The Last Leg; 6 years later, debt free in 2021

Baileys_Babe · 13 August 2020 at 2:01PM

Your revised home by plan makes complete sense, especially as it is only likely to be a 6 month delay, with the added bonus you won't need to involve your Dad.

greensalad · 13 August 2020 at 3:02PM

It does also seem crazy to me that we are thinking we can save over £40k in basically a year and a bit... considering I was once nearly £30k in debt. Makes me realise how poorly I was managing my money for so long.

[Deleted User] · 13 August 2020 at 4:50PM

Just read your post about Moneybox and their LISA, I completely agree it's a weird and frustrating way/wait for the money to go out

x

Kakiste · 13 August 2020 at 9:36PM

Wow well done.

It's very inspiring to see how quickly everything is moving for you now.

greensalad · 14 August 2020 at 10:18PM

SSDD23 said:

Just read your post about Moneybox and their LISA, I completely agree it's a weird and frustrating way/wait for the money to go out x

I get the impression that it's because they started off as one of those "auto save as you go" programmes like Plum or Chip. At least that's what I've gathered from their annoying TV adverts. But they're one of the relatively few places to offer LISAs and I do think their app is better than Skipton.

greensalad · 15 August 2020 at 12:51PM

£5 for some random scarf boxes from a luxury brand on eBay. People buy the weirdest things. I guess it helps boost their profits if they can sell a scarf with the matching box.

I definitely spent beyond my means this month. Bought some fabric despite being on a fabric diet because I cannot kick the habit. I have £10 left in my personal fun money for the rest of the month! But to be fair, I have no plans to do anything aside from go out to Pizza Express with my Mum and she's offered to pay as she got a Barclaycard refund! I've been craving Pizza Express since beginning of lockdown so I'm really excited! We're also going to see some friends next Friday who just bought a new house, so we will need to buy a small gift but that can come out of joint spending.

I'm on a cat sitting booking for the next week which should net me £100. Sadly one of my clients had to cancel last minute because of the France quarantine rules so I lost £45 on that booking, but what can you do. I'm just grateful people are still booking with me.

greensalad · 17 August 2020 at 9:55AM

£40 paid off Virgin credit card. It's the direct debit I'd set aside but I've now cancelled it as I'm making bigger payments every payday. Now a nice bit over 50% of the way there! Still hoping to get it paid off entirely by January 2021.

Penultimate repayment for our mattress today too.

Kakiste · 17 August 2020 at 12:45PM

Excellent work

greensalad · 18 August 2020 at 10:27AM

Grrr yesterday was an infuriating one.
First thing I should say is I hate credit cards, and to be honest don't really understand them. I've only ever spent credit cards without planning how to repay them (just like a "free money!" stupid spend) hence the £27k of CC debt I was once in... but now that I am over that I mentioned before my boyfriend has got me a card for his own rewards CC so we can try and push to spend £10,000 in one year through it to get a free companion flight.

Anyway, because I hate credit cards and don't really understand the whole "statement falls between two periods but that's different to the periods your paycheque comes in" I have always made a spend on the card and then immediately set aside the amount in a pot on Monzo, along with registering it as an uncleared payment on YNAB (I need to use the Credit Card Float feature on YNAB but I haven't got my head round it yet).

So last night I said to my boyfriend wasn't his statement due in the next week or so would he like me to send the money I've set aside for my payments. Some are personal spends (out of my £200 pocket money) and some are joint spends that come from other pots, like booking the airport hotel for our holiday which came out of the holiday saving pot.

We decided to have a look through all the statements as the numbers weren't adding up, but I knew that there were going to be some spends on there that my boyfriend had made which would be untracked, but presumably he'd set aside the money to pay these. Also I'd sent him a few chunks of change for things I'd put on the CC before we started doing this whole joint card thing, so he'd set that aside too, right? Wrong.

We come to discover that not only has he put about £250 of personal spends through the CC, he's also spent the entire of his £200 pocket money from his personal account, AND he's not done anything with the few chunks I sent him and spent them too. £25 I sent him for our Nespresso pod tower he bought? He's spent it. Never set it aside despite the fact I sent it to him with the message THIS IS FOR THE NESPRESSO POD TOWER WE BOUGHT ON YOUR CREDIT CARD.

I'm totally livid. While I've been budgeting and pining after things I can't have out of my £200 pocket money, having to make decisions about what I can afford this month and what will have to wait for further down the line, he's spent £200 pocket money AND £250 on the bloody credit card AND spent extra money I've sent to him. We went through his transactions to see where this money went and it's all acceptable normal stuff. He said he thinks £200 pocket money is too low for what he wants to spend and I had to say no, what YOU want to spend is too much for your pocket money! I'm really trying to push that this is a sacrifice. Yes you can't buy a new football jersey that you want. Yes you can't go for 2 rounds of golf per month. You'll have to make a decision at some point that something has to be gone without. It's not like any of our friends care that much, they've all done the house saving scrimping before.

The long and short of it is I've had to pull several hundred pounds out of our emergency funds to cover his erroneous spending.

I never really saw it coming because I'm the one who's normally crap with money. He always said "I don't think I spend enough to need to worry about budgeting" but we've obviously discovered that isn't true!

I've decided to put a halt on any spending on the shared CC until the statement comes in so I can fresh-start it in YNAB as an actual credit card rather than uncleared transactions which I've been doing at the moment.

But ugh, this has wiped out most of the additional cat sitting money I've been able to bring in this month.

WinterWarrior · 18 August 2020 at 11:11AM

Oh no! So annoying for you. I won’t do joint anything apart from the mortgage as I have enough trouble with my own and can’t give OH’s the headspace. I know he’s bad with spending, but I’m not going there until I’m where I need to be...then I’ll hopefully be able to step in and help.