Debt Free in 2009!

carrollsk

Hi there -

I'm newbie on the forum, but have been watching Martin Lewis on tv and lurking on here for a while. My OH and I are in debt, mostly out of foolish decisions and purchases. Some of it has been out of necessary borrowing, but we just kept up the minimum payments and we find ourselves spending almost all our income on bills and repaying debt and are FED up!:mad:


So our new debt free life will hopefully begin in Summer 2009. We are proud to be frugal and facing up to our debt.:T

We've cut back all the essentials, no sky, only prepay phones, sticking to a spreadsheet budget, etc. Just need to dig in and see it through.:j

Debt at it's highest in January 2008 - £15449
Debt level today - £12599

Total paid off to date - £2850 :T :T :T If we keep it up I think we'll make the £8000 by Xmas goal

Cleosmum

Hi :wave: welcome to MSE, you sound very focussed and doing well! Pop in and join us on the small DFW thread, let us know what you do each day, I find it very inspiring and it usually reminds me of something I have forgotten, like checking for mystery shops

carrollsk

Hi Cleosmum! Thanks for the welcome. We are very focused just now, but it started out of a repayment situation. We were naive and misunderstood the repayment terms. Anyhow, long story short is that we have a large repayment for one of our debts just now (6 months in total, only another 3 months of this agreement). We have found we're managing along with the mortgage, other repayments, etc. It's given us the motivation to carry on and get us out of debt asap. It's been a struggle as every penny literally counts just now and we have no luxuries at all, but in a year or two we'll be able to have much more spending money. If all goes to plan (fingers crossed!!!), we'll be looking to join the mortgage free wanabe thread. I want to start keeping the money we make for us to enjoy, and not be a slave to the banks anymore!

carrollsk

Oh dear...forgotten to add in our student loans as we usually don't count it in with the rest of the other debt like credit cards, etc.:rolleyes:

Ok, we're just going to focus on getting rid of this huge chunk of high interest debt, and then work on the student loans and mortgage. We're still headed in the right direction finally after it's taken an age for OH and myself to both have the lightbulb moment:o

kizzykizzywizzy

Hi & welcome,
You really do know when you've had your real lightbulb moment don't you;) I have had several, what I thought were lightbulds, but they were just shifting debt elsewhere moments & building it up again.
Good luck in your quest to be debt free:T
There is a thread started by Pollydaydream, Pay off £20,000ish by Xmas 08, although it doesn't have to be that much, just a stop faffing around challenge, it's great to see everyone's totals going down on there & we're really a nice bunch! Come & join us:beer:

Lorne

Hi there, welcome to the boards, you'll find some fantastic advice on here, has definitely made a different to the way that we manage out finances.

Good luck!