Busting this debt before 40

Chocolatefund

End of week check in.  A spendy money week to talk about.

Filled up the petrol tank at the beginning of the week. Used the cash I had left over from my trip in which I only ended up spending £10 of it. So filled up the tank which took about £32 of it. Used the rest to supplement my weekly food shop of £42.

Chimney sweep came, did a fab job and left, which cost £75. Accounted for in my main bills account. Feels good to have a clean(ish) efficient log burner. It’s my ‘winter is coming’ prep He did hoover up all the ash though…will have build that back up again.

My birthday also came and went. My wonderful parents got me a tablet which I was totally not expecting. I gave myself a birthday gift of a couple of accessories for it, totalling £56. This wasn’t budgeted for, however I’m still on two thirds of a petrol tank and I can’t see the need for me to fill it up again this month, so it should balance out there.  I fitted the coffee out bill which came to £15.

Later in the week. We booked a table for a bday meal at the Alchemist as we are cocktail-aholics. They were running very late, so I got an Uber into town (£12) and ordered an Esspesso Martini while I held the table (£13  ) Then while I was waiting, I got a message from my folks saying that they were stuck in car park as their bank had blocked their debit cards, their credit card wasn’t working and the only way to pay the parking was an app!  There’s not even an option to just pay contactless on the pay machine…wut.
So I paid for my cocktail and ran around the corner to the car park to rescue them. Thankfully, once I found out that it was RingGo and I had it set up already on my phone, I added their car and paid for it. We did enjoy a lovely meal after that malarkey. The next day my dad sent me £50 as a thank you to cover the cost of rescuing them. Awww. 

Still not done yet. Yesterday I decided to go into town and get a bunch of Xmas shopping started. £83 for five presents and four cards. £4 for the bus. Not bad. I could move the money from the Xmas pot, but I’m going to see if I can last the rest of the month without touching it. There’s £234 left in my spending account. Hmm, three weeks till payday…

Payday’s on Black Friday!?!  Fuuuuuuu……..

Chocolatefund

Another week has gone by.  Mid November already.

A decent low spend week. £50 food shop and a £3 birthday card for a friend.  The food shop came in lower than I expected. Definitely a lot more price aware now.  Even just switching from branded names to stores own is making a difference.  I don’t really miss or notice enough the food difference.

Except coffee.  Not switching out my nice coffee. (Coffee snob alert!)

A certain energy company starting with O and ending with O, decided to put my direct debit up.  So now my gas and electric bill has gone from £105 to £129 per month, even though I’ve got +£340 in credit.  How rude.

I am however, going to cancel this work membership thing I’ve had for a while now, the price keeps creeping up and it’s no longer worth it.  Will pretty much cancel out the bill rise.

I've got my brain back in the selling game and listed a couple more items to sell.  Got some interest already so fingers crossed for a sale or two.  Also did an extra shift today so the monies will go on the next loan overpayment.  

£176 left in my spending account. Just under two weeks till pay day.  If I can get another couple of low spend weeks then I may be able to send another big overpayment to the loan.  The bigger the overpayment, the bigger the interest rebate.  It’s pretty motivating actually.  I could overpay small amounts as and when I get the extra money, but I’m finding the bigger numbers more impactful.

Zilch plans for next week.  Maybe plan to do a little as I possibly can?  My sleep quality is terrible right now.

Chocolatefund

Well…two more weeks have come and gone.  The run up to the Xmas month sure does make things busy busy.

End of month round up for November,

Food £115.  I checked my Tesco account last week to find that I had £24 worth of vouchers to use, nice win.  Still, I’m actually not sure how this is still so low…I’ve gone through all my transactions in case I missed anything and can’t come up with a reason.
Petrol £46.  I did have some left over cash from last month which helped. Nice and under budget.
Eating out £42. Feels about right as I’ve not really been ‘out out’ this month.
Miscellaneous £42. A combination of Amazon, bus and Ubers.

Total November everyday spending = £237.
 
I have two Xmas work dues coming up in December costing £22 and £30 which I’ve paid for.  Also bought another Xmas present for £30. That combined with the £83 earlier in the month brings the total Xmas spend so far to £165.  I’ve decided to take this out of the Xmas fund.  I need to train my brain to actually start using the pots for their intended purpose, and not just hoarding it.  Otherwise I run the risk of being tempted to spend it on something else it wasn’t intended for.

Payday came yesterday.  So my Chase spending account had £71 left in it.  I’ve moved £165 from the Xmas fund into it, and transferred £214 from my main bills account.  This brings my monthly spending amount back up to its usual £450 for December.

My Xmas fund got £1.46 in interest and I moved £4.27 from rewards into it.  The pot now stands at £342.  I’ve got four more Xmas presents to buy plus whatever social activities come up.  Should see me through nicely over the pricey holiday period.  This is the first time in my life I think, that I’ve actually had a dedicated fund for Xmas.  Definitely sticking to doing this going forward.

My bills are due out tomorrow, so once that happens I’ll do my loan overpayment.  If my calculations are correct then I should be able to send £1200 towards it.  

Away for work next week.  Potentially money spends for social outings and lots of travelling coffee.  I’m thinking to be a bit kinder to myself over the festive period and let my Xmas fund to its job if need be.

Overall, super happy with November.  No takeaways, no lunch bought at work and no real money saving setbacks.  

Bring on Christmas!

Chocolatefund

A strange week at work with lots of miserable rain and wind.  I think I was the only one at work that actually enjoyed the snow when we had it.

So earlier in the week I made an overpayment to the loan of £1200.  This plus the usual direct debit takes the loan down to £13,082.  However, I’ve yet to have the usual interest rebate adjustment.  It normally happens on the day or the day after.  Hmm, I wonder if I’ve paid off all the interest part and only have the principal left?  Nah, surely not…

I’ll wait a few more days to see what the overpayment letter says, then I’ll decide if I want to contact Te$co about it or not.

A few spends so far this week of £21 travel, £15 eating out coffee meals and £16 food.  Meh, could be worse.  I will need to do a big food shop this weekend at some point and finish buying the rest of the Xmas presents.

Busy week…can’t wait for the weekend.  Xmas decorations are going up!

Chocolatefund

Another happy Sunday my fellow debt free busters.

Had a bit of a spendy day last Saturday.  Got all the Xmas shopping done.  Yay!  £168 for x 5 presents.  As of now I've got £174 left in the Xmas fund.  Keeping this as a nice to have buffer as I will be staying over with relatives for a few days over Xmas.  No doubt a few social outings will happen.

Did a big food shop earlier in the week that was a whopping £90.  Eeeek.  Did include alcohol and lots of household items.  Had to buy more dishwasher tablets and clothes detergent.  Should last me a good while now.  £17 spent on eating out a few coffees.

Had a dental appointment last week.  Decided to save about 15 min of heaving traffic driving by taking the M6 Toll.  I rarely if ever use it, but the last time I remember paying £4 something.  Now it's gone up to £8.  Disgusting.  And that was just one bloomin' way.  Won't be doing THAT again...

I've got £229 left in my spending account till payday which is two weeks and two days away.  Should be good with this.  I will have to fill up the petrol tank once, if not twice more.  Another big food shop next week probably too.

Got £14 in the V1nted account with a possible £15 more on the way.

Still need to ring Te$co Bank regarding the loan.  Shoved it into the back of my mind last week as work was busy, will try and get round to it next week.

So ready for some much needed time off from work.  My brain is totally done for 2024.

Take_a_hike_Elon_and_Jeff

Chocolatefund said:

Gosh, where has the time gone? Time flies when life happens.

So I'm back home now after being away overseas for work. Because most of my expenses were paid for, I've used the opportunity to manage a low spend month. A total of £142 spend for the whole of October. Which consists of £70 eating out (slightly over budget) £48 for overseas data (grrr) and £24 mini food shop when I got back as my fridge was empty..

October payday came and went and so another great money shuffle.  In the end I decided to top up the savings pots to thier targets. So now my savings are as follows;

Xmas Fund £504
Sinking Fund £1502
Emergency Fund £1973

I took a sledgehammer to the loan and sent an overpayment of £1500. This along with the usual £285 direct debit and an interest rebate adjustment of £401 (wow) my loan now sits at £14,567 :-) 

Phew! Now my savings pots are where I want them to be, the next few months can be focused on the debt. I will still be sending the £150 a month to the emergency fund and slowly building that up over time.

November is going to be full of temptation as it's my birthday month. There's about £200 spare in my main bills account, so I may give myself a birthday gift if I see something I'd like. I have a feeling that I'm not going to stick to budget this month.

Overall, super happy with my efforts in October. I wish every month could be a super low spend month, but I guess that would make the debt busting too easy!  I'm now 25% of the way there. Next milestone will be 50% debt paid off.  Can't wait to get into the 10k figures.

Hello Chocolate 
I've just skimmed through your diary. Are you likely to travel overseas again for work? The reason I ask is you quoted £48 for overseas data. I travel abroad quite frequently for work and on occasion where needed have used the Airalo app for buying data and it is super cheap perfect for global travel it will save a fortune. I also use Revolut for overseas spending it has saved me literally a ton of cash over the years. I tend not to leave cash on it, only load enough for travelling. I also never use public wifi when accessing banking apps for added security unless you have a VPN

Chocolatefund

Take_a_hike_Elon_and_Jeff said:

Chocolatefund said:

Gosh, where has the time gone? Time flies when life happens.

So I'm back home now after being away overseas for work. Because most of my expenses were paid for, I've used the opportunity to manage a low spend month. A total of £142 spend for the whole of October. Which consists of £70 eating out (slightly over budget) £48 for overseas data (grrr) and £24 mini food shop when I got back as my fridge was empty..

October payday came and went and so another great money shuffle.  In the end I decided to top up the savings pots to thier targets. So now my savings are as follows;

Xmas Fund £504
Sinking Fund £1502
Emergency Fund £1973

I took a sledgehammer to the loan and sent an overpayment of £1500. This along with the usual £285 direct debit and an interest rebate adjustment of £401 (wow) my loan now sits at £14,567 :-) 

Phew! Now my savings pots are where I want them to be, the next few months can be focused on the debt. I will still be sending the £150 a month to the emergency fund and slowly building that up over time.

November is going to be full of temptation as it's my birthday month. There's about £200 spare in my main bills account, so I may give myself a birthday gift if I see something I'd like. I have a feeling that I'm not going to stick to budget this month.

Overall, super happy with my efforts in October. I wish every month could be a super low spend month, but I guess that would make the debt busting too easy!  I'm now 25% of the way there. Next milestone will be 50% debt paid off.  Can't wait to get into the 10k figures.

Hello Chocolate 
I've just skimmed through your diary. Are you likely to travel overseas again for work? The reason I ask is you quoted £48 for overseas data. I travel abroad quite frequently for work and on occasion where needed have used the Airalo app for buying data and it is super cheap perfect for global travel it will save a fortune. I also use Revolut for overseas spending it has saved me literally a ton of cash over the years. I tend not to leave cash on it, only load enough for travelling. I also never use public wifi when accessing banking apps for added security unless you have a VPN

Hi!
I’m not due to go overseas next year, but anything can still happen.  I’ll definitely have a look at that app you mention.  I didn’t really put time into researching data saving as I had two days notice to move. 

I use Chase for spending abroad.

Chocolatefund

So I didn’t get around to contacting Te$co about that interest rebate.  But…

I've just checked the app to find that I did get an interest rebate after all, but it looks like this;

PRIN CR ADJUST, INT REBATE £276
PAYMENT £1,200
PMT REVERSAL -£1,200

So it seems like they had to give the overpayment back and take it back in again for the computer to kick in and give the interest rebate.  . Just guessing.

Bizzare…but hey ho will take it!  That brings the amount owed down to £12,805.

Sarahwithlove

Wahooo good to know that interest will keep coming off with the overpayments 

Chocolatefund

Happy new year everybody!

I can’t believe it’s 2025.  I also can’t believe that it’s January 3rd already as I type this.  I mean what the heck.

So I lost track a bit of my spending dairy in December.  I tried to write all my spends in my book as best as I could, but none of my numbers add up, lol, I had so much more coming in and out than usual.

Buuuut, the good thing is I ended in December with about £70 left in my main spending account and £50 left over in the Xmas fund.  So…yay? 

Having a separate pot for Xmas saved my debt busting butt that’s for sure.

For January so far, I’ve been paid and thus the monthly great money shuffle.

Moved the leftover Xmas money into my spending account.  I have £30 in cash from a relative for funding their train ticket, so moved £300 from my main bills account into the Ch@se account to bring it back up to the usual £450 spending budget for Jan.

Sent a loan overpayment of £1100. This plus the £285 direct debit now takes my outstanding balance down to £11,420.  Who knows if or when I’ll get an interest rebate.  I’ve given up spending the mental calories thinking about it.

This new balance is exciting.  Next month If I can overpay more than £1,135 it will bring the amount owed under £10k.  Which means I will hit the 50% milestone.

Bring on 2025!