Reducing Debt - being accountable and taking responsibility

DrSpendLittle

Hi Wish, I have similar categories set up for you but I don't Tilly tidy - I keep leftovers in them and they automatically roll over to the next month. I like to see the green!!

DrSpendLittle

My credit card debt (CC2) is 0% until June 2019, which means it's not costing me any money.

I'm currently going through a phase of wanting to save, save, save. I'm very much a phase person, as my diary probably indicates :rotfl:

My short term plan (do-able within the next 14 months) is to pay off all my consumer debt and have a fully funded emergency fund. The latter would be comprised of: 1) Emergency Fund (£500); 2) A Month Ahead Salary Buffer (£2300); 3) 3-6 Months Expenses Fund (£5000).

I've played around with my YNAB budgets (creating two parallel ones) and have produced two options to achieve this:

Option 1: Pay off CC2 as soon as possible, clearing it by 30th September 2018 and then save the EF's by June 2019

Option 2: Pay £225 per month off CC2 to clear by June 2019 and save the remaining spare ££s into my Emergency Funds, by June 2019. The break even point (where savings equal debt), would still be 30th September 2018.

The above is based on an add hoc monthly budget until Dec 2018 and, from January 2019, a proper budget that allocates a set amount every month to all categories (e.g. £50 clothes, £50 household misc., £30 health; £200 holidays, £50 car maintenance etc etc etc).

Since starting my diary, I've been really driven to pay off the CC debt as soon as possible, largely for mortgage and secrecy purposes. But, these have recently changed as we've recently decided to delay moving until later in the year and DF now knows about my debts.

Over the last few days, I've been reading other people's diaries and encountering tales of people taking the scenic route to debt repayment (especially where their debt is 0%) and at the same time, building up a decent EF.

I'm going to think through this over the next couple of days. If I took Option 2, my countdown would still stand, though it would be a countdown to Break Even.

I'd be keen to hear your views on this. Does the above Option 2 sound sensible given the changing circumstances and interest free debt?

DrSpendLittle

I like seeing the numbers go down on my debt free (...or debt 'neutral') countdown!

Today is a day of meetings in town and there will be some spends as I need to pay for parking (all expense-able) and possibly a bit of public transport / taxi. I'm unsure just now as it all depends on the weather. I don't want to be walking half way across town in the rain to a meeting in the middle of nowhere. Also not sure if I have a working dinner or not. I can't remember what the plans were.

£2.47 cleaned in my account from TCB. Still got about £8 pending from PA. Their website seems to be having problems at the moment, well for me anyway, and my studies are taking aaaaages to clear.

Also still waiting on £70.70 to clear in TCB from insurance purchases from December. I think it'll be another 3 months!

Have a great day!

DSL :j

DrSpendLittle

To my delight, yesterday turned out to be a NSD. I parked for free in the town near my first meeting where I had free lunch. I then walked across town to another meeting with colleagues, where we all had a free evening meal. I then shared a cab back to the original meeting place with 4 other colleagues, one of whom paid to claim expenses! I now have £50 in my purse burning a hole :rotfl: I've decided to use it as my fuel spends.

Had a good moan about work to my colleagues last night (see my earlier post) and I was surprised to learn about a growing air of discontent in my team, largely the result of a newish line manager. I think perhaps, subconsciously, I've been picking up on this at work. Anyway, onwards and upwards.

Today is WFH. We have an Ocad0 shop coming shortly and hopefully something in for dinner though we haven't quite thought about what that will be. I may even bag another NSD today!

A quiet weekend of catching up on house work, perhaps doing some sport and / or going for a walk.

Have a great Friday 13th!

DSL :j

DrSpendLittle

PA balance now at £17.97 and will cash out at £20. PA seems to be being really slow with approving studies. I've more pending than cleared!

I reckon I can make today a NSD. That would be 5 days in a row. Oh, wait, I did an Ocad0 order on Wednesday. Does that count? Probably does. Darn it.

I think I've decided to take the scenic route to paying down my CC2 and using the spare ££s to build my emergency funds (Option 2 in the posts earlier in my diary). I'm still mulling it over but I think I would feel more secure knowing that I have a £500 EF, a £2300 salary buffer and a £5000 emergency expenses fund. Anyway, I will mull over it some more and decide in the next day or two and them amend my signature.

Right, got a wee bit of work to get done and then its the weekend. Yay!!!

DrSpendLittle

So yesterday involved a £7 spend in the end. DF and I had a naughty takeaway as the meat we ordered from Ocad0 that we planned to use for dinner was simply dreadful. We'd ordered diced lamb to use in a curry and what arrived was so gristly and fatty. It had been pre cut into such small cubes that it was impossible to trim. Very disappointing. Anyway, I've emailed Ocad0 and I'm hoping for a refund (which will cover my part of the cost of the takeaway it turns out!). Will stick to the local butchers for cuts of meat like this in the future.

Today is Operation Sort Out The House. DF is the messy one and I'm the tidy one, so I try to keep on top of tidiness and I'm normally the one putting everything back in its place. Its got a bit untidy over the past few days and I have a busy week ahead, so I want it to be nice and organised for that. The weather is nice so I'm thinking of throwing DF out to enjoy a short walk or something whilst I sort stuff out. As a kid, my mum always used to throw us out when she tidied up on Saturday mornings!

DF and I had a brief chat about buying a new car as our main car is getting a bit old now and will soon start to cost us money. Our plan is to buy a 2 year old one and pay cash. I need to see how that works for my financial plans over the coming 12-18 months. DF initially seemed anxious about his ability to save up that amount of money from his salary. I told him I manage to set aside at least £800 per month (okay, it's on debt repayments) and if I can do it, he certainly can since he has no debt or payments and makes £8K a year more than I do (without a student loan deduction). I think he had a mini LBM :rotfl:

I'm in the office for most of next week so I need to plan evening meals and office lunches to make the week smooth and easy. And outfits!! I find the more prepared I am, the easier the 6am get ups are.

DSL :j

DrSpendLittle

Radio silence for the past few days. I was feeling rather under the weather but I'm now back in the game!

Worked from home / felt poorly on Monday and had a NSD. Tuesday I was in the office and I was deeply unorganised so bought lunch locally I know, I know!! Today I'm in the office too but I have got lunchy stuff with me. I'm out for dinner this evening but I'm hoping to keep spends down.

PA now at around £20.70 ish. I can't remember off the top of my head the precise balance, but I'm ready to cash out soonish. I'll pop it into the eating out pot, as most other categories are doing okay and it could do with a boost.

My only spends over the past four days besides lunch buying naughtiness have been £25 fuel for my commute and £2.25 on coffee to keep me going between work meetings. I never normally buy coffee at work, since we have all those facilities to hand in the office, but I was hanging around for an hour between meetings and decided to take a break in a local cafe. Felt guilty about coffee cup waste. Must think of how to get around that - I try to keep my use of plastic (water bottles, food containers etc etc) to a minimum as I'm concerned about hormone disruption (oestrogen dominance). Too much Dr Google. Anyhow, I digress. The point is I don't want to start using plastic-based refill mugs on a regular basis, but I do want to do my part in reducing the billions of coffee cups that are thrown away on daily basis. Will scour the forums here for inspiration.

What else? I'm in the office quite a bit over the next few weeks so I need to watch my fuel spends. My fuel budget might running on fumes itself by the time April 30th appears. On that note, I'm looking forward to seeing what the new tax year brings. If my calculations are correct, my net take home pay will go up by £12.38 per month. It'll do!

Have a lovely warm day!

DSL :j

DrSpendLittle

The countdown is making my debt free / debt neutral date more exciting that it should be!

Bit of a dilemma... a few months ago I switched up my skin care routine. Well, it is completely, 100%, absolutely NOT working out well for my skin. I've never known my skin so shiny and spotty or my makeup so unable to stay put. At first I thought my skin just needed some time to get used to the products and routine. But, after 10 weeks, I am now Fed Up. The products are 'natural' (Liz 3arle) and use a range of natural oils (avocado etc) as a base for the moisturiser. The combination skin moisturiser that I first tried about 5 weeks ago was way too heavy for my skin - my face would be super shiny by midday and my makeup practically dissolving by 3pm - so I switched to the light moisturiser for day time and used the combination moisturiser for evenings on the recommendation of the counter lady. However, I still have the same shiny-slipping-sliding problem, albeit to a slightly less, though still unacceptable, extent. Primers and setting sprays didn't help either. To top it all off, I've been getting lots of spots, particularly in places I'd never before got them. I initially wondered if the spots had been caused by some of the new herbal teas I'd been drinking (in the hope the natural skincare was not the culprit) but I excluded the tea over the past two weeks and I still have the spots! :mad: The excessive oil production caused by the moisturiser must be irritating my skin and blocking my pores. So, the moisturiser just doesn't suit my skin.

So on my hunt for a new moisturiser, I did some fairly extensive research on different types of moisturisers, slipping makeup, skin irritation, oil production, causes of adult acne etc etc. Well, it turns out that to prevent you foundation slipping, you need to match the base of your moisturiser (oil, water or silicone) with the base of your foundation because oil and water simply just don't mix and that is the main cause of foundation slippage!! Oil based-moisturisers should be used under oil-based foundations. I actually use a powder foundation and I've not quite figured out what the best moisturiser is for that, but I suspect its NOT oil-based!!! I think my previous moisturiser had been water based and obviously the LE one is oil-based. "That has to be the reason for the shine, spots and slipping foundation" I yelled to myself in delight! :rotfl:

So, armed with my newly acquired wisdom, I've been a bit non-MSE friendly and invested in a gel-based moisturiser, alcohol free toner and mild cleanser from Clini8ue, which I will use for the next month or so to see how my skin reacts I reeeeeeally hope it works as I am so fed up of spots and sliding makeup and this heat is not helping! I'll use some of my unassigned expenses due back shortly to cover the cost. I will probably give my other oil-based products to my friend who I know loves that range. It's a shame as I wanted to support the LE brand as I had heard so may good things about it, but it just mustn't work with my skin type.

Right, back to work. I'm glad I'm working at home today in this heat. I've got the curtains in all unoccupied rooms closed to keep the house cool (a Spanish trick, though they use shutters) and it's working a treat! In fact, I may have to put the heating on... only joking!!! :rotfl:

pidge04

Hi
I just went back to the beginning of my diary where you had posted and decided to look at your diary again.
How are you doing? Looks like it has been a month since you posted unless I have missed some posts.
I am very impressed by your number of no spend days and the money you are bringing in from (I think) surveys. I imagine they are a good way of feeling like you have done something. I struggle on the days when I feel like I have not done anything to reduce the amount I owe.
Ok, just checking in. Hope you are ok and feeling motivated etc!

DrSpendLittle

Hi all,

Been off the site for a few months - I lost the habit of updating my diary BUT my debt slaying has continued:

• I've now paid off my car loan. :T My little car is all mine.
• CC2 is now below £5k!
• Since August 2017, I've managed average monthly repayments of £810.47

So, my total debt is now at £4,999.99, which is the outstanding balance on CC2. It's interest free until June 2019.

This time last year, before my LBM, my outstanding debt was £13,915.17. If you'd told me this time last year I would manage to pay £8,915.18 off my debt and still maintain my lifestyle, I'd have laughed at you. The ironic thing is, I've never felt richer.

Other MSE news? We've had some work done on the house - just bits and bobs of wood replaced and painted, some kitchen work, some gardening and some furniture refurbishment. The total cost was around £500 each. My emergency fund is around £250 as we had some work done on the car and new tyres. My new skin care routine (lolz at my last post!) is doing well and I'm pleased and now settled into it.

What next? Well, July will be expensive as I have £800 to pay for my holiday, so only £744.90 in debt repayments will be made. My current debt plan is to aggressively (accounting for planned expenses) pay down CC2 until October 1st (reducing the balance to £2,999.99) and then start paying £300 per month for the following 7 months and make a final payment of £600 in June 2019. During that time, I plan to build a £500 EF, a £2300 next months salary fund and have £4000 in my 3-6 months expenses fund. I will also be running a proper budget, where I assign monthly amounts to each line item as if I were debt free, such as for holidays, insurances, clothes & shoes, books, CDs, car maintenance, gifts, xmas, household miscellaneous, eating out etc etc. My existing way of budgeting has been very much a 'scorched earth' approach, involving throwing all except immediate obligations at the debt and dealing with 'expenses' as and when they arise. If my plan works, my theoretical break even date will be 30th November, which accounts for an expensive Oct - Nov (xmas savings, birthdays, car insurance, house insurance, car MOT etc).

You'll probably know by now how indecisive I am about saving / paying off debt :rotfl: so that plan might change. But, I feel the need to build up some cash reserves sooner rather than later.

Over and out for now. Will try to pop in more regularly and catch up on diaries over the next few weeks. I'm keen to see how my regular lurking debt slayers are doing!

DSL :j