20K to Debt Free by June - Finally Debt Free 27/06/23

LittleMissDetermined

Hope you had a great holiday! Well done for managing to lose weight whilst on holiday - that NEVER happens to me! Oh, except when I was in US and had altitude sickness for half of our stay. That sucked.  

You're making great inroads each month, more than 6% gone this last month and that will only get higher as your balance comes down - Well done! 
LMD x

LeeXenon

LittleMissDetermined said:

Hope you had a great holiday! Well done for managing to lose weight whilst on holiday - that NEVER happens to me! Oh, except when I was in US and had altitude sickness for half of our stay. That sucked.  

You're making great inroads each month, more than 6% gone this last month and that will only get higher as your balance comes down - Well done! 
LMD x

LMD, thank you so much for your comments and for checking in!
Admittingly, I came home 2-3lbs heavier, although this dropped off after a few days so I can only assume this was water weight. Not quite sure how I managed it, I think possibly the extra exercise was a huge contributor.

I'm still plodding along nonetheless, not leaving much money aside for leisure I am most definitely feeling the strain over the last few months with the wedding abroad etc (Only doable due to a long time saving!). I'm hoping next month to start making additional contributions again to hopefully bring my debt free date a little closer.

LittleMissDetermined

All we can do is keep plodding and hope that life doesn't throw too many curveballs!
LMD x

LeeXenon

Is it already that time of the month again? Payments to go onto all CC's as planned. Balances are coming down very nicely, although I think I'll be having to remind myself not to get carried away with this and make sure I keep enough to the side to keep myself plodding along nicely.

I think I'll be enforcing a few rules this month to tackle unnecessary spending, effectively;
- Mirror any spending by entering a PAD of the same amount.
- Top up that PAD to round to the £.

This is really to discourage unnecessary spending and incur a penalty where I do. Of course, the penalty will benefit me in the long run!

Balances;
CC1 - £1,548.44.
CC2 - £4,993.83.
HP - £6,361.98.
Total - £12,904.25
Cleared Today - £929.40.

So close to knocking out CC1 and excited to start snowballing away the debts, I will be reviewing the budget at the end of October to see if there's any way to add a bit of momentum to this process, be it with additional PAD's or increasing the monthly payments.



Unplanned Edit
Today I just so happened to find a Debt Free Diary file on my hard-drive when the balance was around £23,000 debt total. I made a note of my mental health at this stage and described myself as feeling around 2/10. Hopeless, depressed and the details perhaps too much to document here.

A lot of how I felt boiled down to my financial situation that I was tackling by myself and in total secret. This really highlights the importance of not getting stuck in the circle of debt again and to continue this battle until the debts are cleared, for the sake of me and my family, and to remind myself of what will be achievable without the requirement to spend around £1,000 a month on clearing debt alone.

For any lurkers here browsing the diary's, opening a diary is a great way to hold yourself accountable for your debts. Whilst I appreciate not everyone will be successful in clearing their debts, what helps massively is the ability to go back in time and see just how far you've come which may just make that little bit of difference to make you successful in clearing your debts. If you are considering opening one, I highly encourage you to do so.

LittleMissDetermined

This is a fantastic update and brave of you to share how the financial situation impacted your mental health.  I agree though, my diary has kept me going and the closer I get to £0 the better my mental health is. 

I love your PAD vs spending penalisation plan. Genius! 
LMD x

[Deleted User]

Hello I've caught up on your diary and I couldn't agree more with LMD, how brave of you to share your previous vulnerability. You are so right, a diary has helped me not to feel alone, given me valuable support and a better perspective on my debt situation. You've inspired me to keep going, thank you x

LeeXenon

Thank you both for the positive comments and support. £23K of debt is certainly not a good position to be in, my highest balance being over £30k worth of debt. I do believe it's important to be open and honest with yourself which if I remember rightly is precisely why I was documenting how I felt mentally, I found this also gave me more motivation to start taking the debt seriously and to do something about it.

There's still a bit of a way to go, for now the focus remains just keeping on the rails and chipping away at the debt month-by-month until I reach a zero balance.

This evening I've started with a £3.44 PAD to CC1 to round that balance off nicely.

LeeXenon

Going to ramp up the payments again and keep the flow going into the cards from Prolific ...
£5 to CC1
£3.83 to CC2

LeeXenon

Good evening everyone, I'm still working hard at prolific and today just made another contribution to CC1.
I seem to be inclined to snowball via CC1 first for mainly psychological reasons.

£10 PAD to CC1!

Hope you are all having a good weekend.

LeeXenon

Good morning all,
kicking off the day with a £10 PAD to CC1.