I’m 34 and have been in debt since I was 18. It ends now!

badmemory

If anything a sitting tenant would normally get a better deal than a new buyer!  If only because of the selling costs they save the owner.

GolfR

MHi everyone! Thought I would update as I’ve not been on for a while. I got the fabia home 225 miles with no problems at all and I’ve been using it the last few days back and forth to work and it’s going strong. It’s had the cambelt and water pump done so should keep me going for the next year at least. It’s slow as can be but on my trip to work I got 70mpg! I bet I’d have only had that in my previous cars coasting all the way down a 10 mile hill 🤣

I put the polo on the fb owners club two evenings ago and within an hour I’d had a deposit paid! I put it up for 12k and had a trader offer me £10,750. I asked if he’d to go 11k and he agreed and he’s coming on the train on Monday to pick it up! I can’t believe how quickly it’s all happened. I originally wanted to hold onto it for a couple of months to see how the fabia goes but with the way car prices are at the moment it’s better to have it go now.

I’ve been looking at houses and I’ve seen a lovely one with a massive (to me) kitchen for 120k not too far from me. Lloyds - who I bank with - have said I can borrow 117k with my current monthly debt payments but I’m not sure if this is with the deposit or without. I’ve seen some houses for 90k that are pretty nice but it’s street parking and I don’t know if I want that. At the same time I’ve looked back at my rightmove saved properties from a year or two ago and you could get so much more for your money back then so I don’t know whether to bide my time and stay in my rental, pay off my big loan over the next year or so and save more of a deposit and get a better rate and hope house prices come back down. It’s whether the cost of paying £600 pm rent will offset any savings I might make, with the thought in mind that prices may not come down at all or worse, increase. Unfortunately I don’t have a crystal ball to tell me what will happen in the future!

GolfR

Time for another update! The polo went on Monday and I can’t deny that I cried when it went but luckily looking on Rightmove has kept me not not thinking about it. I made £11,150 from the sale as he also bought the aftermarket exhaust that was already on the car from me so now I have £11,300 towards a house deposit which will keep rising over the next however long until I send that deposit money to the solicitors. I’m aiming to have 10% deposit and my partner has kindly offered to lend me any shortfall to make sure I have the 10%. I’ve had the mortgage in principle from my broker who has said the max I can have with my debt is £121,700 so my max budget for a house is 120k but the less the better.

I viewed a house on Thursday and I loved it so put an offer in. The asking price is 120k so I offered 110k. However that evening I decided the house wasn’t right for me and thankfully the next day I was notified that she had declined my offer so I was hugely relieved! That’ll teach me to be hasty about things. I’ve booked a viewing for another house on Tuesday and I’ve decided to view other houses too, even if they aren’t perfect as I think it’ll help me learn what to look out for since I’ve never done this before.

The house I’m going to see on Tuesday is up for 115k and it’s done really well inside, completely modernised and it has a utility room which I’ve not had in the past and a lovely little paved rear garden for the kids and the dog. The only negative is that it doesn’t have off road parking so I’m going to pop up in the morning after work which will be 8am or so to see what the weekend morning parking is like and I’ll go Monday evening around 7/8pm after most people will be home from work to also see it then. If it’s really full and difficult to find a space then I’ll have to sadly leave it but I’ll keep my fingers crossed.

If I can get a house under 112k I’ll be thrilled as that’ll be approx £450 a month mortgage, £150 per month less in rent than I’m paying now! That’ll help massively towards paying my big loan off which I’ve set a goal of paying off by summer next year. Then I can work on paying off my smaller loan to be debt free hopefully within the next 2/2.5 years. Gosh I cannot wait for that day!

On car news, the fabia is going fine however the mpg is not what it should be. I worked out out I’m getting 50mpg which is good, but I should be getting around 60/70mpg so I’m going to look into that. And I don’t think it’s the way I drive it as the dash tells me each journey I do that I’m getting 60/70mpg but 400 miles to a full tank on a 1.9 non turbo car is not great. Otherwise as far as I can tell, there’s no problems at all with it so I’m happy. It’s lovely to be able to dump it anywhere and not worry about the body work or the wheels

Buffythedebtslayer

That is amazing progress, good on you for selling the car, I drive a (very old) Polo and adore it, I am gutted as I will probably have to sell it as it isn't Ulez compliant, which breaks my heart. I think and hope I can get a compliant one for about 2500 pounds. I really love it tho so am putting it off. I will cry too! 

XXX

GolfR

Hi everyone. I wanted to update as I’ve not been here since October and A LOT has happened since then. I bought a house for 115k and got the keys at the start of January and moved in 25th Jan, officially left my rented house 6th Feb and got my deposit back a few weeks later. I’m now paying £470 a month on my mortgage as opposed to £600 rent, £30 in life insurance but I’ve saved £20 a month on my council tax so I’m effectively £120 better off every month.

I’ve still got my car shed (as I ‘lovingly’ call it!) and have only had a bill of £250 so far following an RAC recovery to my partner friends garage for a shot driveshaft and something else suspension wise on the other side which my partner kindly paid for me. It went for a pre mot the other day to see if there’s anything wrong and if it’s worth fixing for the amount of the car, so that I had plenty of time to find a new car if it was bad news. I was told there’s £300-£400 worth of work so I started looking for another car but then I realised the car I buy could be exactly the same in needing work so I’ve sensibly (I think anyway!) decided to stick with the shed and again, my partner has offered to pay for whatever it needs doing come mot time in July.

Although though I’ve been very tempted, I have not bought a sporty car so that I can continue to pay off my debts. I’m not sure of the balances from when I last posted but I’m now on £3400 on my older and bigger loan of £362 a month. I’ve been paying off as much as possible around paying for stuff required for the new house. I’m on roughly £7400 on my polo/house deposit loan of £191 a month and once my big loan is paid off at the latest Christmas time (if I don’t pay any extra off it at all but hoping for September 2022 ish) I’ll be ploughing all my money into the other loan which I then hope to get paid off within 8-10 months after the first loan.

I also have £1000 in my premium bond savings as an emergency fund, half of which was the deposit return from my rented house. Once my loans are paid off I’ll be going crazy at my savings. Once I’ve got a decent amount I do plan to treat myself to a nice car again!

I’ve got plans to do an extra shift every week next month and hoping I’ll get at least £1200 from them which will go straight to my loan.

Thanks to those who read my diary before and any new readers. It really helped to keep me motivated and I’m so proud of what I’ve achieved to this point. Long may it continue!

mark55man

well done - sounds like you are in a better place and making faster progress as you settle in.  great to see you back

GolfR

I’ve had to come back to update to keep me on track as I’m really really close to splurging 15k on a car! But I must not do it. I’m hoping if I talk out loud here about my plans for the next year it’ll stop me. Since the last time I posted, I bought a different car in august and I scrapped my shed. I got a mk5 golf GT, a car I’ve always really liked despite it being quite old now. It cost me £2000 on quite high mileage but the spec was exactly what I wanted - full heated leather and sunroof. As expected for an old car, it’s needed quite a bit of work done so far. I’ve spent around £1250 on it since September on repairs however £475 were tyres and full brakes all round so that’s just wear and tear. I got approx £350 in scrap for the shed so I was quite happy with that.

Fast forward to today, MOT time! Broken spring, ARB bushes gone both sides on the front amongst many others on the majors side and just as many advisories. My partners friends garage have quoted £500-£600 for the work. At this point I was so wound up I just wanted to throw the car in the bin! So off I went on autotrader looking for a golf R (I still regret selling mine!) and found one with perfect spec within my ‘budget’. I say ‘budget’ because of course I’d be taking out a loan. I got approved at 6.4% and was as happy as Larry. Stopped myself before fully completing the application thankfully.

Come to this evening and I started worrying about how this is going to affect my finances, adding a £291 a month loan. I still have small ish amounts in a few different places now, all 0% apart from my current loan which is at 3.5%. It’s all manageable and most will be gone in the next five or so months apart from the loan which is £190 a month and has £5700 left. My plan now is to pay an extra £300 a month on top of the monthly payment and hopefully I can get the loan gone in 10 months which will be October/November.

I’ve got £1250 in my emergency savings, I did have £1000 the last time I posted but I used most of that to go towards the mk5 golf but I’ve been putting £250 a month away the last few months so I’ve managed to build it back up.

SO I need you kind people to be firm with me and tell me what an absolute fool I’d be to go ahead with this! And how much better I’ll feel this time next year when I have hopefully no debt at all. I’m feeling strong at the moment and I really hope this lasts!

Thanks for reading

joedenise

It's definitely worth getting the car repaired at £5-600 - that would only be about 2 months payments on a £15,000 car!  Instead just put that money away towards a new car until you have enough to buy another one for cash or use that money to pay off your current loan.

I'd never borrow money again to buy a.car!  It just means you are paying far more for the car that it is worth.

GolfR

joedenise said:

It's definitely worth getting the car repaired at £5-600 - that would only be about 2 months payments on a £15,000 car!  Instead just put that money away towards a new car until you have enough to buy another one for cash or use that money to pay off your current loan.

I'd never borrow money again to buy a.car!  It just means you are paying far more for the car that it is worth.

That’s why I loved this car, completely paid off but the stuff going wrong constantly is getting me down! But I really hope it can give me another year of good motoring after this and I’ll be happy with that. It’s a really lovely car and I enjoy driving so we’ll see.

13thlegion

Think of it this way. If you didn't have that car now, would you pay £600 for one just like it with the MOT just passed and working?