Nearly 30 and my life is a mess...

-daydreamer-

gilliweed said:

-daydreamer- said:

gilliweed said:

I'm 29 and an trying to clear my debt before my 30s. I'll be following your diary!

Thankyou! Good luck with your journey, do you have a diary I can follow? I think I'll be close to 32 by the time I'm debt free! 

-daydreamer--❤️ 

I do but just realised I posted this on the wrong account!! I only recently managed to dig out access for my original account and I was still logged into this one on my phone haha. My diary is called The Last Leg

Oooh I shall have a search for it and give it a follow! Thanks 

-daydreamer-

CreditCardJunkie said:

Just wanted to wish you luck. I have found the only way to success (after several attempts) is to be in it for the long haul & proper budgeting. Extra income such as surveys etc helped me pay mine off quicker . 

Thankyou so much 😊 I've just stated some survey sites again. Logged into an old valued opinions site and already had £2.50 in there so I've been doing every survey possible these last 2 days and have £10.25 in there, 25p away from being able to cash out anything 😊

I've just joined prolific and I-say yesterday, is there any more you recommend?

-daydreamer- ❤️ 

-daydreamer-

savingholmes said:

Good luck on your journey. Ditch the shame far more people are in the same position that ever let on - at least you are doing something positive to fix the situation.

Thankyou 😊 you're totally right I just need to focus on the positives of moving forward and stop beating myself up about it, so easily done though!!
-daydreamer- ❤️

-daydreamer-

So on Tuesday, I was on the phone to my mum and my debts came up in conversation, she already knows I'm in debt, and I did the  usual and say I don't want to talk or think about them right now 🙈 After I got off the phone I decided there's no point putting them off or hiding from them anymore, it was time to face up to them! 

 So I got up and found a pile of unopened letters (anyone else guilty of stashing them in drawers without opening them when things got bad? 😬) to see the full extent of the damage!

My ex partner had not only been bad with money, but also didn't work for the majority of the 5 and a half year relationship. The few times he did get a job, he didn't stick to it or just spent the money on himself anyway. He had zero concept of money and how to budget along with expensive 'habits' and yet still had an entitled attitude to what he thought he deserved!! My wage had to cover everything, and debts crept up, alot of the time living above our means. And even though I should have put my foot down long ago, honestly alot of the time it was just easier to let the money be spent than have an argument about it 🤷‍♀️ We were very different people when it came to money. 

Last March after a second miscarriage in less than a year, and losing my Nan all within a couple of days, I ended up with depression, and having some time off work on the sick. By then everything was pretty much maxed and I was struggling to keep up with repayments. Missing the odd payment and interest being added making it impossible to catch up with an endless cycle... 

I wish I'd been proactive and done something about it then but I wasn't in the right head space and as they say ignorance is bliss. I'd ended up on depression tablets and by the September, my sick pay had dropped to SSP and I was seriously worrying how I'd make priority bills like my rent!!
We had an argument when he demanded yet another £10 (for shall we say a smokable substance) and I couldn't understand how someone could be that selfish when I was struggling and worrying about how to keep a roof over our heads and food for our 3 year old 😠 enough was enough and I couldn't carry on living like that and needless to say that was the end of our relationship... 

-daydreamer-

Thy should have been the time I faced my debts but after struggling my way through the end of the year and trying to give my little girl a nice Christmas with good memories, I enjoyed having some money spare to be able to do nice things and go more places, something I hadn't done in so long. Although I haven't added to the debt I hadn't acknowledged it either....

Every debt but one was now with debt collection agencies, and I wasn't paying a Penny towards it.

 I'd had an email from PRA group back in April to pay my Barclaycard debt of £6017.72 for £2106.20 😮 so my first thing was take advantage of that, after sorting it with my stepdad, he's done a 0% money transfer on his credit card for that amount and i'll repay him monthly....which has knocked close to 4k off my debts 😮😮😮

A couple of the smaller ones have been paid off and affordable payments made to the rest of my creditors (been dreading the phone calls to them but they were all surprising nice and friendly on the phones, not at all scary like I imagined 😂) which now means I'm:
£19,135.23 in debt
£3762.97 less than Tuesday 😮😮😮

greensalad

That's a great windfall! 

Can I ask how you go about budgeting? Only because I am a YNAB evangelist and it's taken me from £26k to £3k and made me so much more accountable. I couldn't live without it. Your mention of saving for Christmas for your daughter is what made me think about asking as I have a Christmas budget category that I save into every month. Last year I did it for Christmas shopping too (I went to Liverpool with my Mum and Aunties for the weekend and got all my Christmas shopping done in one go, and I had all the money set aside for it). It was such a relief to have it there ready. I'm excited for Christmas now, and I'm also doing the same thing for our holiday next year.

-daydreamer-

greensalad said:

That's a great windfall! 

Can I ask how you go about budgeting? Only because I am a YNAB evangelist and it's taken me from £26k to £3k and made me so much more accountable. I couldn't live without it. Your mention of saving for Christmas for your daughter is what made me think about asking as I have a Christmas budget category that I save into every month. Last year I did it for Christmas shopping too (I went to Liverpool with my Mum and Aunties for the weekend and got all my Christmas shopping done in one go, and I had all the money set aside for it). It was such a relief to have it there ready. I'm excited for Christmas now, and I'm also doing the same thing for our holiday next year.

Budgeting is something I'm working on at the minute, I've just opened a Monzo account, and my plan is to transfer my fortnightly budget to it to cover all groceries and other little spends that add up and are usually unaccounted for. Only time will tell if this method works for me!

I have looked in to ynab but atm I can't justify paying a monthly fee right now, something I won't rule out in the future though, and sounds really good! Well done on clearing so much, such a huge achievement!

-daydreamer--❤️ 

greensalad

-daydreamer- said:

Budgeting is something I'm working on at the minute, I've just opened a Monzo account, and my plan is to transfer my fortnightly budget to it to cover all groceries and other little spends that add up and are usually unaccounted for. Only time will tell if this method works for me! 

I have looked in to ynab but atm I can't justify paying a monthly fee right now, something I won't rule out in the future though, and sounds really good! Well done on clearing so much, such a huge achievement!

-daydreamer--❤️ 

Monzo is so great for budgeting! You can add goals to pots, so you could so something like set up a spreadsheet with all your goals (£300 by Christmas) then divide it by the number of months between now and then, and then put away that much each month into a pot. I have loooads of pots, for everything.

Also if you are a student or have a valid student ID you can scan it in and send it to them and get a whole year of YNAB free.

Also the monzo bill payment pots are really useful. If you have anything on a direct debit like leccy or car insurance you can select to withdraw it from a specific pot. We have a joint Monzo account with a "bills" pot. Fill it with £450 at the beginning of the month and all our bills come out of that so it's locked away. Means I know all the money in our main joint balance is fine for me to spend on groceries.

-daydreamer-

greensalad said:

-daydreamer- said:

Budgeting is something I'm working on at the minute, I've just opened a Monzo account, and my plan is to transfer my fortnightly budget to it to cover all groceries and other little spends that add up and are usually unaccounted for. Only time will tell if this method works for me! 

I have looked in to ynab but atm I can't justify paying a monthly fee right now, something I won't rule out in the future though, and sounds really good! Well done on clearing so much, such a huge achievement!

-daydreamer--❤️ 

Monzo is so great for budgeting! You can add goals to pots, so you could so something like set up a spreadsheet with all your goals (£300 by Christmas) then divide it by the number of months between now and then, and then put away that much each month into a pot. I have loooads of pots, for everything.

Also if you are a student or have a valid student ID you can scan it in and send it to them and get a whole year of YNAB free.

Also the monzo bill payment pots are really useful. If you have anything on a direct debit like leccy or car insurance you can select to withdraw it from a specific pot. We have a joint Monzo account with a "bills" pot. Fill it with £450 at the beginning of the month and all our bills come out of that so it's locked away. Means I know all the money in our main joint balance is fine for me to spend on groceries.

I love the pots, they are a great feature and I love how it tells you the percentage of the goal you've set! I've set one up for an emergency fund, Christmas and also a holiday one so far! I've not transfered any direct debit or bills yet just purely using it for monthly spends, but I'll see how I enjoy monzo for a few months then look at changing it over 😊

Not a student unfortunately so no use to me, but thankyou!
-daydreamer--❤️ 

greensalad

We used to have a separate bills account but ended up moving to Monzo purely because of the bills pot. It's great! It tells you how many more bills are due to come out of the pot and how much money you'll need to cover them, and it also sends you a notification if one of your regular bills is going to be more expensive than it expected. Really useful. Hope you enjoy Monzo!