The end is in sight!

FluffyBabyPenguin

After nearly 10 years of being in some degree of debt (twice before it was almost all paid off) I am determined to see it through to the end.

I'm starting this thread somewhat in the middle of my DF journey, in the hopes that it will keep me motivated and on track!

Pre-Covid, I had about £1k in CC debt. During 2020- 2021, that built up to about £3700 in credit cards and overdrafts. It had just been overspending on daily living, and at some point I managed to rein it in and stop spending on the cards. Still, I was only able to make the minimum payments and most of that of course was interest. 

January this year, I was quite fed up. I managed to make a few payments above my minimums, and a few months later got offered 0% balance transfers and money transfers for the overdraft. I made a budget and got better at managing my money and not overspending so much. 

My debts are now:
£624 Virgin card 0% until July 2025
£1800 Barclaycard 0% until Feb 2026

Plan is to pay £63pm to the Virgin card, £90pm to the Barclaycard,  and both will be paid off by the end of the 0% dates.

Once the Virgin card is paid off, I could put that payment towards my emergency fund (currently only £300). I could use it to pay off the Barclaycard quicker, but so long as it is on 0%, I guess there is no rush. 

If I can make any extra income to pay the cards off quicker, I will do so. I realise my debt is not that high compared to many on here, but I think I'm lucky I curbed my CC use before I got anywhere near their limits (£18k limit combined) and have been able to organise my debts to make them manageable. Thanks for reading! 

BlueJ94

Welcome along! I will keep an eye out for updates and cheer you along

FluffyBabyPenguin

As a visual way to see how my debt reduction is going, I've drawn up a "debt payoff tracker" in my finances notebook*.

Its 10 X 10 squares, so 100 altogether. Each square representing 1% of my debt, which I started at £3040. So, £30.40 per square. I bet that gets tricky when interest is involved, but thankfully I don't need to do any kind of complicated maths or add on minimum payments. 

Today it is nice to see that 20 of those squares are coloured in  

Sarahwithlove

That's good you have a plan to pay it off. If I was you I'd focus on building the emergency fund up rather than making extra payments to cards. You already have them covered and increasing the EF will hopefully prevent any further card usage.