keep your head above water

seize_the_day

Fighting daily to survive the London jungle: single parent, full time job, reasonable income [note to self: could do better], mortgage slave, trying to escape the lure of unsecured debt. My total debt today, including mortgage and credit card, is at £216,300. Quite the eyesore.

This diary is supposed to help me stay motivated and on top of my finances and health. I plan to update it daily, as I'm at a point in my life where I'm feeling like I'm heading the wrong way and the boat is slowly sinking. Just about keeping my head above water...

Wish me luck please. Thank you.

Babysquirrel

Good luck! I'm a single mother too so I know how hard it is. You can do it! :T

seize_the_day

Good morning! I'm off today, had to take one day holiday in January, as we aren't allowed to carry over days to the next year. It's also pay day, so I paid the childcare bill and also paid off one of the credit cards.

Total debt today £215778. Of this, £2700 is on my Barclaycard, the rest is my mortgage :sigh:. I need to pay off the credit card debt in full by the end of March, as that's when the 0% rate ends.

I actually lost the Barclaycard yesterday, I think that's a good sign :-) I'd really like to stop using credit cards, especially for booking holidays in advance with no savings. Next goals: pay off the credit card debt and start building a holiday fund.

enthusiasticsaver

Good luck. £2700 over 3 months is £900 a month. Is that doable? Once the credit card is gone I would build up some emergency savings rather than tackling the mortgage immediately. We found overpaying small amounts on the mortgage and gradually increasing worked best. So £25 a month doesn't sound much but it is £300 over the year and gradually we increased each overpayment every year. Shaved years and interest off it until we got to to a point where our savings were more than the mortgage so we repaid it.

seize_the_day

Hi and thank you! Yes it's doable but only with discipline (no holiday booking!) and the help of my quarterly bonus. I also have some savings I could throw at it if needed. I prefer not to though, as that is my rainy day fund... what you call emergency savings.

We found overpaying small amounts on the mortgage and gradually increasing worked best.

Funny you mention that... yes that is precisely my plan. I'm overpaying £102 per month at the moment, my regular payments are £898, so I 'rounded up' the mortgage payments to £1000. I was planning to increase that and failed, as I'm mindlessly spending too much on holidays and eating out (and generally on food). I'm embarrassed to say how much I spend on food. I did an experiment last November where I used only a credit card for the entire month - only for grocery shopping and eating out and it was a shock, it was higher than £600 . This is for 1 adult and 1 child. And school lunches were not even included in that!

EsmeWeatherwax

Good luck! Nice to have a day off, gives you a long weekend.
Sounds like your starting from a good place and have a plan.

seize_the_day

Thanks, but I'm not so sure I'm starting from a good place with almost £216K of debt. I know many people don't see mortgage as a bad debt but it's a big burden when you're on your own.

So I paid more bills: school lunches and musical theatre class for my DD. Most direct debits are due to come out on the 1st of February or shortly thereafter. After all bills and a small contribution to savings, I'm left with £424, which is supposed to cover daily spending until 25 February.

Roughly that's £100 pw and for me that's a tight budget but it'll have to do this time. This is for groceries, eating out, oyster top-ups and any other unexpected stuff. No clothes/shoes needed, nothing's broken. I only have one evening out that is planned for the next couple of weeks, and that should be a short one as I need to get home before 10pm.

Off to do my weekly 5K run, then household chores... Way to spend my day off, yay!