Why is spending money so easy......

Snwps

Jumping on to give a quick update. Job #2 payday today so £584.71 paid to the highest paying credit card bringing the total of that card to £1,976.93 and the overall debt total to £34,687.54

So currently paid off £2,805.71 - 7.48%

Had a little pay rise this week - every little helps! Plus it's been confirmed that we're having a healthy bonus in work paid just before Christmas. As much as I'd like to say I'm putting it all to the debt, we really need a new bathroom. We have a hole in the bath and the sink is falling off the wall. We're not going to go crazy overboard on the spending, we have a budget and hope that calling in some family favours will help keep costs low. I'll keep you posted on how this goes.

[Deleted User]

That's brilliant progress! Great news on the payrise and the bonus too!

Snwps

Wow has it really been that long since I've been on and posted!! I can see the forums have had a facelift. 

Well things have been super, super busy since I last posted. I have been working 35+20 hours a week over 2 jobs and DH has been working, what feels like, every hour he's not sleeping, on job no 2. On the positive front we are now finally starting to see some movement in the debt figures and we have enough extra income to make a significant dent in our debt. I'm earning between £450-£500 extra a month and DH is earning around £780-£800 extra a month so we're ploughing on average about £1300 extra (on top of our minimum payments of around £1000) towards clearing this mountain of debt. 

Our debt today as at today is £32,266.53 which is £5,226.72 (14%) off our highest debt amount of £37,493.25. We could have cleared a little more over Christmas but we needed to do some house improvements which took a chunk of around £3000. Our debt figure today is now lower than it was in August 2018 so we're getting there, slowly.

All being well, and as long as we're both OK in doing these extra hours we plan to pay it all off by summer 2021. I'm not going to lie it is really difficult. We hardly see each other at the moment and the kids are having to do more around the house to help (which isn't a bad thing I know). As a couple we've agreed that we need to have a couple of 'us' nights, a meal/drink out. And as a family we try and spend some time together when we are all off and have a movie night etc as I dont want the next 18 months to be work, sleep, eat, repeat. We've also agreed that we take the extra hours month by month. If for some reason one/both of us feel enough is enough then we stop. Our mental health is more important than money, but for now we're both OK. 

As to our individual debts, I've paid off our one consolidation loan in January and free's up £223.63 a month which is now being snowballed to the next credit card. All going well this time next month that credit card will be gone and onto the next one. We're still paying interest on certain cards and a lot of our balance transfer deals are ending this year but I'm hoping between us making these big overpayments and the debt coming down we can get new deals if we need to, but thats last resort.

Job no 1 is going well. Had another pay rise in January and things over next few years look really bright. Job no 2 is also going well. I had some teething problems in the beginning but now I'm getting on with everyone I actually enjoy going. 

Hope everyone here is well. Will be catching up on what I've missed the last few month with a cuppa today.

Snwps

So thought I'd re-do my SOA seen as our income has changed. I'll list a few points below:

[font=courier new][b]Statement of Affairs and Personal Balance Sheet[/b][b]

Household Information[/b]

Number of adults in household........... 2

Number of children in household......... 2

Number of cars owned.................... 2[b]

Monthly Income Details[/b]

Monthly income after tax................ 1946.94

Partners monthly income after tax....... 2266.55

Benefits................................ 137.6

Other income............................ 0[b]

Total monthly income.................... 4351.09[/b][b]

Monthly Expense Details[/b]

Mortgage................................ 504.5

Secured/HP loan repayments.............. 0

Rent.................................... 0

Management charge (leasehold property).. 0

Council tax............................. 120

Electricity............................. 100 - £158 gas & electric, I keep an eye on this regularly with MSE energy club and switch if there is a better deal.

Gas..................................... 58

Oil..................................... 0

Water rates............................. 49.53

Telephone (land line)................... 0

Mobile phone............................ 29.6 - This is for 4 sim only deals - 2 on 12 month contracts - other 2 30 day contracts

TV Licence.............................. 13.2

Satellite/Cable TV...................... 53.9 - This is for Landline/Fibre/Sky TV & Netflix (Netflix is inc in our packaage) - in contract till end 2020

Internet Services....................... 0

Groceries etc. ......................... 350 - This is average for last 3 months

Clothing................................ 50 (average over the year)

Petrol/diesel........................... 356 - This is a lot higher than usual useage due to us both having 2 jobs and me delivering 4/5 nights a week

Road tax................................ 19.1

Car Insurance........................... 40.04

Car maintenance (including MOT)......... 30

Car parking............................. 0

Other travel............................ 0

Childcare/nursery....................... 0

Other child related expenses............ 0

Medical (prescriptions, dentist etc).... 2.86

Pet insurance/vet bills................. 14.1

Buildings insurance..................... 14.65 - Buildings & Contents Ins

Contents insurance...................... 0

Life assurance ......................... 32.19

Other insurance......................... 0

Presents (birthday, christmas etc)...... 21.38 - This is just birthdays over last 3 months DOES NOT INC XMAS

Haircuts................................ 12

Entertainment........................... 225 - This is for meals out/days out/family time & take aways

Holiday................................. 0

Emergency fund.......................... 0

Leisure................................. 130 - This is Tobacco for DH[b]

Total monthly expenses.................. 2226.05[/b]

[b]

Assets[/b]

Cash.................................... 0

House value (Gross)..................... 120000

Shares and bonds........................ 0

Car(s).................................. 1500

Other assets............................ 0[b]

Total Assets............................ 121500[/b]

[b]

Secured & HP Debts[/b]

Description....................Debt......Monthly...APR

Mortgage...................... 81000....(504.5)....2.99[b]

Total secured & HP debts...... 81000.....-.........-   [/b]

[b]Unsecured Debts[/b]

Description....................Debt......Monthly...APR

Loan...........................2467.89...145.2.....0

Cap............................1563.42...93.9......30.34

TS.............................5330.84...69.87.....0

HL.............................3503.74...89.33.....19.45

V..............................3464.35...155.2.....26.39

HMRC...........................700.......20........0

MB.............................1891.4....30........0

TL.............................4953.63...81.62.....0

PO.............................1042......27........0

BC.............................3695.68...85.06.....0

HS.............................2794.54...28.23.....0

MS.............................929.39....23.83.....0[b]

I know we should limit the entertaining budget a little but we feel that working so much it's only fair to have a couple of days out a month and sometimes from working 2 jobs in 1 day and not having time to food prep we opt for the odd take away. If it becomes an issue I know we can reduce this.

Snwps

I've just noticed that my SOA above dont inc the summary:
Total income £4351.09
Less Monthly Expenses £2226.05
= £2125.04 Available for debt repayment
Less Minimum repayments £849.24
Leaves surplus £1275.80 to overpay debt. This is roughly the extra income from the 2x 2nd jobs. 

Snwps

So its the 1st May already, time is flying. Just wanted to pop on to update my figs. The debt balance as at today is £30,190.23. So close to getting into the £20k's. Should get below £30k next week when some more payments come out of the bank. So we've paid off £7,303.02 - 19.48%. Snowballing is starting to pick up now. I've lost the income from my second job for the time being due to the virus but its not an issue in the scheme of things. The figure is still coming down thats the main thing. 

Hope everyone is well.

elly68

fantastic reduction keep going and enjoy the downtime from second job

Snwps

Finally done it, broken the £30k barrier. Debt figure today is £29,428.87 having updated the interest added recently and paying off £700 today from DHs 2nd income. This is £8,064.38 paid off 21.50%. Hoping to pay off another £1000 before 31st May with normal direct debit payments.

Been looking at where I can save and am shopping back in Aldi now to save some pennies. We're also starting to see the difference in not having to use the car for petrol. I need to sit down this week and look at possibly switching the Gas/Electric and moving the car insurances. 

Snwps

Debt figure at 31/05/2020 is £28,218.73. I can finally see us getting somewhere now this huge figure is coming down. We've paid off £9,274.52 (24.74%) of the original £37,493.25 in 12 months and just noticed that I started my diary on 25th May 2019. The majority of this figure has been this year as last year it was still yo-yoing around the £35-36k figure. 
We've also cleared 3 of the 13 debts we had. One loan was paid off in Jan, one credit card in April and the other credit card in May. These were the highest interest (and balances) credit cards and I've been rolling over the minumum payments onto the next debt making huge monthly overpayments. This is where I was going wrong last year. Its easy to find something else to spend the money on instead of rolling over. It takes a lot of determination to keep it snowballing. In 2020 we've paid the following monthly totals towards the debts:
Jan - £2,602.60
Feb - £1,073.89
Mar - £1,901.95
Apr - £2,652.10
May - £2,402.60
(These figures don't include interest paid which is around £250 per month - this should be reducing now seen as I've paid off the 2 highest paying cards)

There is still a long way to go but keeping track of spending using YNAB and budgeting and seeing how we're doing it's spurring me on to keep going. I seem to have changed my mindset lately with regards to debt. For example we've been taling about doing some house renovations. 'Old me' would have rushed out and got a loan on top of what we've got to get it done now. 'Now me' knows that if we keep going we could get the work done next year or the year after and not put more strain on us financially.

Monthly spending also seems to have been better in May. We've reduced our monthly grocery shop total compared to last month. Plus I've learnt that shopping only once a week and spending £100/week is better than popping into supermarkets every other day to do a top up shop. 

I'm still not working at job #2. TBH the longer I leave it I think its going to be harder to go back. But I need to think of the money and will maybe do 2-3 nights a week instead of the 5 nights a week I was doing before lock down. 

Snwps

I've got some minimum payments to come out this week and by 4th June the debt figure will be in the £27k's. eeek!