This time next year, we'll be millionaires

Rochelle13

After really sitting down and going through my finances last night, I've realised my debt needs to go once and for all. I'm 34 now and I've really been in some form of debt since I was 18. As the years have gone by, I've gotten used to my debt being there and kept on living outside my means. I had a really frugal year recently where i suddenly had to get used to one salary as my husband was, and still is, unable to work. I did well cutting all the bills, eating cheaply, few takeaways, hardly ever bought anything etc but my debt was still sitting around the £10k mark. Well, I went to college last year to retrain so that I can have a larger salary to support us in future. However, after such lean times and with the full student loan and part time work making me better off than I had been in years, I've went a bit ott and my personal unsecured debt currently sits at £16839.53. :shocked: This is the highest ever and it cannot get any larger!

I've never been great with money, but I need to learn to budget properly and stringently but with enough rewards that it's not a starve/binge situation when it comes to spending. And I need to stop impulse purchases.

So, I've enrolled in a free online budgeting 'bootcamp'. I've signed up to the 'make £10 a day' challenge on this forum and I have made over £50 on cashback and reduced a regular bill by £10pm already. All credit cards have been cut up, save one which im scared to cut up in case of an emergency, but hopefully I won't need to touch it as I've put £950 in savings from my student loan to cover any eventualities.

I'm at the beginning of this journey but I'm feeling hopeful. There's much to learn and many pounds of debt to clear.

pidge04

Welcome. You have made some positive actions. Good luck. Have you done a SOA?

GlendaSugarbean

Good luck! I'm the main wage earner too, it can be tricky at times but at least I have some control over things

beanielou

WElcome
Happy shiny new diary!

redofromstart

Good luck with the new diary.

MrsOli

Welcome and good luck! I'm just starting out too, so I will be keen to follow your journey.

Rochelle13

Thanks everyone.

Update for today is that I called my contact lens subscription to take a 6 month break, so that's £17.50 a month better off until March. Also, after reading an article on MSE about having savings and debt, I realised it's not really beneficial to keep the savings right now given how much the debt is increasing my monthly bills, so I have paid chunks off some debt. This is leaving me about another £20 a month better off for now. So £47.50 better off in total with the tenner I shaved off the boiler care package I have.

I've done a statement of affairs on paper but will get one typed up to post here. My main problem when budgeting is that I usually add together all my outgoings and what's left is my food/travel/anything-else money. Which is leaving me not really knowing what I actually spend on each and what I could potentially put back into debt. A potential idea I have for this is to take out the cash and give myself x amount per day to live on after figuring out petrol and food shop. If I don't need it that day, it goes in the piggy bank and what's left at the end of the month goes back to debts. It won't be much but I hope it will make me see reality and stop spending as I'm kind of down to brass tacks without using credit all the time.

Its good to have this forum as an outlet, I feel quite inspired by a lot of the things I'm reading!

BabyStepper

Hi

I love the title of your diary, you're ambitious, and why not?

Just wanted to add that I know you have put your emergency fund towards your debt now, but having an emergency fund is a great idea and would help you cut up the last credit card. You wouldn't need it if you had a small amount of savings to cover the odd unexpected thing that crops up. Doing it his way has really helped me get out of the mindset of using credit cards and that's been really helpful.

Good luck.

Rochelle13

BabyStepper wrote: »

I love the title of your diary, you're ambitious, and why not?

It's mainly inspired by Del from Only Fools and Horses. :rotfl:

I totally agree with you, I definitely want to build up some savings, it's just when I'm living at the limits of my income I think I need to plough it all into debt just now. I am saving £10 per month in a s&s ISA but it's a 5 year term so I can't access it until then. Hopefully Brexit won't hammer all my hard work there. :undecided

BabyStepper

I understand the problem. It's hard for me to look at our £800 emergency fund and know that it could pay off one of my debts and that would reduce our monthly outgoings by £42.20. If anything came up though it would be a disaster as we have cut up all of our credit cards. A cushion feels good and inspires me to believe we can live without credit cards and I'm no longer spending every single penny that comes my way.

We can only do what feels right at the time. And £10 in your isa is a good start.

rollercoasting

Love the positivity! Welcome and good luck. Have you discovered YNAB yet? It's a budgeting app and ethos that I've found really useful getting me better for budgeting. You can get a free trial but you do have to pay for it, but I've saved far more than it's cost. It's great for making sure you are budgeting for everything you need to as well as easy to do pay a day challenges etc.

Good luck will be following x