Time to Face The Music

milann

The dog sounds as if she has a lovely life. I suspect many will end up feeling sad when their human friends head back to work.....especially the ones that were acquired during lockdown.
A homemade curry night sounds lovely........although it’d be wasted on me.....unless there was a korma included. We had one with ds last weekend.....we all took a different hm dish. Dh and ds love it and as long as there is a very mild one I’m happy 👍

RelievedSheff

I am going to tame the heat down from what we would normally have. Not sure how hot they like it, they have said medium so I will air on the side of caution!

Baileys_Babe

Are you doing 1 curry or a selection?

RelievedSheff

Baileys_Babe said:

Are you doing 1 curry or a selection?

Just the one. Keeping it simple

RelievedSheff

It will be a no spends day today.

Breakfast, lunch and dinner will be from stores. Breakfast was toast, the other half has taken his packed lunch to work, I am having some chicken and vegetables for my lunch and dinner tonight is veggie burger with chips, homemade beer battered onion rings and homemade coleslaw.

Today's jobs include:

• working from home
• 2 x loads of washing (dried in the dryer as the weather is rubbish again)
• vacuuming the house
• dusting the house
• walking the dog x 2

The other half picked up the timber for the shelves after work last night. It was really quite cheap and they cut it to size for him for free as well. So the job will end up being a lot cheaper than we thought it would. He will just have to fit them tomorrow and put everything away in it's relevant place then strapped down with the luggage straps we ordered from Ebay. By the end of the weekend we should have the van in ship shape and ready to head out off grid for the bank holiday weekend.

RelievedSheff

We decided last night that we would have a little rethink of how we pay down the remaining balances on the credit cards. Now that we have the remortgage and the van finance sorted out we have a new 5 year plan. By the time the van finance is paid and remortgage time comes around again we want to be finance and credit card debt free.

For the van that part is easy. Just pay the monthly repayment and that will clear that balance in 5 years.

We did however decide that if we are balance transferring Cards 4 and 5 in July (when my CCJ drops off my credit file) then instead of having a super tight budget for the next few months paying £500 a month to Card 3 to clear that account, then we may as well reduce the payment on that card to £100 per month for the next few months and then balance transfer the remaining balance at the same time.

With all of the remaining card balances (hopefully) on one 0% card we can then set a monthly payment that will be making decent inroads into paying off the balance and then at the end of the 0% term transfer again.

This will make the road to paying off our debts that bit longer but at the same time it will also give us some breathing space in the budget to go out and enjoy ourselves when Covid restrictions allow.

Sun_Addict

I think that’s a great plan. You can still pay off debt without putting your life on hold. Lots of good times ahead.

RelievedSheff

Sun_Addict said:

I think that’s a great plan. You can still pay off debt without putting your life on hold. Lots of good times ahead.

That's what we figured. And so long as the credit card debt is going in the right direction we don't have any great rush to pay it off ASAP. The five year target gives us plenty of time to pay it down. I'm sure it will be paid off much quicker than five years though if we are now sensible with the cards and make best use of 0% deals when available.

warby68

As long as the old habits, whatever they were, stay under control, I don't think it matters if you take the scenic route and obviously if the 0% deals aren't there for whatever reason you can rethink.
Its the balance thing again, slightly different for everyone. 

RelievedSheff

warby68 said:

As long as the old habits, whatever they were, stay under control, I don't think it matters if you take the scenic route and obviously if the 0% deals aren't there for whatever reason you can rethink.
Its the balance thing again, slightly different for everyone. 

The old habits were that boat. It has cost us a god damn fortune over the years. We realistically couldn't afford to keep it hence why we racked up a large amount of credit card debt. The bills never stopped rolling in, right up until the day it left.

We should have got rid of it years ago looking back. But we were not ready to admit that at the time.

We have no regrets though. We thoroughly enjoyed our time with that little boat and went a lot of places we probably otherwise wouldn't have.

Time for adventures new though. The van should prove to be much less maintenance over the years and with it lower costs.We need to find that new balance again. We do want to make inroads into paying off the debts, but at the same time we do want to live a little as well but within our means and our budget this time.