Kezzy's debt journey 2024

kezzygirl

Oops, I will just add that I have renewed our buildings and contents insurance for just under £200 this year. Paid for by the savings pots! 
This means a while new pot for the insurance over the next year, which feels nice. 

Also, sadly our 12 year old cat has been diagnosed with heart failure and so there may be a vets bill in coming weeks/months when the time is right. She won't take medication and we haven't had any investigations for her but her clinical symptoms and the presence of a heart murmur and rapid heart rate all point to heart failure. We are keeping her as comfortable as possible for now, while she is not in distress. 

The universe has a perverse way of testing us currently. I'm hopeful the coming months and the rest of this year will be better.

kezzygirl

Good evening, I did type out a big post last week, but accidently hit the 'back' button and deleted it all  

Things are looking up. Dh has been back to work for two weeks, and this was paid in mays pay which bumped the wage up a bit. My basic wage was not too bad- sufficient to cover bills and have some left over- which was a relief. 

I've sorted dh's motorbike insurance and got it £80 cheaper than his renewal. I went via topcashback which will give me a percentage back. It hasn't tracked the amount just yet but I'm keeping an eye. 

Dh received his shares, which were just over 3k. We go on holiday again in 2 weeks and so this will go to holiday spends and car hire. I also paid off his phone contract (only £29) and switched him to a sim only deal with lebara for just £1.90 a month for five months, then it's a fiver! My phone contract too is due for renewal in September, so I will switch to a cheap sim- this will give us some extra cash to put off the bills. 

I have started growing a few veg- I have some cos lettuce that I got from a plant sale for £2 for 6 plants. I have managed to trim the leaves off today so this was eaten for dinner tonight and some has also gone into dh's salad for lunch tomorrow. I'm growing tomatoes also and strawberries! Also got these cheap from the plant sale. The front of our house is a real sun trap, so ideal for growing.

So, on to money. We seem to have developed a bit of a habit of just spending recklessly the excess remaining in our banks. I saw someone else's diary and it's titled 'giving every pound a job' which is REALLY what I need to do. Maybe develop a budget for spends/treats etc as we don't have a budget for that? That said, this month has been a bit tight so maybe il put this in for next month. 

I've rounded down all of the credit cards, which has pleased me greatly. Also, paid an extra £100 off the mortgage this month..

Barclaycard £6000 total (£3800 is ours)
Virgin £3900
Sainsburys- paid off and closed  
Natwest £6550
Novuna £9959 ish (can't log in to account, need to call them). 

£2500 in savings though this will reduce in a couple of weeks. 

One habit I have picked up again is buying scratchcards in store. I think partially I am buying them because I've been feeling low but also in the hope I get the big win and can clear our debts and not have to work so hard. I spent £20 on them the other day, won £7 and bought more with that, then won nothing. I need to nip that in the bud again, it just makes me feel rubbish and wasteful. 
I still have the ban with gamstop thankfully because I think I would've done some serious damage to my bank account. 

I have a day off tomorrow and plan to potter at home, relaxing. I love days to myself have a good week.

peb

Have a good day to yourself, I'm glad your DH is managing to work .

And yes stop the scratch card habit!

kezzygirl

peb said:

Have a good day to yourself, I'm glad your DH is managing to work .

And yes stop the scratch card habit!

Thanks, peb. I'm addicted to the win. Need to stop as I'm easily spending £50 a week

kezzygirl

Pre-payday update, we were due to go away abroad this past week but have had to cancel due to hubby having tests at hospital and feeling unwell the last couple of weeks to the extent he has reduced his hours at work for now. Luckily, I worked an overtime shift last month so this will increase my pay this month. We have dipped into the savings with days out this week, plus it was my birthday so extra spending was done. 

I'm going to increase the amount of budget for the food shopping, I've noticed we are spending about £120 a week for three adults and our hungry 15 year old son and so from this month il allocate more money for food everything is so costly, and it's not that we are buying extravagant things, it's crazy! We cook from scratch, but find that mid week our fresh supplies are non-existant and the fridge is bare. Hubby is having salad daily for work and our son has sausage rolls for snacks, I've also been buying precooked pastry slices for him. He will not eat anything veg related, so it's a case of either buying the stuff so he doesn't go hungry, or letting him starve. 

So, new food budget: £550 a month to include dog and cat food, toiletries etc. 
This month I am also going to allocate spending money for myself and hubby as I'm finding that after bills are paid, I have money left over and it slowly dwindles on rubbish until I have no money and then have to dip into savings. Hopefully with the new food budget I won't need to use savings(!)

I have started to try and grow my own tomatoes, strawberries and lettuce. I have eaten three of the lettuces so far and they are sprouting new leaves!! I have yet to see any tomatoes or strawbs but there is time yet. 

My focus for now is going to be to pay down barclaycard. I've worked out that I need to pay £550 a month for the next 6 mths to clear it- gulp. That is a lot of money, il be so glad when I get rid of this debt and all our money is ours. Will update after payday

kezzygirl

Morning, here we are almost at the end of August, can't believe how fast this year is going. I looked back at my first post, which I couldn't believe was posted 8 months ago! I felt the same sense of dread reading the level of debt we have, but we have made lots of progress on that front. Hubby is back working full time hours, he has had a switch of medication which we think was causing his problems but over the last week since the switch he is feeling a bit better and his blood pressure and pulse are recovering. We cancelled my birthday trip in June, bit gutted as insurance took two excesses off the amount, totalling 300quid. Ended up with £113 refund of which we paid £55 to the gp for a few sentences on a 'medical report'and so we ended up about £355 down on cancelling the flights which were only £430 in the first place. Grrr. 

We are on annual leave next week and I've been trying to resist the urge to shove a last minute holiday on the credit card as we need a break. Looking at the weather in menorca etc currently I'm pleased we haven't booked! So we plan to have a chilled week, we won tickets to an outdoor cinema evening showing of pretty woman on Sunday so we will take a picnic with us to save spending on the food stalls.  There are some free things to do locally-id like to visit the horse sanctuary and we can go out on the motorbike too. 

Anyway, back to money. I am going to redo my soa at some point as my mobile contract has expired and I've switched to a sim only deal with lebara for £2  a month we do have some big expenses coming up next month-my mot and insurance and the motorbike mot. We have some money saved in our sinking funds to cover this (hopefully!) Otherwise we will have to use our wages. 

Debt currently looks like this: 
Barclaycard 0% until 3rd December £2350owed!! Plus £1050 from our daughter. I've been paying a lot of money to this over last few mths to make sure it's cleared by December. 

Virgin 0% til Jan 25 £3820

Natwest 0% til March 25 £6400

Novuna loan April 2027 settlement figure sits at £8371

Going to have to balance transfer the virgin and natwest soon as we won't be able to pay them off. I've seen a few deals- 0% fee and 0% for 15mth balance transfer card which hubby is eligible for. I can transfer virgin to that. Natwest I plan to bt to santander interest free for 15mths with £3 charge a month. Just need to decide when to do it but also worried the offer will expire so might do it sooner rather than later. 

Il update my soa and post later, have a good day x

Sarahwithlove

I'd definitely look at giving yourself and hubby a spending allowance for the month and then pay the rest off your cards at beginning of the month so you aren't tempted to spend it on rubbish such as scratchcards. It's what I do as I would be same. It then makes you think about what you are spending your money on as it doesn't stretch very far. 

Aimingforthegoodlife

Glad to read that DH is feeling better and back to full time work, that will definitely help with the budgeting. I have heard teenage boys can eat and eat, that is hard to budget for! Agree that increasing that budget makes sense. BTs all sound well thought out and will make a huge difference going forward, I am sure that Martin used to call it 'tarting' the credit card, so just moving from deal to deal!haha. 

kezzygirl

Aimingforthegoodlife said:

Glad to read that DH is feeling better and back to full time work, that will definitely help with the budgeting. I have heard teenage boys can eat and eat, that is hard to budget for! Agree that increasing that budget makes sense. BTs all sound well thought out and will make a huge difference going forward, I am sure that Martin used to call it 'tarting' the credit card, so just moving from deal to deal!haha. 

Yes! I've been tarting for years haha but I need to get them paid so our money is OUR money. I'm at work today but then off for a week which will be bliss. Will update soa 

kezzygirl

Good morning! I've done some tarting this morning. Approved for the natwest 0% for 13mth balance transfer card at zero fee 10k limit.
I have transferred over:
Virgin @ £3820
Barclaycard @ £3400 (1k of which is our daughters)
I am going to continue paying at the rate I was on the barclaycard to ensure the balance for what I've transferred is cleared by December, as was my plan for the barclaycard. 

This leaves me with an 11k limit on barclaycard and an offer of 3.5% money transfer, for which I'm considering transferring £8400, which is the balance of the novuna loan. The 3.5% fee is half the interest rate of the loan and will save us about £700 than if we continued at the duration of the loan until April 2027. Having said that, the barclaycard money transfer rate is only 0% until May 2026- 11 months short of loan duration. If we continue to pay £275 a month to barclaycard (the amount we were paying for the loan) this will leave us a deficit of about 3k by the time barclaycard expires, but I'm sure we can transfer that elsewhere or have it paid off by the time the deal expires. 

Does this sound like a good idea? It seems to make sense to me.