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

One-step-at-a-time

There has been a significant episode of debt busting burnout this week. Between the extra grocery shopping and going out over the weekend and eating out twice, we now owe ourselves well over £100. It will be rectified next month but I figured I should confess to the diary! I have £10.92 left in cash to last til Friday, not planning to spend any of it though. No reason I can't have a run of NSDs this week.

One-step-at-a-time

A busy week but not a bad one at all! Two catered lunches at work, and an app that caught my eye on the MSE newsletter this week promising free drinks actually delivers. I had a lovely free cocktail after work. As a very occasional drinker who doesn't like spending money on overpriced fancy liquids, this is an excellent thing to have been told about, so thank you Martin! I have made sure to plug both app and drinking establishment on my social media. Quiet weekend ahead, aiming for staying at home and having more NSDs.

One-step-at-a-time

Payday has arrived, so I've done the monthly spreadsheet updates and a small rounding down overpayment on the interest-bearing card. Today is a day of food prep and housework - pizza dough is the top priority. I have a small side-hustle job tomorrow which will clear £50 after tax; that's being allocated to the annual bills pot to make sure we have enough to pay the house insurance in full in September. Boring update but that's how we roll a lot of the time!

savingholmes

Keep plugging away - it makes a difference over time. I know what you mean about grocery shopping too - there have been times when I have spent over £1k a month on food.... :oI know, I know... :oCurrently aiming for approx £10 a day for food plus a little more for non-food household expenses.

One-step-at-a-time

Oh savingholmes I hear you on that, we have a BAD history with grocery shopping! At the height of our debt accumulation I was going through a long period of ill-health that left me permanently exhausted; for about two years I may as well have just had my wages paid direct to M&S food hall! I dread to think how much that cost us over time (I could probably figure it out from old bank statements but I'm not going to put myself through that!). Now we are averaging under £200/month for all food and household basics (toiletries, cleaning stuff etc).

Though it's nowhere near as bad as the amount of interest I paid on the CCs over the same period. When I initially sat down to work out the full horror of our situation the most shocking thing was that nearly 10k of our total debt was from leaving a five figure card balance on minimum payments at 22.9% for so long. I never even opened the statements, just ignored the whole thing because I wasn't struggling to meet the minimums. Awful, and ridiculous, and feels like the actions of a completely different person now!

That was a bit more of a reveal than I had intended :rotfl:

astrocytic_kitten

One-step-at-a-time wrote: »

At the height of our debt accumulation I was going through a long period of ill-health that left me permanently exhausted; for about two years I may as well have just had my wages paid direct to M&S food hall!

I could have written exactly this, One step. Time and / or decent health makes such a difference when moneysaving. Forcing myself to focus on food as a part of my budget instead of whacking M&S shops on the credit card when I’m ill and struggling has been one of the hardest changes I’ve made - I’m so impressed you now make your own pizza dough!

One-step-at-a-time

Hi astrocytic kitten
M&S was the path of least resistance - literally! I used to cut through the food hall on my way home from work every day, which didn't do me any favours at all. I think about it now and just shake my head in disbelief!
One of the big plusses of this journey is that I've got so much more confident and resourceful with cooking, and am much more aware of what things cost. Even for yellow sticker bargains my criteria is 'can I make it myself any cheaper'. If it's a resounding no, then in the basket it goes!
I've taught DH the pizza dough recipe and I'm starting to get experimental with bread now - the next sourdough will have cheese and olives in it (unless DH gets through all the olives first).

I've just got another £1 final selling fees thing through on eb4y; having failed miserably to list things last time I really need to pull my finger out today! I've been relying on bits of money dribbling in from the side hustle and surveys and not making much of an effort lately. Part of my reluctance is knowing that I don't really have anything left that's 'big ticket' to sell so it seems like lots of effort for little return, but I know that if I bundle it all up for the charity shop I'll be kicking myself later.

Have a fab weekend everyone!

One-step-at-a-time

I have done one charity shop run and listed a bunch of stuff! Between Marketplace an eb4y there is potential to clear over £250 if everything sells, and just starting to deal with it has improved my mood considerably.

DH and I have both been home all day and we've both been vaguely productive around the house, cleaning, washing, sorting and cooking, but in a nice and relaxed way, if that make sense. I have a couple of small online jobs to do, one of which will definitely be finished this evening, the other I can have tied up before lunchtime tomorrow.

Dottles1

I've taught DH the pizza dough recipe and I'm starting to get experimental with bread now - the next sourdough will have cheese and olives in it (unless DH gets through all the olives first).

That sounds fab One step. I've just been reading a recipe for bread with red peppers, olives and feta in it. Yum
I too am impressed with your pizza making

One-step-at-a-time

Thanks Dottles! The only problem with the bread and pizza making is the temptation to eat far more bread and pizza than is sensible

I realised that I hadn't updated my signature for a bit, and as of today I am less than £250 away from being halfway done with that original scary number! This realisation has sent me off on another meander through our numbers.

This month my CC minimums have dropped to £361.08 - less than our mortgage payments for the first time in years. I'm now overpaying the minimums by more than £500/month.

I still get extremely anxious about the level of debt at times, especially when I think that we've still got around two and a half years of walking this tightrope before we can start putting serious money to savings instead of debts. Our EF has been wiped out a couple of times already and it would take a full year of nothing going wrong to get it to where I want it to be (1 full month take-home pay - I really want six months, but that's not realistic until we are debt free). Every now and then I toy with the idea of cutting CC payments to the minimum for a few months to build the EF, but every month I do that would delay the DFD, and I want this thing over with as soon as possible!

Totting up the money owed to me, there's still £480 after tax outstanding to come in from a couple of side hustle jobs, and another job coming up this month that should clear me £250, and up to another £250 in potential sales from the things I have listed. I think maybe if I split that money between the CC and EF as it comes in, it may calm me down a bit