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Resourcefulness: The budgeter's friend
Happy New Year to readers old & new! Well, it's time for a new chapter. My old diary ("Put away your purse & become debt averse") achieved pretty much what I intended. I shared the story of how I got into debt at the age of 19 & stayed that way until a pretty enormous lightbulb pinged on during my early 40s, I've shared…
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Progress not Perfection
Happy New Year! I thought it was about time I started a new diary. I've been on these diaries since 2008. My last diary is here Things
can only get better My first diary is here Champagne Lifestyle Lemonade Budget and the one after that here Looking for the Silver Lining. That's a hell of a lot of waffle over the years 😆…
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*sigh* this is still taking a while, but moving forward (slowly!)
Hope everyone is enjoying their Christmas so far :) After 4 years writing (sporadically) on my previous diary, I thought it was time for a sparkly new one. A lot of things have changed over the 4 years - I just have 1 job these days, my children are all that bit older, our house renovations are complete and our debt is…
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Here Goes...Starting Up on a Journey
Hi All, I've made some reckless decisions recently, tried to invest money, kept borrowing to invest more and lost it all. Ridiculous I didn't learn after the first one, two, three, ten attempts. But we are here now: Essentially I am up to my eyeballs in debt and have about the same amount of debt and interest payments)…
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Trying to get the balance right
Hi all, Long time lurker over here 👋 and thought I'd finally bite the bullet and create my own diary. Mostly for my own self motivation and to keep tabs on myself as I am my own worst enemy at talking myself around or out of situations. I have stalked these forums for a number of years as I find reading other people's…
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2024 - Let's go again
So I'm starting 2024 with my debt at a little over £31k - still sounds so bad but considering it was £50k when I had my LBM in 2022 it's not so bad. I'm paying £700 per month towards debt and all but one account has been defaulted. Which makes me think about how best to tackle that. Defaults will start dropping off in…
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Milann’s mutterings through retirement
I thought it was about time for a new diary. Ive been a member of MSE many years now and got my debt down from £20,000’s to a big fat ZERO. I kept the debts to myself as I was the one who built them up. Dh would have been ok and we’d have worked through them together…..but it was my mess that I wanted to clear myself and…
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Moving on with things
I have debated posting this for a few days or so. One of the main reasons I wanted to post an update is because recently I said goodbye to my car for good having made the decision to lease another electric car through my business. A decision I simply think I wouldn’t have made without having been on here. My wife and I are…
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Managing Mat Leave
I've been meaning to start a diary thread on here for a little while. I'm due to start mat leave in 8 weeks which was not entirely planned, meaning from a financial point of view it's a little tight. Definitely manageable but we need to keep track of a few things as we have some debts we're paying off as well. I'm hoping…
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Getting Over "The Terrible Mistake" and a Debt Free Target of 2026
Hi everyone In January 2022 I had to sit down and tell my wife that not only had I managed to lose over 100K in inheritance but tried to recoup those losses through adding approximately 25k in credit card debt. COVID also caused a huge drop in income. Through a couple of really crazy investments (Avoid AIM investing like…
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Giving every £ a job
I've decided to be brave and continue my journey from lurking on these boards, through posting on these boards and I now feel ready to start my own diary. I don't actually have any debt anymore but I am very bad at saving so I've decided to set myself savings goals and treat them as debts to my future self. I was…
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Giving Up/Cutting Down Alcohol Thread part 18
Welcome!! Here we are again, time for a new thread, new starts and new challenges. Let's take a trip down memory lane and remind ourselves of In Search Of Me's original post on February 24th 2008 in Part 1: And here's what she started!!! Part 17 is HERE Part 16 is HERE Part 14 and 15 is HERE Part 13 is HERE Part 12 is HERE…
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My long overdue journey to becoming debt free!!
Hello, I've been lurking on here for a good few years now, and I have decided its time to finally, and for once and for all, to sort my sorry financial mess out! I wont bore you with all the gory details of how I got here, it would just be a list of excuses and justifications, when the hard reality is I spend more than I…
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From debt to freedom...
For a couple of months I have been lurking and reading diaries which have been helpful and inspiring. I thought that I would start a diary to keep myself focussed on getting rid of the debts. I am a working mum, recently separated from my husband. I have a large family which makes for an interesting and busy life! I have…
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Small steps lead to big changes...
I thought I'd start a new diary for the new year. It always feels like time for a nice fresh start, and whilst I don't really make resolutions, it's always nice to have a plan of things I'd like to achieve. After many, many years of struggling, it feels like my finances are finally on a more even keel, and I have for the…
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Must try harder!
To echo the words of many a school report, I must try harder! My dad often quoted ‘a fool and his money are soon parted’ and it’s taken many years and losing my dear dad before I really took it to heart that I am that fool. My position isn’t terrible, but I’m terrible with money. I often get to the middle of the month with…
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Time to Face The Music
We have decided as a couple that it is time to face the music and start paying down some of our debts. We are lucky that we are both in jobs that pay ok but we have at times been living beyond our means and now it is time to start reining in the spending and making a concerted effort to cut the debt. Moving house last year…
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Moving on
Welcome to my new thread: my old one is here: Cherry takes the reins — MoneySavingExpert Forum and my very old one is here: Coffee and chocolate — MoneySavingExpert Forum Quite a lot changed in 2023, and now it's time to move on. I left the job and career path I'd followed for many years and don't feel I can or should go…
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15months to debt free - I hope
Well I thought it was time I started a diary having put my two pennorth into several others. Brief bit about me. I am a retired careworker having done other things as well. I have a husband who has mental health issues and 3 old dogs. A 15 year oldJack Russell X who has heart and kidney failure so I am not sure how long we…
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Get a grip woman!
Having been reading a number of people's debt-free wannabe diaries for some time now, I have finally decided I will start my own. We are less than three years from wanting to stop work, and less than ten years from state retirement age. I manage our household finances and DH lets me get on with it. His attitude is more…