Divorce debt be gone!

Sarahwithlove

Good luck in 2026, good to be ending 2025 under 10k mark 

biggerpickle

Argh, in among all the other bills and thoughts of money for the start of 2026 etc, totally forgot about the £326 professional subscriptions due on 1st Jan . I've just paid £100 off it, last year I definitely paid in 3 installments even though officially that option doesn't exist. What I might do later this year is make advance payments in Nov & Dec if I can.

Anyway, that stuffs up the £10k debt barrier. Again. 

biggerpickle

My electric tariff is up mid-Feb - the eco in me wants to stay with the 100% green supplier I currently have but there's another company coming up cheaper with bill per use energy rather than the flat monthly all year DD. Am trying to decide if this is a good idea or not, in the summer my bills are £30/40pm so this could free up debt cash this year.

biggerpickle

I had a thought this morning in analysing my debt. The debt started off as divorce bills and moving but has now morphed into overspending, compensating the teenmonsters with extra hols and not being secure enough to say no to things while also having the same social life I had with the cushion of another (let's face it, massive) income in the house. Oh and fixing the car (which started first time earlier, despite the snow and temperature - yay for new battery). Anyway my thought, as things have been shuffled round on to various balance transfer cards, was to think I wonder what I have actually paid off and what it is that's left to pay.

The answer is I am about 12 months behind myself - the payments made to date take me back to spend 343 days ago.  Target for the next few months is to try and reduce that - going to be not a lot of movement for a while as Jan last year I booked flights for 2 trips (one solo, one me & teens in the summer hols) which were over a grand. Let's see how this works out monitoring!

Humdinger1

Well done @biggerpickle for grasping the nettle! I well remember the shock of parting from my first husband.  But you are listening to your authentic inner voice and will triumph.   Love Humdinger xx 

beanielou

It’s a real biggie going from two incomes to one. I took years to recover and stop over spending. 

Now I’m debt free apart from a home improvement loan & have no mortgage. 

All thanks to MSE. 

biggerpickle

More spreadsheeting tells me it's going to take me 18 months to pay this off. I also know there will be spend in the meantime that will go on my overseas card so the tail chasing will continue in all this time and more. This feels like both a good and bad start to the year.

biggerpickle

Had a retail accident today - a basket with a present for me from me for having such a rubbish Christmas was purchased. It'd been in a basket since Boxing Day and had a sale on a sale on a wait discount. Given the sum total of my actual Christmas presents from everyone else was about 50 quid at the outside, 70 quid to me seems to reasonable. I will have this as a momento of why I matter to myself and will not fret too much about not paying this off until spring 2027.

biggerpickle

Having another thought - what do folks think? 

The two balance transfer cards I have were 13 & 14 month  / no fee BT cards but won't be paid off before the 0% expires on both this summer which means am needing to pay as much as I can but this £4/500+ pm is just too much as I then leave myself short and need to use the other card I have which is 24+% interest. I think I need to bite the bullet and pay a fee to BT for 30 months (some long ones in this weeks email) and set a lower payment each month so I can have more disposable cash & scope to build up an emergency fund while still having 0% cards. It almost makes sense, no?

joedenise

It makes more sense than using a 24+% CC!  As long as you can be sure that once you transfer you won't use the other CC then it seems worthwhile.  Only you know if the extra this frees up will be enough for you to avoid using the other card.