Almost debt....free

iceVice · 7 January at 9:34PM

Hello everyone!

Long time lurker but first time poster. Hope new year has started well for everyone.

I just wanted to share the progress that's been made since Jan 2024 and where I am now to keep myself accountable in the last few steps of the journey.

As a background, I was debt free in 2023 but was lucky enough to purchase a property during the time which resulted in me using credit cards and needing to buy a car. This all resulted in Jan 2024 start with £65k worth of debt. Reality hit me slowly as I had to pay back another £4k to HMRC making it close to £70k.

Since then, throughout 2024, I've been able to achieve the following:
- payoff Barclaycard for a total of £6.5k towards end of August.
- sold the car I've had at the time as it was expensive to run and own. More on this further down.
- pay off a grand total of £10k on NatWest credit card.
- pay off whatever was owed to HMRC in taxes.

You'd think I've learned my lesson and bought something that's cheap to buy and to run. Unfortunately, I didn't, I bought something that's cheap to run but not to buy. I was back to a total debt of £40k in September. This car is brand new and has an issue which resulted in me having to raise a complaint and try to reject it. The process is still ongoing but throughout the whole ordeal, I've realised that my decision was not the most sensible one financially.

Fast forward to today, I've done/doing the following:
- purchased a car that's actually cheap and I paid for it outright.
- I'm selling the new car where I'm currently £6k in negative equity. I'll still save upwards of £30k by selling it as opposed to continuing with the ownership. If ombudsman rules in my favour, then I'll be compensated for the loss I had to take by selling the car.

So with that, I'm going to open up my diary with approximately £6k in debt as soon as the car is sold via the motorway. I'll update the exact figure and what I'll be doing to reduce that as quickly as possible. And to also continue staying debt free.

Many thanks