Reality hit hard ......now i'm hitting back

bd80s

Hi readers (if there are any haha)


i have been reading a few diaries on here, having a nosy, taking on board advice that while not directed at me made a lot of sense. I knew vaguely that other people had money problems but was still thinking that i must be the worst person with money and the only pesron that could have gotten into such a mess. While its not nice to read about other peoples worries and stresses i finally understand mistakes happen, wrong judgement calls made and things can escalated.


so a little bit of back round, almost 6 years ago despite earning a reasonable salary, for where i live (around £20k), and having access to overtime pretty much unlimited i started to overspend. trying to suss out the root of problems i can see that i was very much trying to keep up with friends who all still lived at home with their parents by going to all events, out for food and on trips despite living on my own with a mortgage and all the joyful bills that go along with owning a home. to anyone out there doing the same thing, its not sustainable .........wish someone had told me that.


i started to dip a toe into pay day loans, started with £100 just to see me through the last week till payday, did a little bit more overtime but as that never came through until 2 pay days after it never quite caught up so i continued borrowing. as some will know you very quickly have to start borrowing more because the £100 you borrowed is £120 paid back so after a couple of months £100 becomes £150, £200, £250.......and you get the picture


5 years after starting it payday loans, last August, i finally reached a point where 7 days after payday having paid all my loans i had no money left, was being refused any further pay day/short term loans and still had priority bills left to pay, so what did i do? thats right i buried my head further into the sand. after i had electric and tv shut off and realised i hadnt paid my council tax i had to peek my head out and try to address it.


now some of you may think that would be my light bulb moment ........nope in all my wisdom i decided that it was the best thing to get a bigger loan to consolidate everything else. the only option available to me was a guarantor loan so i shamefully asked my friend would they guarantor it for me. thankfully they agreed and the next day i had £5500 which should have covered everything. nope wrong again, in all my wisdom i decided to pay MOST of the loans and keep a bit of a cushion in my bank account so that i for once was not pennies away from my overdraft limit.


what a mistake, i now had a large loan payment plus a couple of hundred extra for the outstanding loans to pay which left me no better off and after just one month i was back to small pay day loans. it then got worse as the friend which was a guarantor was applying for a shared house purchase but being my guarantor was affecting their ability to get a mortgage so i needed to get them removed. i tried and tried to get a larger loan just on myself but this was not possible.


luckily i finally confided (most of) my financial issue to a good friend and they offered to pay off the guarantor loan on their credit card (20% apr, they did try to get a lower apr loan but as they had just changed jobs and couldnt show proof of income they were unable to secure one). they asked me numerous time, was this the only loan i needed to pay off? here it was, the chance to really get some help and i stupidly said yep that was the only one and i would be able to pay with ease..........


fast forward 6 months to June this year and after actually tallying up my outgoings i realised i was back to having no money the next month. ding ding ding, this was my light bulb moment. i confronted my situation. i wrote to all loan companies advising i was in financial difficulty and have managed to come to payment plan agreements with them all. i also had a judgement against me for non payments of a catalogue bill but was struggling to pay the monthly judgement amount and was just a few months from having the debt registered against my property.


i then found the MSE website and discovered that there was a possibility of claiming back on payday loans that may have been unaffordable when given. looking at my history i could see i had numerous back to back loans, some all going on at the same time with a certain company so i started the process of claiming.


i was lucky, one of the biggest lenders to me dealt with my compalint quickly and fairly and within 9 weeks i received payment of over £6k. wha a relief, i paid £2500 to my friend on top of the £250 each month i had been paying so that i had just under £2000 left to pay off for them. i also paid off the £1700 judgement, phew! the rest i used to pay off a couple of the small loans just so that i had less defaults against me.


i have had a couple of smaller wins that i have used just to keep my head above water without borrowing more while i stabalise my budget , i still have one which is with the FOS that i am quietly confident i will get some money back from as they were the first lender and i consistently loaned from them as soon as i was able to for 5 years.


thanks for reading if you are still there.....just a little bit to go.


currently i have six outstanding pay day loans, just under £1000 to repay my friend, a £458 blance on a usable credit card and £9300 on an old credit card that i currently have an agreement to pay £25 per month (this was over £10k).


in total i have £13344 to pay across all my debts which i am determined to get gone by the end of 2021 at the latest, ideally the end of 2020.


i am going to be paying the smallest outstanding loan and then snowballing the payments into the other first as well as finishing paying my friend back (last payment should be february as i am now paying £300 to them). i will then use that freed up £300 to put more towards reducing my debt but first and foremost building up a £1000 emergency fund, sensible yes?


i thought about waiting till the new year before starting this diary but have come to the conclusion that with the time of year it is and the temptation to spend and get further into debt i will be better off starting it now even if i have a wobble.


so this will be my little debt free (hopefully) diary, i make no promise to post daily but will as and when i have stuff to say and not just ramblings........


if me laying out my issues and documenting the upcoming struggles and (possible) acheivements helps just one person it will be mission accomplished


for all you on your journeys good luck, hope you get there


for those that have got to debt free status, amazing i hope to joing you soon


cheers


bd

doingitanyway

Debt free status is yours to be had. It isn't easy but what good thing is? Good luck with your efforts.

bd80s

weighing up the best way for me to track progress with the way my mind works, so many different ways i see on everyones signatures. I've decided to go with the most pressing (the loan from my friend) and the smallest loan at the moment as these are both only 3 months maximum away from being cleared (fingers crossed)


the dreaded c word (whispers christmas) is unfortunatelu upon us and while i dont have many people i need to but any presents for i do have a few plus 2 christmas outings (works and a farm one). the works one will include food and some free drinks but i know we will be out prior to the works one starting which is not going to be wallet friendly, the farm one i will have to drive so should be a cheap night as its only a band at a local pub.


presents wise i have set a £200 budget which i can just about manage but that is a maximum, no more can be spent over and above this so i have utilised some 3 for £20 deals and discounts and for the total of £56 i have managed to buy half of what i need to so hopefully i will be under budget on the spends


looking forward to the end of this month when all festive related nonsense (yes i am a bit of a bah humbug) will be over, the nights will slowly start to draw back out and i can have a full years focus on decreasing all debts............

bd80s

so i spent a little time today and actually added up what i have been paying to various debts since July this year (pretty much my LBM) as i keep thinking that i am missing something. In my mind i've just been paying a couple of hundred each month and was starting to get a little disheartened.


turns out i am actually paying £574 towards debts each month, admittly £300 of that is to my friend but, this is just over 30% of my monthly wage and until i sat there and added it up i would never have thought i could find that amount of money each month.


the rest of the money goes on bills and a £400-£500 shopping/petrol/activity etc budget which probably seems high to some but does allow me some relaxation in what i like to do (and after 20 plus years of doing it i would really find it hard to give it up even with the expenses that go along with it).


this has actually given me a boost today as when i've finished paying my friend back i can increase payments on my other debts to clear them faster as well as assigning £100 per month to an emergency fund.........i've managed without the money for this long so i see no reason to strart frivoulsy spending it now.


the general gist i get from reading other peoples diaries is take the small wins where you can as this will be a long slog so this is being banked in my "yipee" pot to reflect on when i have a "nooooooo" moment.

JohnJ76

Good luck, I bet it will feel great when you have payed off your fiend :rotfl: guessing that wasn't intentional in your signature but then again it way have been

bd80s

JohnJ76 wrote: »

Good luck, I bet it will feel great when you have payed off your fiend :rotfl: guessing that wasn't intentional in your signature but then again it way have been

oh, good spot! nope, that wasnt intentional but as it was the biggest debt i had this year and caused me an awful amount of stress about paying it as it was a friend i'm going to leave it as fiend haha. may just rename them all as fiends..........

warby68

You have very kind and supportive 'fiends' and seem to want to do right by them. Although its never advised to take debt on for other people, this extra level of worry for you seemed to give you your lightbulb moment.

You're well on the way now to clearing your debt and are doing it at a decent speed so not much to do other than wish you luck.

bd80s

when i started this diary on saturday, full of enthusiasm and plotting, i was quite convinced i would very easily rack up a week of NSD's. I had been shopping (with a list so that i only bought what i needed) and couldnt forsee anything i would need to buy.


turns out i need to be better at list writing and its not just food/household bits i need to consider when trying to plan my week. everyday i have had to spend on something....paracetamol, a birthday card, carrots, new dish sponges, coffee for work .......ok none of these have been expensive items but still a spend.


hopefully with practice my planning ahead will get better and i will get to a NSD.....but the good news is my enthusiasm is still there and as much as i want to be paying bits off everything constantly i am using sensible head and making a deal to just get to the other side of (whispers) christmas and the dreaded longer times between paydays and i can focus on making additional payments.


at least the shortest day will come and go soon and days will be drawing back out, im definately a spring/summer person not a winter person


c'mon NSD......

OnlyPariah

Really interesting reading your diary and I hope you can get through this and become debt free. We're all on this journey, albeit with different amounts and circumstances.

Have you thought about topping up your wage with Survey sites and ordering things via something like TopCashback. This can help maximise your money.

bd80s

OnlyPariah wrote: »

Really interesting reading your diary and I hope you can get through this and become debt free. We're all on this journey, albeit with different amounts and circumstances.

Have you thought about topping up your wage with Survey sites and ordering things via something like TopCashback. This can help maximise your money.

thanks, hope your journey goes well too and at some point we'll both be celebrating debt free status!


i have just started dipping my toe into surveys, building points on one to get £50 back (think coming up to an election was a good time to do this) and did sign up to PA, been quite lucky on the timing on there and manage to get just over £6 in two weeks. I will admit that i am always a little fearful of internet buying so trying to train myself to use it more so that i can do the cashback sites, some progress made as i actually signed up to topcashback today.......small steps......

Iwantanewlife

wow it seems as though you have been on quite a journey. I really wish you the best of luck, im going to subscribe to your diary to cheer you on from the side lines!