Sunken's attempt to float...

Sunkencosts

Still keeping on keeping on. I think it's been more of a spendy month than planned (OH treated me to a couple of bits for mother's day ) but we're both very much keeping track of it all and I'm using YNAB like a demon. Husband keeps taking the mick as I can sit scowling at it for ages and he'll tell me to leave it and I'll say 'not until I've found that rogue 38 pence!', the feeling of satisfaction when the bank accounts match my working balance is immense!

Had the £125 switching bonus from First Direct, so that's gone straight into the Emergency pot which is currently sitting at a healthy £500, however I know £140 of that is earmarked for the loft insulation so I can't get too pleased. Slightly regret switching to FD though, I really did prefer TSB - they are much quicker to record pending transactions -nothing we have spent over the weekend has shown up on the bank account yet, and I didn't have to have a stupid security key/app with TSB. Oh well.....

Still enjoying the diaries on here. Really really want to be debt free. I want the money we earn to be OURS again.

Sunkencosts

Feeling a little low. Been learning and playing with YNAB all day, which is good - but I have managed to work out how to list my debts there without them tracking. With the loans, because I can't figure out how to separate capital and interest etc, I have put the full amount if I make payments over the term of the loan, and it makes for depressing reading.
So total of 54,866.56.

Now, I know that there is a few thousand of interest in that (particularly with my loan with 7%), and therefore once I have paid off a few other debts I can throw more money at it and bring my dfd closer.

I'll be honest, I do feel a certain amount of shame at that figure, I think I'll pop off to do a snowball now I have got all my exact figures together and see what it comes up with as a dfd

Sunkencosts

Well, snowball says 37 months at the rate we're currently paying it off. If I've done the sums right. That seems ok to me.
We are remortgaging this year (well, switching rates) and I was thinking about some sort of consolidation, but if I've learnt anything from this site it's that IT DOESN'T WORK!
SO we'll just suck it up for 37 months.

Bigskies

We (briefly) considered consolidation when we redid our fixed rate last month. It was so tempting as our equity is more than our (huge) debt, but like you decided that actually as nice as it would be, it wouldn!!!8217;t make us spend less, so sucking it up and getting it paid off makes more sense, even if it!!!8217;s going to probably be grim for five years (as we!!!8217;re juggling paying off sixty odd thousand and will be putting three kids through uni at the same time!)

Sunkencosts

Yeah, We've been struggling with debt since we've been together and our solution has always been to consolidate, and then consolidate some more, and then some more. At some point we have to pay down the damn debt!

Again having a squeaky end to the month, because I've been focussing so much on a professional accreditation I have to submit, organised food shopping has again gone for a Burton and we have way overspent. We're still within total budget, just (as in have spent less on petrol and childcare than we planned to) but I'm disappointed it's coming so close. Bad habits slipping in again.

Also worried that I won't get paid much next month as work are spectacular at messing up my payslips and now I only have one job it all comes through them. Also OH's work have upped his compulsory pension contribution by an extra 80 quid with no consultation! That's not money we have right now.


However, we have no trips away planned over Easter so will just have to budget hard and suck it up - and remind myself that each month we live within our means and pay off debt we are making our lives better not worse.

enthusiasticsaver

Sunkencosts wrote: »

Feeling a little low. Been learning and playing with YNAB all day, which is good - but I have managed to work out how to list my debts there without them tracking. With the loans, because I can't figure out how to separate capital and interest etc, I have put the full amount if I make payments over the term of the loan, and it makes for depressing reading.
So total of 54,866.56.

Now, I know that there is a few thousand of interest in that (particularly with my loan with 7%), and therefore once I have paid off a few other debts I can throw more money at it and bring my dfd closer.

I'll be honest, I do feel a certain amount of shame at that figure, I think I'll pop off to do a snowball now I have got all my exact figures together and see what it comes up with as a dfd

Sunkencosts wrote: »

Well, snowball says 37 months at the rate we're currently paying it off. If I've done the sums right. That seems ok to me.
We are remortgaging this year (well, switching rates) and I was thinking about some sort of consolidation, but if I've learnt anything from this site it's that IT DOESN'T WORK!
SO we'll just suck it up for 37 months.

Is there no way of getting a current up to date balance on the loan without including the future interest if it goes on monthly?

Sunkencosts wrote: »

Yeah, We've been struggling with debt since we've been together and our solution has always been to consolidate, and then consolidate some more, and then some more. At some point we have to pay down the damn debt!

Again having a squeaky end to the month, because I've been focussing so much on a professional accreditation I have to submit, organised food shopping has again gone for a Burton and we have way overspent. We're still within total budget, just (as in have spent less on petrol and childcare than we planned to) but I'm disappointed it's coming so close. Bad habits slipping in again.

At least you are aware that bad habits are starting to creep in again and being aware goes halfway to solving the problem. It is learned behaviour to spend without thinking. You need to think before spending.

I cannot agree more about your comment about consolidating and consolidating being the reason for yours and many others high debt figures. At some point the debt has to be repaid. Delaying by consolidating can only be done for so long.

You seem to be doing really well and I am impressed by how you are trying to change your mindset. Choosing a camping holiday to keep the costs down is sensible and hopefully in a few years time you will be able to up the holiday budget and do these things with no problems. Just think £1300 pay rise once it is all gone just by having no debt repayments.

Sunkencosts

Thanks Enthusiastic Saver,

Actually we've just had our annual loan statement through, so I could update it. The problem is not knowing how much of our monthly payment is actually coming off the balance (I'm not super fast with aprs etc) as we don't have day to day access to our account - it's a peer to peer lender. I could phone up and check each month I suppose.

Feeling a bit boosted as we are actually finishing the month in the black. More through luck than judgement (had an unexpected bit of holiday pay etc) but have enough in the pot to put more petrol in the car, do another big food shop and still start next month with around £200 in the kitty. I think I'll get to Friday and then sweep this into the savings so we budget only what we earn.

This is good as my wages may be much lower than I'm expecting (so frustrating to never understand your payslip or be able to predict how much it will be!)

YNAB has been a godsend this month. Sure it's a bit laborious entering everything in (don't have bank accounts linked) but to be able to see where our money has gone has been brilliant. My God we've overspent on food! And it's been because I've been too tired (lazy!) to do proper food shops so again we've been to the local convenience shop.

It is completely in my power to change this!

It was lovely having the money saved for our martial arts grading fees, without having to scrape around and pay at the last moment.

Onwards! Obviously the school holidays are coming up but we're not going away so hopefully a couple of day trips will be enough for everyone.

Sunkencosts

I have updated my debt figures with today's totals, and it comes to an eye watering £48932.97, but it's definitely going down. As far as I can tell I pay about £88 interest a month on the peer to peer loan so I will just adjust for that in YNAB and at least I will know my total is either that or less as the interest will decrease a little over the year.

Have set my figures in for YNAB next month and am currently £1181.96 underfunded, so am hoping my wage slip shows either that or more. In truth, there is room for cutting back a little bit in the budget if we need to - but seeing how we managed to overspend last month I really need to keep on top of this!

Hoped today was going to be a non spend day but remembered the kids had to have sponsorship money for something this money so bye bye tenner! My 'stuff I forgot to budget for' category is growing by the day!

OH and I are a little bit at loggerheads over the issue of, well, logs. We have come to the end of a load and as it's April (nearly) I would like to leave it until autumn - however, with the predicted Beast from the East 3 coming in OH wants to get another load. Just seems so extravagant.

Sunkencosts

phew - payslip is in and it's enough for this month, just!

Sunkencosts

And in further good news, have submitted latest energy readings and they are refunding us another £169 and are finally dropping the DDs by £38 a month. Will be putting that to the emergency fund. Really want to see if I can get it to £1000 and then extra money can go towards other things.