Give me some motivation! Feeling embarrassed and down about debt!

leannes_3

Posting here to finally face the music. My lightbulb moment has been having my baby girl. We borrowed money on credit cards and overdrafts to do up our home, and I’ve since had 6 months of crippling maternity pay. I’m losing sleep now over our debt. We’re able to make the payments on all our debts, and we’re going to start overpaying on debt in July when I get my full wage back.

just looking for some motivation that we can do it!!!

here’s our total debt

CC 1: £7200
cc2 : £1500
overdraft: £2000
Buy now pay later: £430

seeing it all like that makes me feel sick.

like I said, we’re starting to pay £500 a month off when my wage comes back in July,  but seeing it all like that makes me want to cry! 

femalemonarchfemalecanine

Please don't cry. You're making payments and have plans to start making real inroads into it this month - that's a good thing.
I know debt can be horrifically worrying, but you will get it paid off, because you have a plan.
You have recently had a baby, might you need to talk to a healthcare professional about 'baby blues'?
you've spent the money on making your home lovely for your new daughter, so try and focus on your baby, and carry on with your plan to get the debt paid off. You can and will do it, but please don't be so hard on yourself.
take care, and good luck.

summergirl40

You have done the right thing by acknowledging it! I was in debt for years after being a single mum. In total 1200 overdraft, 2000 credit card doesn’t sound much but when I had my baby and my partner moved in I lost all benefits and had very little of my own money coming in. 

I started off ploughing everything to pay my overdraft off, then a buffer of savings before I tackled the cc. 

Please keep positive and enjoy your baby. The best advice I can give is get a country park pass so you can go out free, take picnics, cook in nice meals to feel like it’s that bit extra special. Write down all your spends. 

Once you are back at work you will feel much better and congratulate yourself once each month has passed you will see the debt go down. 

Keep positive 

pjcox2005

Do you know what interest rates each debt is at? If it's all zero and you can pay back £500 a month then hopefully you can make a dent quite quickly.

If not and high rates, then you may want to look at what you can do to reduce the interest rates, whether call to card providers asking them to do something (explain maternity pay situation) but they may not, or looking to see if you can do balance transfers to low rate cards.

Main point is you're aware of the debt and trying to sort it so good luck.

tacpot12

You can do this. I cleared £12,000 of debt that I had stupidly acquired. It took nearly four years and there were times when it felt either impossible or that I was making no progress, but the sense of achievement when it was paid off was amazing. At £500 per month, you should have your debts cleared in less than two years! 

Good luck

RAS

Hi Leanne

Well done for addressing this now.

You need to know the interest rates charged on each account. It's likely that the overdraft is the highest, so that would be the one to pay off first. But until you have the numbers, it's impossible to tell.

Jami74

Sorting out your debt while she is so young is absolutely the right time to do it. Young children have no concept of the value of money and while you'll want to spoil her rotten on birthdays and at Christmas and with holidays and trips out it means you can really do it on the cheap and she'll have just as much fun whether you spend a few quid on pre-loved items or hundreds of pounds on new branded stuff. It's harder trying to cut back when they are older and want the same things they see their friends having. You'll have it all paid off within a year or two and you'll be used to living economically so will then have surplus money to budget towards the nicer things. And she'll never know.

leannes_3

Thank you all so so much for the comments. Having our baby made us really see that we needed to sort it out now. I don’t think I’m struggling with the baby blues, I think just having our little girl made me realise I have to be responsible with money for her, and not just myself anymore. I want to be able to buy her nice things and enjoy our time with her without wasting £500 a month on just debt!!

So my MBNA cc is 0% until august 2022 and I’ve worked out we should have paid off easily half of it by the time the interest free runs out. I’ll look into if I can do another 0% balance transfer when that runs out. 

Our buy now pay later im planning to tackle first, I can clear that completely over two months so I’m hoping that will spur me on to keep going. Aiming to be debt free from the buy now pay later August this year! 

the overdraft was the killer and we buried our heads in the sand over it for years. We took it out when the apr was 18% to help with doing our house up,  but when the interest shot up last year it’s been costing us £50 a month in interest 😭

so, this is what we’ve done so far! I get my full time wage back on 22nd July which means we can start to clear on the 22nd of this month! Woohoo! We also got a new credit card (don’t shout at me yet!) and transferred the balance of the overdraft to the new card which is 0% for 16 months. That’s a saving of £50 a month alone in interest. We can clear that cc in 8 months so we will be well within the interest free period. Finally, my other half cancelled the sky movies bit of our sky package saving £10 a month. Not a lot but every little helps!! 

Really pleased with our progress so far. My other half plans to switch his phone contract to a sim only in December too, saving £75 a month.

top tip as well. Some of you may have heard of TopCashback. Well, they offer £3 cash back on all online grocery orders at Asda. I worked out, if I shopped via TopCashback with Asda for a year, that would be £156!! Result! 

draiggoch

It might be a good idea to plan to pay off the new CC in 15 months rather than 8 and use any surplus to reduce the balance of the MBNA card to an even lower level before it runs out of the 0% period. At least it will be less to transfer then including transfer fees. You did not mention the current rate of the third credit card and if this is also on 0%.

DrCarrie

You can do this! It will be ok, it might take some time but it will be ok. 

You have done some good things already! go you!

Others have given some great advice and ideas. I would recommend the following:

- join a challenge or 2, stay involved in the forum, it keeps you motivated. 
- consider writing a debt-free diary
- enjoy the rest of your Mat leave, and your daughter, time is precious. 

CreditCardJunkie

Okay first things first, congratulations on your baby girl.

Secondly, there is absolutely no shame so please don't be embarrassed. We've all been there and probably a few people you know are or have been in a similar position but debt seems to be a taboo subject.

I was in exactly the same position as you, having a baby changed my focus and made me address the debt. What I learned was;

- Give yourself a realistic budget for nice things each month. A family day out/your favourite coffee or something like that. It makes it easier to stick to your plan.

- Track every single spend on a spreadsheet. You will be horrified but you can quickly see why you've ended up in debt. 

- Work out your realistic debt free date. The majority of us find ways to beat the target. Prolific surveys are a great way to start by bringing in extra income. If you can do something extra to bring in more money, do it and use that to overpay debts.

Best of luck, you can absolutely do this!