Debt free and staying that way while I re-evaluate life and keep blood sugar levels down

Humdinger1

Well dear debt-free aficionados, after reading and commenting on so many diaries on this board, I am launching myself into the abyss! Although debt-free now, you do all feel like my tribe because over 3-5 years several years ago, I did manage to.pay off £140k.  Yup, that's right; no need to clean your specs though please feel free to shake your heads in sheer disbelief at the scale of my folly.  All I can say is: that was the size of the lesson I needed.  Drawing on the example of @foxgloves, I will intersperse this diary with horrifying tales of previous spendiness, which may politely be described as magical thinking; or putting it another way, delusions of grandeur; or possibly being so far up my own j*cksie that it's a wonder I found my way out without the help of mountain rescue.  I will be back shortly with further and better particulars but just wanted to make a start.  Thanks to all readers/commentors and a happy new year to us all! Love Humdinger xx 

Humdinger1

So these days, I have no debt and am mortgage-free.  I have various emergency funds.  So why am I posting? I work via my own limited company; projects from my major and most lucrative client have dried up since last April.  I have survived on a side-gig which is fascinating but poorly paid.  While I think about how to develop my business, I have been putting skills learned in paying off colossal debt to good use.  I no longer spend money before it's in the bank and have trimmed spending to the bone, apart from good (mostly organic) food.  Still keeping to £300 per month for DH and myself, more when DD is home from uni.  Have saved too from what I would previously have viewed as an unsustainable pittance but now take pride in managing.  I am so grateful that I had my LBM while I could pay off the debt.

Blackcats

A lovely new diary.  Looking forward to reading about your previous speediness (I can safely say that I will have done many of the things you did) and also hearing about your frugal ways.
£140,000 is quite an amount - the accumulation but particularly paying that amount off - amazing achievement.

Four_Seasons

Hi Humdinger looking forward to following your new diary.

CRANKY40

How lovely to see you posting in a diary of your own. 

enthusiasticsaver

Great achievement on paying off so much @Humdinger1 and to staying debt free and mortgage free. 

Look forward to following your diary. 

Humdinger1

Thanks everyone! So, bad habits started to form in earnest in my 30s (I'm now 58) when I was in event sales at a high level.  Toxic positivity is perhaps one way to describe the mindset and overall culture; the whole set-up incentivised the belief that if you wanted something enough, you'd attract it.  I know, delusional....but for a while at least, that's how it worked.   I got out of that particular company but stayed in the sector.   I was married at the time to my first husband who was deeply insecure; he wanted to give the impression of all-round prosperity while fretting about what everyone thought didn't make for a healthy situation.  I wasn't blameless though, far from it.  One example of lunacy which I shudder to remember now is not using repaid work expenses to clear my credit card.  I ran up 20k on credit cards not once, not twice but three times! Had the money reimbursed but it just sat there in my current account while I paid who knows how much in interest...gothic.  Now, I don't buy anything on credit unless I know that I can clear it at the end of the month.   At the moment, I'm paying myself £800 per month while I work out next steps.  Not ready to retire or work full time as want to fit exercise (I'm on the cusp of reversing type 2 diabetes) and fun into every day but do want to earn more.  Onwards and upwards love Humdinger xx 

foxgloves

Hi Humdinger1 - Great to see you've started a diary. We all share & learn from each other on here & you have clearly got an epic debt-busting saga to tell, having managed to clear such a high proportion of debt. As @Blackcats said, I'm sure I will have engaged in much of the same cash-spraying activity back in the day, despite working in a very different sector. It is interesting to note that you & I are the same age.....I think it would be very interesting to do a study on the trajectory of the personal finances of people born in the mid-1960s. My theory (which may be rubbish, but bear with me.....) is that we were born to parents who lived through the war as children, & very much in the shadow of wartime austerity afterwards, in the 1950s. So many of us probably had parents who were pretty careful, didn't use credit (mine had a mortgage & one car loan that I know of in their entire lives) & believed in saving for things. My Mum & Nana were very scathing about buying things on the 'never-never', when people would end up still paying for stuff which would already be nearly worn out. Now, we were a middle-class family & I didn't go without anything, but that post-war, savings good, credit bad, living withing one's means culture was very much in evidence. So given that background culture, us 1960s-born teens go off to university or whatever in the 1980s, & feel we have been let off the leash financially.........& that coincides with the start of the credit boom. An overdraft at first for me (one which lasted over 23 years), then a loan, then came the credit card, the car finance........the amount one could borrow if in full time employment seemed limitless. It felt modern, the solution to so many things, very different to the attitude to money my parents had grown up with. I'd love to know whether there is a correlation between poor money control & being born in the 1960s. Maybe every decade has its own debt-trapping - perhaps those born in the 1970s & 80s borrowed more than us because we had already laid the path for them, normalised consumer debt, I don't know. For younger generations, there is a very real problem of needing two incomes to facilitate paying a mortgage or uncontrolled private rentals - that doesn't make debt any better or desirable, & it doesn't mean that people don't still waste money, but I can understand how difficulties could soon arise having lost an income when two are required to pay the sort of monthly rents or mortgage payments I certainly never had to pay.
There is probably a strong element of confirmatory bias in my theory, but I regularly read past spendy/debt tales on these forums, think "Oh my goodness, that was exactly me!", then discover the writer is of a very similar age. 
Anyway, I shall enjoy reading your money-wise diary, @Humdinger1.
F x

jwil

Happy new diary

Sunshine_girl2

foxgloves said:

Hi Humdinger1 - Great to see you've started a diary. We all share & learn from each other on here & you have clearly got an epic debt-busting saga to tell, having managed to clear such a high proportion of debt. As @Blackcats said, I'm sure I will have engaged in much of the same cash-spraying activity back in the day, despite working in a very different sector. It is interesting to note that you & I are the same age.....I think it would be very interesting to do a study on the trajectory of the personal finances of people born in the mid-1960s. My theory (which may be rubbish, but bear with me.....) is that we were born to parents who lived through the war as children, & very much in the shadow of wartime austerity afterwards, in the 1950s. So many of us probably had parents who were pretty careful, didn't use credit (mine had a mortgage & one car loan that I know of in their entire lives) & believed in saving for things. My Mum & Nana were very scathing about buying things on the 'never-never', when people would end up still paying for stuff which would already be nearly worn out. Now, we were a middle-class family & I didn't go without anything, but that post-war, savings good, credit bad, living withing one's means culture was very much in evidence. So given that background culture, us 1960s-born teens go off to university or whatever in the 1980s, & feel we have been let off the leash financially.........& that coincides with the start of the credit boom. An overdraft at first for me (one which lasted over 23 years), then a loan, then came the credit card, the car finance........the amount one could borrow if in full time employment seemed limitless. It felt modern, the solution to so many things, very different to the attitude to money my parents had grown up with. I'd love to know whether there is a correlation between poor money control & being born in the 1960s. Maybe every decade has its own debt-trapping - perhaps those born in the 1970s & 80s borrowed more than us because we had already laid the path for them, normalised consumer debt, I don't know. For younger generations, there is a very real problem of needing two incomes to facilitate paying a mortgage or uncontrolled private rentals - that doesn't make debt any better or desirable, & it doesn't mean that people don't still waste money, but I can understand how difficulties could soon arise having lost an income when two are required to pay the sort of monthly rents or mortgage payments I certainly never had to pay.
There is probably a strong element of confirmatory bias in my theory, but I regularly read past spendy/debt tales on these forums, think "Oh my goodness, that was exactly me!", then discover the writer is of a very similar age. 
Anyway, I shall enjoy reading your money-wise diary, @Humdinger1.
F x

Oh gosh foxgloves I think you are spot on. 
Humdingef lovely to see your own diary , will be following . 

Seasidegal58

Hi @Humdinger1 - have subscribed and looking forward to reading your diary!😀👍