Adventure wanted, but first we must rid ourselves of debt

charlies_tribe

Hope the children enjoy forest school. It will be nice to have just the tiniest but of normality for them. DS would love forest school but its the same day hes at the adult ed centre.

Your emergency fund is coming along nicely. 
Baby clothes bundles seem to sell quite quickly here so hopefully you won't have to hold on to them for too long.

AdventureWanted

Hi,

It's been ages since I've been on the forum. Life has been pretty hectic recently and I haven't had time to do anything!  Money wise we are ticking along, but not really making that much progress. We're doing ok though considering we've had a 20% pay decrease since work restarted in August. Hoping that next year will be better financially, but we will wait and see.

Forest school restarted and all of us really enjoyed it.  It ended up being a slice of normality in such a strange year and did real wonders for all of us.  It's now closed for Christmas, but we can't wait to go back in January.

I ended up donating loads of newborn and 0-3 month clothes to our local baby bank.  Really pleased I did, as when I took the bits in they said they were desperate for bits and that they had been inundated with requests for bits since the pandemic started.  Made me feel pretty good that I could help some new parents in a time of such uncertainty. Was also nice to remove the stuff from my house!

November debt roundup.

Joint debt at 30/11/20
Parents loan (CC4 & DH car) - £15,700
Parents loan - £6,200.00

Combined debt now sits at £21,900.00 (30/09/20 - £22,279.00).

EF - £2,000

Pleased that we have managed to get the EF to £2k. Ideally want to get to 6 months expenses saved, but that seems like a massive unachievable goal at the moment. Going to think about goals for next year soon.

jwil

Lovely to hear from you

It's all going down, which is a great result!

Have a lovely Christmas

AdventureWanted

Thanks Jwil 😊.  Hope you have a great Christmas too. 

So I've been looking back at my diary at February time before the world changed! My total debt then had just increased by £10k due to DH buying a newer car and the total debt at the month end was £18,575.  Our debt today stands at £21,400, so the debt has actually only gone up by £2,825 since February. Obviously I'd rather it hadn't gone up! But I've been so down about the increase and panicking about how on earth we will repay it, but an increase of under £3k definitely seems more doable. (I thought it had increased by lots more). Hoping that DHs work picks up a bit more next year and that the hourly rate may increase a bit again, but going to try harder to stick to my budgets and pay off as much as I can.  Think November and December I have let the budgets slide quite a lot as I have been pretty stressed and that old habit of treating the kids or just not paying attention to what is being purchased crept in again. 

Debt wise I think if I can get the debts to under £15k by the end of 2021 then I will be very happy. Owing the money to my parents makes me feel incredibly awkward (DH does not agree on this! He's happy to repay them slower and doesn't really have an issue owing them money) and I really would like to repay it as soon as is humanly possible!  I will think more about my goals over the next week or two and figure out what is doable with debt repayments and savings. I know I'd like the EF to be at least £3k by the end of 2021, but ideally would want a higher figure to feel more secure. 

charlies_tribe

I've not posted for a while.
Happy New year Adventure x

jwil

Happy New Year!

AdventureWanted

2020 v 2019 debt roundup . (2019 figures in brackets).

Joint Debt
CC1 - £0.00 (£0.00)
CC2 - £0.00 (£0.00)
CC3 - £0.00 (0.00)
CC4 - 0.00  (£9,620.00)
Mum & Dad - £21,150 (£0.00)

Total debt - £21,150.00 (£9,620.00) 

DHs Business Cc
Total - £0.00 (£1,355.00)

Total debt at 2020 £21,150.00
Total debt at 2019 £10,975.00.

Well the debt has increased A LOT since 2019.  Part of that is DHs new car and the other part is a loan from my parents to help with reduced income from end of March to July due to COVID.

All of our debt is now owed to my parents on a 0% loan basis.  In 2020 we paid £6,459 off the debt, which is pretty good seeing as we had such reduced income for a fair amount of the year.  

Hoping 2021 will start improving at some point and the debt will start reducing again. 

kindofagilr

Subscribed
I'm sure you are going to continue to ace it, I think a lot of people's will have gone up a bit cos of Covid xx

AdventureWanted

January 2021 debt roundup.

Joint debt at 31/01/21
Parents loan (CC4 & DH car) - £14,860 (31/12/20 - £15,150)
Parents loan - £5,750.00 (31/12/20 - £6,000.00)

Combined debt now sits at £20,610.00 (31/12/20 - £21,150.00).

EF - £2,800

In January we paid £540 off the debt. 

So my aim for 2021 is to pay £8,000 off the debt. This may end up being unrealistic, but I may as well try! Hoping that in the second half of the year life may be a bit more back to normal and work opportunities for DH increased, so the pay may go up a bit, which will help reduce the debt quicker.

May end up repaying my parents using a 0% credit card in a few months time. They at present won't accept repayments, instead getting us to keep the money in savings just in case. This is exceptionally kind of them, but I'm really struggling with owing them money - feel really guilty and exceptional pressure to pay it back ASAP.  

Would like to get the EF to £3,800.

AdventureWanted

It's been ages since I last posted. Life has been hectic recently and although we're in lockdown the days & weeks are going so fast. 

One of the main advantages of lockdown is the reduced expenses. The DC haven't got swimming lessons, so that money is being transferred to the EF & debt, as well as extra fuel money we aren't spending. 

Since last posting things have changed a bit for us. We're currently in the process of selling our house & buying a new one. It should complete before the stamp duty holiday ends, which will save us a fortune. We ummed & aahed about moving, but this house is no longer big enough for us & the location not brilliant for DHs work opportunities. The stamp duty holiday seemed like a perfect time to move.  Obviously it would have been more practical to wait until all the debt had gone, but we feel this is best for us as a family.  (As you can most probably tell I have some guilt towards it!).

DH is busy working, which I am incredibly grateful for. He's not enjoying work at the moment, but I keep telling him he should be grateful for the work and although his pay has reduced it's still more than a lot of hourly rate jobs. 

The DC are plodding on with their home education. They are missing their groups, especially forest school, but for 75% of the time are playing nicely together and doing ok.  Looking forward to the weather improving so we can spend more time outside. At present our garden is ridiculously muddy.

Need to start doing surveys again to get some extra cash in and am planning on listing some bits on eBay this weekend as they have a £1 listing weekend. 

Hope everyone is ok. I'm slowly catching up on all the diaries I subscribe to 😊.