This time I'm sticking to it!

rdone

Sains card is gone forever!  It's paid off.  No more.

We're now down to one card with one balance... party!

WinterWarrior

Well done! 

rdone

Thanks @WinterWarrior!

DD for NW has been set up for £450 from 21st of this month.  This is down from the £550 I was hoping to set it at but after DH completed his English Channel swim we decided to keep the DD of £100 a month going into that savings pot to use for the next adventure.

Can't quite believe we have just one DD now.  And one card.  We've paid off £8116.16 just being sensible, we've grown savings pots and any additional left at the end of the month has gone into savings not CC.  It's all looking good!

Savings are all looking very healthy and I want to adjust the DDs on our presents and Insurance etc pots as they're far too high.  There's always loads of money in them.

House move is still going, our enquiries have been sent to the house we're trying to buy and we've sent the answers back to our buyers.  Hoping these won't take too much longer so we can exchange contracts!  Our buyers want to be in by the end of August for their children going to school so just putting all positive energy that way.

rdone

We finally moved house!

Can't quite believe it actually happened.  But it's actually perfect.  Well, I say that, it's rather disgusting - the amount of dirt is incredible.  I didn't know it was possible for a house to have this much dirt.  They also left loads of rubbish in the garden and attic.  We had to pay for a skip on the weekend which obviously was a big expense we weren't expecting.

The £450 DD for the CC I set up wrong so the £100 went out last night.  I'm going round in circles at the moment as to whether we should keep it at £100 and use the extra £350 towards doing up the house.  Even though it'll then take longer to pay off.  It's at 0% so won't cost as anymore.  I can argue it both ways so I'll just see.  Might get the bulk of the building work done and then up the DD?  £100 is above the minimum anyway.

rdone

The £450 to the CC went out this month so am just leaving it at that for the minute.  I have set up a new Sains card (previous one was in my husbands name) as it was 0 fee and 0% interest on BT so going to move it over to there as there was a really long payback on it.

My husband is of the view that we divide the amount we have left to pay (£6,242.17) by the interest free term and just pay that.  I'm of the view that I want to pay it off immediately.  Even though it's in my name it's spending from both of us and we take it in turns to take out a card if we need one.  So at a total loss of what to do.

Had a high spend month as our oil tank had a leak so we've had to pay for a new one to be installed and then a VERY expensive part of our boiler broke.  We were hoping to replace the heating system with either an air source or ground source heat pump but we've come to the conclusion that due to the age of this house it'll be far too expensive.  As we weren't sure what we were doing when the oil tank leaked we decided to rent one for a few months.  I think we need to bite the bullet and just pay for a new one.  We've used the money that we have from the sale of our pervious house to cover it.  I absolutely hate the oil tank but there's no mains gas where we live so there isn't much choice in what we can do.

Not sure what to do about the CC.  I don't think either option is better than the other really, it's just personal choice.

rdone

We have been very good at not putting anything on these cards since we've had them.  The initial overspend has gone on and that's it.  I've moved them a couple times when there's a 0 fee and we're not going to pay it in time.

Sains - £4,500 - will go with minimum +£1 until the below is paid
NW - £1,742.17 - £450 DD

WinterWarrior

I hate our oil tank too…I miss gas, but there’s none in our village. Our tank is elderly and the gauge doesn’t work…to see how much we have involves shining a torch down the filler hole 😬

rdone

@WinterWarrior - sorry for the delay in response!  Our oil tank is exactly the same, even the new one we are currently hiring.

The end is in sight though.  We have made the decision to switch to LPG and have the large bottles instead of a tank.  Much more environmentally friendly than oil and much cheaper than buying a new tank (plus the new boiler is cheaper).  It's no where near as good as heat or ground source but it's better and it's all we can do at the moment.  Roll on when we can build our own house!

rdone

A little while since my last update!  Not much has changed really, we're still paying off the same.  It is exciting though to know we're now under £5,000, this now seems like a very manageable amount and we should be done by the end of 2022 heading into 2023 debt free!  Except the mortgage, which we'll then start to overpay.

Knowing we've put over £10,000 towards the CC in the last 20 months is quite astonishing.  I keep thinking how nice it would be to have that money instead and how much it would help with our current house renovations.  I realise there is no point thinking like this, what is done is done and at least we are moving very well in the right direction and have learnt our lesson.  Nothing has been put on CC since Jan 2020 so we're doing well.

rdone

So we had our CC bill (the one we spend on every month and pay off in full to get points) from December go out today and it was bigger than we expected!  There is over £600 of returns on there which haven't processed yet which will help next month but it was still a little scary.

We're going to have to dip into our house renovation fund to pay it which isn't ideal considering some of the work will be starting next month.  By dipping into this pot we're leaving our other pots as they are - we have gotten into a bad habit of taking from them when needing a bit extra and it's becoming a bad spiral.

So from today we're making a conscious effort to reduce spending.  Most of what was on the card was meals out/take away's and silly bits here and there so it'll be easy to do.  On Wednesday we weren't sure what to have for tea and nearly got a take away but stopped ourselves - the joys of living in the middle of no where and having no deliveries available!

I'm going to start using this diary to document spend and not just CC debt.  CC debt should be gone by December (have set DDs from Feb to be the amount needed to pay per month for it to be gone) and that will help us loads.  Both financially and mentally!

We have some par baked baguettes so we'll have them for lunch and we have far too many tins of chopped tomatoes so I'm thinking we could make pizza for tea - always a favourite meal, we have all the ingredients and will stop us going to a shop where we would no doubt by extras too.

Neither of us have to leave the house today (except for my run at lunch) so no unexpected spending... just need to keep off the internet!