The Mental Debt Struggle...

Keedie

I think that's great news @abaka! 

Do you have a target amount? I'm aiming for £500 a year, as that's realistic with how stretched my finances are at the moment.

As my Jamaican dad always used to say, "every mickle makes a muckle". Which is the Jamaican equivalent of look after the pennies and the pounds will take care of themselves. You'll be surprised what you can accrue with spare change, and you can always treat yourself to something at milestones in your debt repayment journey without having to go into debt or leaving yourself short. Or just let it build up knowing that if you need something that isn't to be covered from your joint savings account as it's not household or car related, then you're covered.

Over half of my EF is purely from round ups! It has been since the end of December 2021, but the small little pennies do really mount.

@LittleMissDetermined I forgot to say that you don't have to lock a Monzo pot to earn interest on it. You just have to set an interest accruing pot and do what you want with it.

LittleMissDetermined

Thanks Keedie! I’ve done this now x

Keedie

I'm on the irritable side of being tired this morning, as my son woke me up at 4am as I could hear him cleaning his room! I mean I'm glad he tidied it, but seriously, why in the middle of the night?! 🤷🏾‍♀️ 

But on a good note, the debts are coming down as I paid the £32.87 to Sky Mobile for our mobile phones. I've paid 12.09% of my debt since 1 April 2022, so I'm very excited. If my maths is right (which is often questionable), then I should have paid 16% off my debt by the end of the month, as most of my repayments are set after I receive my salary on the 24th of the month.

By 31 December 2022, if I can get my spending under control and have a sustainable budget, then with my minimum payments, I should reach approximately 39-40% of the debt repaid.

I've coloured in some more tiles on my debt free chart, so it's starting to look good. The tiles are split into 200 pieces, so each part is 0.5% repaid, and it's more motivating to me, than waiting until I reach 1% at a time. I need to work out how to add photos so I can show you all. But I got the debt free chart online, and it's free which is a bonus 🤗 https://debtfreecharts.com/.

LittleMissDetermined

You just use the image option at the top of the comment box 

Keedie

OMG I'm so slow, I've never even noticed that before! Thanks LMD x

Keedie

This is my debt free chart so far. I’m hoping to complete Level 1 by the mid to end of September 2022. 

Psychologically it’s really helping to colour in this chart as I can visually see my debts going down. Otherwise it’s just all numbers and gets a bit overwhelming and demotivating as I can’t see that much progress. 

I actually get ridiculously excited to colour in a tile - I guess small things please small minds 🤣. 

LittleMissDetermined

I love it  , I chose different charts but I still get excited to colour another one in when I hit a milestone

Keedie

It really does motivate you doesn’t it @LittleMissDetermined? 

I’m going to do some savings ones so that I can get the money together for my car service and MOT for next year and some money towards my car insurance. 

abaka

Those charts are the very cool but I'm the opposite - I'm a number cruncher and I like seeing the digitals fall

Keedie

Oh I love the number drop and spreadsheets as well!

I've got a spreadsheet that I call The Debt Buster, that has a home page with a tracker to show how much my initial debt is for each creditor, the amount repaid and a percentage bar that I complete as the amount repaid goes up. There's a tab for each creditor which is like a mini statement and I can show how much I've paid whether it was a faster payment, card payment or direct debit and the date and amount paid. And then when the values are updated in the creditors tab, it automatically updates the home page, so that I can see what I've repaid for each creditor and the percentage for each one, and the overall percentage and that's how I update my signature.

It also has a tab called The Plan which has my plan for my snowballing from the date of my restart in April 2022 up to December 2024. And there's a numerical version of my debt free chart on a tab called the Debt Drop and it has the actual accumulated value of each 0.5% square, and I colour them in as I hit each milestone. 

I tried to do a screenshot of the spreadsheet but for some reason MSE removed that post, so I'm not sure what I did wrong there...

One of my sisters and one of my friends has used my template to sort out their debts, and it made me quite chuffed that they liked it. The spreadsheet has been a work in progress over the last few years, as my debt has yo-yo up and down and I realised that when I'm using the spreadsheet I'm more on target and focused.