Positive Balance: Focused on Budgeting 1 January 2018 at 10:54PM edited 7 March 2018 at 12:49AM in Debt free diaries 229 replies 20.9K views

PositiveBalance

Hello everyone and happy New Year!

I'm back. A bit shamefacedly, but here I am.

I shuffled off to the MFW boards once I bought my house 2 years ago, shiny-faced, naïve and hopeful that I would be able to debt-bust and overpay my mortgage all at the same time.

Then reality hit and I needed to repay a large chunk of my debt back to source quickly - more quickly than I would have been able to based on my rather meagre wages - so I took out a 0% credit card and paid everything I could against it (bills, shopping etc.), stashing the cash I would have used for those in a bank account and using that to pay back the debt.

Now it's time to pay the card back.

I've still got the remaining balance on the debt to repay, but I'm going to focus on paying the CC back first (subject to change if necessary).

This past year has been financially tumultuous with making sporadic payments on an as-necessary basis.

This year I need to get a bit more structure. I've also realised that I am not great at creating budgets and sticking to them, so that's also my aim: I need to be sure where every pound and penny is going and be able to stick to it.

I'll be back soon with more (including SOA) but I just wanted to post this while it was still New Year's Day.

At time of this first post debt repayments stand as follows:

Original debt: £11639.02
Repaid to source: £6000.01*
Remaining balance due to source: £5639.01
Credit card balance: £4999.10

So here's to a structured and thoroughly boring financial year ahead!

*Yes, I did make an extra payment last night to get it to over £6K repaid in time for the New Year. Call me superstitious if you will!

PositiveBalance

*Reserved for SOA*

PositiveBalance

Hi all,

I just typed a longish post and my computer has eaten it. :mad:

It's too late to write it all again so I will be back to write up today's events at a more reasonable hour when the wind is not quite as lively.

CC min payment plus £1 extra paid off today bringing balance down to £4887.73.

Other financial shenanigans today have been less fun, but that's a considerably longer post so I'll deal with that when my computer isn't quite so hungry!

Sleep tight, y'all! :heartpuls

redofromstart

Good luck with the diary, and your journey. Its always worth trying pressing 'control and Z' together if MSE eats your post. Sometimes it brings it back.

PositiveBalance

redofromstart wrote: »

Good luck with the diary, and your journey. Its always worth trying pressing 'control and Z' together if MSE eats your post. Sometimes it brings it back.

Thanks redfromstart - I tried that but alas, it didn't work.

In better news, so far it has been a NSD! (Won't last, I'm just out of bed. :rotfl:)

PositiveBalance

I'm back - at long last!

It has been an eventful week and I have a house guest meaning that I don't get a lot of time to myself for plotting, planning and diary updating purposes.

This week my mortgage moved from my old provider to the new one. This hasn't gone without a hitch as the old provider took out a larger than normal DD from my account for what the payment would have been if it had gone up to the standard variable rate. I need to get this back. Luckily, I've just had written confirmation that my new mortgage won't start until next month so I need so speak to the old provider tomorrow morning to get my money back :eek: then pay the remaining mortgage broker fee!

Alas, the budget I have yet to post on here has not been doing well: due to having a guest has resulted in the budget being blown somewhat in terms of food and spontaneous outings which have not been accounted for. It's lovely having this person to stay, but things are getting arranged with other people without me knowing meaning that I end up finding myself going out for dinner or similar which I have not planned for. Grr!

Spends today:

35p fruit (reduced)
£6.83 lots of Christmas cards, wrapping paper etc, for next year at up to 75% off.

There has been quite a bit of other spends etc. but I had better get to bed as tomorrow morning will be too soon here.

I'll update more when I can get online.

PositiveBalance

Old mortgage provider consulted: one refund on the way.

£250 broker fees paid.
I need to get my receipts together for the rest - it was an unexpectedly expensive. Grr!

PositiveBalance

I'm back!

I've had a houseguest, which has been lovely but totally kept my eye off the ball. My guest has left, which is sad but means I can get myself back on track again.

Things have been busy and there are lots of big decisions to make over the next few days (more on that later).

In the meantime, I paid another £200 off my debt, which has pretty much messed up my budget for the month. Couldn't really be avoided, though.

I'll be back with an update and figures soon.

Total debt repaid to source as of now: £6200.01 (53%)

Hope you are all keeping well.

PositiveBalance

*Peers over edge of thread*

Is it safe to come out? I won't get deleted like all the other threads, will I?

*Climbs over ledge of thread and dusts self off*

Right, well that was January. And a total wash-out it was, too.

Perhaps that's a little unfair: I did pay off the remaining £250 to the mortgage broker and £200 to the debt *and* stock up enough washing powder/liquid/fabric softener, kitchen cleaner, toilet rolls etc. and expensive dried cat food at a discount that I should not have to buy any again for the rest of the year (except toilet rolls and perhaps a little cat food).

Having said that, I should still be relatively rich as I had no mortgage payment last month. And it has vanished. Completely. Utterly.

I know I had a guest stay and that I've spent more money than normal, but this is *ridiculous*, especially since I had some money from overtime as well.

This cannot and will not happen again. I should have been able to make a decent start to repaying the CC, but I did not. It has not been in vain, though, as it has been one of the things that has made me reassess my situation very seriously.

I want to post more (including budget) but this will mean one of my overly-long posts which will probably make you fall asleep so I will return with a few shorter ones tomorrow.

Sleep tight. Don't let the bed bugs bite etc. :rotfl:

PositiveBalance

Right: to business...

Here's the budget I've worked out. Overtime figures are just for this month as they vary monthly.

I've written down my basic salary and any overtime I will include each month as a separate figure when I know how much it is. (Truly, my workplace goes out of its way to make it as hard as possible to figure out how much you will get paid until you receive your payslip.)

Basic salary: £1255.83
Overtime: £242.13
Total: £1497.96

Budget:

Mortgage: £268 (nearest whole figure)
Council Tax: zero (all this month and all next month )
Water: £27.90
Gas & Electric: £50.00 (was less but just upped DD cos winter)
Food: £200.00 (guestimate)
T'interweb & landline: £39.50
Mobile: £10.50
Public transport: £74.10
CC min: £109.97
Union @ work: £8.87
Xrcise class: £27.00
Clothes*: £50.00
Holidays*: £50.00
Presents*: £50.00
Fun*: £50.00
Prescriptions*: £8.60
Parental expenses: £50.00
Total: £1074.44
Difference between base pay and this month's expenses: £181.39 (excluding Council Tax)

As for the *s:

Clothes: have only bought the absolute (and I do mean absolute) basics for the past few years: I'm a walking scarecrow. With holes in.

Holidays: not something I have budgeted for previously, but I'm going to have to make at least 1 trip this year I simply can't get out of, so better to predict it then stick my head in the sand. I'm also cross that I have had to miss the opportunity to go to visit a normally long distance friend in order to sort this out but needs must and maybe this has been a LBM for me to tell me that I need to sort this out.

Presents: I don't spend this every month (or even close) but it will create a buffer for Christmas/Easter etc.

Prescriptions: not every month.

This month's extras:

Passport photos
Passport
Greenhouse plastic cover: £8.00 (apparently)

Boots (hopefully)
Spectacles (shunted to next month - I'll be lucky if I get the boots this month)

The past year of my life has been incredibly reactive in terms of repaying debt, so this year, while the pressure is off (a modicum) I am trying to be proactive and anticipate debts instead of reactive and spend the time chasing my tail down to the last penny as I had to do at some points last year. (It was squeaky to say the least, at times.)

According to everything I have read, I can see another economic crash coming so I want to ditch the consumer debt in particular ASAP. So my principle aim this year is to pay off the CC.

The CC is currently at 0% until June, so I will hunt for another deal in May and save as much as I can until then to pay off just before transferring to, hopefully, another 0% deal to help me kill it forever.

I'm aware that doesn't include the remaining debt due to my parental, but I'm doing what I can.

I calculated that to pay off the £4999.167 balance in year would mean paying off, initially £416.64pcm and since January was a total washout that has now increased to £454.42pcm. If I keep doing 3 days overtime a month, though, I should kill that, especially if I manage to sell online lots of stuff cluttering up the house in the meantime.

Since then I have since had a £2.50 refund onto the CC (and should expect a further £30.00 refund in a few days (a refund yet made so not counting chickens until they have hatched yet etc.), reducing the balance to £4997.17 for now.

So here I go. Many more updates to follow.

Wish me luck!

enthusiasticsaver

Ambitious target. Good luck in paying the card off this year. I always find guests throw my budgets too.