My accountability Diary for £42k!!!!

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Excellent news!

KellyAS

Hubby's new extra job is going good. We have used a little of the money for odd bits and bobs but have £960 in the savings pot from it now. I'm going to use this as our emergency fund then when it gets to £1000 anything extra can go towards debts until they are repaid. He should be able to make another £1500 from it in the next 3 weeks I hope, if they have work for him everyday.

Planning the eldest childs birthday party this weekend. He wanted an action camera so he can film his bike rides, I managed to get a refurbished one with helmet and chest strap for £80, it's a proper one rather than the kids one he saw which had awful reviews and the picture quality looked rubbish, so hopefully he'll be happy with it. I budgeted £100 so a little bit of saving there.

We were part of a class action law suit and have just received a cheque from them for £1775 for our settlement. That is sitting in my interest paying account at the moment while I work out what to do with it. None of our debts are accruing interest so I'm a little reluctant to pay anything off just yet. The MBNA has £461 left on it so I would like to get rid of that but the Amazon card ends in December so that one needs to be paid first. It has £1999.80 on at the moment.

Still waiting for our remortgage to be sorted unfortunately. The furlough on hubby's payslip is causing issues with the lender. We have until the end of January to sort it but I just want to get it done so I know what's going on! I'm not very patient with these things!!

I sold a few of the boys old clothes online but after all the washing, packing, listing etc it really wasn't worth my time with the money I made so I have reluctantly bagged up the other bits (4 large black sacks!) and put them in the Salvation Army clothing bin. At least we have some storage space back now. I still have the old toys in the loft to sort through, spare room to organise and the toy room to declutter but I will get there! I feel like we just have so much 'stuff' kept that we don't use or need cluttering up the house.

I have managed to set up a savings account for the youngest now, I've been meaning to do it for ages but kept forgetting but it is done and finally his kidstart savings can go in there.

Need to sort out my work stuff for Christmas. I have set my targets on what I plan to sell, have a 10% discount code for the packaging company I use so will order everything this month before it expires then November is festive fair month! 4 full weekends of fairs booked plus the online platforms so hoping it will be as profitable as last year.

KellyAS

Thought I'd do an update as it's nearly the end of another year!

All Christmas presents have been paid for with savings.

I met my sales targets for this Christmas.

Paid off the MBNA with some of my Christmas earnings (£441.20) but had to transfer the Amazon balance as I didn't quite have enough saved up and had a good 0% offer.

Paid my Mum back £2000 from what I'd managed to save in the account I have allocated for her

Paid off the Creation TV loan £744

Emergency fund at £1000

We finally managed to sort out the remortgage and borrow an extra £20000 to clear out debts. I know on here it's not usually recommended to add unsecured debt to the mortgage but after talking with our advisor it works out the best for us. Remortgage rate was 0.99% and our payments will only go up by £70, saving us over £400 a month in debt payments. Some of this I hope to repay back to the mortgage so it won't cost us more in the long run. We are tied in for 5 years so if I can clear the extra we borrowed in that time I will be very happy indeed.

All cards except 1 will be cut up and closed down. The remaining card will be put with the emergency fund just in case one of the dogs needs an operation that we don't yet have enough saved for before claiming on the insurance.

Hubby needed a ULEZ car to get to work as both our current vehicles would cost £12.50 a day. We bought a cheap old petrol car to get him by for now so had to use £750 of the emergency fund to purchase one (which we have since managed to replenish so fund is now back to £1000)

We currently spend approx £350 a month on fuel so decided in the long run that an electric car would work out the cheapest option for us as he can charge it for free at work when he's travelling there and it will be cheaper for the short runs we do when at home. We have ordered a new vehicle which should be coming in March and payments for that will be £337 a month, electric charging for home use shouldn't be more than £20 a month so it won't cost us any more than our current vehicle (tax will be £0 currently we pay nearly £30 a month for the car) Our current 2 cars plus some savings will pay the deposit. 

We now have the following outstanding:

4 credit cards left with a total of £20809.87
Loan to my Mum £11700
Creation loan for dining table £437.94

Total £32,947.81 (21% repaid)

2022
Plan for next year is to pay off all the credit cards in February (should have enough to clear them all after the next couple of mortgage payments have gone through)

Save £3000 to pay to my Mum by the end of the year

I've done a new budget after the debts are repaid:
Income £3480
Bills and regular payments £2216
Debts £588 (car and Mum)

Leaving us £676 for food etc

All money from hubby's second job will hopefully be put into savings. I would love to have £4000 in savings (plus the emergency fund) by the end of the year, that would put us on target to repay the mortgage money in 5 years, or my Mum back earlier.

Hubby is potentially getting a pay rise of £8000, union are fighting for it at the moment (something about his level of training means he would start at that as a base salary if he went elsewhere apparently) so fingers crossed for that.

Take the boys on holiday!

Happy new year everyone!

KellyAS

Can't believe how quick this year is going! Nearly 1/4 of the way through already!

Since my last update a few things have changed, mainly the cost of living rise has scuppered my budgets a bit but hey ho, I'm always tweaking them here and there so just needed to do a bit more tweaking!

Instead of part exchanging our car (they valued it at £1000) we managed to sell it for £1700. We also sold the other car we'd bought for £1350 so made £600 profit there I've put that money into savings at the moment, our CC debt is all on 0% still so I will see how much I can save and hopefully pay a nice lump off at a later date.

Remortgage went through fine, and just in time by the look of the rates available now! Our adviser said ours was the lowest long term rate he'd ever got anyone

We ended up with £21800 from the remortgage and I was feeling guilty about owing my Mum a lot of money so I have paid her back first plus some of the credit cards. It means we do still have some credit card debt but now we can really work on those to bring them down. So I used the remortgage money to pay the following:

Mum £11700
New car £3616
Barclaycard £2254
Barclaycard 2 £1438.41
Tesco £2720.20

Total: £21728.61

I have also booked EuroDisney for us and the boys which was paid for by the claim cheque I got last year.

Our new car is awesome, hubby charges it at work for free and I charge it when I go to the supermarket for free. So far it hasn't cost us a penny in running costs and looks like we got it at the right time with the price of fuel now! Our van is pretty juicy to run so when I can I have been leaving it at the school and walking home with the dogs then walking back for pick up time. It halved my weekly fuel spend last week! It's too far for the boys to walk at the mo while they are young but hopefully in a few years we can do it. 

I'm trying to save money on energy by turning as much as I can off at night. Our fuel payment went from £78 last year to now £249! We were with Avro so spent a long time in limbo whilst they sorted everything out. I did change our payments to £140 because I knew they would change but I didn't realise by quite how much! Blankets and hot water bottles now! And I'm trying to batch cook as much as I can, I always make something that serves 4 and freeze a couple of portions when I make things like lasagna, pasta bake, shepherds pie etc but I'm trying to be a bit smarter with cooking other things too.

Food shopping I find difficult to keep low, with 2 growing kids who don't stop eating it's hard to save the pennies but maybe if I go on a diet it might help?! I keep thinking about growing our own veg but not sure I have the time or if we would get enough, we go through quite a lot of carrots as it's the only vegetable the boys will reliably eat!

I've been stocking up on cheap presents for kids friends as we have a lot of parties coming up. Budget is £5 each and so far I've managed to get 3 good books for £3.50 each and 3 science based toy packs for £4.99 each. Lucky they only have a small class and not all of them have parties so I think that will be enough for this year.

Update on plans for 2022
So far my plans seem to be going OK. I haven't cleared all the credit cards but I have cleared 2 of them and paid a lump off 1 and repaid my Mum. We currently have £14,116 owing on CC plus £364.95 to Creation. I hope to get the CC below £10k by the end of the year and Creation will be cleared by June 2023.

I have booked the holiday we wanted.

We still have the £1000 emergency fund plus £2369 in savings.

So far, so good

KellyAS

Well it's been a while! Sad news, my Nan passed away on Wednesday evening  she hasn't been well for a while, dementia then she had a massive stroke 6 weeks ago and had been in hospital for 5 weeks until being transferred to a care home. She was refusing meds and not eating, didn't know who anyone was so although it's very sad and I will miss her very much she was here for 97 1/2 years and is now back with my Grandad.

Cost of living is not really helping with my debt busting but we are slowly getting there. So glad we were able to remortgage so low (0.99%) for 5 years when we did!

Since my last update one of our 0% deals has ended but I managed to get a new card with 1% BT fee and 0% for 2 years so have £8686 on that (less the £200 just paid) plus £3765.99 on the other card and £243.30 with Creation which means we are now 70% repaid! Yay!

On the downside my £1000 emergency fund seems to have disappeared  I took £40 out for the car MOT and £10 for my son's art class the other month because I couldn't get to a cash machine before I needed it so should have had £950 in there, when I went to replace the money there was £150 left!!!! Hubby admitted taking £100 out because he wanted to buy food at work. I am soooooo angry about that! But I don't know where the missing money has gone. The only thing I can think of is I didn't replace it when we sold the Golf (I used £750 to buy it) but checking back on this diary I did it so I have no idea where it's gone other than hubby lying to me (possible as he's useless with money) but I don't think even he would spend £850 without me knowing, it was all in £50 notes so not easy to spend! The remainder is now going into the bank, along with the kids pocket money/birthday money as I don't want to risk it again. I will get to the bottom of it.

I really need to cut our spending down somewhere but am struggling. Hubby is doing 3 days overtime each month now which should give us around £700 extra a month and I have a casual job doing bar work when they have events, around £100 a month and from October I will be working another day in the day job so that will bring me another £300 a month and also make me eligible for an employee pension . I'm hoping that can help us pay the debts down a lot quicker but am also conscious that unless we can drastically cut out energy bill we will be paying nearly £400 a month come October  not looking forward to that. I turn everything I can off at the plug overnight, nothing goes on charge for longer than it has to, I've been batch cooking when I can, washing machine goes on 30 degrees for most washes, I'm filling up the dishwasher and doing that every 3 days, trying to cut the washing up down. I'm going to try and use the slow cooker more when the weather cools down. Not sure what summer meals I can make in a slow cooker at the mo!

I also had to change our internet/telephone/TV and hubby's mobile because those contracts ran out. I can't believe how much prices have risen since we last did it which was only 18 months ago! But did manage to move hubby to Sky mobile so I can bump my data over to him. I work from home so use our wifi and have the cheapest tariff (2gb for £5) so I usually roll over at least 1gb every month whereas he is a data drainer so I put him on 3gb for £7 and will keep rolling my data over until it runs out but it should last him at least 12 months I hope. Honestly I have tried to teach him how to budget and cut back on things to make it easier for us but he just doesn't seem to understand anything about money! If he has it he will spend it asap.

Am going to do the budget planner again as our finances have really changed since I last did it, just need to find the time to get it done. The dogs and kids are huge expenses!

Mum_and_Wife

Hi just read your diary from start to now been up to date. Your doing a great job and I look forward to more updates x 

KellyAS

Thank you Mum_and_Wife  it's definitely challenging but we are slowly getting there.

After the news about energy prices this week I am getting a bit scared going into winter! Our payments are currently £239.59 and based on our current annual kwh predictions it looks like we may need to increase that to £395 from October, not including January's rises    I have turned down the water temp on the boiler, turned the preheat off and also turned down the boiler radiator control temperature so am hoping that will make a difference. Sometimes we have to plug the car in at home but only when it is really necessary and just to top it up. I've looked at the cheap night rate tariffs but as the day rate is so much more expensive it really won't save us any money    We are lucky that at the moment we can afford those payments as long as overtime is available for hubby, although I'd much rather be paying £400 towards our debt or savings! 

Hubby managed to get an extra £1100 last month from his pay rise and overtime. I have redone our budget for now based on this new income.

We will have a minimum of £3700 coming in each month (excluding overtime), this will rise to £4000 from October when I do an extra day per week. I have been trying to do a £0 budget where everything is allocated so I know I have enough to cover all our expense then anything left over will be put to one side. We've struggled a bit lately but I can now restart thanks to hubby's recent pay rise and the overtime for this month.


Here is a brief breakdown of our current situation:

Bills each month £1970
Kids activities & school fees £120 (swimming, gymnastics etc)
Debt repayments £325
Kids savings £100

The following are payments I transfer into sinking funds
Presents £86
Annuals £147 (car tax, MOT, insurances etc)
Dogs £250
Food £500
Fuel £150
Christmas £52

Total outgoings £3700

Overtime brought in £1073 last month 

I have had to replenish some accounts using our spare income this month but I now have £600 sitting in my savings which I hope not to touch by the end of the month.

I have looked at all of our expenses but there isn't anything I can cut back on at the moment. The only expense I feel we could cut back on is the TV but as we don't actually go out it is really our only treat and it's much less than I have seen some other people pay! All our other expenses we don't have much control over other than using less water, energy etc. Food I try to keep under £100 and fuel £30 a week but keep the extra in those accounts in case I need to bulk buy or have a long trip coming up (I have to take one dog to the specialist vets tomorrow as he needs an eye op) I meal plan 3 weeks at a time so I can bulk buy and prep better.

*My plan is to get our emergency fund back up to £1000, currently it has £150 in it

*Next will be to save towards a proper holiday at the same time as clearing the credit cards down and saving for 1 months wages safety net in case anything happens to our income.
I have calculated that if I pay an extra £123 per month to the MBNA card (currently paying £200 pm) it will be cleared by the time the 0% deal ends in July 2023. Then I can snowball the payments to the Virgin card to get that down, hopefully by the time that 0% period ends in 2024. I really don't want to transfer anymore balances over, if I have extra funds available at the end of each month I will put them towards the debt but as they are not costing me anything extra and we haven't actually had a proper holiday since 2014 I feel that we deserve one if we can afford it. Sadly we lost my Nan a few weeks ago and she has left me £2000 which I am putting towards the holiday for us and my friend has just found out she is living with cancer   it's not terminal yet but she also has 2 young boys and it's made me realise if we can do something then we should do it. If we end up not going away then I will have a big chuck of money to pay to the debt too. At the end of the year if any of my sinking funds have money in them I will put those balances towards the debt too and start again in January.

*Once the debt is all gone I will be saving for 3 months of expenses as our safety net and topping up the kids savings to repay from when I couldn't when our income was much lower. I wanted to be able to save £50 each month until their 18th birthday for each of them.

*And finally we will then start overpaying the mortgage, once we are financially secure elsewhere 

Big news this week is we have sold the old Anglia. We got £15000 for it  Unfortunately it just wasn't practical as we couldn't all go out in it due to only having 2 seats. Hubby has taken back his original £9000 inheritance and purchased a lovely old Beetle which we can all use. The remaining money is going to be used to get our driveway done and to finish bits on the house that have been left. I have started to get very down about the state of our house recently, it is clean and (fairly) tidy, as much as it can be with 2 huge dogs and young children! But we do have a lot of stuff that we really don't need, I'm feeling a little claustrophobic with it so it is time to have a clear out and get the house sorted instead of shutting it all behind doors. The spare room is just a junk room at the mo! And hopefully I can make a little extra money from some bits to help with our finances.

I have also finally shown hubby my spreadsheet tracking our money so he knows where we are financially.

Wow, sorry it's so long! I seem to go for ages without posting then get it all out in one go! This is definitely helping me stay accountable though. I realise my way of budgeting/debt repaying isn't the quickest way and I definitely want our debt gone asap but we also need to enjoy what we have while we can. As long as the debt isn't costing me more money I am happy to pay extra when we can as long as it is cleared by the end of the 0% terms we currently have.

This month has been a good month, financially speaking 

KellyAS

Just a quick one because we have finally got under the £12k mark for debt and 72% repaid!

I would really like to end this year with £10k owing then be able to pay the rest off by the end of next year.

KellyAS

Happy New Year!

So let's see where we are:

• Didn't quite reach my target of having under £10k on the CC's but we have just under £11k left so nearly made it.
• £53.55 in emergency fund, we did have just over £1000 but I finished paying my mum back for the £1000 she lent us to get the driveway completed as it went a little over budget. I hope to make this back up to £1000 by the end of April.
• All Christmas presents paid for with savings.
• Hit my sales targets in my business for the Christmas period.
• Debts are 74% repaid, nearly 3/4 of the way there!

Currently we have £10,800 outstanding on CC and £145.98 on the Creation loan. The loan will be cleared by the end of June this year 

Hubby has finally received the last of his pay rise.

Targets for this year

• One CC 0% rate runs out at the beginning of Aug so I would like to have that paid back by then. Currently it has £2800 outstanding and I pay £200 a month which means I need to find £164.38 more each month.
• Have 1 CC by the end of this year with less than £5500 on it (at least 50% of our remaining debt paid this year)
• Take the boys on holiday on an aeroplane.
• Turnover of £30k and profit of 60% through my business by the end of the year.
• £1000 in emergency fund
• House redecorated and garden sorted as they have been neglected over the last few years. I plan to do this all myself (and hubby!) so it will just be materials costs and time.
• Not add any more debt!

I would love to be debt free (with exception of the car and mortgage) by the end of 2024

KellyAS

Wow! Where did the last year go?!

2023 was a bit of a tough one money wise unfortunately we had to add some more to credit cards from private health care costs (the issue wasn't covered by the NHS unfortunately) and hubby was signed off work for a while, at full pay luckily, but no overtime so things have been a bit tight but we are slowly chipping away again at the debt.

Good News:
I got a pay rise with the increase of the minimum wage and I am completing qualifications (paid for by my employer) to improve my job and increase my earning potential. I hope to have these completed by the summer so by the end of the year to be earning £30,000 pa (very realistic in the industry I work in). This also means I have closed my business. It was a difficult decision to make but this job is very flexible around the kids, means I don't have to go out and find the work and earnings are not capped.

Good news/bad news:
Hubby is back to work but unable to do overtime just yet. Hopefully this will change in the next 3 months so earnings will increase then. He had 3 more pay rises last year but these have taken him over the Child Benefit threshold and also over the next tax bracket so not only we have lost the majority of the child benefit payment, we have also lost the marriage person tax allowance so even though his earnings have increased we are now around £128 pm worse off when he can't do overtime I have been putting the child benefit straight into an account as I'm not sure how much we'll need to pay back so at least it's there ready and whatever we have left over will be a bonus and can go towards the debts.

Let's see where we are now:

• Credit cards are at a depressing £17,672.59   that's 2 CC's both at 0% One ends October this year but I'm not sure I can clear it by then unless we have a huge increase in income
• Emergency Fund has £687.08 in
• We managed to pay off the CC with £2800 on but had to use the cards again
• Christmas presents all paid for with savings again
• Creation loan paid off
• My phone loan (£14 pm) will be paid off next month
• We did manage a holiday on a plane last year a cheap week to Turkey which was definitely needed
• House redecoration - I have half finished the hallway! I have everything to do it except time at the mo! This year I need to move the boys into their own rooms, they share at the mo and need more space each so hopefully we can get the house (and garden!) sorted!

I am really, really, really hoping to not add any more debt this year.
Once the emergency fund is at £1000 I will be throwing all excess money to the CC's to bring them down as much as I can starting with the £9774.25 on Virgin.

I did a check to see how much more we are spending now than this time last year (on bills and services etc) but it is actually the same so we haven't added anything other than for the private health care costs which is a good thing. I have just cancelled Sky because we are at the end of our contract and they were asking more than I wanted to payso I need to find a broadband provider but we have decided to just go for broadband and Netflix, Disney+ I get with Tesco CC vouchers and we're not huge film watchers so if we have't got it we'll make do. The only thing hubby wants is Moto GP so instead of paying the ridiculous £28 for TNT sports I've found a videopass for it for £124 a year and am hoping that will be suitable. 

Feeling very grateful that our mortgage is still fixed until the end of December 2026 or we would be in a bit more of a difficult position. I really want all our debt paid off by then in case mortgage rates are still high and would really love to be able to overpay on the mortgage.