early 40s and not fabulous at all

Plush

PS. There is £11 left in my Halifax account. Looks like I might make it to Friday unscathed.

enthusiasticsaver

Hope you manage to make it to payday without going into your overdraft.

Change of circumstances is one of the biggest reasons for debt and if you are already in debt when that change comes the crunch point comes that much sooner. This is one of the reasons I strongly urge people not to turn unsecured debt into secured because it threatens the roof over your head. If you cannot meet unsecured debt payments there is very little the lender can do other than wait for you to find a new job or default you. Your credit record is trashed yet but you are not risking your home. If you default on your mortgage they can start repossession proceedings within 3-6 months.

Re the school photos yes, they are nice memories but I have spent the last few weeks sorting out cupboards full of school photos for our two daughters which are just up there gathering dust having long been replaced by graduation and wedding photos. Why not just pay out every two or three years rather than every year?

EssexHebridean

Maybe worth talking to your line manager about the redundancies situation? If you explain that it's left you and others feeling very uncertain/insecure - and that some form of official statement would really help to get people feeling reassured maybe? I can certainly understand why it's scared you - it's never a nice situation to find yourself in, but even worse when you're finances are on the line too. Absolutely agree with what ES says about turning unsecured debt into secured too - I shudder when I see folk thinking to do that. It's almost never a good idea.

Keep at it with the yoga and running - definitely good stress busters!

Plush

I have not made a decision on the remortgage yet. In any case, there is no way I will do it unless 1. credit cards and overdraft stay untouched 2. I cancel the credit cards once paid and 3. I make regular over-payments on the new mortgage of at least £300. I have a friend who's a financial adviser and she promised she'd help me run all numbers for me, not only short term but long term.

On the redundancy situation, will find out more tomorrow at the meeting. My line manager is on holiday at the moment, he's picked the perfect timing

Had a really busy day today, work, DD's swim class - she's moved up to the last stage of the swim courses. Then came home and cleaned up the bathroom and did laundry. It's only Tuesday and I cannot wait for the weekend.

Plush

So it looks like there will be no more layoffs - for now, anyway. The morale at work is very low... not surprised.

Mine's better, yoga is definitely helping, even though my body isn't very happy, the break was way too long.

Pay day is Friday and I still have the £11 left. Tomorrow is free lunch day, we have a long training session at work. Once again, cutting it close... but happy to be in green.

Plush

Pay day today, happy to report I stayed in green. Just.

Paid £300 to my credit cards, which is just the minimum payment, rounded up. Total debt across the 2 cards is now £12800. I'm really hoping to get it to less than £10K with the help of the annual bonus but that might be too ambitious.

December is a tough month financially - I will have to get very creative with some of the presents. DD is helping me, she's told me she would make presents for some of her friends. We have a good stock of charity Christmas cards, will need to buy a few stamps though.

Next pay day is on Friday the 22nd of December and it's going to be super-hard to stay in green giving all the presents that I still need to buy. But, the bonus will be on the 22nd payslip, so at least I won't have new debt post Christmas. I still don't have my bonus statement from work, which is a bit annoying, as I'd like to know the amount, roughly.

Can't wait for tonight's yoga session. I've actually turned down an offer to go out to dinner and drinks with friends tonight, because of yoga. Still in honeymoon over it. Speaking of honeymoons, my dating life is still a big blank, I forgot about my online profile and I have not accidentally met anyone on the tube yet. There is a guy in my yoga class, the problem is he's double my age... probably 80s... very sweet though

The weekend looks quiet but nice. I'm going to do a Crisis at Christmas volunteer training session tomorrow (I'm volunteering 2 days just before Christmas this year) and DD will be at her dad's. Sunday looks like it will be an NSD - we'll stay at home and have DD work on her Tudor project, as it's due in 2 weeks, then perhaps go for a short walk in our local park.

That's pretty much all... my tube's arrived to Blackfriars, I'm meeting a client today.

Happy Friday everyone!

enjoyyourshoes

Work out why you need to spend.

Solve that problem, then move forwards.

Unless you stop the profligate sending you will always be in debt.

Saving for the wants makes them more rewarding and ultimately more enjoyable.

Plush

PS. Forgot to say. I used the £11 that were still in my account this morning for a mortgage overpayment! That felt so good (OK I know I could've reduced the credit card balance instead, but that's on 0% and I really felt like making a mortgage OP, as that doesn't happen very often).

enjoyyourshoes

Have you a plan to pay off the full balance on the 0% before the period ends?

If not please look at what you need to pay per month t get balance to zero before offer period expires, often the terms are poor and interest astronomical (check terms carefully on what happens at term end with outstanding balance)

Plush

@enjoyyourshoes that is work in progress. The £12.8K balance is on 0% for another 18-19 months, on 2 cards (Barclaycard 1 and Sainsbury's). I've been making miniumum payments on the Bcard, because I plan to tackle the Snsb one first.

On the immediate term, at the end of December, right after Christmas, I plan to use a large portion of my annual bonus to pay a good chunk of the Sainsbury's credit card. I have yet to find out how much is the bonus, but it should be more than £3000 net. I won't be able to use it all to pay off Sainsbury's but I hope I can use a lot of it.

Also, I've been tracking all non-bills spending in YNAB since late September, and I plan to sit down and do a spending review after the first 3 months, then come up with a realistic monthly budget for 2018. I've already started a draft of the spending budget but I need to know where I stand debt-wise at the end of the year, after that bonus.

The main plan, however, is to stop using credit cards (and the overdraft) altogether. I have managed to do that over the past couple of months BUT it was always too tight and I need to come up with some emergency fund, otherwise this isn't going to work.

Then, there is the question about re-mortgaging which I have yet to decide on... in any case next year my current fixed mortgage deal is expiring and I will have to either switch to a new fixed deal with Halifax OR remortgage to a different lender. In any of these scenarios my monthly payments should be lower than currently, if the interest rates don't go up by more than 0.25-0.5 (they just went up by 0.25).