Divorce debt be gone!

biggerpickle

Had a rethink about the anticipated mortgage reduction and have just increased my £50 overpayment standing order to £75 from September. If this is comfortable, makes remortgaging to a shorter term much easier.

biggerpickle

Ups and down with money this month: hefty spend last weekend (family birthday socialising!) so have had to dip into savings - £55 so far but the last few months have been 4 or 5 times that so definite progress. No spend weekend now (catch up on chores!) and then child benefit comes in on Monday which should just about see me through the bills and commuting this week and then tis pay day on Friday. I'd hoped to get back on track in August and I've just about done it so go me!

Aimingforthegoodlife

Fantastic work getting back on track!

Sarahwithlove

Sounds like you are making some positive changes. Well done. It gets easier as the months pass and you learn how to navigate the budget 

biggerpickle

Am sure it's only people here who will appreciate my excitement at it being payday tomorrow to be able to do manual overpayments on a debt plan!! Obviously am also pleased it's payday as my current account balance is £0.01 tonight and am looking forward to grocery shopping. 

When tomorrow's payments are made and some other dd's on debt filter through, I can update my signature with this month's progress. It's set back a bit by needing to replace a karked it laptop but I did manage to get an on sale one on interest free BNPL so could have been worse.

Sarahwithlove

Do you have an emergency fund for anything like laptop breaking rather than getting into debt? 

Blackcats

You've done really well which gives you great encouragement for keeping going with debt reduction and changing money mindset.
you are absolutely right that this forum is definitely a place inhabited by folk who love managing their money each month with spreadsheets, notebooks etc.

biggerpickle

Sarahwithlove said:

Do you have an emergency fund for anything like laptop breaking rather than getting into debt? 

I do - I've earmarked part of the divorce pension pot to be my emergency fund but as that's sitting in a 5% account and interest free credit was available for the new laptop I took the 12 months IFC, perhaps that's just my perverse logic and not very MSE?!

Blackcats said:

You've done really well which gives you great encouragement for keeping going with debt reduction and changing money mindset.
you are absolutely right that this forum is definitely a place inhabited by folk who love managing their money each month with spreadsheets, notebooks etc.

Thank you for your words of encouragement!

Edit I've made all the manual overpayments planned and after accounting for them and direct debits for this pay period (I get paid 24th so covering now til 24th Sept), I've cleared £345 of debt. I now have £459 left for the month to cover groceries, commuting and social life - this is after I did the massive pay day grocery shop I did so groceries for the rest of the month shouldn't be too grim.  

Since starting my diary at the beginning of July, I've cleared £885 / 7.2% of the debt. 3 more pay days and I should break the £10k barrier, though changing jobs and getting 2 partial months pay in September might mess this up, I have no gap between jobs though and the salaries are very similar so fingers crossed I'll be OK.

Aimingforthegoodlife

That is amazing debt reduction in such a short amount of time! I have everything crossed that the job change won't interfere!

Blackcats

Might be worth planning for your tax being a bit wonky in September.  HMRC might think you have 2 jobs and put you on emergency tax for 1 job.  Hopefully not but thought it was worth mentioning.