YNAB...ing my way to freedom!

SuperFrank88

Mumoffourkids said:

SuperFrank88 said:

Mumoffourkids said:

I’ve just spent the morning reading through your diary because of the title. I am another YNAB user. I used to use the old version about 6-7 years ago but then stopped using it. I got myself out of debt coming up to two years ago now, but I have noticed that my spending has been a bit out of control recently and I could quite easily have saved more money so I turned back to YNAB in the last month and now I can’t stop using it. My age of money is only up to 40 days but I Am so much more conscious about spending my money now and how much I have left in each budget.

Hopefully you will receive defaults soon from your debts. I started with Stepchange but couldn’t stick to it, so in the end I cleared the debt myself. I sent letters to all my debts with the amount i could afford to pay. They all accepted and then I concentrated on one debt at a time and any time I made extra money or saved money from budgets, I would pay to this debt.

I am subscribing to see how you get on with your diary!

Hi, Thank you so much for stopping by, the 'click-bait' title worked 

Wow congratulations on being debt free! That must feel so good. Great to hear that you decided to successfully self manage your DMP. Did you also wait until they defaulted your accounts before starting with Stepchange? Also, when you went to self-managed, did you stick to the payment amount that Stepchange had generated for them? No problem if you don't want to answer any of those questions, just trying to build a picture of how others self-managed. I have used the CAB self managed tool to generate the offers and they are so low compared to what my monthly payments were.

The click bait title definitely worked!

I certainly don’t mind answering questions about my dmp. Yes all of mine had defaulted by the time I contacted step change. I didn’t however save up an emergency fund which is what people are advised to do. So when I had an emergency, my dmp failed. Then when I got myself right again, I wrote to all my creditors asking them for the current balance owed. I told them in the letter that I was in the process of sorting my finances and to give me three months, to be fair, they were all understanding and agreed. Once I had all the balances owed, I worked out my soa, I added extra bits on to food, haircuts (I cut all our hair myself) etc to give me some breathing room. I then worked out how much to pay each one based on what I had left. I think it was around £580 a month in total. I sent my soa along with my offer to each one and they all accepted. As I had breathing room in my budget, I saved up and paid extra off the one that I was focusing on. I ended up clearing it all with 9 months, I started with around £23000 of debt. I got lucky in that £12000 got written off but I still paid off £11000 in 9 months whilst only working part time and bringing up 6 kids by myself. 

Wow that is incredible! Reading that is a breath of fresh air so thank you so much for sharing that. How did you get so much of your debt written off? (Again if it is personal, don't answer). I am so gratful that you have started to follow my journey and I will no doubt be reaching out to you for tips & tricks along the way. Thank you

Mumoffourkids

Two of my debts were with NatWest. When I wrote to them asking for the current balance, they wrote back to me and said that they had taken the commercial decision not to chase me for the debt. I could however pay towards the debt if I wanted to, but I didn’t have to. The other one, I wrote to, got no reply and isn’t showing on any of my credit reports. No idea what happened to it!

monkey62

Looking forward to hearing how you get on with the irresponsible lending letter - it will take up to 8 weeks in some cases to get a full response, hopefully bearing good news! 

SuperFrank88

monkey62 said:

Looking forward to hearing how you get on with the irresponsible lending letter - it will take up to 8 weeks in some cases to get a full response, hopefully bearing good news! 

I will get a letter written up and sent off this week. Funnily enough, I had a annual statement from my biggest debt this week (Avant credit). For the past year I have been paying £334.49 every month (except the last 4 months) and £250 of that was going on interest. So the 'opening balance' in July 2019 was £9240, but with the huge interest and missed payments now my balance is £10k. So even though I wrote to them at the start of the year saying I was in financial difficulty and was in touch with Step Change, they kept throwing £250 a month interest charge at me. Do you think this is irresponsible lending? 

SuperFrank88

Hi All,
I hope you are all well & safe whilst enjoying this fantastic weather.
So today I have got the bit between my teeth and emailed Avant Credit a complaint letter based on irresponsible lending. I am not holding out any hope but the reason I wanted to take the bull by the horns and go for it is because I had my annual statement from Avant sent to me on Friday and basically, since contacting them at the start of the year to let them know I was seeking advice from Step change due to my financial situation, they have been charging me over £200 a month in interest! A total of £1155 has been added since January. 
This is my biggest debt at £10k ( was £9k last July!) so it would be good if I could get a result with this. My next biggest debt is £3k with Vanquis. Had a letter from Cap One last week issuing a default notice. 
I really want to get the ball rolling now with my self managed DMP but not going to start until accounts have defaulted. Avant have really peed me off adding that much interest knowing I was in financial difficulty so I am going to really dig my heels in with them!

In other news, boss has given me next week off work because it is still all up in the air as to when we are going to be back in work. This is a fantastic opportunity for me to spend time on my uni work and get as much of it done as possible. 

I will keep you updated with how it goes with Avant. Challenge accepted.

Frank

SuperFrank88

Morning All,
So had a chat with my boss yesterday and we are all going to be restarting next Monday. I have loved my time at home during lock down but I am looking forward to getting back to it after a nice break. It is going to be very strange having the routine back but I am sure it won't take me long to get back in the groove. Everyone will be in the same boat and it is to be expected that we will all be a bit rusty for the first few weeks after having 2.5 months away. One thing I am going to try not to do when we start back is take on so much and end up getting stressed. This lock down has shown me that there is more to life than work! I know I am a hard worker so I just need to chill out a bit.

OH gave me my 3rd lock down haircut last night and she did a fab job again. So much so that I have ordered some hair clippers on Amazon for £20 and will now save £10 a month going to the barber. WIN! 
I have had a reply from Avant regarding the SAR request and they say they will get back in touch within 30 days, so watch this space on that one.
I have also moved £414 from my 'rainy day pot' in Monzo and sent it to my emergency fund. This was from my regular monthly saving during lock down but I did not spend it so I thought, get it in the emergency fund and start my 'rainy day pot' again from now. 

Plans for the rest of the week are to keep chipping away at uni work. Had a good couple of days where I have got a lot done so just need to keep the momentum going now. We were going to have a BBQ on the weekend but the weather has taken a turn and it is now supposed to be wet on the weekend so that won't be happening.

Drawingaline

I am also enjoying being back doing some jobs. But like you I won't be taking on as much work and am going to be stronger at saying no to extra work for a while.

SuperFrank88

Drawingaline said:

I am also enjoying being back doing some jobs. But like you I won't be taking on as much work and am going to be stronger at saying no to extra work for a while.

Think it is easier said than done though ey? People just know how to take advantage of your good nature! But yes, saying no, or at least making sure my own tasks are done first.

joedenise

You know what they always say "Ask a busy person".  It's very true that if you're busy and a hard worker you'll get constantly asked to help out and it is so hard to say NO.  I do hope you manage it though because it can be so stressful.

I've just updated my MacBook and the new update has lost all my YNAB4!  I don't want to go over to the YNAB5, web-based version!  I am so annoyed it say I would lose access to all 32 bit files!  No idea what I'm going to do now for my budgeting.

[Deleted User]

Hi, I stumbled across your thread earlier this week and have spent the last few hours reading through it all. 

You seem to be doing a great job in building up the emergency fund and tackling it head on. I'm currently 3 years into a DMP via Stepchange but got another 8 years to go  . It never even crossed my mind to not set up the DMP until I had defaulted and daftly went straight into it and therefore I had no time or money to build an emergency fund (and still don't). 

I'd never heard of the FIRE community before but following a look on Google I will definetly be following up on this. I am also 31 and can't bear the thought of working until I'm 60 or 70. 

I hope you get a positive response from Avant! I'm in the process of writing to Barclaycard over irresponsible lending, despite me already having credit card debt higher than my annual salary they kept increasing my credit limit until it doubled the original balance. I'm not too hopeful of getting anywhere with them but I thought it would be worth trying.