Feast or famine

CCW007

New user name but old forumite (just had my 10 year badge); I feel the need to confess without outing myself!

My situation - me and OH, in our 40s, no kids, lots of cats, big fall-y down house with a bit of land in need of total refurbishment, trying to live the simple life but just living the expensive life instead!

Both earn good money but have got too used to spending as we want to without thought of the consequence. We have both bought new-ish cars recently so we're sorted for several years but it's all been financed on 0% cards. Current amount to debt neutral is £36k (all at 0%, mostly for 2 years or with the option to move to BT cards once it finishes it's 0% so will all be at least 2 years out). Total debt is around £43k but we have £7k in cash in various high interest accounts. This is also our emergency fund.

We can pay anywhere between £1k and £3k off per month but hardest thing will be not adding to the debt when we see something shiny that we want NOW! On the plus side, we have a couple of cars to sell, potentially motorbikes (done my CBT but not ridden for almost 2 years so need to seriously consider whether I want to continue and if I don't my OH won't as he has no-one else to ride with), loads of STUFF everywhere which I reckon we can sell to make a few quid.

Payday tomorrow for me. OH's payday is 28th. Hopefully we can knock £3k off the debt this month - we will see!

Oh and feast or famine? Because I am either saying we can't afford anything as we are skint (pack of extra strong mints? Good god no we can't buy them!) or spending like there's no tomorrow so I really need to find some balance!

Starmummy

good luck

CCW007

Both paid, money shuffled. After mortgage and DDs paid, amount to debt neutral will stand at £32,700, reduction of £3,300 this month.

Next month will not be so good for debt reduction so need to concentrate on bringing in income via selling.

CCW007

£20 in from gumtree sale :j
Pair of new tyres on car I'm selling as it failed it's MOT (one was cut back to the cord on the inside so not visible and I had no idea, other was low so only advisory but thought it had more wear left than it apparently does) = £232
£4 TCB for tyres :cool:

CCW007

Spendy month.

Mini bus (estate car, van and camper van all rolled into one useful vehicle, however still haven't sold actual estate car yet...) needed some work which OH could do but just doesn't have time with all our other projects. So it went to the garage for them to work on... £647 later :cool:

£600 invoice for some consultancy work (small sideline) submitted .

Hmm, definite trend here

[Deleted User]

Happy new shiny diary x

CCW007

Pfft, two months without posting

Large credit card bill last month so very little debt reduction gone on, however this month's bill is smaller so hoping to put a dent in the debt by end of November.

We are contemplating a major life change next year; in preparation there are four pillars of our lives we really want to focus on getting under control:

• Health
• Finances
• House
• Garden

I am often guilty of looking at the big picture, feeling overwhelmed by how much I have to do then not doing anything and instead sitting down with a glass of wine, feeling guilty about what I should be doing instead.

Instead, my plan is to break each pillar down into over-arching goals, then a specific goal and then tasks to break it down into manageable chunks.

So my finance goal is to be debt neutral by June 2019.

Sub-goals are:

• Sell my girl racer car
• Sell our estate car
• Sell my motorbike?
• Declutter and sell whatever we don't need
• Create a proper budget and stick to it

We have inventoried both freezers tonight and have soooo much food - threw some things out, have taken out loads of unidentified meat to defrost and see if there is anything usable for dinner tomorrow. Cats will be happy, they have a lot of treats coming up (roast goose!)

Next step will be to roughly meal plan what we can make with the ingredients - I hate having a prescribed meal plan where you are having XX on a certain day but happy to have a list of options and choose one to prep the night before. The only thing which really works for us is batch cooking but have no room in freezers currently :cool:

And big pledge is to post here regularly to keep me accountable and keep track of spends

CCW007

Current amount to debt neutral - £31,500 - down £4,500 since start of diary and £1,200 since end of August.

erin_transport

Hi
Just popping by to say what an impressive amount - well done. Isn’t it amazing what we can do when we focus in.

CCW007

Thanks Erin, it was very motivating to put it down in the diary!

MrsPorridge

You could be writing about me with this:




Oh and feast or famine? Because I am either saying we can't afford anything as we are skint (pack of extra strong mints? Good god no we can't buy them!) or spending like there's no tomorrow so I really need to find some balance!