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LouisaAlmighty

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foxgloves

Good luck @LouisaAlmighty - You are on a good salary & with plenty of planning, I'm sure you will be able to make good inroads into your debts. We didn't deicide to tackle ours until we were in our early 40s, so I was living beyond my means from the age of 19, when I was a student & finally paid off the last chunk of our £35K debt at the age of 46! Yes, you will definitely pay it back quicker if you make draconian lifestyle changes, but it is actually surprising how much you can free up for extra debt-repayment simply by going through all your outgoings & really looking at little regular money-leakages which it wouldn't be much of an impact to cut down. 
Working out a monthly budget which works for you is the single most important thing you can do. Challenge everything. Do you already meal plan? That was a big saving for us. Can you believe that even with 15% (as of today) food inflation, we are still spending up to £50 less each week on food than we did in the early 2000's when we were still very spendy. That's the difference a budget makes. Do you find yourself doing top-up shops? They can be a terrible money-leaker....go in for milk & potatoes, come out with £30 worth of stuff. Do you have a regular coffee shop habit which could be not cut out, but cut down? Every city centre trip for us used to involve coffee & a scone/cake, then lunch, etc.....it adds up over a month. Do you batch cook? Make full use of your freezer? Do you shop around for the best prices? Do you have subscriptions for stuff you wouldn't really miss if it went? Basically, it comes down to a case of every £ saved is an extra £ you can throw at your debts. We didn't give up all life's pleasures & live a hair shirt existence, far from it, but I learned to budget & practised until I got it right - it took about 3 attempts to get a system which really worked for us - & still does. And we both built on the excellent planning skills we'd always used in our professional capacity at work by transferring the same eye for detail to running our household budget.
Saving for things we can all see coming is also key. I used to spend every January & February dreading that my cards might be stopped at the till or cashpoint when I was out shopping because of insufficient funds. Yest, as Martin Lewis always says, Christmas is a fixed date in the calendar.....literally the same day every year. We also started saving into a Holiday Pot, as it seemed irresponsible to be putting holidays on credit when we already had a lot of debt.
It can be done. You may well find as we did, that not spending money becomes motivating in itself, & I can tell you that there is no feeling like making that very last payment, meaning that your income is now your own.
Good luck!
F
P.S Do have a think about use of BNPL methods such as Kl*na, which are terribly tempting. I personally wouldn't ever use these unless the item I was buying was absolutely essential (i.e My only pair of winter boots had an unrepairable hole in the sole) & I had no means whatsoever of saving to buy a new pair outright. 

Makingabobor2

Good luck. With a salary like that, I would think you can easily sort your debts out. When we first started on our DMP journey, we had £57K  debts and our total combined salaries were no where near yours (Think we were on about £33K between us then), now we are on even less as I no longer work. But with careful planning for shopping & cooking, giving up non essential luxuries etc, we are making it work, and the good thing is once you realise how good it is to save and only spend what you actually have and not use cards or loans etc, you actually find that life is better.  I will follow your journey with interest and cheer you on. 

Doris17

Good luck on your journey.

foxgloves

LouisaAlmighty - I think it's just looking like a case of spending more than you earn, which was very much how my debt accumulated. It's so easy to borrow, especially when you're on a good income, but the harsh truth is that your income is your money. That's the amount you have to spend. There isn't any more. If you need to put it on a credit card, extend or take out a loan or overdraft, that's not your money, that's somebody else's, so you can't afford whatever it is. As simple as this sounds, it actually came as quite a revelation to me. I think there are exceptions.....i.e mortgage to buy a house (which is generally a long-term asset) & a reliable but affordable car for getting to work. I would probably also be prepared to borrow for re-training in a different profession if it would pay for itself in enhanced salary or job satisfaction. With hindsight, as a reformed over- spender, I wouldn't use credit again for anything else. When you pay off the last chunk of debt & your salary becomes your own.....it's a fab feeling & I find myself wanting everyone to experience it.
F

enthusiasticsaver

If you are serious about reducing the debt then a budget is a good start. Whilst I appreciate you enjoy travelling, socialising and generally spending outside of a budget you have got to almost £24k debt in spite of a good salary and presumably reasonable living costs if you live in the North rather than the more expensive South. That means you have been over spending by quite some way although I note the problems you had with your ex. 

As a first step I would work out actually how much you are spending on food, eating out and takeaways, holidays and clothes etc as well as making sure your bills are as low as they could be. You need some emergency savings especially if you have a pet and a car and start up some savings pots for holidays, Christmas, pet etc. Maybe fill out an soa to help you see exactly where your money is going. 

http://www.stoozing.com/soa.php