2026: The Final Year

crunchy_time

Todays little wins:

I've rounded down two of our savings pots as follows.  £5k for a holiday to somewhere like the Maldives in the future. The interest has ramped it up to £5014 or something like that so I have rounded it down.  Also, the part of the emergency fund which is instant access was at £5089 so I have taken out the £89.  This means there is about £104 winging its way to us for tomorrow.  

Also, I had an email to say that the money for the books that I sold will be winging its way to me as well. 

So I should be able to pay off another chunk in the coming days.  Woohoo!

I'm supposed to be working today but my charge is ill so I'm at home, decluttering and making space for another income stream.  I still get paid as I didn't cancel the session.  I'm still a little nervous about this part of the job so when I get paid (which will be weekly now),I will be  squirelling what £1500 away as quickly as possible which is my bare minimum for 3 months if this income stream ends unexpectedly.

Crunch x

crunchy_time

Today's little win:

£104 paid off, bringing the current total to £307 in total and a balance of £6250.

More than happy with that!

Crunchy xx

crunchy_time

Today's little win:

£8 off the cards this morning.  This is made up of the money from the books and some rounding down of accounts by emptying the pennies from them.

I'm not sure where the next lot of money is coming from, so it might be a bit of a lull until we get closer to the end of the month and pay day arrives.

Crunchy 

crunchy_time

Today's little win:  

I managed to scrape together another £2 and nearly another £1 on top of that to chuck at the debt from round downs.

Tomorrow I get paid for the first time since October and I get paid weekly now.  If I round it down to the nearest £100 that will be another £8 that I can chuck at this debt.

I've been reflecting on how much I enjoy this process of gamifying the achievement of money goals.  It makes so much sense to set challenges for us.  I've also been wondering if anyone has been baffled that we don't use the 'Maldives' money to just pay off this debt.  Here is the answer, we have a lot of savings but, the biggest regret I have from when I we were paying off debt a few years back was that we never tackled the route cause of us having debt in the first place.  For us it wasn't necessary living above our means it was a lack of organisation and short term sighted.  Additionally, we were very - pay the debt off and then we can live our lives.  However, your life chases up to you.  I now have a big pension deficit because I prioritised debt pay off over paying into my pension so that is why savings will always come first to us now.  And we want the debt to stop us doing those over an above things in life rather than taking over the things that make us happy. 

I feel that's why gamifying it works best for us.  

Crunch x

crunchy_time

Today's little win: 

First pay day for a while! Slushed £9 towards the debt today.  The extra £1 was from round downs.

Also saved a big chunk towards my February bills.

Very happy with that!

Crunchy x

13thlegion

Completely agree with savings first. Switching my mindset to paying myself first, almost like I am the priority debt, has been life changing.

With the added bonus that by doing that we remove the need for credit in the first place so we never end up back where we were.

crunchy_time

13thlegion said:

Completely agree with savings first. Switching my mindset to paying myself first, almost like I am the priority debt, has been life changing.

With the added bonus that by doing that we remove the need for credit in the first place so we never end up back where we were.

You are totally correct.

I was so obsessed with being debt free because of the shame we didn’t save for ages despite being home owners with kids. So when we didn’t have enough to cover things that cropped up we had to use credit cards or overdrafts or loans.  

That’s why I’m doing this slowly and intentionally.

crunchy_time

Today’s little win:

Not using my credit card to pay for clothes and then paying it off with money allocated for clothes in bank account.  

I just used the bank account for intentionally required clothes.

Crunch 

crunchy_time

Morning!

It's been a little quiet in Crunchy land.  No little bits of money to chuck at the debt yet.  I have had urges to buy a few bits that I need from Vinted but I have no money yet in my spending account so I have been very restrained which is a step forward.  I get paid on Friday so can allocate some money then.

A couple of our bills have gone up so I have had to add some money to the amount we pay into our joint account for each month.  

The credit card interest has been allocated to me credit card for January.  For December it was £36, for January it is £29 so its going down which is great and a sign that we are doing well with our challenge of not spending on them.  Well that's for me at least.  I will be checking my husbands cards either tonight or tomorrow night.  

This weekend is the last weekend of frantic DIY before the plasterer comes next week.  We will also find out if my husband has to go abroad for work for a week which will involve the weekend before and after and I have to make plans for me and the kids to do stuff so that they don't miss him too much!

So the little win is:

Credit card interest for this month is £7 down on last month which is a huge step int eh right direction.

Crunch