Clearing my debt after 25 years

Jrcoal5

I’m quite new to the forums and not to sure I will have done this right but I wanted to start a diary because I need some forums friends to keep me motivated. 

My story is a long one! We all have reasons why we ended up with debts, mine has just been some bad luck and some stupid choices! I won’t bore you all with those details.

over the years me and my husband (3 kids) have struggled with paying our bills and our mounting debts, at its highest we owed £50,000 with nothing to show for it. Slowly we have paid a lot of this off, changed our spending habits and lifestyle, the kids have grown (26, 20 and 16) and we seem to have things in hand at last!

At the time of posting this diary we now owe:
£2280 to our sofa 0% finance 26 payments of £87 to go
£3072 to MBNA credit card 0% cc3

£2149 to Virgin credit card 0% cc2
£0 to Halifax cc1

Total debt £7501

We have £8300 in savings currently which I realise could pay off the debt but then I feel that leaves me with no money incase of emergency’s and this scares me more than anything else because we might end up back where we where before! 

We have 2 decent cars 🚗 (can’t manage with one we live rural and have tried but work patterns don’t work and bus services terrible here) both paid for in cash nothing oweing on these.

We also have a holiday booked in August which I’m currently saving to pay for.

The big reason I need rid of this debt now is because we want to move house, the house opposite my parents is going to come available at the end of this year early next year and I have never wanted to move but I really want this house! 

My husband works 56 hours a week to bring in as much as possible and I currently work 22 but looking at other jobs/ agency work to increase income. 

I hope you’ll come along with me on the final leg of my debt free journey and share you thoughts, tips and your journey with me 

love J

vampirotoothus

Welcome I am the same as you. I would cling onto those savings and just continue to pay the debts down as you have been doing. A new home will be exciting, so try and work out what the costs will be and get that saved to. Lots of lenders will let you move with debt, so be sure to find out what's on offer, before you pay them off and lose your savings. Good luck V x

Jrcoal5

vampirotoothus said:

Welcome I am the same as you. I would cling onto those savings and just continue to pay the debts down as you have been doing. A new home will be exciting, so try and work out what the costs will be and get that saved to. Lots of lenders will let you move with debt, so be sure to find out what's on offer, before you pay them off and lose your savings. Good luck V x

Thank you so much! I’d rather not take the debts with us but like you say I need to factor in the costs involved with moving, we have a good amount of equity in this house so we have a good deposit at least, I’ll just be chipping away and trying my best with it all!

Jrcoal5

Pay day at last! And as soon as it’s in the bank it’s shared out across various pots! These are £580 to the food/fuel/gas and electric account, £50 to Christmas savings, £400 to holiday savings, £200 to the account I save for car maintenance/birthdays/dogs jabs/emergency stuff, and £50 paid off Halifax Cc2 and that’s it, my husband is weekly paid and we use his money to pay the actual bills and spending money for the month off to do a bit of tea its curry tonight x

outoftheviciouscircle

Good luck with your journey. Wishing you the best of luck.

When are you thinking of putting your house on the market? I don't know about your area but houses on my estate used to sell within a week. Now they are reducing the price after about 3 months and still taking a while to sell. Maybe worth speaking to estate agents now to get an expert opinion.

Jrcoal5

outoftheviciouscircle said:

Good luck with your journey. Wishing you the best of luck.

When are you thinking of putting your house on the market? I don't know about your area but houses on my estate used to sell within a week. Now they are reducing the price after about 3 months and still taking a while to sell. Maybe worth speaking to estate agents now to get an expert opinion.

Hello and thank you for popping in, I am in the fortunate position in this instance to actually be an estate agent, the housing market has been unbelievable since we came back to work after lock down right up until the budget last year which set the mortgage market into turmoil and the interest rate rises have had an effect, here its still busier than a normal market but nothing like it was, we are seeing price reductions, lower offers and properties taking longer to sell again.  With this in mind and because I am very aware of what can go wrong mixed with the fact we only want this one house and do not want to risk missing out we intend to put ours on the market in 2 weeks, just have a couple of outside jobs to do first.  If we are lucky enough to sell quickly we will then stay with my parents until the one we want are ready (having refurb and extension on their new home before selling current home) and the owners expect that to be around December/January time.  It will be a squeeze but we will make it work and they are happy to have us.  Im actually dreading the sale process, financially we have the option to put ours on a buy to let and rent it so thats an option if we cant sell, its not something I am fully comfortable with hence trying to sell first. 

Jrcoal5

My payment for day is £1 to cc 2 and £1 to my sealed tin which is savings for decorating, off to work today have 4 days to go then 9 days off 😊 

Jrcoal5

so todays payments are £1 to PAD account which I will then pay off debts once it gets to £10 and £43 to next as I ordered a curtain pole so this will pay this off, had a chat with Mr and think we should pay the sofa off first probably seems an odd thing to do really as it’s 0% finance (all debt is 0%) but it’s the biggest payment a month and if we end up having to move with some of the debt for initial budgeting reasons I would rather be left with the lowest minimum payment a month debt as can then over pay hope that makes sense, sometimes I do very odd things that make no sense to anyone but me, I run a tight budget now and I’d rather keep my bills as low as possible for those months when something else crops up 
have a lovely Sunday 
J

Jrcoal5

It’s child benefit day today so £87 in and added to and then £110 transferred to the Christmas savings pot, and then the normal DD to CC2 £22.75 gone out today it’s a beautiful sunny day here and off to work I go, could of done with another hour in bed!

Jrcoal5

small pad today of £1.35 Mr J gets paid Thursday so hope to be able to pay something more off then although youngest has prom trials this week spray tan make up and dress alteration so that will be eating into our weekly budget, whoever decided a prom in year 11 was a good idea obviously was not trying to clear their debts in 9 months!

Jrcoal5

Well this weeks not going to well on the debt payment from only managed 2 small PADs so far, vets bill yesterday for annual jabs was £80 Mr J has picked up overtime tonight so that will bring in extra for debt payments in 2 weeks time.  Oh and Happy Easter to those who celebrate xx