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

One-step-at-a-time

Three days to payday!
Still no refund from the insurance overpayment - I think that warrants another phone call today. Still, I will make it to payday with £1.78 to spare.
My beloved coffee machine bit the dust last week after 17 years of faithful service - I will not be getting a replacement, but making do with my little cafetiere instead.

Good news:
- a £40 Topcashback payment finally changing to payable after 4 months
- my next prolific survey payment is only 70p away from a £20 cashout
- I'm due £106 from a freelance job this week, to split between tax savings and debt
- my final £72 HP payment goes out at the end of the month! (One more thing off the credit report)
- I have some more stuff sorted out to sell on ebay
- after payday I can juggle a little more of the debt around and reduce interest payments a tiny bit more.

July is a reasonably quiet month, the few things we have planned are cheap/free/already paid for/close to home, plus we still have loads of food in the freezer, so the grocery shopping should come in under budget. Inventory to be updated tonight. Next month gets me under £28k on cards, and crosses the halfway point on the additional debt.

One-step-at-a-time

My favourite day of the month! I enjoy getting bills paid and debts reduced more than spending money on anything else now, how times have changed! Another £520 gone this morning on top of the mortgage payment.

Good things:
- I ended the month in credit
- Nearly all the money owed to me from the last month has arrived, just £25 left to chase
- Goodbye HP payment!

Just worked out that even after all of the unforseen expenses this year (I'm looking at you, car) we've still managed to clear more than £6k from the debt in the last six months, almost as much as we managed in the whole of last year, and we're still managing to have a bit of a life outside of bill paying. Whenever I get down or anxious about the totals I need to remind myself of how much we've improved things in a relatively short amount of time, and just keep plugging away at it.

Working_Mum

YAY!!!! That is a phenomenal results One-Step!!

You should be so proud!

Real tangible progress being made!

Gemsy81

Just been reading through your diary, and well done you, amazing progress!

One-step-at-a-time

Thank you Working Mum and Gemsy - sorry for the late response, I don't pop in here as much when things are busy!

July appears to be all on track so far - my tasks this month are to apply for a tax rebate, and make another attempt to pull my finger out on ebay selling (I've been actively avoiding it for the last few weeks). Today's DDs took me past £14k/30% of total debt paid, which I'm rather happy about, and I'm a hop and a step away from the 10k paid off CCs mark.

Drawingaline

Doing well!

One-step-at-a-time

I took a bit of time out today to play fantasy debt repayment with the 'what's the cost' calculator. I do it at least once a month to motivate myself; the nice thing is that doing it regularly enables me to see the big picture, and as I'm always using up-to-date figures I can see the results that little overpayments can make over time. For example, the DFD in my sig was calculated a few months ago. Today I've recalculated it, keeping at the current repayment rates, and inflating the interest on the Hfax card to the worst case (no more BT offers), and the DFD is currently May 2021, not August! I'm realistic enough to know that things can get worse as well as better (the car problems this year are a good example of that), but I do so much better with a glass-half-full scenario, and it shows me that being as frugal as possible without going completely bonkers from it is totally worth the effort.

remote_control

Sounds good, I do similar with an app called debt planner, its free and it basically just has the debt totals and a dfd

One-step-at-a-time

Oh lordy, the debit card took a battering last night!

£9.70 on food, £20 on a replacement saucepan (very much needed, been putting this off for months), and £14 each on two pairs of jeans (one for me, one for DH). I was really hoping to get through 2018 with no money whatsoever spent on clothes, but when things disintegrate beyond salvage, exceptions sometimes have to be made! I've not done badly getting to July, though. On the plus side, the non-sale price of the jeans would have been £35 per pair so at least our timing was about as good as it could have been, and almost all of the food was on yellow stickers and needed. This brings the remaining budget for the month to £6/day. I'm still hoping to squeeze at least another 8 NSDs out of the next 15 days so it's very tight, but doable. I made pizza dough last night which will be enough for two evening meals, and we still have plenty of food in the freezer and nearly 3/4 of a tank of petrol in the car, which will easily last us as we only have a few small local journeys to do.

Over the last six months, ever since we had to ramp up the repayments, I have come to really, REALLY resent spending money on anything I think of as non-essentials, even if they are actually needs not wants; I'd much rather be throwing it all at the cards!

One-step-at-a-time

Friday was a lovely night out with friends, paid for months ago and I'd budgeted for one round of drinks. I was up early on Friday morning to sort food out so DH and I could both eat before we went out.

After a quiet Saturday and Sunday, no spending, and collecting loose change from around the house, the budget after work travel is now £7/day for the next ten days, which is perfectly doable. I will be spending a maximum of £1 today on extras we need for tomorrow's dinner, and found a couple of breakfast bars at the back of the cupboard which will top up this week's work food supplies. We'll need bread and milk before the week is out, but I'm not expecting much else to pop up. I sold a print yesterday completely out of the blue, which after tax is £10 straight to the CC. This month's interest has gone on to the CCs but I'm not going to update my signature. Next month's minimum payment on the card I am only paying minimums on have dropped another £10, which will be redirected to the one I'm trying to overpay the most on.

Zero interest so far on any of my ebay listings, which is disappointing - I think I'm going to give FB marketplace a shot instead if I get no bites this week.