Organised Chaos

StressedSteph

Hi all,

I have been in some degree of debt all my life. I am a self confessed impulsive geek.

I love organising my finances, I use YNAB and an excel spreadsheet but then I get in a particular mood and make rash impulsive buys that destroys all of my hard work and planning.

My son has just been diagnosed with ADHD and i think I know where he got it from!!

I started 2015 hitting the debt hard. I posted on here every day to stay on track, I cut all of our outgoings to the bare minimum and as a family we did nothing for a whole year. By December 2015 I had reduced our debt down to 13k from about 24k.

Then early 2016 my mother in law died and my father in law was diagnosed with throat cancer. As I wasnt working at the time I dealt with all of the funeral and organising of FIL and also help him with all of his hospital trips, nursed him at our home for months when he had a stomach tube and was a horrendous time after Chemo and radiotherapy. Due to all of this I had no time or energy to spend watching our finances and I just made minimum payments and the figure didnt really go down at all for the whole of 2016.

By Christmas 2016 FIL was back in his own home and much recovered. So I was faced with tackling the 2nd half of our debt.

To be honest after watching FIL come close to death with cancer I have had a really hard time accepting that I need to cut all the finances back again, say to no everything the kids ask to do or want and to cut our already minimal lifestyle back to zero again because I have seen how life can go completely sideways and to be frank...I could be dead by the end of the year, my children are growing up fast (13 & 10) and I don't want to miss out on doing fun things with them while they still want their old mum around.

So for the whole of 2017 I have just been making minimum payments again. I have kind of set up my own debt management plan and have agreed £50 per month payments on all of our debts.

I still do struggle with the decision though. I desperately want to be debt free and not have this 13k hanging over my head forever but at the same time I want spare cash for the odd school holiday trip out, concert, camping trip etc. (nothing wild and extravagant just regular little bits to look forward to)

How do you guys manage this decision between debt or a life???

Maybe I am being too dramatic and i guess there is a middle ground somewhere. On months where we have abit more cash spare I would like to pay off some of my smaller debts with a double payment maybe.

I thought i would start this fresh diary to follow my many and varied mood swings and hopefully see some improvement in my debt level. I imagine my signature is very out of date now so will change that soon.

Hope you are all in alot more control than I am but I look forward to hearing from you all.

StressedSteph xxxx

Happierdays

Hi stressedsteph! I agree -finding a balance between paying off debt and having a life is difficult to achieve... I tried to find small, free or cheap things to do (esp when my lads were boys and not young men of 18+nearly 20!) while trying to slightly overpay c cards at the same time. We did have some nice beach/park/picnic days tho obviously this was weather permitting! Sorry i am prob not telling you anything new! I think sometimes we just gritted our teeth and wished we were able to be a bit more relaxed with the purse strings and at times it felt like a difficult time that we had no choice but to try to make the best of and just "get through"! but it has felt a bit easier as the debt has reduced... even when it was reducing painfully slowly it was still going in the right direction!
Best of luck to you

Honeysucklelou2

Hi Stressed Steph,

This family/debt balance is one that I'm trying to get right! I think I'm a long way from affording a holiday but working up to a weekend camping trip would be good:). I am trying to do free or very cost days out and utilising the NT membership more, as I find it cost effective over the year.

BadBookkeeper

I agree its so hard. To be honest that is were most of my debt accumulates from. I scrimp and save for ages get fed up of the slow progress have a 'sod it' splurge and undo all my good work. Perhaps have an amount in your monthly budget for treats as if its a bill that HAS to be paid? Also things like Meerkat cinema codes and kids eat free offers are quite easy to find.


Good luck!

StressedSteph

Evening,

Thanks for replying Happierdays, HoneysuckleLou and Badbookkeeper. Its nice to know it's not just me that struggles with that balance.

Apart from both of my childrens birthdays being this end of the year coupled with Christmas I do find the winter months easier to budget and stay on track. Theres something about sunny days that just makes us want to be out spending money much more. Obvious I guess.

Well I had an interesting conversation with my dentist tonight. Back last Christmas a previously rebuilt tooth broke off and I havent afforded/prioritised getting it checked by my dentist this year as i knew it was going to be expensive. Well I had my annual check up this afternoon and the quote for the work is £244 :eek:.
You can't see that I have a tooth missing except I now tend to chew on the other side because of the gap, but I REALLY don't want to have to find that money with birthdays and christmas looming . It might have to wait for some magical rich month that we never seem to have anymore.

Not much financially to report except I have about £5 left untill we get paid at the weekend.

I put £15 diesel in the car today and £20 for my dentist checkup and £5 is what I am left with

Not going to be much better off once the wages come in as I have to play catch up with Septembers Mortgage payment.

Eugh Keep plodding on. When I have chance I will do an SOA.

I have reorganised my abandoned YNAB budget and plan to restart that on the 1st October. I stopped using it about 6 monthd ago because I got in a bad habit of fixing the budget to suit AFTER I have spent the money. This is most definitly not the way you should work YNAB and because of this I found it very depressing to have to keep juggling the budget to fit my random spends in.
I plan pon inputting the wages and then spreading it amongst what is going out that week and sticking to it in October.
When you are strict with yourself YNAB works very well.. just that age old problem of actually sticking to it is what i find hard.

Hope anyone reading is having a good day. Speak soon.