Debt Free Wannabee, finally seen the light

granthar

Been in debt most of my adult life. 
In March I decided enough was enough as it had reached £35K. However as grim as it might sound, its the Covid situation that has fuelled my drive to sort it out.
I have always been a spendaholic, quite possibly spending to make myself feel better, however the Covid crisis has rained the spending in considerably as 90% of the shops are shut and a lot of stuff on Amazon isn't available for next day delivery anymore, have even cancelled my Prime membership to adjust my thinking.
So March 1st I owed £35K, last month thanks mostly to a tax rebate I have got that down to £27.5K and now have a plan to halve it by November and clear it all by April next year. Its going to be tough going but I think my head is in the right frame of thought now. 
Although the amount of borrowing was a lot, I am in the fortunate position of having a well paid job and also never missing any payments or having any defaults or CCJ's against me. So I am determined more than I have ever been to remove this weight of debt from my shoulders.

monetxchange

You're off to a great start. It's so important to address the spending behaviours at the root of the debt before you try and it's great you are doing.

It's very doable. I think this crisis has driven home to me how important it is not to be living financially on the edge as I did for so long. I cleared similar debt to yours, so always here for advice. You're in the right place. good luck!

If you were a big spender, have you got anything you can sell? The auction sites are doing pretty well at the moment due to the shops being closed.

granthar

Unfortunately I sold a lot of things last year, but only because my lines of credit were maxed out. So that money was used to buy more things to make me happy. However I have found a new free source of happiness

ryanm8655

Good luck on your journey, I’ve been in a similar boat having been in debt ever since uni and always thinking I’ll pay it off with the next promotion, only to increase my spending instead...

It took my lines of credit to be starting to dry for me to begin to address it. Plus telling family the extent helped, even though I didn’t need to it just gave me a bit of accountability as they’re the sort of people who stringently budget and save for everything (the opposite of old me).

Whats your longterm plan? Have you done an SOA and got a clear monthly budget?

I’ve kind of eased my way into mine, getting stricter and stricter and more structured as I go. The first step for me was upping my payments to £1 above the minimums for all cards, then I set higher DDs on a few others so I was paying at least £1200/month. I was being pretty flexible with the rest, since I don’t pay rent at the moment but still had rough budgets in mind. Snowballing was a big help as well to give me a bit more drive in the short term, clearing and cancelling some of the smaller non-zero percent cards. As time has gone on I’ve progressed to having a pretty tight budget and working out the max I can afford to pay on payday to leave myself at zero at the end of the month, then pay it so that I have no choice but to stick to it. The lockdown has helped a lot as a lot of my spending was entertainment and commute but I now have a longterm and sustainable plan. 

granthar

Thank you all for your responses.
I have set out a budget (I love spreadsheets) over the next couple of years, am aiming to pay off around £2200 a month, am using snowballing, paying off the highest credit card API (28%) finishing with the lowest Card at (13.5%, how do they do it so low)

ryanm8655

granthar said:

Thank you all for your responses.
I have set out a budget (I love spreadsheets) over the next couple of years, am aiming to pay off around £2200 a month, am using snowballing, paying off the highest credit card API (28%) finishing with the lowest Card at (13.5%, how do they do it so low)

Great that you’ve got a plan - maybe you want this shifting to the diaries section or you can create a diary to sit alongside this thread. I’ve found it really useful for tracking progress and keeping me motivated.

One piece of advice. Have you checked whether you can get any 0% offers? If you can then take advantage of those as you’ll find your debts fall much more quickly. If your debt levels are too high then check back in a few months, I found once I had cleared about £5k I was able to get more offers. I’ve also taken advantage of offers from existing cards as well as I’ve paid them down. Now every penny I pay goes to debt, where as initially a big chunk was on interest.

granthar

At the moment I cant even get a card at my current worst APR%, so I think I am a few months off of being able to get anything that I can balance transfer to

Narola1976

Good luck it sounds as if you are in a good space and are determined. I wish you well on your journey. 

Fireflyaway

Sometimes it takes a crisis or something unexpected to change your way of thinking. It's a great plan to get debt free now whilst you can. I had a similar wake up call and realized it was silly to not have an emergency fund so that's my goal. Good luck!

ryanm8655

granthar said:

At the moment I cant even get a card at my current worst APR%, so I think I am a few months off of being able to get anything that I can balance transfer to

Definitely worth exploring again once you e made a bit of a dent. Best for emailing offers on existing cards have been Barclaycard, MBNA and Tesco, in that order. 

JayRitchie

ryanm8655 said:

granthar said:

At the moment I cant even get a card at my current worst APR%, so I think I am a few months off of being able to get anything that I can balance transfer to

Definitely worth exploring again once you e made a bit of a dent. Best for emailing offers on existing cards have been Barclaycard, MBNA and Tesco, in that order. 

Hey, I remember you! You are doing great! You are on the final furlong now. Not long to go.