Dear Diary

One-step-at-a-time

Just wanted to chip in and give you some encouragement. My husband is another one who has the 'whatever' approach - he is overpaying his CC and taking a little notice of what's going on, but is far less bothered about the whole debt than I am (which is fair enough I suppose as most of it is mine!). I haven't put his CC debt in my sig as I'm not touching it, at least, not until mine is a bit closer to being beaten into submission

MeenaM

One-step-at-a-time wrote: »

Just wanted to chip in and give you some encouragement. My husband is another one who has the 'whatever' approach - he is overpaying his CC and taking a little notice of what's going on, but is far less bothered about the whole debt than I am (which is fair enough I suppose as most of it is mine!). I haven't put his CC debt in my sig as I'm not touching it, at least, not until mine is a bit closer to being beaten into submission

thanks i appreciate you chipping in :T at least yours is overpaying his ,mine is still on min payments good luck with your debt free journey

debtfreeby2020_3

I am having a 'budget meeting' with mine later. Wish me luck *sighs*

MeenaM

debtfreeby2020 wrote: »

I am having a 'budget meeting' with mine later. Wish me luck *sighs*

hope it goes better than my last one , i do find that what i am thinking in my head i am going to say doesn't come out in the way i want it to and i get all stressed! i must try not to do that from now on

debtfreeby2020_3

The meeting never happened. I fell asleep - been up since 4 this morning. Now hubby’s asleep. It will have to be tomorrow :rotfl:

It’s tough going in to these meetings knowing exactly how things *should* be done. I get tongue-tied myself!

MeenaM

morning everyone

I've paid off £363 from the Barclays CC so that is down to £4095.95 , I have left £222 in my account until my benefit comes in and then will pay it to the CC , been to Aldi this morning and spent £80 so on course for that in my budget ,

a bit of snow here this morning but nothing to bad , so far!

got some more things on Ebay

lonelyrat

Hi You're making great headway. Sorry about the situation with your husband... I was in a similar sort of place last year with my OH. I was getting more and more worried and stressed about our debt and he just didn't seem to care. We had a talk about it and it turned out he was just as stressed but really didn't see a way out of it so was just burying his head in the sand (fair enough as I did this for months too)... He would forget to leave money for direct debits and got hit with charges left right and centre which was in turn making me even more stressed. What's worked for us is basically me just taking over everything (Im a control freak anyway so I actually love it :rotfl:). He has far lower debts than me but it's still significant for him as he just has student finance as his income.

While talking about it was great and we have found a way of moving forward together it wasn't the first conversation we had had about it and the other times really didn't go very well. I do struggle to get my point across and things I mean to say never come out the way they seem in my head and both he and I can get defensive and stubborn. I'm rambling here but I think what I'm trying to say is that even if you've had unsatisfying conversations in the past the next one may be better.

With my OH the way we tackle it now is that I've added him to my spreadsheet and every month I check his balances and give him an amount to transfer to the joint account. I then send it where it needs to go. He's involved in the sense that he's a sounding board for me when I need to talk things through but the overall decisions are down to me and it is working. We are both going to be debt free at the same time which will be amazing and can mean we can start saving for our future.

I haven't included his debts in my signature either as I'm not paying any of my money to them - just allocating his.

This sort of approach may not work for everyone and I do feel like a babysitter sometimes but since I've been sorting it for him he hasn't had any bank charges or late payment fees and he's paid off 2/3 credit cards which feels amazing. It's a win for him and a win for me.

I talk about money all the time now, I do think it's hard not to when you have debt. But the way I think about it now is more hopeful for the future. There's lots of planning and allocating and back and forth but it is all positive.

Good luck going forward and keep your head up! You're doing really well

MeenaM

what a lovely post LonelyRat , thank you for that, that does sound like it works really well for you , it's great to see the amount of debt you've paid off in your signature , very well done on that !

MeenaM

Paid off £222 to Barclays and it is now below £4000! yay!

snow day today and have printed off debt free cards , check out the website you can down load them for free my daughter has had fun colouring it in today , it charts your progress to debt free and there is one for credit cards too etc go check it out

we had takeaway pizza last night , cost £26 but we had put aside £70 for a birthday meal for hubby so taken the money from that as he has decided doesnt want that as my daughter birthday this weekend anyway and we have money budgeted to go out for that so dont really need to spend money on another meal out ,

debtfreeby2020_3

Woohooo! Well done on the payments. Are these overpayments or minimums? I hope you enjoyed the pizza.