This Duo's debt free journey

Willowtree222

Deffo not easy, but it’s a target to aim for!

DebtFreeDuo

I am almost on £160 just since the beginning of December so only another £240 to go in 4 months. £60 a month doesn't seem too much of a stretch although January will be difficult with exams.

HairyHandofDartmoor

The life insurance seems sensible for peace of mind.

It would be great if you could get DS a bunk bed with your survey money. They do like their sleepovers (or wakeovers as I call them :rotfl:).

I think it's a lovely idea to get your neighbour some beer. Kindness should be rewarded .

DebtFreeDuo

Really not feeling well today, head hurts, have a cough that just won't go away and my emotions are really all over the place.

Food shopping today wasn't such a good idea as I didn't monitor it as well as I would have had I been feeling better. I have around £10 of my budget left for the month. I am hoping that I will be able to stretch out what I bought today and then I will only need bread and fruit before January. I think this is doable, I bought some mince for lasagne today which will do us for 3 days and a small pork joint which should do us another 3 days. I really haven't been taking very good care of myself in the food department and I think that is contributing to me feeling down.

Getting close to my next cash out on PA and getting ever closer to my next £10 voucher to bring me up to the £160. I am considering using some of this to do a pantry order though as I am completely out of detergent and close to running out on a few other bits.

DebtFreeDuo

Filled the car up today, I did this so that I could save some of my budget this month as it cost £42 rather than £55.

So my total budget left for the rest of this month is £28. I won't need any fuel, won't need much more food and I shouldn't really have any other costs come up as I need to spend most of my time studying. Will try and get DS out of the house but because he breaks up from school so close to Christmas he will have a lot of new things to keep him occupied indoors so that I can study as much as possible. I hate not being able to do much with him and feel so guilty but in the grand scheme of things its only 2 weeks and these exams are for our future.

I now have £160 in my amazon account for gifts and I have decided against using it for household things for now. Its great knowing its there if I have a real emergency though.

enthusiasticsaver

Your life insurance with the cashback sounds a bargain and for a relatively low amount you have bought some peace of mind for your DS future. Even if he is surrounded by adoring family there is no guarantee what health or financial circumstances they will be in if the worst should happen. Having a nest egg to help him buy his first house, pay towards university etc etc is one less thing he would need to worry about. Always essential if you have dependants especially if it is just you.

DebtFreeDuo

Received my first birthday card today which I think most likely has some money in it, also received some money for Christmas that I wasn't expecting. I'm not entirely sure what to do with it so I think I am going to pot it along with any other money I receive over the next week.

I set up my life insurance to come out of a different account that only my broadband currently comes out of so I need to make sure I put enough in there for the next year or so (£72) so that everything will be covered. I set up this account so that I could play around with changing current accounts but not actually moving my main account anywhere. I started this by just opening up a second account and switching that account over when there wasn't any rules to get the cash back. Now that most of the switching offers state you must have active direct debits I have made sure that I will also meet that criteria. M&S are currently offering £125 gift card to switch so I think once my first life insurance payment has come out then I am going to switch this account over.

Been looking at my loan repayments again, I think I have reverted back to my original plan of paying off the lower amount first. I am going to do it this way because then when I pay off the car loan the early settlement fee will be one months interest rather than 2 because I will have under 12 months remaining on both. If I paid the car loan first then I would have over a year remaining. Paying off the higher one first would have been a saving of around £90 in interest once both were settled, paying off the lower one first is a saving of around £85 (provided my workings are correct). I know the saving will be lower but it will give me an extra £400 between Jan-April which was going to be the most difficult months for me.

So plan for 2018

January - Pay off loan.
April - Pay off car loan.
October - Overdraft clear. I will be in and out of this over the year but by October I won't need to touch it at all. Pay off 0% CC here too.
November - If I haven't saved enough up to here for the overpayment then I will use whatever I have in the SPC to put to one side for this.

Then December I will be celebrating becoming debt free and also learning how to budget properly. By this point I should be able to save up the remainder of my house deposit in no time!

EssexHebridean

Great forward planning there and also I'll agree with others that learning to budget is the key thing here - it's SUCH a useful tool and the thing I've found is that once you have the skills that will get you DF then they're skills for life. That Life Insurance is a bargain price too - I really should sort something out on that front - we've been talking about it for ages but MrEH's is a bit more complex and he was the one meant to be sorting it out for both of us. Needless to say it's not happened!

Your birthday & Christmas money - stash it somewhere separate from money that will be going to debt - and next time you need an item of the "toiletries" type maybe treat yourself to something a little nicer than you could justify for yourself with some of that money? It always felt wrong to me to use money that was gifted to me on paying down debt and I would have felt very uncomfortable admitting to the giver that was where it had gone I think. It is an "each to their own" though and others may feel differently on that one.

DebtFreeDuo

I really like that idea for the birthday and Christmas money, that way I won't feel so bad about buying something if I'm feeling spendy too. I will put it to one side and use it as a treat fund. I have always tried to use my gift money for something that I have wanted but I wanted to be a little more careful with it this year.

Whenever anyone gives me money for DS for birthday/Christmas I always feel bad for spending it on anything, I've really got into a habit of putting it away for him. I have started talking to him about this because I feel that its very important for him to gain these skills as he is growing up. He definitely has more money than I do!

There are some really great cash back offers on life insurance so make sure you take a look and see if you can make use of them.

HairyHandofDartmoor

You should definitely spend your Christmas and birthday money on clothes or toiletries for yourself. That will make you feel less deprived and less tempted to splurge.

It's really good if you can bring DS up to understand the value of money. I wish I'd learnt that skill when I was younger .