The Globe’s reducing the debt 2020

TheGlobe

Hi all,

I’ve been a long-time lurker and used to post on the boards very seldom years and years ago but always pop in and have a nosey.

I’ve had a small moment of courage and I’m making this diary to try and track us as a family getting on a better financial footing after a good couple of years of overspending (some necessary, some over-indulgences).

This year my little baby daughter will turn 1 and my boy will be 6. Since they were born there have been a lot of unexpected costs and we essentially live month-to-month which has meant our debts have steadily increased to get to where we are now. But with two amazing children, I wouldn’t change any of it.

We have credit card debt of around 11k over two cards which we’ve never really managed to reduce by much over the last 5/6 years. Our children are absolutely amazing and I wouldn’t change them or the last 5/6 years for anything, but this year I’d like us to make a real effort in reducing our credit card debt by at least a half and start to move away from living month to month and worrying that we only have ‘£x’ to last us until the end of the month etc etc...

I’d like to clear the credit cards as quickly as possible and then we can make efforts to saving properly and putting money aside each month for our kiddies.

We have a probably ill-advised holiday booked for later in the year, which doesn’t help as there’s still about £1500 of that to be paid, but it’s something that we’re all really looking forward to and it’ll be mine and my wife’s second holiday in 7 years, but other than that I and my wife too, are really determined to reducing the debt significantly, which we’ve never really been committed to doing previously. It’s always reduced by a bit and then gone up again.

Whether this is a diary or not I don’t know if it qualifies haha, but I’m starting this to hopefully gain some inspiration from others in a similar boat, and to give me some accountability in terms of reducing the debt and posting our debt pay-offs each month, as well as ways in which we reduce our spends each month. Cutting down on the takeaways and coffees at work etc will go a long way to helping that as well.

Sorry if that’s a ramble but it’s where we are as a family at the moment. Going to make a real concerted effort with the debt this year and I’d like to be able to be posting in here in December saying that more than 50% of it has gone and we’re well on track to getting rid of the other 50% too.

Here goes...