yet another sleepless night :o(

skintmam

hi everybody, been a member of this site for a while and avidly read the DFW forum as all your stories have helped me to confront my own money problems (thank you!) - as I have been in denial for years.

I'll tell you a bit about my background and where i am at the moment (sorry to bore you!) I am 36, married a cpl of years ago and have 2 kids - 9 yr old from a previous relaitionship and a 4 month old. I have always had debts since the day I got accepted for my 1st CC at 18 and basically it has spiralled since then. my husband had his own debts when we met (he got landed with a load of debt when he split up with his 1st wife) he had gone to payplan and he is (very) slowly paying back what he owes. up until last year I had a very well paid job and was earning around £1700 a month, but for the sake of my family (and my sanity) decided to pack it in a get something part time and closer to home, saved on petrol/childcare & got rid of the car & bought a banger so we weren't that much worse off a month. I have had loads of LBM's over the years, which has mainly resulted in me taking out a loan or remortgaging to consolidate my debts and then maxing out my CC's again which has basically got me where I (we) are today. My DH is fully on board with me, thank god!

I had my 'real' LBM in september last year when I started maternity leave, my boss (a pig of a man) decided to pay me a cpl of days late while he sorted stuff out with his accountant and we basically fell apart - mortgage bounced, no money for petrol/food etc and we've basically struggled on since then - we have completely overhauled our outgoings (got rid of sky/reduced our mobiles/cancelled dvd's/reduced food bills/got rid of 2nd car etc) but our outgoings are still more than our incomings. I have managed to make up the defecit (about £200 a month) :eek: by selling on ebay and doing ironing.

we had resigned ourselves into thinking we would be stuck in debt for years and years and then last month I found the snowball calculator which shows that we could (realistically) be out of debt in 47 months! we couldn't believe it and we have been on a mission ever since! suddenly the unachiveable has become achievable. just typing that bit brings a smile to my face. yet half an hour ago I was in the depths of despair, DH got up for work and needed to get petrol on the way in - checked my bank and the money that I transferred from paypal hasn't gone in yet so I raided my son's sponsership money to put a fiver in the car, see I'm crying again now

I'll post my SOA and all my debt details later on but I just wanted to get all this down somewhere as I really don't think I can get through it by myself. I'm also desperately trying to get a new job so I don't have to go back to work for my horrible boss.

sorry if I've bored you but hopefully some of you (i'm banking on it!) will help me through my debt free journey

FrugalJo

Hi Skintmam,
Welcome !
Sounds like you've made loads of progress already. You watch that 47 months go down as you become more and more frugal on this site

You up to speed with the daily clicks and quidco stuff ?

Good luck on the jobsearch. SOA reductions are not my forte but once it's up the clever ones will help

raq

just wanted to say HI and welcome and don't forget to do your SOA, tones of people on here who will work through this for you

skintmam

i've somehow managed to duplicate my thread! my SOA is on the other one.. x