Sixty thousand reasons to stay motivated 10 March 2021 at 10:15AM in Debt free diaries 2 replies 211 views

warren80

Hi, 
I posted my circumstances on here a few months ago but have decided that I need a diary to keep myself on track. I have already posted my SOA on my other post. I made an error and incorrectly listed my total debts as almost 70K whereas it was actualy just under 60K. 
We had our LBM last Autumn when we realised that we were quickly heading towards a financial disaster. At that point we owed somewhere in the high 60K's on top of our mortgage. 
We've no excuses and we have found ourself in this situation due to poor money management, lack of self control and a reckless optimism that everything will be ok. The following phrases sum up our previous attitude towards money - 

" We have a good income so we can afford it"
"Everyone is in debt"
"it's 0% so it doesn't matter"
" We'll pay it off next month"
" We work hard so we deserve it". 

We have made major changes and I have become quite militant about keeping our regular outgoings down. I have cancelled a load of uncessary subscriptions and DD's. I don't want to post another SOA just yet as I find it quite stressful, however here is a summary of our current situation - 

Total income - £5100 ( increased slightly since first SOA)

Mortgage/Bills/Direct debits/living expenses (non- debt related) - £1918

Minimum debt payments - £1582

Money available for overpayment/emergency fund savings - £1600

 

I find the GRAND TOTAL of our debt quite overwhelming so we are going to focus on it in 5K portions! We are paying just over £500 in interest each month. We aim to move as much as we can to 0% when we are able to, however the offers just aren’t the at the moment.

If we can make our minimum payments we will clear a net £1080. We can then use some of the £1600 to make additional payments, as well as build up an emergency fund. We would like to clear at least 2k per month and save the remainder.

 

I am going to try and post regularly to keep myself on the straight and narrow

Bizzywizard

Hi Warren,
Welcome to the forum! We have all had debt and you will find many on here who have been where you are and will happily offer honest helpful advice. I know you don't want to do your SOA, but its useful, so we can see where you maybe able to cut costs. I popped mine on my own excel spread sheet and it really helped...I still use it even though I am now in the black and I check my bank accounts each day.
For me making sure I paid my council tax over 12 months not 10 was huge, this meant my excel spread sheet each month is roughly the same. A quick call to the council offices is all it took.
We were also living in our overdraft which was a crazy apr amount, so we switched bank accounts to RBS for all our bills with NO overdraft ( we have a set amount going into pay the basic bills) then opened a Nationwide flex direct account with a 0% overdraft for the first year, I cannot tell you how much this helped us, it gave us breathing space. We no longer have any overdrafts as this was keeping us in the debt spiral.
Get rid of stuff on ebay (free money I call it) goes straight off the debt mountain.
I know you say you cannot get the 0% deals. How many CC do you have what are they ie VERY, Amazon and what are the APR's? 
You have a good income, so the debt can come down.
Best of luck,
Bizzy
PS DH had £20k worth of debt in May 2019 and debt free as of Dec 2020

beanielou

Happy shiny new diary.
Keep posting