The Mental Debt Struggle...

Sun_Addict

Welcome home, what fabulous photos and memories you’ve made. Your son is a very thoughtful young man and a real credit to you. Holidays are great opportunities to think about future plans and it sounds like you’ve got some good ideas to put into action. 

beanielou

Glad that you both had such a great holiday.
Good news on the payrise.

AntoMac

Lovely photos and priceless memories Keedie. So pleased that your holiday was everything you hoped it would be and more 

Humdinger1

Wonderful to hear from you Keedie; you deserve it all! What a marvellous son you are rearing! Love Humdinger xx 

Keedie

Thank you all for your kind words and welcoming me back. I am very proud of my son, I feel like I've got a more considerate and mature version of my son back, so that's a nice blessing. We need to do his CV this week so that he can start job hunting. He's getting very bored with the summer holidays and so he needs to be occupied and it'll boost his confidence knowing that he's out there earning his own money.

I really did have a good holiday as I didn't really do a lot, but something as simple as being able to just eat made all the difference. My relationship with food hasn't been great since I've become unwell, as it takes so much energy to cook or make something to eat, and we were existing on take aways. So all inclusive made me actually eat, and helped to tone down that constant headache I have, which I came to realise was probably linked to insufficient fuel and sleep.

I've not heard of Club Lloyds @jokono, but I'll check it out. Right now, the Disney+ is a 'freebie' for 3 months by cashing in my reward Tesco Clubcard vouchers whilst they were still 3x value so I don't have to think about paying until December 2023. As I did two rewards so I got a total of 6 months. But I will look at other ways to have entertainment for cheaper, as you don't realise how much all of these subscriptions here and there all add up to! All those £5.99, £7.99 payments can get really pricey. I worked out that at one point, if I add up the cost for the whole year, it was working out to be an average of £94 a month! 😱😱😱 Some of that is shared with my sister, and it also includes my son's gaming passes for EA Access and Playstation+, but it was still a sickening eye opener. I might as well go back to Sky for those prices.

But with taking advantage of offers and saving up to pay things annually instead of monthly I'm able to trim a bit down. So it'll be £68 a month before some of it is split, which is still stupid, but a saving all the same. I need to trim some more fat though. I got Paramount+ for £34.95 for the year as they gave me a half price deal, but when that runs out in July 2024, I won't renew it. My son watches so many different things, on so many streaming platforms, but I don't get much use out of it at all.

Because I'm trimming down what I will be paying for entertainment wise, but I will be still be sending the same amount of money to my Starling account, I worked out that I can save up for a year's worth of Kindle Unlimited by Christmas this year. That is my main source of entertainment, reading all my books. There's no annual subscription to reduce the cost like there is with Amazon Prime, but at least I'll know it's taken care of. 

The biggest expense that we split is the £32.95 a month for our Apple One family subscription, but this needs to be reduced somehow as we're not making the most of the Apple TV and the Apple Arcade, I honestly don't even know what games it covers and considering I play the same 3/4 games all the time, that is another add on that isn't worth it. The Apple Music and iCloud storage for the 5 of us is good, and I read a lot of articles on News+ that I couldn't enjoy before we switched to Apple One, but I don't like spending the money on it all 😂.

I think my biggest area of my budget that I am hopeless with, is food. I spend so much on food in terms of poor meal planning with groceries, the odd meal deal for lunch, take aways, eating out etc. I need to challenge myself to really cut back there as it's so expensive, and the way I'm managing it all isn't helping me. But I figured, if I can keep my fixed bills at the absolute minimum that I can get them and reduce everyday necessities such as food and travel, I'll have more disposable income to plough into sinking funds and getting on top of things. As at the moment, I am good at saving but I am better at spending 😬. Oh dear...

Keedie

I've paid £300 to Barclaycard as my normal direct debit, so that balance is slowly coming down. I also paid £10 into Mobile Madness with the money my brother owes me. I should be able to pay for Phone A (my handset) by the end of this week so that will be really good. 

Work have confirmed that I drop to half sick pay on 5 September 2023, and that will affect my October 2023 budget as I live on the previous month's income. So having lower phone bills because the phones are paid off will be a good help. 

Need to work out the numbers at some point and do my monthly summary and transfer over the money for August 2023's budget. I worked out that rather than the money just sitting in my Santander account as it's accumulated throughout the month, waiting to go back into Monzo for the following month's budget, it makes more sense to stick it in one of my Chase savings accounts and earn some interest. So that is what I have done this month, and I'll see what I get in interest each month. Every penny counts after all.

I'm in a lot of pain today, so I'll be experiencing life from my flat and doing some Netflix and Chill once I've sorted the finances.

Keedie

My friend owed me £100 and she repaid it in full instead of the instalments we arranged, so I've paid that to the Mobile Madness pot, so I'm now only £2.29 away from clearing Phone A!

This means that it will be all be cleared by September 2023. I was hoping to have a reduced phone bill from October 2023 but expecting to still be clearing the last phone, but this makes it easier as I can reduce the phone bill from £55.91 to £23.04 as that's the current price for both of our line rentals.

I'm looking to move to a different tariff for my son as Sky Mobile have some double data deals at the moment, so when the right one comes along, I'll drop the cost of his line rental from £15 a month to around £10-£12 a month. Mine is £8.04 as I have a loyalty discount so I can't get mine any lower.

LittleMissDetermined

The double data deals are good aren’t they? I moved my dad to one of those and it’s fab as the unused data just rolls over. 

Keedie

Yeah they're amazing @LittleMissDetermined, and I use the banked data to top us up if we need it. But mainly, I used it to get a discount on our handsets at the time that we brought them. I saw a triple data deal when we were in Turkey but I couldn't do anything about it (though in hindsight, maybe customer service does work abroad???), so we missed out on that one.

Keedie

July 2023 Financial Summary

Starting Balance = £12,433.25 | Amount Repaid = £505.54 (2.24%) | Closing Balance = £11,927.71
Total Repaid to Date = £10,645.59 (44.92%)

Bank of Mum 3 (school fees)
Starting Balance = £2,850 | Amount Repaid = £100 (3.51% repaid) | Closing Balance = £2,750 | Total Repaid to Date= £2,050 (42.71% repaid)
This continues to tick along at £100 a month repayment and once the mobile phones are done and dusted, all of my spare change, survey money, and monies owed to me and any side hustle money I might be able to get back to earning once I'm well enough, will go into a pot to start saving lump sums to repay my mum. But that's a target for 2024 when I'm back on a normal salary and in a position to try and do some additional work and I've managed to trim some more of my fixed expenses.

Barclaycard
Starting Balance = £8,850 | Amount Repaid = £300 (3.39% repaid) | Closing Balance = £8,550 | Total Repaid to Date = £3,546.23 (29.32% repaid)
I'm still toying with the idea of reducing this direct debit to £250 from September 2023 or October 2023 to get my fixed expenses down whilst I am on half sick pay and when I return to work, I'll be working less hours and the increase in universal credit won't bridge the gap (as that's not really it's intention after all, as it's an income supplement not a replacement of lost income). 

Creation ~ PAID IN FULL!  🎉🎉🎉
Starting Balance = £72.67 | Amount Repaid = £72.67 (100% repaid) | Closing Balance = £0 | Total Repaid to Date = £1,070 (100% repaid)
We finally sleep on mattresses and pillows that I own outright! So glad that the final payment for this has been made and I have been able to cancel this direct debit! Yippeeeeee! 🤗

Sky Mobile
Starting Balance = £660.58 | Amount Repaid = £32.87 (4.98% repaid) | Closing Balance = £627.71 | Total Repaid to Date = £378.32 (34.34% repaid)
My Mobile Madness pot is on the cusp of being completed to pay for Phone A (my handset), so that one will be repaid in full early August 2023 and then the second handset repaid in September 2023. The pot currently stands at £284.55/£286.84 (99.20% debt neutral). Once I've paid off that phone, I will reset the target to match the balance for Phone B (my son's handset). Both phones will be repaid by September 2023, then I need to start a Tech Fund as I have no intention of buying a phone like this again, I'd rather save up for it and buy it outright and get a cheaper deal. And my iPad screen has hairline cracks and is starting to freeze and the home button has gone a bit dodgy and sometimes is a bit non-responsive. So that will all cost at some point. So it'll be good to at least partially if not fully prepared when the time comes.

Debt Free 2023 Target = £6,000
Amount Repaid = £3,945.17/£6,000 (65.75% cleared)

Debt Reflection vs Savings Focus

I can't believe that I'm 65.75% of the way to my target of paying £6,000 off my debts for this year! Definitely ahead of the game in terms of being just over halfway through 2023. As my income reduces at the beginning of September 2023 when I go onto half sick pay and my wages when I return to work will still be lower as I will be doing less hours than I do now, I've decided to make savings my reducing my fixed expenses my main focus. This will allow me to have more disposable income to meet the rising costs and expenses once my son starts college and my income takes a nosedive.

I have kind of abandoned my original savings plan as there isn't really anything left over to save at the moment and the summer holidays are never cheap. Although considering the weather is very much like late autumn, calling it the 'summer' holidays is a bit of a stretch to be fair 😂. But in all seriousness, I'm focussing on 2/3 of my savings targets for the rest of 2023.

1. Emergency Fund = £625/£1,000 (62.50% saved) ~ target date of 31 December 2023
I no longer pay £100 a month into account after July 2023, as I am shaving my outgoings where possible and so from August 2023, this will be £75 a month. But I will still reach the £1,000 target in December 2023. It's more manageable this way, and I still reach the target. From January 2024, I will reduce the amount I pay into my emergency fund to £25 a month, as I will still keep it going whilst I work on my second goal.

2. Build a Buffer = £79.10/£500 (15.82% saved) ~ target date of 30 June 2024 
Once my emergency fund reaches £1,000 in December 2023, I will start paying £50 a month into my buffer account so that I can reach the £500 by June 2024. Once this is in place and the emergency fund is still incrementally building, I'll be able to work on my third goal.

3. Freely Debt Saving = £0/£500 (0% saved) ~ target date of 31 December 2024
So, this one got relegated to the bottom priority. I more or less drained this fund so that I could pay off the Creation, and the rest went into the emergency fund make it a rounded number and the last bit went into the Mobile Madness pot. I'm not going to bother with this for now as a focussed target, any surplus that I may happen to have, will go into this pot but I don't anticipate that it will be more than a few pounds total between now and December 2023, so I will focus on this for 2024.

I'm in a much better position than I was a year ago, as I have cleared £10,645.59 in debt and this month saw me break into another £1k barrier as my total debt is now £11,927.71. So when I feel frustrated that I have debts etc, I just keep trying to focus on getting rid of £1k increments at a time...