*sigh* this is still taking a while, but moving forward (slowly!)

ohdearhowdidthathappen

Hi EH, Debs, Lucielle and LG
I’m going well, been a busy few months, I’ll do a good old catch up post soon (I’m probably over-egging it a bit, but it’s seemed busy!)

Diary of a CEO is one I listen to too! Although must admit I cherry pick which ones as some of the guests are a bit wacky.
I like Dave Ramsey’s one, because I’m very good at knowing what the advice will be (but very bad at following it myself!) 
I’m still sticking to virtually booze free lifestyle, so I listen to some sober podcasts too.

Ive seen clips of Therapy Crouch on insta and it looks like it’d be funny. Might give that one a go

savingholmes

Nice to see you back. All the best!

ohdearhowdidthathappen

Hi SH! Hope all well with you 

savingholmes

Thanks for visiting my diary. Looking forward to a more detailed update from you.

ohdearhowdidthathappen

Busy Easter hols!

So (belated) promised update....

Home:  can't remember how much I mentioned on here, but we sold our house last year and then the buyer pulled out the day before exchange.  We ended up £3k out of pocket, very irritating.  Staying put for now, but very itchy feet!  We're dithering over staying local or moving away.

Kids:  All doing well, DD1 is enjoying her apprenticeship and loving earning, DS1 has an apprenticeship lined up for September in the techy field he's interested in.  Other 3 are all doing well at school etc.  More importantly, they all seem happy and major dramas for several months.

Health:  still losing and putting on the same 7lb regularly, trying to hit my daily step count and incorporate more exercise into my life.  Majorly cut back on alcohol, only drink when socialising (rarely) and never in the house.

Work:  I'm back working 2 days in the NHS and then 2 days agency.  Have been doing this for several months and is giving me a good balance of salary vs flexibility.

dawnybabes

I think most of us are putting and taking off the same 7lbs 🤣🤣🤣

ohdearhowdidthathappen

Money:  mixed bag here.

About a month ago, we had a really big conversation about money again.  We're both pretty similar in that we'll be on it for a while and then our motivation slips and old habits sneak in.  We'd run up little balances in several places and still weren't saving and this was despite us both having increases in wages (although some of that was swallowed up by cost of living increases!)
We'd been giving ourselves personal spend money and DH had taken out 2x 0% CCs to buy some stuff he wanted, he was clearing these out of his personal spends.  But that meant he was tight on personal cash each month.  While we're sorting ourselves out again, personal spends are frozen and the cards are included in our debt snowball below.

I won't do a full SOA, but the basics are:

DH wage =  £5275
My NHS wage for 15 hours pw = £1429
My agency shifts for 15 hours pw = £1800 
Total = £8.5k

Outgoings = £5832.  These are what we're working off now, after our latest conversation and renewed drive.
Our mortgage is now £2100 due to our fixed rate ending.

Cars:  our previous lease ended and we got a loan to get a reasonable used 7 seater, this is £290 a month over 60 months.  We still have the other car on PCP, £210 a month... due to finish March 2026, but there's a balloon payment.   DH still dithering about getting rid of this 2nd car.  By the time we've paid everything else off, we need to make a decision on this.

So we should have £1800 to throw at clearing debts and saving our emergency fund.

I'll map our finances against DR steps and show what we've done so far over the last month:

BS1 -
£1000 emergency fund saved - done

BS 2 - 
£200 Next - paid
£600 student loan (this has been hanging around for 20 year!) - paid
£600 Paypal - paid
£1500 CC1 - DHs, should be paid out of April salary
£3000 CC2 - DHs, aiming to clear May and June salary
£15000 car loan 1 - this is the 7 seater that we want to pay off and keep
£15000 car loan 2 - PCP, if we sold this, we'd have £4k 'equity' which we could put towards car loan 1.
So £34500 outstanding debt, although £30000 is in cars that are worth more than the loans

BS 3 -
we need to save £10000-20000 depending on how much of a cushion we want

BS 4 -
we kind of do this, NHS take 10% of my salary and contribute 20%
DH contributes 8% and his company matches 

BS5,6 and 7 are distant dreams

I've picked up the 4th day of work since restarting on this to give us a bigger spade for digging out.  Our current DFD if throwing £1000 extra at it is Feb 2026, if we can do £1500 it's September 2025 which sounds much better. If we got rid of the second car, we could be done by January 2025. 
None of these figures include DH bonus, which is usually £7-10000 after deductions and is paid in March.

My ideal would be to get rid of the 2nd car, throw all our spare money at debt to have it cleared by early next year and then use DH bonus to pretty much complete our initial FFEF.  But need to get DH on board!

lucielle

Could you sell the second car, clear the debts and then buy the second car (or similar back) with savings?  It might work out that you don’t need the second car…..
L

savingholmes

Thanks for the update. What a pain on the house sale falling through last year. 

Good you have a plan to clear debts again. Good you both are doing pensions. Having a decent EF is what I'd want - given the disparity between your income and DH's.

ohdearhowdidthathappen

Thanks L and SH

We are thinking of selling the second car, the issue is we do sometimes use both cars at the same time.  Not often though.  Plus, hospital parking is rubbish so I often use the little car for work.  I often shoe horn it into tiny spaces that would not be possible in the fat 7 seater.  It would definitely speed up the process though.

Initially, we're going to aim to save £10k for the EF, but £20k would definitely be the plan long term.  Both DH and I have 3 month notice periods and our company sick policies are excellent.  But yes, the discrepancy means we do need a nice fund there.