Overhauling for the second (and last) time

Pinknails101

twiggy86 said:

Well done so far! I wanted to comment to say there is not "only" about the £2 in the EF! A BIG learning from me is that all the little amounts add up and over time make a big impact - for me, this applies to both spending and saving. So if I think of £2 as "only £2", I'm more likely to spend £2 here and £2 there, which soon mount up during a month! Hope that makes sense! 

I completely agree with this comment, it might not seem like much to you, but like you say it's the first time in however long where you've ended the month not playing catch up! So it's fantastic news Little wins go a long way, and certainly give a positive mental outlook.

I've book marked your thread, i've just started myself too, so it will be nice to see your progress

overhauler

Thank you @Pinknails101 I have been to read yours and will follow along, it looks like you’ve also made a wonderful start 

overhauler

It’s PAYDAY 

So this is the official start of my journey to debt freedom and better money management 

INCOMING MONEY:
so had a slight pay rise which is seeing me come out with an additional £100p/m after tax. Wage was £1899.47
still to come in throughout the month is; transfer from partner for his share of bills, child benefit and board from son 

OUTGOING MONEY:
I have 6 outgoing pots, detailed below with the money allocated to them:

- essential bills £1012
- other bills £242
- food £327
- car £160
- personal spends £100
- debts £101.50

i haven’t added the money to the personal spends pot yet as until transfer from partner comes through tomorrow I am short by around £40

Additional pots I have:

- emergency fund
- 100 step challenge 

CHALLENGES:

i am starting the 100 steps to debt freedom. For me 1 step = £50.50 so I should be able to make 2 steps per month with a debt free date of 11/2028
i have allocated a pot so I can look in the future at making additional steps to bring it forward but will mainly concentrate on the emergency fund for now 

I am also going to do a no spend day challenge, I have 33 days in this monthly cycle until my next wage and the aim is for at least half of them to be no spend, with it being an odd number I will set it to 16

OTHER

as I track my money via a spreadsheet I have made a further column for miscellaneous spending, this is for anything outside of my budgeted pots that isn’t covered by my own personal spends budget. The aim of this at the minute is to see what else comes up throughout the month that I’m not budgeting for so moving forward I can start to budget and make a pot for it. This month we need to finish the work on the driveway so that will fall into this, once I am slightly more settled I will add a diy/house pot into my budget and start adding to it monthly 

ROUND-UP

current debt balance is £5047.68 - 1 of these is interest bearing, but is one I’m in the process of setting up a repayment plan for. I am hoping once everything is in place if they will freeze the interest - I will ask them this to have it confirmed 

100 steps to debt-free 0/100
NSD 0/16

overhauler

Just to add, for the NSDs I am not counting bills or petrol so basically anything that comes from personal spend, food shopping or that falls into the miscellaneous pot

the main culprit for overspending is midweek shops, some weeks I can pop to the shops most days for either something we actually need or snacks (or both) so I’m going to try and stick to just 1 mid week top up for bread, milk, fruit and veg needed 

overhauler

Some good news from the debt I am currently setting up a repayment with, they have said they are adding £18.77 on 1/10 as interest but will then freeze interest moving forwards as long as I continue with the repayment plan as agreed 

overhauler

Bit of stress, I thought the payment plan with the last creditor was all set up. I have two accounts with them. I agreed to pay £25 per month but would have to use their online chat function each month to ask them to transfer £10 to the second debt as they are linked and i can’t pay the second one directly

so I paid £25 today and messaged them but they have come back to me saying I have made the payment before they finalised the plan and so it can’t be taken into account and I will need to pay again on the 1st

this isn’t accounted for in my budget and I have told them this so waiting for a response. I read back through all the previous messages and they did not make it clear I couldn’t, or shouldn’t make a payment today so to me they need to accept this and either move the money or change my repayment start date to 1/11 instead 

hopefully I will sort it quickly, not what I needed today when dealing with a lot of work stress over the project I’m trying to get started 

backinbusiness

Just tell them you can't afford it and you'll have to start afresh next month. They'll probably accept that. One thing though - have all your debts defaulted? You want them to do that before you start making any payments, otherwise you'll end up with Arrangement to Pay markers, which you don't want. Subscribed and following with interest. Good luck OP. BiB x 

overhauler

Thank you for the comment, yes they all defaulted. This one didn’t get sent to agency to deal with so is still with the original lender. It’s a bank and connected credit card but is set as defaulted as I haven’t paid anything to it now for a few months. 

They have replied to say they understand I can’t make an additional payment and that they have escalated it to a senior supervisor to see what they suggest but will either look to override the system (if they can) or will have to change the date on the repayment plan to the following month 

not a NSD today as had to do a bit of a top up shop which came to £13.50 but should have my first one of the month tomorrow as have nowhere I need to go and nothing to do apart from work which is remote

ive allocated £160 to my petrol budget this month, that’s what I spent last month but my work has changed (I’m on a 2 year training programme) and the project I’m doing now is pretty much fully remote. There is an office and I will pop in occasionally but mostly will be from home so doubt I will have to use all that as previously I was driving to the office around 35 minutes away on a daily basis and sitting in motorway traffic. Most I will be doing now is going to the gym a few times a week and potentially driving eldest to work and back if I’m free 

overhauler

So should be a nsd today

yesterday I paid for a Christmas meal out of my personal spends budget at £25

ive just realised it’s my grandmas birthday within this months budget so I need to pay for that out of personal spends

Saturday daytime I have a family celebration, I am driving so won’t be drinking but will be out a few hours so expect to buy a few juices 

Sunday morning I have a planned event, the event was paid for a while ago and won’t cost anything more whilst there but as it’s such an early start I am going to go stop with a family member the Saturday night and we are ordering takeaway 

the personal budget will take some hits this weekend 

I also remembered that I owe my mum some money for some clothes she ordered for me so need to check how much that is and pay it, but on the plus side forgot I was owed some money for the event this weekend from another family member so they are giving me £40 back as I originally paid it for them when I booked. I think the two should cancel each other out 

feeling very stressed work wise, I’m on a training programme and currently doing a placement with a team for a few weeks and finding it very tough. They don’t seem to really know what it is they want from me and just when I make a decision on how to move forward, I will go to a meeting that will throw it all into chaos again. I’m going to try and deal with it today by creating a PowerPoint of options, outlining what’s achievable during my time with them and send it to the manager for confirmation on how they want me to proceed. If I carry on the way I am I don’t think I will get anywhere as it’s, in my opinion, too big a project for me to make any real headway in the short time I’m there unless we filter down to one objective rather than a broad sweeping approach they are currently going with so hoping that once I’ve done that it will make me feel better about how to tackle it 

overhauler

100 step challenge 1/100
(£41.79 to complete next step)

NSD 1/16

today will be spendy but will be coming from my personal spends pot which currently sits at £75

i received the £40 from family member which has gone into my emergency fund 

received £313 from partner as money he owes me for monthly bills after taking into account the ones that go from his bank

emergency fund balance currently £255.58 but will have to use this pot for any unassigned spending through the month - mainly work on house, the main goal over the next couple of months is to end the month with more in the emergency fund than when it started. Emergency fund balance at the start of the month was £2 

once the year ends and it’s the start of a new calendar year I will create new pots for gifts, car, house which I will assign money to on a monthly basis

I receive child benefit money weekly each Tuesday at £25.60 which is currently unassigned so will go into the emergency fund pot and any board money from son when he gets paid on 17th will also be added to emergency fund 

hopefully, if all my other pots then stay within the budget allocated I should be in a good place