Best way to do things

adamj1984

TheAble said:

£80k @ 5.5% is still going to cost you £4400 in interest a year though - not a million miles off your rent cost. You might of course reasonably expect some capital appreciation but that can't be guaranteed. Factor in all your purchase costs as well, mortgage set up fee etc. Another consideration is that while people often think of properties as assets they can also be liabilities if they suddenly need a meaningful repair doing, so you want to make sure you have a good emergency fund in place to tackle such potential problems.

Your shout of course but personally I don't think you want to go into the responsibilities of property ownership when you're humping a load of debt around. 

yep, This forum today has certainly convinced me to clear car finance, I've done a budget today and can clear it by June 22, so thats the plan now.

Andyjflet

I think you are going about this all wrong IMO
Owning a house brings its own pitfalls, costs to buy it, running costs and maintenance, solely your responsibility. Renting while you are sorting your finances is perfect.
Have a look at Dave Ramseys baby steps.
1.) Get current on Overdraft.
2.) Save £1000 emergency fund
3 ) Start paying off your debts in the snowball method, smallest to largest.
When you have done this come back and I'll tell you the next steps. 

So, Council tax first, you have to look after your 4 walls, then the personal loan and car loan in that order.
Stop using your credit card, pointless. I have one item of consumer finance which is being paid off and still have a 999 credit score, which is meaningless anyway.

adamj1984

Andyjflet said:

I think you are going about this all wrong IMO
Owning a house brings its own pitfalls, costs to buy it, running costs and maintenance, solely your responsibility. Renting while you are sorting your finances is perfect.
Have a look at Dave Ramseys baby steps.
1.) Get current on Overdraft.
2.) Save £1000 emergency fund
3 ) Start paying off your debts in the snowball method, smallest to largest.
When you have done this come back and I'll tell you the next steps. 

So, Council tax first, you have to look after your 4 walls, then the personal loan and car loan in that order.
Stop using your credit card, pointless. I have one item of consumer finance which is being paid off and still have a 999 credit score, which is meaningless anyway.

Thanks for the advice will look into dave ramsey baby steps, with regards to the council tax, the £304 includes this years council tax, and it isnt actually debt, I defferred last years balance due to covid/furlough etc etc, so thats not in arrears or anything and will be cleared by march.
this has certainly been an eye opener...

adamj1984

Just as an Update, Had my last fag this morning, haven't bought anymore, lets see how I get on!

curlytop12

good luck! you are a non smoker now, don't forget. And you will get to " future you" all the sooner, and probably live longer to enjoy it all

Drawingaline

Good luck with the smoking. My husband finally managed to quit in 2014 after 20 years of being a smoker. He used an electronic cigarette which said helped massively. Over six months he went from the highest nicotine one to the lowest before eventually stopping. 

Just in case going cold turkey becomes impossible!

I bought it in a supermarket, not one of the new vape type, it looked like an actual cigarette.

adamj1984

Drawingaline said:

Good luck with the smoking. My husband finally managed to quit in 2014 after 20 years of being a smoker. He used an electronic cigarette which said helped massively. Over six months he went from the highest nicotine one to the lowest before eventually stopping. 

Just in case going cold turkey becomes impossible!

I bought it in a supermarket, not one of the new vape type, it looked like an actual cigarette.

I've actually got one, tried quitting with it multiple times and always end up back on smokes

Brie

Congrats on stopping smoking - OH has tried repeatedly and I keep hoping "next time...."

What I noticed on your post with the high amount of monthly insurance.  So you have a £10k car and are paying well over £1k a year to insure it??  I'm sure there's a reason for this but that is something that you should also work on improving.  I have a tiddle car (OH claims it is powered by hamsters) and pay about £200 a year, OH's monster vehicle costs about £400.  So half of what you pay.  Potentially this may be due to needing to insure it for work??  Or is it points on your license?? 

adamj1984

Brie said:

Congrats on stopping smoking - OH has tried repeatedly and I keep hoping "next time...."

What I noticed on your post with the high amount of monthly insurance.  So you have a £10k car and are paying well over £1k a year to insure it??  I'm sure there's a reason for this but that is something that you should also work on improving.  I have a tiddle car (OH claims it is powered by hamsters) and pay about £200 a year, OH's monster vehicle costs about £400.  So half of what you pay.  Potentially this may be due to needing to insure it for work??  Or is it points on your license?? 

Nope license is clean, but I have to have 25k business miles on it unfortunately, and I live in not the nicest area so insurance is quite high round here because of that also

adamj1984

Hi Guys,

Just thought i'd drop back in to say the update, well the update is there isnt really an update lol.

still making payments to everything.

Still failing in quitting smoking.........

Afraid im going to have to use my electric Cigarette, reason i didnt want to quit with that is because everytime I have in the past I have failed to remain quit, but I'm not managing to quit without it either so I may as well use that and save circa £250 a month.

Going to try what drawingalines hubby did and slowly reduce the amount of Nicotine, see if that helps.

Holiday now paid off for me and my little man, we go 4 weeks tomorrow (first holiday since me and his mum split), after that its full steam ahead with clearing outstanding credit accounts.

Thanks For reading guys

Adam