Time to clear the debt - for good!

laurag89

Update: £425.18 left on M&S credit card.
Want to pay that £25.18 off as soon as possible to fall within the £300 territory


Just off to update my signature. woooohoooo

laurag89

Makeachange wrote: »

Well done you're doing amazing :beer::beer::beer::beer:

Thank you so much


Something definitely feels different this time around, I think its the wedding. We will look to start a family after we are married and I do not want any debt hanging around!


Think that is giving me motivation.

laurag89

My day has just improved significantly, logged on to my joint household account and our water company had credit £216 - turns out they have been massively overcharging us.


Doesn't help my own personal finances, but it does mean £216 has gone into the wedding savings

Happierdays

Brilliant!:T

laurag89

Morning to Anyone reading


More surveys completed yesterday evening, and the good thing is that I don't think I will need to put fuel in until tomorrow which is payday so..... I should be able to pay another £10.00 to my M&S credit card this evening.


I plan to spend my weekend doing up our house (we have already bought all the paint etc - so no spending involved), and finding things around the house to stick onto ebay to make some more money towards this credit card.


Even though it is payday tomorrow I am going to change my thoughts this month and treat it as if I haven't, by only buying things that I absolutely have too. I will see what is left at the end of the month and pay that to the credit card aswell.


£100 will be going to my holiday fund, and £100 to the wedding fund. I know my debt should take priority although - I do not want to put any money for holidays on the credit card like I used to, so I am planning to save for the holidays we have booked already and once saved I will move the £100 per month to the credit cards.

DrSpendLittle

laurag89 wrote: »

Morning to Anyone reading

Even though it is payday tomorrow I am going to change my thoughts this month and treat it as if I haven't, by only buying things that I absolutely have too. I will see what is left at the end of the month and pay that to the credit card aswell.

£100 will be going to my holiday fund, and £100 to the wedding fund. I know my debt should take priority although - I do not want to put any money for holidays on the credit card like I used to, so I am planning to save for the holidays we have booked already and once saved I will move the £100 per month to the credit cards.

I would recommend using You Need A Budget (YNAB). It's excellent for tracking your spending. Basically, you give each £1 a 'job' and assign it to different categories (wedding, mortgage, groceries, dentist, petrol etc etc) and you try to stick to the budget for each category in any given month. There is some flexibility (indeed, proper budgets do need some flex) so you can shift money between categories and top up the ones where you've had unexpected spends (e.g. I put a bit more in my mobile phone category this month as I sent a few picture messages and they were an extra cost above my standard budgeted phone bill). But, more than all this, it's a really good way of feeling okay about spending on things like holidays and weddings because they become part of the budget. You can do a free 30 day trial and if you don't like it, you don't need to subscribe. I'm quite a visual person, so I like to see my money and YNAB really helps me. Wow, all this and I've only been using it for 4 days! :rotfl:

laurag89

Thank you DrSpendLittle!

I am going to give the free trial a go now!
It really does sound like something worth while doing! It is so easy to spend little amounts here and there and not really know where your money is going in a month.

I will report back how I get on

laurag89

So today - I cancelled our Sky TV because all of our deals were coming to an end and they wanted £69 for the same package we are currently spending £44 per month on.

Looking on MSE TV deals i found a really good deal with BT for similar broadband and enough TV for what we need at £39 per month
Which is still cheaper than what we are paying now, plus we get £150 reward card, which can be used in most places. So think we will use that for our food, and use the cash we would use for food towards wedding savings.

Just about to do some surveys now And sign up to YNAB.

laurag89

I paid £5 to my M&S credit card this evening i had an amount pending to come out for a birthday card i bought so could not pay the whole £10 I was planning - but it is payday tomorrow yay!

Credit card balance - £420.18 remaining.

laurag89

Yay it's finally payday!

£100 paid to wedding fund, and £100 paid to holiday fund! I'm off to Mexico in October so I already have my spending money for that, just saving for tenerife June 2019 now, once I have what I need I am going to switch the £100 per month to my debts.

Going to see what is left in my account just before I'm paid again and will hopefully be able to put £50 to M&S along with any payments from surveys
Planning a NSD today taking lunch in from home which to be honest I usually do anyway, I can't bring myself to spend £5 a day on lunch!