It's the final countdown...£10k to go

mark55man

The harder you work, the luckier you get.  Plus wow, you have hammered the Vinted, if you are like that at work .....

Don't let the imposter drag you down. You've earned it, you're worth it, and people don't like to see the panic within.  Self-deprecation is not a winning strategy even if you're not very good at it (ha ha joke) - but the rest isn't 

t2rry

Thanks @mark55man, you're right of course - plus I'm sure I'm not the only one, I may be surrounded by colleagues (not physically these days, obviously!) that feel the same, it's just that nobody lets on!  It certainly is giving me a push to really make the most of my opportunity though!! 

In other news, OH's selling pennies have hit so that's another £70 off the Car CC - now down to £3,015.  Then I have £15 in cash in my purse to be paid in, £45 profit pending from online sales and £25 agreed cash sales awaiting collection.  Thrashing the moot point of clearing the Car CC regardless of the backpay, if these amounts all come in before Friday, I would be down to £25 left of that original target.  That's not much so I'm going to still push for it in the first instance, then once payday is actually here I will readjust and work out what I need to then have My CC cleared a month early. It may be too much (around £450 as I'm sure I've said before) but it's still a target!

It will be nice to make the first overpayment to My CC either way as that's only been getting £55 per month since I transferred the Car PCP in February (I think it was February I did that anyway) and with current guaranteed funds, payday and it's lovely overpayments available to make should bring My CC (and therefore total debt besides the mortgage) down to £3,085.  That's almost normal month-to-month kind of credit card debt!! I'm going to be elated!  

t2rry

I am drawing a line today to prepare the budget spreadsheet for tomorrow.

I have money still pending from online sales that I don't think will come through today (there's a chance it may do but I shall presume not) so I am going to move across those figures from coming off the CCs this month, to coming off next month.  This adjusts the amount I need to pay off the Car CC tomorrow ever so slightly.

I had another £50ish online sales yesterday so need a post office run today too, so I'm still feeling pretty good about starting the month with £50 odd already pending from online sales and £20 cash sales expected to be collected over the next few days.  It's a good start to the selling month!

And whilst I didn't quite do it in time, I'm counting it that I effectively did make my target and would have been able to pay off the Car CC even if my backpay wouldn't have come through, it just might have taken a day or two beyond payday.  As it happens now, this refresh just means I can officially change my target to what I need to clear My CC that one month earlier too.  I'm hoping payday might bring a few more online sales as I have a lot of watchers and still around 50 items listed.

So as it currently stands, my cleared earnings from selling this month equals £648.04.  That has pushed the month to my second best of the year.  February was the best as I used some banked funds to help pay off the Car PCP as it was.  When I started April, I thought it was going to seem like a disappointing month in comparison as both February and March I paid off over £3,000 each, but with the sales I've pushed April up to having paid off £3,336.48.

So the new target is £455.  That's how much I will have left on My CC after May's payday, not accounting for my new job pay increase.  I'll count that as a bonus towards it when it lands I think.  With pending sales, I've already started to get that figure down, so keeping the incentive up to keep going!

As for an April spending round up - we spent:

£484.33 on food (including 2 pub visits for OH, 2 takeaways for all 4 of us and 2 sets of tea/coffee out and about) - under budget
£50 petrol - on budget
£4 work lottery syndicates - on budget

The only other spending was on car tax/insurance and a deposit for an event later in the year.  All of these came in under budget.  I also have another deposit that still never came to fruition so that's £125 I haven't spent this month, but the deposit will still need to be paid, so that just rolls over.

That's a pretty frugal month yet again, I think.

The little we have left (basically a tenner or so leftover from the food budget) will roll over into next month so will be accounted for somewhere reasonable there.  

t2rry

Well....

2021: Paydays to debt free = 2
OH C/C was £6,570.00 now £3,085.00
Car PCP was £14,610.79 now C/C PAID OFF
Total was £21,180.79 now £3,085.00

What a morning!

I actually hovered quite a while over the payment to OH C/C (which I've erroneously referred to as My CC recently on here, not sure why.  I now have zero debt to my name aside from the mortgage!!) - that was a big one to make when the card is still on 0%, there's a part of my brain saying why pay it off, keep it in a savings account and pay it all off when the 0% ends.  But no, it's paid off, extra incentive to not spend it as now it would cost me extra to do so.  The fight is now on to get the last £3,085 paid off on May's payday.  I genuinely think I can do it. 

The £455 I would be short, with online sales pending is now already down to £380.

I've had to adjust the budget already this morning as OH's passport has run out, so I've taken that cost £75.50 from the deposit amount I still have coming up to pay.  I had budgeted £125 for that, which is half the total cost and I don't believe it should be anywhere near that, so I have £60 for that now instead.  I actually expect it should be around £30 so still scope to have leftover to put to the CC.  I've also realised that I had the remaining £125 budgeted into the spreadsheet for next month, which is still way off the event (in August) and whilst I was being cautious, I don't think that's realistic.  I'm going to leave it there for now, but if I come to know when that will need to be paid (I expect it will be the week of the event) then that will be another amount available to eat into the remaining £380.

Once again, the closer I can get to it with each day and every small sale or saving, the better.

I feel like we just need one more good month!!!

t2rry

Just a little reflection on how far we've come this year (so far) - I'm so pleased I went with my gut and paid the Car PCP off, it gave me such the extra incentive being able to put every saved penny towards it, rather than having to hold fire until we had enough to clear it completely.

Also, credit card debt feels much more irresponsible than a Car plan, I'm almost embarrassed to carry credit card debt now, I don't think I'd have felt this sense of urgency had we paid off OH C/C instead and then saving for the Car balloon payment.  It would have felt like we were actually saving rather than still fighting debt.  It's always a mindset thing.  Plus, you know, the interest  

I have been trying to think too, I'm not sure if I can remember the last time we had zero credit card debt.  Whenever we've got close before, we've added to it for the benefit of another debt to save interest - first my professional development loan, then my old car loan, a mortgage exit fee, then the next car loan, now the new car PCP. (That seems like a lot of cars but that's due to needs changing, as much as I would have liked to keep a previous one, 2 kids just wouldn't fit into a micro car!!)  This time, we have no other debt and no other large spends in existence or on the horizon.  Fully intend this to be us done now, forever, sinking funds and emergency funds are our whole way forward.

t2rry

Had most of my pending online selling pennies land, so the FINAL (Can't get over that!) CC is edging towards the £3k mark.  I may leave it at a nice round £3k when it gets there, then work on building up the pot for anything else.

I haven't sold anything now for a whole week.  I need to see if I can have a little push tomorrow.  Vinted has slowed down, I think as I've not listed anything new now in just over that week.  There's still 50+ items on there though, some of which are listed cheaply in comparison to what they sell for on ebay.  I may move some across, as I just want them sold, I think the limited time to purchase on ebay brings a higher chance of selling some things.  I'm not knocking Vinted, i've made maybe £100-£150 there pretty quickly, but it feels like maybe if things don't sell quickly they may not sell as people just have them sitting in their watch list and there's no urgency about it.

I have spent some time today on survey sites as we had a quiet rainy day, so that's given me a £15 boost.  It's a lot of time for not much, though, that's been a solid day across two sites and only £15 (there is another £5 but could take ages to process)

t2rry

Last CC is down to £3k.  A little more selling plus some survey sites has done that.  I'm now, just for a little bit at least, going to put extra funds I make/find, into the emergency fund.

Just one page ago here, I typed this out as my budget plan:

BALANCES WITH BACKPAY

April Payday:
Car CC Cleared
OH CC down to £3,280 approx

May Payday:
OH CC down to £665 approx

June Payday:  DEBT FREE plus £2k+ savings pot started

I'm already £280 better off than that budget at April payday (I consider each month from the payday it follows!) 
I have another £30 banked and £40 pending from payouts already requested.

That May payday guesstimate, according to my budget now will bring OH CC down to £280.  That's £385 closer to getting rid of the last debt since I typed that out just a few weeks ago.  I'll keep banging on about it, the little bits here and there really do add up!! Although granted I am going for it a little h*ll for leather, which may not be realistic!

t2rry

Emergency fund is climbing.  I've had a few days off this week so I've hammered the survey sites and I'm £40 up from those with another £30 pending payout. (this is across 3 sites, not something I'd recommend if you are time-poor, there's no way I'll be able to keep this up!)

I have made a couple more sales, so sales completed for the month is now over £100 and £40 is waiting to clear plus £20 due to be collected tomorrow.

Finally, I had a nice email from MSE yesterday to confirm that my cashback had been paid for my energy switch earlier in the year.  I had completely forgotten about that, so another £25 a nice bonus landed today.  

2 weeks until payday and mine should be 50/50 old job and new job.  I guesstimate that will mean about £150 more than i've allocated in my budget (never want to overestimate so I haven't taken into account new job on the spreadsheet yet).  I genuinely could feasibly get this last CC paid off then if I keep going as I am for just that little bit longer!!! 

t2rry

So technically, budget is now £220 short of paying off the CC at payday, if I get approx £150 more salary, that's only actually £70.  I'm not counting on that but if I keep it in mind, even if another £220 seems unachievable in the next 2 weeks, £70 doesn't!  Especially when I'm not counting surveys I've not cashed out yet or sales agreed but not completed.  That will keep me ploughing on for the next 2 weeks at least, to see how close I can get!

Tightpants24

I have been following and just wanted to say how impressed I am with your determination to slay the debt.  Incredible effort 👏   I am cheering you on with your final push to debt freedom