Debt free by 40

MissRikkiC

Great news on being able to pay off one of your cards soon! 

Your determination right now is kicking my !!!!!! into gear too!

jokono

To be honest I feel like I am spending all my time trying to make money, I need to calm down. This morning I spent an hour playing farmville. If I get to level 30 in 10 days I get 2500 swagbucks points which are about £15. Is it worth it? Probably not, it's not the first time I waste time for rewards that are very difficult to achieve.

I got the £25 from vinted for the lost shoes (I was selling, not buying!) and sent to the credit card, £240.34 left now.

We were going to leave Dog with family when we go on holiday on the 26th but things have changed and we need to look into paying someone to look after him. I really hope we can find a home boarder at such short notice and we don't have to leave him in a kennel.

It looks like there won't be a lot more than minimum payments to debt next month with the dog, we also need to book flights to visit parents in August. The holiday pot will be pretty much empty after this holiday in June, I think I'll have to use some of the EF which is not too bad as I kept building it over £1k. But still, annoying. 🥴

jokono

New spending week started with £20 left over from previous week, so £110pw next month is definitely not happening anymore. I'll try to spend very little this week again and keep as much as possible for our holiday next week. 

I booked flights for August, so expensive!! 😱 I used the cashback credit card and will pay it back in full before it starts incurring interest but there won't be anything left for overpayments. I'll keep sending prolific to the small cc until it's cleared but that's it.

Today I cashed out £5.93  £234.41 left.

MissRikkiC

I envy your spends budget of £110pw even if it is reducing. I allocate hub and I £150 a month each for our own stuff. We do have a pot for going out and another for birthdays but I actually can’t wait to have more 🤪

jokono

The £100pw (plan  was to increase to 110 next month) is for everything - food, train tickets when I go into work and anything else that I might spend in a week, I don't have a lot of separate budgets. I wish I had £100 to spend  for my stuff every week, I don't even know what I would do with that money after a few weeks 🤣

Bluegreen143

£100p/w for everything is tight. For a while I used to do similar with just one spending pot for family spends (food, petrol, kids’ stuff) but I find it helps me more to break it down a bit. 

As for personal spends - DH and I take 20% each of our salaries for personal spending money 🙈 mine is just under £300 but I usually put £75 in my LISA, I pay my phone bill and gym membership and then have the rest for clothes, socialising and hobby stuff but often have a bit leftover which I save til I have a big event. DH earns more than me so usually has about £400 a month and never saves any of it and is usually broke before payday 🤣

I’m debating talking to him about changing it so we get the same (an average between what we get currently) as it’s not really fair - my actual full time equivalent salary is about the same as his now so if I worked full time I’d get the same. I originally thought of this as it’s my choice to work part time and earn less. But I recently worked out it would cost the same for extra nursery & afterschool costs (we don’t have any childcare costs currently as my little goes to nursery just for her free hours and I finish at 3pm each day) as my extra salary would be so actually there would be no point, therefore me working part time saves us both childcare costs 🤷‍♀️

DH needs a lot of autonomous spending money to be happy though (he can’t bear to have ALL his purchases scrutinised through the budget so I don’t put his spends on YNAB) and I would just put the excess in my LISA anyway so not sure it’s worth rocking the boat. 

Appreciate this sounds super extravagant, though we don’t have any debt! When I was a SAHM I was lucky if I gave myself £50 a month on top of my phone bill. 

Just occurred to me that as we’ve both taken two weeks unpaid leave for summer childcare, so our July/August pay will be skewed. How will we work out our spending money as not sure DH will be happy with 20% of a half paycheque 🤣 but really that’s what it should be - he gets the benefit when he earns more for any reason.

jokono

Hey @Bluegreen143 - it is tight but not as bad is it sounds because:
1. we have an electric car and don't drive around much so there's no (ridiculously expensive) petrol to buy. 
2. husband buys stuff too

I agree it is not fair not to have the same amount of spends since you're earning less only because you are part time to spend time with children and also save on childcare. My Mr earns a lot more than I do, we are pretty separate with budgets but generally he spends more around the house. For example, he's always looking to improve something, either refreshing the kitchen like we did last weekend, working on the garden, or a bigger project this summer - Boy1's room. He also has debt to pay off but he's not as obsessed focused as I am.

jokono

£6.41 cashed out from prolific this morning, send to cc, £228 left. 

jokono

So a few days ago we booked filghts for the summer to go visit family; we booked a low cost airline to save money.  Yesterday I got an email that our outbound fligth was cancelled and we were offered a flight the same day at a different time which would've been fine, but the seats (that we paid to choose) were all in different rows. The website help was useless and I tried calling their extortionate call centre (50p/minute!) but after three tries when I was finally 'redirected' to an agent I was told the average waiting time was 30 minutes. I decided to cancel the flights (sent them an email and complaint, haven't received a reply yet) and book with a different company, didn't want to wait and risk not having a resolution and prices are just going up. Obviously the new tickets were a couple of hundred more expensive and we were already stretched, I had a mini break down and cried for an hour thinking all my work to pay off debt in the last year and a half was pointless. Of course I know it wasn't but it made me so sad to have to use more of the CC, we'll also have to pay for dog boarding and spending money there, it will add up and on the back of next week's holiday it's just so much! I almost decided not to go at all this year but my grandma is old and frail and I really want to see her and her to see the boys, and the boys to see where I spent my summers as a child. It will all be ok. It doesn't help I got my period yesterday, that definitely contributed to the helpless feeling. 

shell16

Hi There

We all have these set backs, try not to be too disheartened.  I've recently fallen off the budget wagon myself but you have to remain focussed or risk never getting back on.  Paying off debt is never going to be smooth, there's always some curve to navigate.

You have still done so well with reducing your debt totals so still take it as a win, refocus and crack on.

Shell x