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

Drawingaline

You have done amazingly this year. And an ef is very very important, spend a couple of months getting that back up to a level which helps your financial anxiety.

One-step-at-a-time

Thanks @Drawingaline! We've got the essentials done, and although there's more to fix there's nothing urgent about it, so we're putting the rest of the work back 2-3 months to be in a better place to pay for it. Trying to have a nice calm quiet December now

One-step-at-a-time

End of December update - managed to keep mostly offline and it's been lovely, so this will be my only visit until I start work again in January.
Paid off in 2020: £14,157.50 in spite of boiler, roofing, plumbing and the complete evaporation of all but two days of DH's work since March. Helped greatly by no commuting costs, barely one full tank of petrol used all year, zero spends on clothes, next to nothing on entertainment, a drip feed of sales from decluttering & crafts. Our monthly personal spends budget has rarely hit its tiny £50/month allowance, and most personal spends have been on DIY odds & sods rather than any gratuitous stuff.
Debt remaining: £9820. I've done the budget forceast for the next year, and with a couple of small question marks the end of October DF target is currently looking doable within our scheduled payments, meaning that we can divert any extra that comes in to wherever it's most useful, and if anything comes up that compromises the DF date we still have 0% until February 2022 on the largest remaining balance. 

remote_control

Well done on payments and low spends this year. What an exciting year 2021 will be to get it all paid off!

One-step-at-a-time

Thanks @remote_control. At the moment I'm just impatient (though I'm sure that will cycle back round to excitement soon enough).
Current total for January: £8920. 

One-step-at-a-time

A good day yesterday with an invoice being settled, so £70 more cleared, tax money put by, and a chunk used to help restore the EF (now creeping slowly back up from being practically obliterated). That overpayment guarantees that the next card will be fully paid off (then closed) in Feb, leaving just two to go. 
I've been having a look at opening a reward credit card after the next debt is cleared to use and pay in full for grocery shopping, and at the moment the only once that fits with our spending patterns is the Sainsburys bank/nectar one. Even so, I'd be extremely hard pushed to spend £400 in Sainsburys/Argos in the space of the first two months to get the bonus £50 in points  (it's rare for the Sainsbury's portion of our monthly food shop to even reach £100, and I can't remember the last time we got anything from Argos). There's absolutely no point in buying from Sainsburys the items that we would normally buy from Lidl as that would pretty much cancel out the extra we'd get from the bonus points, so we'd either have to put some extra funds aside (doable as our council tax 'holiday' would coincide with the application), then do some bulk buying and subtract the extra spends from subsequent months' budgeting, or maybe do my parents' shopping for them during that period so we can hit the spend threshold. Something to think about, anyway. I'd be looking at applying at the end of Feb, and doing the spending during March/April. 

lucielle

Have you had a look at the m&s credit card?  They give you vouchers to spend, I saved all mine up and bought Christmas goodies in there.
L

One-step-at-a-time

lucielle said:

Have you had a look at the m&s credit card?  They give you vouchers to spend, I saved all mine up and bought Christmas goodies in there.
L

Yes, but not much point, I've only been to M&S once in the last two years! Nectar points are a lot more useful to us for the day to day stuff.

One-step-at-a-time

I did a bank account check, shuffle and tidy up this morning, accounting for all bills to go out I've go £70 (or approx. £4/day) for grocery top-ups etc to last until the payday. Doesn't seem like much at all, but the bulk of the grocery shopping has been done so this is basically for fresh veg & milk, we won't run out of milk until at least the end of this week, and we've still got loads of peas, beans, onions, garlic, potatoes & parsnips. Unless anything unforeseen crops up I should end the month with a bit left over, which will go into the EF. Money saving meals this week will include a chicken & vegetable stew w/homemade bread, homemade pizza, and batch cooked chilli, Depending on portion sizes that should see us good for main meals for the week, breakfasts will alternate between porridge & scrambled eggs on toast, lunch will be whatever else is hanging around.
Trying to avoid computer outside of work hours which is doing me a lot of good.

One-step-at-a-time

Wow this month is going fast! 
One new line has been added to the spreadsheet today - our mortgage fixed rate expires in 2023, so I've calculated what the balance will be at that point to give us a lofty savings goal for becoming completely debt neutral. It's about double my best case scenario for what we will be able to save by that point (given the end date for cc debt is still the best part of a year away and that eats £1k/month, and I have other savings pots to fill), but my brain responds well to stretch goals and at the very least, working towards this will mean that we could choose to make some sort of a lump sum overpayment and reduce the remaining term before having to think about looking for another fixed rate. 
My current DIY project has hit a snag - the varnish I was planning to use to tart up some furniture isn't suitable. After spending a fair bit of time researching I've changed tack and ordered some tester wood stain pots so that I can make sure we can get the colour absolutely right before ordering a full-size pot (still got loads of clear varnish and finishing wax so the colour is all that's needed). 
In total this will slow things down by up to 2 weeks (5 working day delivery on each order) and will add nearly £20 to the overall cost, but I've borrowed this from next month's personal spends. That has freed up part of the weekend so I'll be checking my big list and choosing another couple of things to tackle.