The hurrier I go; the behinder I get…

liltdiddylilt

Alice in Wonderland is full of the best quotes, isn’t it?

We’re all mad here.
I knew who I was this morning, but I’ve changed a few times since then.
Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast!
If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.

However, the title of my diary is the one I feel most encapsulates my current predicament. I’ll spare you the gory details, but as one school friend put it; “Lilt, I used to sit & complain about the wife’s soap operas, because I thought nobody in the world could have a life like those on Coronation Street… then you came along & said “hold my beer!”

So, here I am. My overly dramatic life has led to many changes, many difficulties. But I am here to get a handle on the wildly out of control finances. I’m capitalising on that feeling of relief you get, when you simply… begin to fix things. Take the first step…

if you’d like to step with me, I will post an inc&exp of sorts just for accountability tomorrow & the more the merrier! Whether I’m a name you recognise or somebody entirely new (how exciting!) - I’m a very friendly type. So, settle down, & over the coming days, I will tell some details of Lilt, Jellytot (now almost 14 😳) & The Archangel, who will be 5 very soon. 

It’s painful, gut-wrenching, & has unfortunately led to Lilt having a rather large debt balance across many cards, overdraft etc. But I’ve taken my head out of the sand & begun to speak to PayPlan. I’ll get there. 

I’ll find out a total current debt balance tomorrow. For now, I’ll try to sleep. Goodnight folks  

joedenise

Welcome.  Before going into a DMP get yourself a new bank account with one that you don't have any debts with and get your salary paid into it and any utility bill DDs to come of it.  Also build an Emergency Fund as you will no longer be able to have any credit.\

Good luck going forward.

teapot2

Ooh I remember you and Jellytot from years ago.....  good luck with your new diary adventures

debtfreewannabe321

@liltdiddylilt yay you made it back here!
I'm here to help cheer you along (as ever) bookmarked and ready for the soap opera cos let's face it, you and I both. 🤣❤️ Can't believe baby archangel is nearly 5, whaaaaat? Can we call archangel, AA or is that too 🍻🥂🍺🍷🥃 for a 4 year old ❤️ And 14 year old JT well. Good luck with that one 🙏🏻😁. 
Chat soon 😊!

liltdiddylilt

joedenise said:

Welcome.  Before going into a DMP get yourself a new bank account with one that you don't have any debts with and get your salary paid into it and any utility bill DDs to come of it.  Also build an Emergency Fund as you will no longer be able to have any credit.\

Good luck going forward.

Hi!! Thank you for this info! 

I currently only have debt with 1 of my 3 bank accs. I’ve got:

NatWest: OD £1,500 basically used up monthly - where all money in/out goes atm. 

CoOp: where my PIP double enhanced usually goes into & insurance DD’s go out of. I say usually. PIP needs renewing after 5 years & I am struggling with horrific anxiety, have not been able to sit & delve into a lot. It’s paused til I can get it done.
TSB: where wonderful mumsy is currently throwing in bailout money. No DD’s out. Used to be the emergency fund, however I used it to bail a friend out over the course of 2 years topping up his finances. Now look at me. One payment in stops & inside a month, the wheels fell off! 

I don’t really want to go on a DMP. My longest running credit account is an MBNA credit card of 14+ years. I did all the bank acc switching back before they made you close the old account when it first began, so none of my accounts are that old. I also have an AO account with no debt & a £3k limit. I don’t know if the cards get cut up but I can keep the accounts or whatnow. 

I think I need to look & see if I can just go & get my interest paused for myself while I get the wheels back on. You may have stopped me making a huge panicky mistake here joedenise, so thank you! 

liltdiddylilt

@debtfreewannabe321 squeeeeh, they let you @ people now?! 

Ok, for ease of abbreviations, & lack of connection to 🥂🍾🍺🍻🍷🥃🍸 let’s have JT & AG - wait, those are both abbreviations/spelling corrections in my homemade years’ long autocorrect on my phone. I shall devise an autocorrect that corrects to those, because why make life simple? 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 

As for where did the time go… I am not ok with having a teenager or school-age little poppet. Soap operas have nothing on us. We are those people the soaps try to emulate! My life is one long train coming off the tracks/bridge into the middle of Albert Square (or was that the other one? The last time I watched a Soap, Ian Beale was married to Cindy & had toddlers 🤔)

@MeandO < this won’t work 🫤 

Let’s get Lilt debtbusting. Or, you know… maybe just get Lilt doing the darned forms that will allow her not to have a DMP. Xxx

liltdiddylilt

Ok,

So, in the course of chatting (on whatsapp, which feels so wrong!) with Clarice from PayPlan - I went to check if I had in fact missed any debt payments yet. 

Win column:
- I have not! 

- I was able to make a £46 payment to bring my Argos card under-limit
- I have not signed anything, or got very far in my chats, because frankly my health history, & major anxiety disorder both slow things down rather a lot!
- I opened a diary & this has truly calmed my heart rate down somewhat (fun fact: Lilt has Bradycardia & resting ❤️ rate of less than 50BPM. So calming of heart rate is not as good as it sounds 🤣🤣🤣)
- I have no utility debts although on paper it looks very different with Gas/Elec. Let’s deal with that on another post.
- Insanely grateful to state my council tax is a puny, teeny, tiny amount each month, around £20 thanks to many stacked up discounts due to my health.

Loss column:
- I had gone over-limit on my Argos card due to deferred interest being added this month. 🤦🏻‍♀️ see wins
- I do not get any incoming payments to the bank for a further 18 days & I am on fumes. 

- I have still not yet gone & found the full extent of my debts. 

^Shall we make this the project of the day? I have a gorgeous very new a4 notepad that is calling my name, so I can do it on paper as I go through the online systems.

Leeettttsssss Goooooo: 📣 🙌

NatWest Bank: -£1,366.31/-£1,500
MBNA Credit: -£1,118.37/-£1,500
Argos Credit: -£1,720/£1,720
HSBC Credit: -£750.58/£2,000
NewDay Credit: -£4.91/£4,500

Shall we do a debt total? 

-£5,029.17 / -£11,220 total credit access

Things that are jumping out at me here? 
1. HOW DID I GET THAT MUCH FREAKING CREDIT?!?
2. This is £1.5k more debt than I’ve ever been in before which is terrifying, BUT, it is less than ½ of what I had access to.
3. I itch to pay that £4.91 off, but I am holding off on that because as it stands I have just paid off £46, on the Argos card, which is garnering £48 interest per month. Argos has to be a priority, along with the Overdraft.
4. FIRST Milestone is obvious, isn’t it chaps? Get it sub-£5k. That isn’t as cut & dried as it stands because there are many days left of this month, for this to get much worse before it gets better. So I don’t anticipate that being something I can squash by February. Better to be realistic & say, by April 26th, which is my birthday, I’d like to be sub-£5k
5. Do we think a DMP is the way to go? Do I do it with this PayPlan lady, who has been somewhat cagey when I have asked how this works. I cut up my cards, yes, but do I lose access to the accounts forever?!? Do they automatically close when they’re paid off? 

6. May be able to do a balance transfer to HSBC from Argos & possibly cut that interest down?

Okay. This is long & rambling. My ADHD says hi 🤣🤣🤣 so me, myself & my AuDHDanxiegoraphobia are closing out this post, & going to read some stuff about DMP/Self DMP, & see how I would get this interest stopped for myself. 

Lilt signing out! Feeling very scared, but a little more optimistic & in control than I did at the start of this post. 

liltdiddylilt

11:11 @debtfreewannabe321

debtfreewannabe321

liltdiddylilt said:

11:11 @debtfreewannabe321

🙏🏻💖 You know what this means 💖 You're being supported 😇

liltdiddylilt

Good morning diary & frens!

I skipped a day yesterday, because I was having a very distracted kinda day, even for me. I started no less than 5 posts here, but kept remembering things I needed to do, or research. Inevitably, I forgot what I was doing initially, & when I remembered, the app had refreshed & removed my post. 

So, task 1 is to actually sit & write an entire post 🤣 & get it uploaded!

First thing’s first; I somehow added an extra £69 of debt to my total when I was plugging it into my apple calculator. I don’t believe in coincidences. Yesterday I had to make two purchases on Amazon. What are the odds, that these purchases would add up to £68.97 when I clicked to pay? 

What did I buy? Well, firstly, I have an ozone machine that is the same age as JT. It has been used to death, & the last few times, I realised that I could walk into the room, still able to breathe, even after over 24 hours of the machine supposedly taking every bit of oxygen (O²), splitting it & creating ozone (O³), which is harmful to lungs. This machine sanitises rooms. It kills everything, down to bacteria & dust mites, which for someone with Asthma & complex allergies, is insanely helpful! It also kills bad smells, be this pet odour, urine (from any source), nicotine, fast food, mould spores, mildew, fleas!! Having realised that it was no longer making enough ozone to render the room uninhabitable while running, my next thought was that it was no longer up to the job. So, the new one is coming tomorrow & will help to remove a stale water/vinegar scent from my living room carpet which I cleaned & then rinsed heavily. I don’t think I got enough water out, despite going in every direction with the big rig, sucking out as much dirty water as I could. OH BOY, was it ever DIRTY?!?! If you wash your carpets, please remember to add some white vinegar (not much) to the tank once you’ve finished cleaning properly & add plain water. Keep pumping this through. Mainly, as it stops the bubbles & removes detergent, which otherwise sits in the fibres & attracts dirt 10x as quickly. 

I’m excited for this new one to come, as my OCD has flared dramatically over the last couple of months & I’ve been sanitising, deep cleaning & decluttering. It will be excellent knowing that it is truly ✨fully CLEAN✨ ❤️

The second purchase was 2 more cushion covers for the 60cm x 60cm back cushions on my huge, 16 year old corner sofa. In total there are 7 back cushions. 4 of which are in some way doomed, zips bust, inner fluff escaping the cushion liner, so I sourced these new ones. It is a work in progress. I’ve replaced the 4 damaged ones now, but eventually I’d like to overhaul the whole sofa. You may think this was unnecessary, but I will shortly be having major reconstructive surgery & my parents will come down & stay, probably for 6 weeks. My dad has my bed, as he has dementia & needs to be close to the toilet. Mum has slept on my sofa for YEARS, even when there’s a bed free. She sleeps better there, but since she can no longer leave dad at home when she comes, we now share my giant corner sofa, sleeping on opposite lengths. Usually this is for no more than 8-9 nights, but the sofa takes a bit of a battering overnight & then needs plumping & putting back every morning. I feel like I need to give it the best fighting chance by fixing the 4 problem
cushions first. This means I can finally stop bodging the back of the sofa where one cushion has been missing for a year as the inner cushion is inside a plastic bag & makes an awful noise. It will be amazing to get that back in use!!! 

So, my debt total is correct now, broadly. I’ve had lots of thoughts about the DMP route. ive begun a stepchange diary as I try to work out income vs expenditure. What I do realise, is that mine is a short term cash flow issue, owing to me not being able to send a form back due to Anxiety & Agoraphobia. I’m not yet at the point of missing payments, but it doesn’t look great. I’ll make a new post to talk about the DMP as an option. My bestie & her hubby both have StepChange DMP’s so she has me thinking! 

I’m motivated, so. Let’s mum goof! ☺️

debtfreewannabe321

Let's mum goof! I might have to start using this phrase 🤣 
I don't think £69 is a huge spend considering you will need a comfortable sofa to sleep on. I also know your cash flow is temporary and I urge you to get on with some form filling... could you invite a friend over to help with them? I'd help you if only we weren't so far from one another 🫂 then you perhaps wouldn't need the dmp and just clever budgeting which I know you can do! Xx