2-4-1 on Babies - Time to Tackle Debt

Blackcats

great news on the switching bonus. Keep an eye open for the criteria for the Nationwide £100 fairershare payment which MSE usually try to predict what you need to do in the new year.

joedenise

if you haven’t already then open a savings account so that you have the necessary 2 accounts for the fairer share payment. You usually need to have a balance of £100 in each account at the end of March in order to get it - unless of course they change the criteria!

BetterThanIDeserve

@Blackcats & @joedenise thank you both! We have our Mortgage with them, so will keep an eye out on what the criteria is and if that helps - if not I’ll get the savings accounts open for sure!

That would be a lovely touch!

joedenise

no problem if you have mortgage with them as that would count too

BetterThanIDeserve

Good Evening everyone,

The last few days of work have been a busy one preparing presentations for next week, so the weekend is very much welcome!

The money has landed from the Bank Switch and my wife has now been paid, this means we now have a £1K Emergency fund 🎉

Not only is that ticked off, we have been able to pay the smallest credit card off and £75 towards the iPhone (ignore that the second credit card is labelled as 2, I can’t get it to format the same when I edit it 😂…). I have put the £75 aside to do it in one go when we have the remainder of the money as it’s a pit of a pain to do.

1K EMERGENCY FUND ✅

1. Credit Card — £98.00 ✅

2. Credit Card — £284.00

3. iPhone — £275.00

4. iPhone — £275.00

5. Wedding Abroad guest cost for close family member — £1,140.00

6. Personal Loan — £6,272.42

7. Car Finance — £11,925.26

Total Starting Debt: £20,269.68

The only slight issue is… Our en-suite has started leaking 😳 Last night I took a shower and the water was coming through the ceiling downstairs, so this is currently out of order.

we have a plumber coming to look at replacing the shower and putting some splash panels (cheaper than tiles) in as it’s long over due. Unfortunately this means it’s going to take up our emergency fund and some 😞 We wanted to get the debt down to the car payment and then tackle it, however it looks like it’s coming sooner than we planned.

if that’s the case we will double down on selling on V*nted and we will revert back to starting again on the emergency fund.

the positive is, if we didn’t get to the position of having the fund we would be in a much worse position!

honeybee1234

Well isn't this just what an emergency fund was made for? Life has a habit of throwing curveballs our way at any given moment! Does the shower need fully replacing right now, or is there a simple fix that will solve the problem of the leaking, do you know where it's leaking from and is it an ongoing issue?

BetterThanIDeserve

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82149987#Comment_82149987

Hi @honeybee1234 hope you’ve had a lovely weekend 😊 You are right it’s totally there for that, I just didn’t expect it to be used so soon 😅

It’s a fix we have known needed looking at for a while but it was manageable but it’s got alot worse and puts the shower currently out of use.

There is probably a way to fix it without replacing it on a temporary measure but they still have to take it all out to get to the problem. Although it pains me, we might as well get it done.

We got a quote for the full shower unit and splash tiles and it came in at £800ish founds ran it through AI to check prices and we can find the exact products online from separate places delivered, whilst saving £267! It was a bit of a test but will be something I do going forward.

we have a plumber that is a friend of my sisters coming tomorrow, with it not being a full en-suite and it being like for like hopefully it keeps the costs down.

The plan is to cash it, even if it means doing it in a couple months time but at least the ball is rolling. We will then go right back to the emergency fund rebuild and start the process again.

Before getting the quote for parts, it knocked me a bit in terms of motivation but after a couple days thinking about it, it’s actually increased our motivation on why we want to be out of debt in the first place!

riverbluelion

Congratulations on your 2-4-1 bundles of joy and hitting the 1k target for your emergency fund! Ive followed, you can do it!!! 😊

BetterThanIDeserve

Thanks @riverbluelion 💙🩵

BetterThanIDeserve

So the plumbers been and labour is £950 and worst case £1,250 defending on how things look when the tiles comes off.

I’ve managed to shop around for the shower enclosure etc and from the original quote of £870.60 locally I’ve been able to find it online for the exact same products/ brand for £384.32! HUGE saving!

Worst case that’s £1,634.32, luckily getting to the £1K emergency fund will carry the majority of it and I’ll be able to scramble about £250 more from V*nted funds and birthdays Monday. Unfortunately the rest will have to go on the CC, BUT we can pay that off on payday.

Its needed doing for a while, but didn’t expect the leak and having to do it so soon…

Once the CC involved is payed off next month, the rest of the remaining money will go into building the emergency fund back up and then I can get back on the debt snowball!