Facing reality

Sarahwithlove

SusieT said:

Even though you used the sinking fund it must feel so good to have them cleared and not having to pay them any more. Hopefully you will not need to use the fund for a while and can get it topped up again easily  

Thank you I hadn't realised until I paid it off how mentally draining its all been. My plan is to still put the money aside that I had planned for debt repayments but into sinking Fund. Luckily I have paid all the big expenses already recently so its only really a house/car emergency until June. I also brought 4 new tyres this year so fingers crossed they should last. 

Humdinger1

@Sarahwithlove what a huge step forward! You're in new territory now and you have totally got this! Onwards and upwards love Humdinger xx 

jwil

Great news on clearing the cards!  Apart from your Dad loan which is under control, your money is all yours now!

CreditCardJunkie

Well done Sarah! Just look at all those 0's! Must be a huge relief!

DancingInTheRain

Well done, your signature looks amazing! Hope you get a few wins on the PB's! 🙂

debtfreeoneday

Just popping in here to say hi. Well done on clearing so many debts. That’s really great. 

mark55man

Agreed - the pleasure you feel shows it was the right decision, even if it means you have a thinner margin until you fill your pots again.  Great to see!!

Sarahwithlove

Thanks everyone it's definitely a relief to not have it hanging over me. My dad has also said that I don't have to save the money to him for next 6 months I can just delay repayment but I am going to keep putting it in the premium bonds anyway. Then at end of the 6 months I can decide whether to pay him the lump sum or use it towards the next 6 months payments. In ideal world I would pay it off to get it paid but he isn't charging me any interest and money will be tight then with rising mortgage and fuel costs so may be grateful for the help. 

Sarahwithlove

Well its been a while. I would like to say that I have used that time well, but not so much. I slipped on my no takeaways I am afraid and caved. I have decided that cooking one thing in bulk and eating it for 4-5 days in a row isn't for me. So this week I have planned 3 different meals and will bulk cook them and put some in the freezer. This seems to work for me as I can decide that morning what I fancy for dinner and its usually defrosted by the evening. As things stand though I still have a good amount left in my spends/food shopping account so I'm not worried. Just need to try and reign in the unnecessary expenses again. My dad popped round again today for me to sort a few bits for him and brought me a big tray of chicken breasts which I have put in the freezer in 2's so that's one less thing to have to purchase for this month. 

 All my DD's have come out and I transferred the remainder to my sinking/emergency fund so that's not up to £1800 as I also transferred £50 from my PADs account as reached that threshold. 

Had my new water bills through, both have now been adjusted to show single occupancy, so wont have to pay either of those for next few months now until new bills. Though am having a fight with one of them as in April they tried to bill me £25 for my late mothers property from 4/5 years ago. I contacted them and at the time they agreed to credit the account due to the delay and it taking them so long to contact me about it. Now the change has caused them to close my account and open a new one and take that £25 credit away from me leaving an outstanding charge from then. So I have contacted them to dispute this again and will see if get response this week. If not will call them up to dispute it over the phone as that's how I had to do it the first time. I really hope I'm not going to have same issue in April. £25 may not be a lot but its the principle of it, its been nearly 5 years since I lost my mum to now be chasing it is ridiculous. If they had done it even the following April when they do the new billing cycle I would have said ok and paid it. But not 4 years down the line. 

I cant remember if I have said or not but my dad gave me £100 for my birthday and I had been debating what to do with it, options including putting it in my sf/ef but I decided in the end to use it to pay for my parking permit for the year at the beach. I wasn't going to renew and instead try and use the free parking if i could get it on the surrounding area. This however can be very hit and miss and often puts me off going. The walk is good for me exercise wise and for my mental health so I decided that it would actually be a good use of it. I then put the remaining £15 towards the takeaway I had brought as I hadn't realised it was my credit card connected to the takeaway account. 

In other good news work has postponed the testing/training for new systems this month until April so that means no travelling to head office every day for 3 weeks for me. I have however been dealing with the new temp staff who are supposed to be ready to go and just be trained on our tweaks/ways of working. That's not been the case, I am basically having to give them a crash course in my job. Its been a rather stressful week at work and not looking forward to tomorrow. Good news is that due to my 9 day fortnight, bank holidays and annual leave I am basically doing 4 day weeks until Mid April and I may use some of the new annual leave quota in April to extend that to end of May. We shall see. 

mark55man

Brilliant decision on the beach parking.  Everytime you park up you will remember the gift and you will go more often as a result of having it.

I'm pretty much doing the same with holidays taking a lot of Fridays and Mondays - have a lot to get done and the weekend is not enough.  Might make sense to do it in the summer, but when the days are shorter sometimes you just need a day to do stuff in.

Good luck with the trainees - I hope they are keen, Untrained and unwilling to learn is not a good combination