£50k to zero - made it across the finish line

strawberryfield2233

One-step- hope you feel better soon, can see you are making good progress despite the cold, well done :T Tc

One-step-at-a-time

Today I am sad, and angry, and frustrated, and flailing a bit. Perspective really does hit you when two friends tell you about their cancer diagnosis on the same day. One has been caught early, is already undergoing treatment and the prognosis is good. The other - at this point I really don't know, but based on the details I have right now, it's aggressive. This bullcarp with worrying about money? It's nothing, nothing at all in the grand scheme of things.

strawberryfield2233

One-Step, So sorry to hear about your friends, such a shock and upsetting along with everything else its all a bit much. Really hope the best for them, please take care of yourself as I was always told you are no good to help anyone else unless you look after yourself first. Its true money isnt everything. TC:grouphug:

One-step-at-a-time

Thank you. I've just felt so incredibly sad this weekend. So many people I know have gone through battles with the evil C over the last couple of years, and the frustration of only being able to help in very limited ways can get overwhelming.

Back to work today and we are beginning to find out a little more. I am cautiously optimistic that my post is safe for the time being, but should it *not* be, the redundancy pay would clear the newest, most pressing debt and still give a cushion of a few months before anything really drastic needed to happen. My CV is getting a spruce up and there is still a week to the closing date of the best fit job that I have found to apply for.

I have tried to continue chipping away - another £5 has come from ebay, and there are a flurry of watchers on two new listings, but my enthusiasm is pretty low. Nothing else is due to happen with any of my accounts until Friday now, so I am going to try to give myself a few days off from thinking or writing about debt.

One-step-at-a-time

A day *can* make a difference. I was going to steer clear for a few days, but I feel this is worth documenting. Now that we have had the more in-depth meeting on the restructure, it appears that I will escape the gallows this time around, as they are calling it a company-wide targeted restructure. I have very mixed feelings - huge, HUGE relief for my own sake, and a hefty dollop of survivor guilt, as specific positions have been deemed surplus to requirements. There may still be enough wiggle room through not-at-risk people going for VS and freeing up posts. From our point of view the whole thing makes no sense as our workload is due to increase dramatically over the next few months with a new service coming online; it's the old 'do more with less' scenario.

The other minor thing today is that my last month of balance shuffling has knocked £40 per month off my minimum payment for the non-priority card, which can be used to snowball the shortest BT card more effectively, plus I considerably overestimated the interest that would come in on my MBNA statement and am now less than £17 away from £30k :T :T

strawberryfield2233

:hello::j:T Pleased to see some Good News for you !!

One-step-at-a-time

Quiet couple of days of plodding, and now a moan.
The emergency fund will be taking a big hit next week - my First Utility dd goes out on the 23rd (I've already paid EDF and BG this month). Next month I will have the final bills from EDF and BG as well so that's two months in a row of double payments depending on how many days they are calculating the last bill for. It feels like the overlap wipes out way too much of the estimated savings, even though it should all even itself out over the next year. Yes, our utilities are too high even with the switch- we have a fairly large house with very old, inefficient heating, plus I know we (or more precisely DH who is home a lot more than I am) use way too much electricity (one of the reasons I am looking forward to having a smart meter so I can give him irrefutable proof of how wasteful he is, and identify more ways to cut down!).

So any money left over this month (I was on target to end the month with at least £60 left) will not be thrown at the Hfax card, but redirected to the EF. I am due at least £45 from BT via Topcashback next month and have also just lodged a claim for the £40 from First Utility that doesn't appear to have tracked (I waited two weeks just in case). That could take a couple of months to be resolved, but at least will help to plug the hole when it does arrive.

Two more ebay sales finishing this week will be the payment that gets me under 30k, so that at least is on track.

strawberryfield2233

Hello One-Step, thinking the utilities are definately short term pain :eek:long term gain . So close to clearing the 30k hurdle TC

MoneysavingmadGem

Wohoo!!!! Nearly there!
Little steps = huge achievements

Welldone!

One-step-at-a-time

Morning all!

I now have bids on four of my ebay items so I'm hoping this will get interesting! The most hotly watched item is a skirt I bought in a CS for £3 and wore twice, currently going at £7 with 18 people watching it and two and a half days to go.

The last two direct debits for the month go out today - one of them has been changed so that next month's will go out between the 2nd and 5th, for the other one I need to phone the company as I can't shift the date online, but I don't think 'Hi, I'd like to pay you earlier' should cause any objections.

Hoping everyone has a great weekend - we have a retirement do at work tonight which I am hoping to escape from relatively unscathed (not really a drinker so have promised to stay for one at the pub after speeches and have a small budget put by - luckily there are too many of us going for rounds to be a thing!)