Prosperous soul in the making

milann

Good luck with crafts and book

savingholmes

savingholmes wrote: »

Debt excluding mortgage £46554. :eek: This does include two car loans which between them account for about £26835 of this. This leaves approximately £19719 of CC / HP debt. In good months we repay about £1070 a month. Other than the car loans it is all on 0% balance transfer cards. We snowball and tart our cards regularly

It's been a long time since I last posted - however the good news is that
1) We now have an emergency fund of over £1000
2) We gave back a car at a break point in the lease and bought a motorbike for OH instead
3) We now owe £38840
4) We are on target to be debt free by June 21 - and if we up our game may be able to get this to March 21
5) While we are not fully following Ramsey's baby steps - I have worked out when we should hit each point - he suggests that you do baby step 1-3 sequentially and potentially 4-6 together (and pause 4 while you get debt free)

Baby Step 1: Emergency fund of £1K - achieved Feb 19
Baby Step 2: Debt Snowball - on target to achieve Mar-June 21
Baby Step 3: Create a 3-6 month emergency fund - by May 22
Baby Step 4: Invest 15% of income in retirement funds (currently achieving 43% of the 15% target)
Baby Step 5: Save for kids college - currently paying £400 to DS each month - expect to do the same for DD if she wants to go 2021-24
Baby Step 6: Pay off the house - paying £43 pcm plus interest currently - will increase once Step 3 in place (owe £145.6K)
Baby Step 7: Build wealth and give

I would welcome encouragement along the way and will try and post more regularly again. I am thrilled though that even though there's been a gap since I last posted our debt has still been going down.

[Deleted User]

Well done on sorting your emergency fund and planning out all of your steps

savingholmes

Thanks SSDD23

We have been quite fortunate this year and had some pay rises. Between the 2 of us we have a take home income of approx £4800 a month.

In terms of debts

Repay by June 2021
CC1 £6973 - Target Apr 21 - 0% ends Jul 21
CC2 £7374 - Target Jan 21 - 0% ends Jun 21
CC3 £9064 - Target Nov 20 - 0% ends Apr 21

Repay by July 2020
CC4 £5647 - Target June 20 - 0% part ends Mar 20, par Jul 20
CC5 £8193 - Target Apr 20 - 0% end Jul 20

Repay in 2019
Table £200 - to be paid Aug 19
CC6 £1211 - to be paid July 19
Old elec & gas bill from when we swapped £174 - to be paid July 19

Other items:
In July pay period - also need to sort out tax (91) mot (30) and probably insurance for motorbike (approx 270 due August) - so will need to be on plan

Stlll trying to get OH to sell old motorbike and my barely used archery equipment
DD has currently got some items listed for sale on the internet

We are currently doing a major declutter - and taking stuff to tip or charity. We are culling some items that would potentially be worth selling directly ourselves. It seems endless though.

Food and fritter spend are our biggest challenges - so need to get serious with that. Part of decluttering includes organising and labelling stuff to make it easier to find.

Currently on annual leave - back to the grindstone on Monday

savingholmes

Looking at the over-payment mortgage calculator:

Year 0-3 over pay £43 pcm - reduces mortgage to 144,007
Year 4-5 over pay £1632 pcm - reduces mortgage to £104,195
Year 6 over pay £2075 pcm - reduces mortgage to £79,100
Year 7 over pay £2130 pcm - reduces mortgage to £53,340
Year 8 over pay £2230 pcm - reduces mortgage to £26,371
Year 9 over pay £2330 pcm - pay off mortgage in full

I am also currently trying to reclaim mortgage PPI. Even if I am unsuccesful - cancelling it would give me £33 pcm which I could put towards the mortgage or use to repay CCs sooner. If they did pay out - I reckon it could wipe out CC5 above.

My phone is also paid off this month - so if I delay upgrading / replacement - that frees up £22 pcm in our budget.

OH today has finally taken photos of an old BMW motorbike he intends to sell for spares or repair - so hopefully that will get listed this weekend.

savingholmes

I get paid on Monday - so reviewing my zero-based budget for the month. My next hair appointment falls in August pay day saving me £55 this month. While I don't plan to put it towards debt at the moment, it will help me pay for 3 family birthdays that I'd forgotten to put in my budget
.

savingholmes

My pay is showing in my account. I either got more back pay than I expected or I have been regraded. Let's hope it was a regrade (and therefore more of it will repeat).

Will put the extra towards getting DD her first provisional driving licence (£34) and other related costs. We plan to get her a scooter - with support from MIL (who has saved up for her since she was a baby) - however DD will need to do a CBT motorbike course (£130ish) and test as part of that. This is so she can go to the sixth form she wants to in September. which is a few miles from our house. It is likely to be an expensive few months - as MIL will probably fund her scooter and laptop - but we will probably fund the insurance, fuel, helmet and other gear. OH is a biker - so he has some items she can reuse. We are planning to get a second hand scooter so shouldn't be too expensive...

savingholmes

I have just done a 4 week menu plan and agreed it with OH and DD. I have also put OH as preparing the evening meals 3 days a week. I am planning to allow about £10 for food a day. I went on my superm@rket to check which store offered the best price. I am doing a free click and collect from @sda tomorrow am which worked out cheapest for what I ordered. It came to £69.44.

I have allowed about £66 this month on top of this but some of that will be spent on dog and cat food and other things that crop up.

Today, I will need to nip to the shop for some potatoes but I still have some money left from my last pay day to cover that. DD is having a roast chicken dinner from last night for lunch. OH and I will probably have bacon, eggs, beans, hash browns and mushroom and onion (if we have any left of the last two) for tea. DD may eat that too. I have also defrosted a portion of roast lamb.so will eat that at some point.

I have loads of ingredients in my tin cupboard and freezer but no meat other than a leg of lamb that I am saving for when we have visitors. I will need to try the store cupboard challenge to use up what we have.

I am currently trying to reduce my over-eating and reliance on chocolate which is handy as £10 a day for 3 people doesn't really allow for spending £1 or more a day on my chocolate habit.

savingholmes

I have been trying to get OH to sit down with me for the last month so that we can go through the budget and our financial goals together. Tonight he finally did - and was happy with what we were doing and where we were going.

Today we also both checked what we were entitled to for our state pension. Did you know that you can see your NI contributions going back to when you were 16? Well in my case they were there... We were reassured to find that we should get £8.8K per year each in state pension at 67 - as long as we both put in nI for the next 6 years (we both turn 49 this year). Between those and our private pensions we should be at at least £33.5K at retirement. I have a career average pension and OH has a defined contribution pension - so hopefully if we keep working even without the additional impact of baby step 4 - we should get to around £51K a year by retirement age.

I know there are critics out there of the R@msey plan (& even I am doing D@veish not fully his method) - but for the first time I have understood what I need to do not only to get out of debt but also to fulfil a lifelong dream of becoming a net worth millionaire (where your savings, pension and house and any other assets equal £1M (after subtracting any debt) by the time I retire. I don't have to wait for a lottery win or an unexpected inheritance to dig me out of a hole - we have in our incomes a pretty big shovel and can dig our own way out.... That does assume the stock market performs well and that our house continue to increase in value.

I've had the last two weeks off on holiday. This week, I've been physically decluttering and financially decluttering. I have worked out when and where I could be for each baby step - even without getting second jobs - if we became gazelle intense and truly went for it. Sadly, that does mean I need to stick to our food, miscellaneous and eating out budgets in particular.

savingholmes

Last night we took our dog to a local field and she ran around merrily chasing the ball. Today, I was going to drive to a park 17 miles away so we could take her for a walk. DD laughed at me and said I thought you were trying to save fuel. OH also jolned in. So we walked just over 2 miles and played with the dog on some more local playing fields.

This evening I also rounded up a load of pennies and two pences and added a whoe £1.89 towards chocolate.... LOL DD then sprung it on me that she wanted to go to a party tonight. OH took her. Hoping she's okay.

DS is dropping hints about his finances. He saved $80 in the last fortnight fasting so I can create some funds to go to X place before he comes home - but wiped out by an unexpected bill. We commiserated with him but didn't fork out as already sending him £415 pcm (study abroad year). He comes home in around 5 -6 weeks. Can't wait to see him and have him back in the UK again.

I've been reading on other people's threads about decluttering and living frugally. We have so much to do. OH always says we have 3 rooms too much stuff for whatever size house we are in.... Trying to improve. Cutting down shopping and fritter spend will help. We have taken a couple of car boot fulls of bags to the tip and a car boot full to charity. Already filled another couple of bags ready to go. My DD even made me go through 3 kitchen drawers! Unfortunately, we decluttered in the lounge, our bedroom and mine and OH's studies all at the same time - but din't quite finish any. We can now easily walk around my study / spare bedroom which we couldn't before. Loads left to do though - yet trying to celebrate what we have achieved rather than just looking at what's left. .