Time for a new beginning with less talk, more action!

misstoon

Hi everyone 
I'm new here and decided now is the time to start taking control of my finances and put a plan into action to get my debts paid off. 
I have already paid just over £2,500 off my debts but as off today my debt balances stand at:-

Barclaycard         £2,533.00          Pay £50.00/month
Lloyds                  £2,740.00          Pay £82.00/month
Halifax                 £5,524.00           Pay £70.00/month
HSBC                  £2,405.00           Pay £62.00/month 
Loan                    £4,337.00           Pay £289.00/month 

Luckily the cards are all on interest free payments. The Lloyds CC has an amount of £600 due to finish in October so i am overpaying that by £40 per month and any spare cash I have will be put to there to get that paid off before the end of the interest free period. 

I have read about the snowball method and downloaded an excel template which i have entered in all the details but will start with the Lloyds payment first as that one has the shortest interest free period. I am hoping to highlight each payment off when its made every month just so i can see it on the computer coming down. 
Does anyone have any advice when starting to become debt free? Is there anything you know now that you wish you knew when you first started? Any advice would be super appreciated!  
 

doingitanyway

Well done on making the decision to take control. 
My tip is to get control of your food spending. For most of us food is our second biggest spend. 
I wish you well

WinterWarrior

Good luck miss toon. I have excel spreadsheets to monitor everything. For the loans I list all the months payments until it finishes, with a row underneath each payment to add the interest. I colour in each month as it passes, so I can see at a glance what I’m left with.
I also have an old school lovely notebook (I’m a sucker for notebooks) and I have a page I fill in each month, with what I owe on each debt and my goals for the month. As I go along I can page back and see how far I’ve come.
eg June 2021
‘loan 1’. £8,578.93 ... started at £25,000
etc.
savings £353 ... goal £5000
Goals for the month: overpay loan 2, spend less on Amazon, etc. 

I’m not actually very good at money saving, but monitoring the progress shows even small changes add up. 

anjyeah

Good luck! @WinterWarrior is right - spreadsheets can be lifechanging. I never liked Excel before but since I have put in my monthly spends and savings goal on it, I've been updating it at least twice a month. Puts every in order. 

You've got a diary now which is good. Fantastic forumites giving helpful advice on here. I'd recommend the small DFW things for the week thread or even read through the many challenges to check if anything works for you. All the best!