Tidying up the mess

BabyStepper

VadersDad wrote: »

Just reading through your diary. Excellent work on getting yourself sorted out.

I have been on the site for about a year, getting there slowly myself.

Carry on the good work.

Hi VadarsDad and thanks for dropping by and for the encouragement. Not sure how I managed to miss your post before so apologies for that. Glad to hear you're getting there.

BabyStepper

Moneywhizz, the mortgage is going to be fine. We will have details finalised in a couple of weeks and the new payment going out in March. I'll post a new soa when we have all the info, given the gas and electricity is changing too and a few other bits. I feel incredibly foolish for my fuss about it all but you live and learn. And yes, the sense of achievement at having reached £5k paid off is priceless.

marcsshell, thank you for the support and your kind words. OH's aunt was a very inspiring lady and I was fortunate to have got to know her.

Yorkshirelass, thanks for dropping by and I totally agree, having somewhere to talk about all this money stuff is so helpful. No-one in real life can bear to discuss these things.

Hope everyone is surviving the snowy cold weather.

Alleywoman

Subscribed to your diary and will follow your success

redmel1621

Well done on reaching your 5k milestone. You have done brilliantly.

I hope the mortgage is all finalised quickly and you can get a nice new SOA sorted. I hate changes when it come to finances, it makes me feel so unsettled. Unfortunately I've had loads recently.

Keep up the good work and positivity

enthusiasticsaver

Great that you are now happier about the mortgage. I remember how concerned you were with it last year. Hope you get a good rate and brilliant idea to do new soa.

Hope your self employment is still going well now you are six months in or so.

[Deleted User]

:Well done on all your progress!! :T Really pleased that you feel better now about the mortgage too:D

BabyStepper

Thanks for the encouragement everyone.

I have a few changes to record here to help me keep track of it all. If you can bear to stay with me I would appreciate all your clever minds on this.

I have reviewed my business bank account and my employment situation after a lot of new work started last year. I now have enough steady, reliable income to give myself a monthly wage of £1,500. This will leave enough to cover all expenses plus tax and NI and also accrue a bit extra month to month. I will start taking that wage at the end of Feb. :j

OH's promotion has resulted in an increase in wage of £170. :j

Our monthly expenses have reduced with the gas/electricity switch and the new mortgage (confirmation still pending but it looks good so far). :j

So we have decided to organise our finances a bit differently. We couldn't really afford to have our own money for the past 8 months or so, everything was shared and written on the budget. But OH was missing buying me the odd bunch of flowers (bless :smileyhea) and checking in with each other every time we bought anything got a bit tiresome. So we are giving ourselves an allowance of £250 per month for some things that used to be included in the monthly budget like clothes, shoes, haircuts and anything else that is not.

So these are the changes and feel free to comment.

My income £1,500
OH income £2,170
Total 3,670

I will post an soa soon but in the meantime outgoings are similar to before and include all monthly DDs and cash to the house maintenance and present funds. Total £1,766.79

Leftover £1,903.21

When I saw this figure I almost died of shock and had to check the numbers several times then get OH to check them too. It is correct though. With reduced outgoings, increased incoming and being very, very careful we now have the kind of surplus we can do something with.

I took the debt and optimistically divided it by 12. The number is £1347.56. If we paid this off the debt every month we would have £554.65 leftover for our personal spends. This would also include payments to the car fund (backburner for now but gets the odd fiver thrown at it). *I have just realised the monthly DDs include minimum debt payments so overpayments will be £200- ish less than this...even better!*

I have checked and checked. It looks like it will work. OH checked and checked. He thinks it would work. There are no holidays in there and no serious attempt to buy a car with cash. We will just manage without those things for now.

Basically this means that we can be debt free in 12 months.

Then right on cue we have some serious repairs to the house needing done. I am looking for quotes and we should be able to cash flow it from the house fund, Feb wage and if all else fails the emergency fund. But our plan can then go ahead from the end of March's wage and we will be debt free on February the 28th 2020.

What do you think, everyone? Is this doable? What have I forgotten? We have all DDs covered, we have a maintenance fund, Christmas/gifts fund, emergency fund and car fund. We are covering clothes, haircuts and travel from our personal spends, I really cannot think of anything else. If something comes up (we knew about this house repair so it's not a surprise, just hoped we would have another 6 months to sort it) we may have to delay the overpayments but in the meantime we have some wiggle room in the budget to deal with things.

Can it be true??

Moneywhizz

What a great post Babystepper. So good to see how well things are working out for you after all your hard work and worry over your budget. it sounds very doable to me. You seem to have everything covered and still managing to pay your debt down at very quick rate. I think having some personal spends money is essential for anyone whatever your situation but especially when you are paying off debt and each month for payday to payday can be a bit of a slog. Just think of how you will be able to save for the future when you are debt free. It is all sounding so positive and it is down to your hard work and good decisions that you have made. Well done.

enthusiasticsaver

You seem to have budgeted for everything and in your situation I think I would do the same. Throw everything at the debt for a year, get rid of it and then have the whole £1900 free each month the following year to save for holidays and new cars. I also think that is a good idea for you to both have £250 each in personal expenditure. Great news your self employment seems to be paying dividends after only around 6 months.

If you have spare money I would stick that in savings/emergency fund to go towards the house repairs

GlendaSugarbean

Well done - it's a great position to be in, so yes I'd throw it at the debt for a year. If anything comes up you can always divert funds.

I can't remember if you have a mortgage - if so you may also want to think about mortgage OPs next year to start bringing the term down (and saving on interest).