My new debt free diary :)

GolfR

Hi everyone! This isn’t my first debt free diary but I hope it’s my last

I’m making this diary so that I am accountable to myself and I plan to update it as often as possible. I am 38 and have been in debt since I was 20 and bought my first car. Not massive amounts but enough to affect my monthly income. I have 7 different debts and I have no interest (excuse the pun!) in combining them, a golden piece of advice I read on this forum a few years ago. They are as follows:

Lloyds credit card - spends in last fortnight which is due with next months pay, I owe £240 ish. No interest.
NatWest overdraft - £250 limit, usually get to the £240 ish mark by pay day. I usually pay just over £1 in interest pm.
Car loan - £292 pm. £8400 left at 6.4%. Original value £15,000.

Virgin BT - £210 pm. £610 left 0% interest. Three months left!
NatWest BT - £25 pm. £2450 left. This is a new ish one that that I’ll do a BT of when it comes to its end in September time; I plan to get rid of the Virgin one then go hard on this.
Apple - £38 pm. £750 ish left owing, 0%.

DFS sofa - £20 pm, approx £900 remaining (I’ve only made one payment so far). 0%.

My monthly payments towards debts are £585 not including the overdraft. I have £1000 in emergency fund savings and I’m not keen to take anything from this. Monthly income is around £2800 and bills are approx £1150 including mortgage of £470 (single mother to two kids). After bills, debts, groceries and fuel come out I have very little to play with. I left my partner six years ago (could not be happier) however I am STILL living like I have two incomes coming in and this has led me to overspending, hence the two BT’s.

My monthly plan is as follows:
Bills - £1150
Debt - £585
Groceries - £200 (I have two freezers and cupboards full so I’m sure I can manage £200 pm to buy the basics)
Fuel - £200
Personal care - £160 pm (Mounjaro)
Savings - £100
Further debt repayments - £300
= £2700 bar a few quid
= approx £100 left each month.

I’ve been putting £100 a month into savings for a while now and I’m going to keep doing this and then I’ll put as much as I can towards debt repayments, hopefully as much as £300 pm. I use the Emma app to track my spending however I am tempted to start a book with good old pen and paper. I paid £20 ish for a year about two months ago with Emma so I’ll keep it for now. The areas that I need to curb my spending are food shopping and eating out - mainly McDonald’s for the kids when there are offers on, take away coffees and I do enjoy a McDonald’s breakfast every 10 days or so.

I’ll cut this short now as I could ramble on forever. Thank you very much for reading if you got this far!

GolfR

I sold a top on Vinted yesterday so once that arrives it’ll be £3 in my account. Not much but it all helps I’ve just paid £16.74 off my car loan to take it to £8385. I like round numbers!

Fabulous50

Welcome back. I will bookmark your diary to see how you're getting on. Sounds like you have good understanding of your current debts. Keep chipping away, you got this, it will soon be cleared. Having a solid budget is the most important step 😊

Ordinary_Yet_Unique

Well done on starting your diary. Do you receive any money from ex for the children? Have you included child benefit in your income?
Wishing you well on your debt free journey.

GolfR

Hi both, I didn’t expect any responses so thank you very much! I’ve included those figures in my monthly income figures - £2250 pay but this does change monthly dependent on shifts as I’m a nurse, £235 from my ex, £170 child benefit and I get roughly £130 tax credits but if my pay is higher of course I get less but it always works out to around £2800 per month.

Yesterday my daughter (12 year old) was out with a friend and she needed a drink. She uses my Revolut card as a payment method. There was only £1.54 on there and the corner shop said she needed to spent £2 minimum. There’s a minimum £10 top up on Revolut so at first I told her no but then I was worrying because it’s so warm out so I put £10 on for her and she said ‘you can use the rest mam’ . She’s such a good girl. Now I have around £9 on there to use for something; I may use it next time I pop to Lidl for a small top up of fruit and milk. I’ve told her next time you will be taking a drink with you as I’m not giving you any more money!

Also yesterday I decided to cancel amazon prime and Netflix, saving £15 a month. I watch YouTube when I watch TV so I don’t need Netflix, just need to make sure I watch Ginny & Georgia and Squid Game season 3 before it ends but that’s not until the 17th or so. I don’t use prime much - I looked back and I only used it twice in June - so that was effectively £4.50 delivery on each item!

I was going through my fridge yesterday afternoon and realised I had the makings of a good soup - potatoes, leeks, onions and a sweetheart cabbage so I made that in the slow cooker for tea and even the kids liked it! They’re typical potato smilies, nuggets, burgers kids so that was amazing

Ordinary_Yet_Unique

I personally do not have any TV subscriptions. iplayer, ITVx etc... are  fine for me. I think the TV licence is worth the money compared to other subscriptions available. I am always amused by those who complain about the licence fee but quite happily pay for Sky, netflix etc....

GolfR

I found I never watched sky or ‘normal tv’ even when I had the opportunity so I’ve been free of both sky and a tv licence for about two years now. People think I’m crazy for not being interested in ‘normal tv’.

My daughter and I decluttered her wardrobe this evening and found some stuff we can put on Vinted. The money for it will go to her if they sell but still makes me feel happy her and my son are going to Alton Towers with school soon and she’s been bugging me to get her a Mercier tshirt from Vinted for her to wear. This evening I finally told her no, that she had plenty of tops in her wardrobe that she can wear and she was actually ok about my decision.

I found tiny bugs on my monstera plant earlier on today so I’ve had to buy some sticky bug catcher things for that but only £2.99 so not awful. Luckily I found them before my Amazon prime membership is gone! A pretty good day otherwise, I weeded out the back, deadheaded some flowers and made a big batch of baked oats; I make these pretty much every week and they sort me and my son out for breakfast/lunch for a good few days.

Today I opened a Monzo account to use the pots. I’ve always heard good things about them so decided to take the plunge. As well as that I’ve configured my budget on the Emma app and with my Monzo pots as follows:

Bills inc. mortgage - £1130
Debt - £750 (monthly payments plus £165 extra)
Savings - £100
Kids - £40
Eating out - £20 (it’s bound to happen at some point but is way lower than the £100 or so I usually spend so I’d rather budget a little for this and if I don’t use it then it can go towards debts)
General - £20
Groceries - £200
Housing - £10 (I budget for cleaning stuff under groceries)
Personal care - £185
Shopping - £35 (rolling budget for when clothes, shoes etc are required)
Fuel - £150
Car & house insurance and car tax - £100 (I pay car insurance and tax monthly at the moment but I’m hoping to pay them annually once this builds up)
Car repairs/tyres - £60
= £2800

This is of course subject to change; they’re all rolling budgets and the last two are sinking funds so that I’m prepared for anything going wrong. I’ve also changed the dates some of my DD’s go out so that they go closer to my pay date. I’m very pleased with my progress today!

GolfR

Hi everyone 

Not a bad day today. Had to pay £1.20 to park in town to run an errand and then popped to Lidl on the way home and spent just under £17 on milk, butter, fruit and bread. I have £45 cash in my purse that I’ve had for a while so I used some of that. Also put £20 fuel in as I had 10 miles left in the tank. I’d normally fill the tank up but where I stopped it was 5p a litre more for diesel than the Tesco near my kids school but the £20 should last me a good few days hopefully. Used my Monzo virtual card for the first time today for the diesel which was fun

I’ve managed to change a few of my DD’s around such as my council tax, iPhone payment and car insurance. Instead of coming out around the 14th/15th of each month they’ll come out around the 24th, after my next pay, so I should have around £180 leftover to share between some pots before the end of the month and any leftover I’ll put towards the Lloyds card. I get paid on the 23rd so that’s what I class as my month. 

GolfR

It’s been a successful day today! I’ve had my dads barely used treadmill in my living room since he died in January last year and I finally got round to putting it on Facebook marketplace yesterday. Well it’s just sold! It wasn’t an expensive one and I got £45 for it. With the cash I had in my purse already I now have £70 in notes and £11 and some change in coins. I’d love to put it in the bank but I’d have to drive over to the next town which is a 16 mile round trip and that just seems such a waste of diesel so I’ll use it for fuel and groceries instead. And I’m so happy to have that little bit of extra room back in the living room.

I got the £3 today from the Vinted top I sold so that went straight into my debt repayment pot. I’ve also put some more stuff on Vinted. I needed to repot my monstera plant as those little fungal gnats didn’t go away even with the sticky bug catcher things so I did some research and watched a YouTube video. I learned that a shop bought monstera typically has a few plants in it so I took it out of the pot and untangled the roots (that took some doing!) and it turned out I had five plants from my plant! I’ve separated them all and put them into individual pots which luckily I had in abundance here.

On my research it appears that I needed to use some fancy soil and aeration additives but it meant spending probably like £20-£30. It’s grown well in the 3/4 years that I’ve had it with regular multi purpose compost so I’ve just used the compost I already had here to save myself that money. Before I’d have just ordered what I needed straight away from Amazon so I’m proud of myself. However I don’t want them to die so if they show any signs I’ll have to fork out! But fingers crossed

GolfR

Me again!

Didn’t get chance to post yesterday as I had a massive declutter of the kitchen under sink cleaning cupboard and under mine and my sons ottoman beds. A lot of stuff to take to the tip but I did find a couple of things I can put on Vinted so I’ll do that today. I had to buy some syringes for my Mounjaro yesterday which were £7 and will last 10 months and I needed a top up of vape stuff (bad I know but it’s kept from smoking for over three years now) which was £30. Should last me a couple of months hopefully. I sold the Converse on Vinted yesterday for £30 so I’ll send them tomorrow after I drop my son off at school (daughter takes the bus) and that can go into my debt repayment pot.

I found some clothes under my bed that I had when I was last slim as a late teen so I’m excited to hopefully be able to wear them when I’ve reached my target weight and will also mean I need to buy less when I reach that size!

Me and the kids made brownies yesterday evening with a box mix we already had here. Good cheap fun I’m hoping to go for a walk or maybe a run today, I enjoy running but once I stop doing it it’s so hard to get back into; I was working on my couch to 10k as well until a couple of months ago. The hot weather has ruined that although I’m trying not to complain too much as I do like it!

Blackcats

You've made a great start!  

I find that updating my diary regularly is so motivating and when I do MSE things I look forward to including them in my diary.  Reading other diaries is also very informative and inspirational.

having my budgets in separate pots which I can move in and out of my current account has made such a difference to me.  I can see what I'm spending in each category and I tell myself that when it's gone it's gone.

perhaps you could let your takeaway budget accrue if it's not spent and then you can use it for birthday treats or other special occasions.