago, saving myself £299 wasted on a gym I never went to *sigh* If anyone has any knowledge about if this will show up on my credit file I would be grateful if you could share. I plan on writing a letter of complaint to DW about their lack of contact but am sure I will be ignored. It’s not the end of the world and it has been paid it’s just another frustration/ hurdle to overcome and (yet another) lesson to learn)! :eek:

lonelyrat

Updates for this month as promised

Overdraft 1 £950 / £1950
Overdraft 2 £83 / £450
Loan £472.29 / £770
Santander CC £2744.45 / £2770.90
Very BNPL £263.98 / £288.98
Capital One (1) £0 / £404.25
Capital One (2) £0 / £179
Barclaycard £0 / £390

Total Debt £4513.72 / 7203.13

I'm getting there. Slowly but surely. I transferred just over £1050 to OD 1 before transferring to my spends account and seeing how low it brought the overdraft felt pretty great. Motivation to keep going.... next month when I do a transfer of around that amount it will bring me into positives in that account... for the first time since 2014 :eek: Fingers crossed for no more setbacks this month

As I mentioned above I have started a Debt Free Diary and will stop posting here now. I feel like I'm just clogging up this board so a move is a good plan. If anyone has read this and is interested in following my journey it can now be found here:

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/73281545#Comment_73281545

Thank you once again for everyone who's given me advice and posted encouraging comments on this thread - I really appreciate it all and you're welcome to join me on my shiny new thread :beer: