Time to put my big girl pants on!

dreambig19

There's an age old saying - you've got to spend money to make money! Or in my case, spend money to save money.

This week I've actually signed up for three lots of additional monthly outgoings. Sounds stupid right? I'm still trying to get my head around it. Why am I increasing my outgoings at a time when I am trying to reduce spending? It's in the hopes that this will save me money (or stress/debt) in the long run. I have signed up for:
1. Pet insurance
2. Contents insurance
3. Life insurance

The first two, while adding just under £40 a month to my outgoings, should mean that if something bad were to happen - I won't have to dip into my (currently non-existant) emergency fund. And Ok, the third isn't necessarily essential, but I have a family now, and if something were to happen to me I want them to be able to not have to worry about money - rather than being saddled with my debt.

We're just over halfway through the month and I'm creeping close to having earned £300 in 'extras'. I'm still undecided as to how I will split this at the end of the month. I am thinking 50% EF and 50% towards debts. I'll also be getting £180 back which I loaned my mum (wasn't planning on seeing that this side of the new year). I think I might put that all into EF to make a proper start on it.

I also set up a 'round ups' pot on my debit card and have been using whatever is in it to pay towards a credit card weekly - meaning so far this month I've paid my agreed monthly amount plus an additional £20.45 - it all helps..

On the subject of credit cards. I was going to contact one at the end of the month and offer a f&f to close it. However a few days ago, clearscore notified me that the company would be removing their marker from my credit file at the end of the month. Bizzare as the account defaulted in Jan 2018, so still a long while to go. Any ideas what might be going on here? Also if the marker *does* drop off my file, would I be better off offering the money to another creditor?

Hope everyone is well. No idea if anyone actually reads this!

dreambig19

Just checking in!

I've managed to secure some regular, well paid (at $14 an hour - £10.86 based on the current conversion rate) work at home. It's meaning I have to get up at 4.30am and am not getting to bed much before 11pm to fit the hours in around work and family life, but it should mean just under an extra £1650 a month to plough into debts and then savings. Obviously I need to account for taxes etc in all of that so I will sit down and set all that up on the weekend, but it could be a real game changer.

I know it's going to be tough in terms of feeling tired etc, but I'm of the philosophy that nothing worth having comes easily, and I got myself into this mess so need to be the one to put the work in to get myself out!

The husband has just informed me that his credit card is maxxed out - not happy as we cleared it at the beginning of the month and were meant to be keeping it that way for bills while he is off work for the next 8 weeks. I have no objection to him spending but I asked him to let me know when and what so I could keep track - and there's about £300 unnacounted for now. So that should be fun to deal with! I feel like I need to take a firm hand with him, but not sure how to broach it as he's a grown man.

Advice on a postcard please!

R

dreambig19

Wow, dusting this off after 17 months - how embarrassing! 
A couple of days after my last post, I found out I was pregnant with #2. I should, in reality, have used this as a rocket to fire me in the direction of clearing as much debt as I could, but instead I just sort of stopped trying. Well actually there's no sort of, I just stopped. And then, well? Like everyone else, covid happened. I was classed as vulnerable and told to WFH in March due to being pregnant, and at the same time my employer 'asked' everyone to take a pay cut - a portion of our salaries was given back to the company each month to cover loss in profits. Any efforts to earn extra money dried up as I was now spending a lot of time in the evenings catching up on my day-job, as I was spending most of the waking hours entertaining the toddler. 
I was furloughed in May, and eventually made redundant in July, one week after the birth of my daughter.

I sort of muddled through the rest of the year - the redundancy pay was enough to see bills covered without me having to return to work, meaning I could have some form of 'maternity leave' with my daughter - albeit very different to the one I had imagined. I decided that in the New Year I would start looking for work, and as luck would have it an old friend approached me on New Years Eve asking me if I was interested in applying for a job with his company. On 12th January I began my new role!

So here I was back where I started - despairing at the fact that we don't really fit well in our house (we manage, there are people worse off than us, but it ideally should be a fair bit bigger for the size of the family now). But with debts worse than before, and no savings, we are even further away from getting a mortgage.
I took stock in February (I'll update with a list of debts in a separate post) and got back on the wagon of earning some extra money.
I hope someone reads this. I could really do with some gentle (or not so gentle) encouragement along the way. Would anyone be willing to check in on me (I can do the same for you)? Does anyone have any advice?
I'll update again soon.
R

remote_control

Hello, I'm here (waves). 
Our debt is about the same amount so I will be buddies with you.
Babies are really expensive - mainly due to the drop in income. We've got slightly older children and I feel like we're just coming out of the expensive few years.
What's your plan?

dreambig19

remote_control said:

Hello, I'm here (waves). 
Our debt is about the same amount so I will be buddies with you.
Babies are really expensive - mainly due to the drop in income. We've got slightly older children and I feel like we're just coming out of the expensive few years.
What's your plan?

Hi!
Thanks for commenting! They really are expensive aren't they  the youngest is weaning now and is just at the point where she's eating more food than drinking formula, so that cost will go soon. I worked out a few weeks ago that I was spending around £60 a month on formula and £70 on nappies (nappies for the two of them) - yikes! So I've switched from pampers to aldi nappies (with a night-time pull up for the 2yo overnight as he leaks otherwise). I've also made the switch from aptamil (circa £15 a tub) to aldi formula (£6.50 a tub) as I've heard it's identical, and she's getting most of her nutrition from food now. Haven't yet worked out how much the nappy switch will save me, but the formula switch alone should save me £36 a month.

I've managed to get myself some freelance work which I do in the evenings once the children are in bed. Also doing surveys on sites like prolific. My aim is to earn £10 a day and put all of that towards my debts. So far last week I've earned more like £25 a day. When I'm getting the payouts from the surveys I'm using them to pay off debts immediately. It will make my statements look a bit weird (lots of small - e.g. £3.50, daily payments) - but I don't trust myself at the moment to save it up for a month and make one single, larger payment. 
I also had a tax rebate of almost a thousand pounds this month. The temptation was to keep it in the bank 'in case we need it' and then use anything that was left at the end of the month to go towards debts, but again I didn't trust myself to not just spend it. So we used some of it to fix the shed roof (been leaking all winter) and the rest has gone towards debts - paid straight away. That's made a nice big dent and made things feel more manageable.

All my debts are old, most defaulted, and no longer attracting interest, so I'm using the snowball method to pay them off from smallest to largest.

How about you, do you have a plan? How do you feel about it?

dreambig19

So a little later than planned, but here's an updated list of my debts. I'll include where things were at the start of the year and where they are as of today. As mentioned in the post above, an unexpected tax rebate has meant I've been able to make a good start at clearing these debts. 
Company            Starting debt     Outstanding

Welsh water 1	(Jan 21)   15		(March 21) 0
Barclays (sole)	64.35		0
Hello Fresh	71.38		0
Barclays (joint)	71.71		0
Salary Finance	88.42		0
Simply Be	98.29		0
Virgin Media	107.41		0
JD williams	160.5		0
Rent	350		350
Lowell (vanquis)	353.49		347.36
Court Fine	454		454
Pounds to pocket	669.66		632.45
Welsh water 2	731		616
118 money	1159		1159
Bulb	1189.58		1158.58
Mum	1236		1136
Council tax	1307.41		800
Restons	7440	7365

 

remote_control

Hi
Yes like you I do surveys and things to get little bits here and there and I pay it straight off the debt as soon as it goes into my bank account. I just love to see the debt go down! It looks like you've got lots of fiddly little debts but you'll get so much satisfaction each time an account is closed! I've recently discovered market research, I'd really recommend it. I did one last week and got £100 although a lot of the emails I get say you can't have done one in the last 3 months https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/team-blog/2020/02/how-to-earn-cash-from-market-research/
I'm just doing a juggle to move some money from one 0% card which is ending to another one. The new one is for 18 months so I'm going to set up a direct debit so the balance is fully paid in 18 months.
We did reusable nappies and our county council gave £50 grant to buy them. We only used disposables at night. 
I cashed out for the first time on swagbucks last night! I don't think it was worth the effort so I won't do it again.

dreambig19

Ugh so the husband has just called me to say he's got a flat tyre! Luckily I haven't paid into my Christmas savings club yet this month, so we can use the money for that, but that means I'll have to pay double next month.

This just makes me annoyed all over again that I don't have an emergency fund of ANY kind. So I'm going to start splitting my extra earnings between debts and an emergency pot. Any tips on what split of funds I should put towards each - 50/50? 60/40? Any and all advice welcome!
Also how much of an EF should I have before I switch back to ploughing all extra into debt repayments?

remote_control

I don't have an answer for you but I put any extra I make from ebay/surveys etc towards debt. And then for savings I put any money I have left in my account on payday and also 'savings' I make a long the way e.g. not having a cake or coffee out, finding a money off code for something I buy etc. 
It is just what suits my silly brain!

dreambig19

remote_control said:

I don't have an answer for you but I put any extra I make from ebay/surveys etc towards debt. And then for savings I put any money I have left in my account on payday and also 'savings' I make a long the way e.g. not having a cake or coffee out, finding a money off code for something I buy etc. 
It is just what suits my silly brain!

oh that's a good idea! I like that!!