AimeeMum's Debt-free challenge

abba1772

Have you tried doing survey I use PA and average between £20 and £40 a month (I cash out on the last working day of the month) and opiuium research which you cash out when you get to £25 

aimeemum

abba1772 said:

Have you tried doing survey I use PA and average between £20 and £40 a month (I cash out on the last working day of the month) and opiuium research which you cash out when you get to £25 

Thanks x
I have tried doing surveys but I find that I spend ages for very little gain at the end - I have never actually managed to 'earn' anything from them. Maybe I ought to have another look. I had signed up to do mystery shopping/focus groups before the c19 situation hit but obviously nothing has ever come of them. 

abba1772

honestly Prolific Academy (PA) is great for surveys mostly for university students you fill out your info then you get the surveys and you very rarely get screened out and they have a time limit only thing is you don't get an alert you need to check the website but so far I have £14 this month and you can cash straight out to paypal once you've earned over £5

aimeemum

Abba1772 - Thanks for the encouragement - over the last couple of days I've tracked down a couple of old survey accounts and I've just cashed out my first £7.50!! That will go straight to the debts once it's in my account Very excited!!! 

aimeemum

A new week, a new payday and a new set of payments in/out. Very excited to say I spent a lot of time going through and discussing with hubby what our targets etc should be and he agrees we need to kick this into touch! So, I've re-jigged our budget a little for the next 8-10 weeks so we can really make some headway. The weekly minimums have gone from £60 to £80 plus I'll still be putting the odd spare £'s plus anything I can earn - earned my first £7 on surveys which will go towards the debt as soon as it clears, and going to be starting to promote my Etsy shop in the next couple of weeks so fingers are firmly crossed! - so on paper we should be debt free by mid-july now rather than beginning of September!  

This week's figures
Paid to Debt - £87 
New total - £1,152/£3,078 - £1,926 remaining

Into Savings - £45 (H2S, Holiday fund and kids pocket money SF) 
Total in Savings/SF's - £1,129
Net figure of Debt minus Savings - £797

6 weeks to go to get Debt Neutral (target is by the payday on April 1st) and if I can put the same amount of money aside each week that I have done this week we'll do it! I'm VERY excited!! I was in such a pit earlier this week but as always all that was needed was a bit of a re-vamp and a look at the dates. If all goes according to plan in 20 weeks time we'll be looking at cleared CCs and a savings balance that will form a very nice starter EF. The only way from there is definitely up but we just need to get there first! 

aimeemum

A new week here so time for an update. 

My monthly budget runs from the 27th-26th so today is the 'last' day of the month so time for a bit of a run down. 

This week I only managed a £62 payment towards the CCs as I had over-spent last week (hospital appointment ended with us having to pick up a quick dinner as we were so late and that was more expensive than I anticipated) but £62 is still pretty good. Interest went onto one of them so that was £34 added but even so that's a £28 dent. I put £35 into savings too (£20 regular plus an extra £15 into SFs.)

New figures are on signature but 
DEBT remaining - £1894
NET = £717.18 

February - Paid off debt - £266 

I have done some surveys this week and I should be getting a £10 voucher for doing a weeklong one which was actually quite interesting (about the kids' tech usage). Waiting for that to appear though so we will see. 
Other than that I'm just plodding along. The February pay period was a 5 week month so I've not got a lot spare at the end of this month but hopefully the March one will be a little bit better. Just keeping on swimming. 

ETA: My £10 voucher turned up. It's a £10 Amazon voucher and I happen to need some new materials for my boys home-schooling so that's really welcome  

aimeemum

I'm having one of those days where my mind is clear and I just want to sit outside with my notebook and a bottomless teapot and write but, real life beckons. I've been out and cleared the winter rubbish out of the garden and trimmed the grass (only cut the tips as the ground is still very soft from the rain/snow but it was looking so straggly it needed to be done) and now there is a load of freshly washed bedsheets out on the line in the sunshine. It feels like spring. 

Other plans for today - 3-4 more loads of laundry (aim to have empty baskets and full airers by the end of today) and iron hubby's work shirts. Quick blast in each room. Help the boys to clear/tidy their rooms a bit. Spend a bit of time planning for the next week/month (which I would normally do Sunday but as hubby is day off tomorrow I may not get the time) and then type up the writing i have done by hand this week.....I have no idea how many words, but it's 6 A4 pages. 

aimeemum

Another glorious day - just waiting for the sun to hit the grass so I can go and put another load of washing out. Pulled Pork joint in the SC for dinner - with Brioche rolls, coleslaw and fries  

Have set myself up with a '£2 a day' challenge to get through some more of my debt before we go away on hols. I already have all of my holiday/spending money accounted for in my budget, plus my regular debt payments but I need/want to make some more progress. I have printed off a tracker for each of March, April and May and I counted out my change pot which had £3.74 in it so that's my first £2 coloured in Done another survey or two this morning so now have £3 in there but can't cash out until I have £7.50+....will keep on plodding away with it and cash out as and when and then I'll add to my trackers. I also have a few bits I've been meaning to put up for sale so will do that once lockdown ends in April and in the meantime will gather up more stuff to add to the pile. 

ETA: Change pulled from daily bank account check - another £2 added and coloured in

aimeemum

Sent £2 to one of the CC's yesterday as a bonus payment so that's another £2 for my tracker!!  

We found out which secondary school eldest is going to in September. I need to make a phone call as he's been put on the waiting list for his 1st choice but having discussed it as a family he wants to take up the place he's been offered....it's the catchment school with all his friends so after all the upheaval of the last 12 months  we all feel he'd be better with friends .....so I need to call up and see where he is on the waiting list (if he's like 3rd or something daft that may change things but basically we're taking him off. I sat down and wrote out a list of all the equipment etc we'll need for sending everyone back and I reckon £500 is a minumum! Scary numbers when there's 3 of them!! 

In other news hubby and I have decided what to do about our cars. Our current DFD is June 24th, so as of June 1st July we'll (hopefully anyway) be debt free!! We have always planned on getting a second car over the summer but I went through the budgets with hubby to see how much money we would have when and he's not happy to spend less than £2k to get a 'decent' one (i.e. one that may just last more than 12 months and pass an MOT! lol) so my task is to accrue as much of a cash deposit as I can and then on the 1st we're going car shopping and we'll take out a small loan for the remainder with his credit union. We got a quote last night and the repayments will be less than half of what we're currently putting to debts and we also got quotes for insurance on some models we like so we can plan accordingly. It's exciting! The car will ostensibly be hubby's (I'll get to keep the Zafira as the school bus! lol) but it's nice to see some progress for our efforts. I'm a little upset about going back into debt after working so hard but it's not CCs or arrears and I've done the budget and we'll be a lot more comfortable than we currently are even with a loan repayment and running costs of a second vehicle.......:D 

Anyway - plan for today. Online grocery shop, laundry (again), homeschool this morning and hopefully some writing this afternoon. 

aimeemum

Just because I wanted to see how we're getting on I have gone back and tracked out debt figures and savings figures for this entire diary. 

Savings have crept up very slowly and we currently have £1,187 all in which is the most we're EVER had!! 

We began our journey to debt free-ness in October 2018 and we started with £7,773 to be paid off. 
Since then we've added a further £1,472 to the total (mostly last summer when Hubby went and collected the motorbikes....we still haven't sold/scrapped/fixed them....but that's a whole other gripe!!)

That means that we have the following stats for the last 2 years and 5 months:

Total Debts: £9,245
Paid: £7,353
Remaining: £1,892 
Savings currently: £1,187
NET = -£705

Annoyingly the 1892 isn't the lowest I've gotten it to, (that was £1,862 back in June 2020) but tomorrow when I make my regular payments it will dip to £1,807 and that's officially the lowest it's been EVER. It's annoying that the past 2.5 years have seen over £7k go to servicing debt that really wasn't paying for anything in particular. It was just money we had accrued over the years and mainly because we didn't budget!!.