Debt Free By 2019?

onedaysomeday · 24 February 2018 at 5:18PM

Well all but one of my eBay listings sold which has got me around £70 which is good and I have the bug now as I have spent this morning combing through what else I could put on for sale! I have just listed 2 DVD bundles which will only get me around another £10 but it's rare I watch DVDs what with all the streaming services available now, and I don't have much room to store them anyway.Just need to package up all the items that sold last night so they are ready to go the PO on Monday! We received a charity collection bag today too so I think all of my shoes that I don't wear and also won't get much online will go into that as well as a couple of jackets I have that also won't sell online - slowly decluttering! Annoyingly I know I have a bangle in a box from the jewellers somewhere, that I could put up for sale as I don't generally wear things on my wrist, but I cannot find it! I'm sure it will turn up somewhere

Nothing much else to report, been a quiet day and not much else going on this evening!

onedaysomeday · 26 February 2018 at 6:11PM

Probably won't update til payday.. partially as I have to spend some time working out if I'm going to break up with my OH or not.. on the plus side of that I didn't think I could stomach lunch today so a NSD... next report after payday!

onedaysomeday · 28 February 2018 at 10:02AM

Well, it's payday!

Bit of a weird one this month as where February was a short month, a few of my bills are coming out later than the 1st of the month so I currently still have all of my wages sat in my account, but they're all accounted for where various payments will be going, it's just a matter of waiting for the payments to go out.

I got my activation code for online banking for my new account yesterday and happy to see that my switch bonus is sitting in there already, so that's going straight into my car fund!

It's my first day on my holiday days (back on the 12th March) so I think today will be a nice chilled out day and will try to be vaguely productive for the rest of it :rotfl:
There will be lots of items going onto eBay I think whilst I have the time to go through everything that I own. I really do have so much clutter!

OH is waiting to find out if the landlord of a flat we viewed is willing to negotiate on the rent, we have sat down and worked out how much his outgoings are and how much his finances change with the extra cost for the new flat vs where he currently is. Easy to do finances these days I can look at my own just as well, so helping with his, making changes where necessary. Just wish I had been able to do this kind of thing when I began getting into debt

savingholmes · 4 March 2018 at 11:50PM

Don't beat yourself up over the past. Just go forward. Great about the switch bonus. I need another active direct debit on the account I want to switch from before I can switch.

onedaysomeday · 12 March 2018 at 11:13AM

Well, I'm back at work today after 8 days off where I wasn't at all as productive as I had hoped I would be!

However I'm happy with the progress I've made so far on my Old Debts - the figure should go below £1,000 after March's pay which will be a nice milestone!

I'm just awaiting a response from a Packaged Accounts claim with NatWest to see if I can get anything back from them before starting to make repayments - it's a closed account and they have said that they won't be chasing me for the money but have given me the number to call and make payments if I wish to.

The repayments to my nan and my OH will remain the same as it's an arrangement I've made but I may try and repay my nan a few months early and then start putting the extra £50 I pay her towards my repayments to my OH and get that cleared down quicker.

The credit card will now be tackled at £100 per month and more payments as and when I can so will be clear by the end of the year but hopefully a long time before then.

My other main priority as of my pay at the end of this month is to start building an emergency fund, and get that built up as soon as possible.

My turn to cook dinner tonight so we will probably have to stop at Sburys so I can use my Nectar points and not have to spend any money :rotfl:

onedaysomeday · 12 March 2018 at 12:05PM

Well I have already been looking ahead at the end of the month to see what I do debt wise to clear things down quicker - provided I keep to a £150 allowance (I've completely messed that up this month but I can scrape by for the rest of it that I have left).

I should have £245 left over for debt repayments once I have paid everything out this month.
I have 2 accounts with a company with balances of £100 and £150 which currently gets paid at £25 a month on each account. Once the payments have been made at the end of this month to each account those balances will be £75 and £125.
This means I could settle one of the accounts at least, and if I did that make £50 a month repayments to the one account left and settle it in a few months as opposed to 5 months.

That would then reduce my old debt figure to £934 with my other account repayments.
I have 2 accounts also with Lowell that stand at £118 and £134.

After settling the £75 account I could then either settle the other account (£125) or either of the Lowell accounts. My thinking at present is to repay the account that stands at £125 purely as its the ones I pay more to, and I would then have £50 free to throw at the two Lowell accounts and repay those quicker - if I did that, the £118 Lowell account would be paid in 3 months max (although I'd probably settle it all after two months) and the second account in 3 months max also. This would mean that by June I would just be repaying one old debt, and would have paid off £500 worth of debt :j

Well, it seems I have figured it all out for next month then! :beer:

onedaysomeday · 13 March 2018 at 1:43PM

I've been sulking a bit today that I've been too lazy to even make myself a packed lunch for work each day which was what I had been planning to do, to stop myself spending nearly a fiver on lunch as I work right in the town centre. My plan was to make a sandwich and bring a pack of some form of healthy snack too.

Then I remembered I now have a fridge at work. Well - a coke fridge, but big enough and cold enough to be able to store food in for a few days. This means what I could actually just do on a Monday morning is go to the shop and get enough for cheap lunches each day. I'm thinking a loaf of bread, sandwich filler (whether actual sandwich filler or just a pack of ham or something), and some own brand yoghurts and that would see me through the week. We always have enough healthy crisp things at home that I can just throw one in my handbag in the morning without having to think about it too much.

That means I can probably spend £5 a week on food absolute maximum. It makes life easier as well as there's no guarantee there'll always be enough of what I want at home to make lunch for the week, and I don't have to worry about waking up too late to be able to sort it out. The only other money I ever really spend on food is porridge sachets for breakfast and milk for that and coffee, so I can't really complain at £25 a month on food! Plus I'm sure there will be times that branded stuff may be on offer so it won't always be bottom of the range items :rotfl:

Just kind of waiting for the end of the month to come around now - all my driving lessons this month were covered in a block booking, and I don't think I need to get the train to my OH at all for the rest of the month (he will drive) so just waiting to get paid and pay off some more debts! :beer:

fatrab · 13 March 2018 at 6:20PM

Hi, Just catching up on your diary since you were good enough to read mine!!

One thing I will say, porridge sachets are extortionate compared to a bag of porridge oats. I reckon my morning porridge costs me 5p per portion. Sure, it's only a little saving and it's fractionally harder to make, but how much are the sachets costing? I used to spend £6.95 on breakfast alone Mon-Fri EVERY WEEK!!!! £35 just on breakfast!

What my wife and I do now is write out a meal plan like this:

Monday
Breakfast - cereal/porridge
Lunch - Sunday's leftovers
Dinner - spag bol

Tuesday
B- cereal/porridge
L- leftover spag bol
D- stewed sausage and potatoes

Weds
B- cereal/porridge
L- Leftover stewed sausage
D- chicken stir fry

and so on...

When you cook every dinner make a big enough portion for tomorrows lunch. Plan 3 days in advance. Only shop for what you need to complete each meal. Make a shopping list and only buy what's on it! I don't remember the last time I threw any food away. Everything gets used.

There's a book & website called the Savvy Shopper's Cookbook, might be worth looking at if you're looking for easy cheap meals. If you don't already, start shopping at LIDL/ALDI, 3 months ago I wouldn't have set foot in either of them, now I resent going to ASDA or Sainsburys!

And as for finding the motivation, give yourself a kick up the backside and get on with it. You will feel better once you're getting on with it. Everyone will say "oh, £5 per day adds up to £25 per week" or "think of how much that adds up to over a year", I didn't find those numbers helpful at the time but realise now how it adds up. What I found helpful was keeping a spending diary and realising that the reason I didn't have £900 spare every month was because I was frittering it on utter, utter garbage!

The only person who will make that change is you!

I wish you the very best and will pop in as time goes by

onedaysomeday · 13 March 2018 at 6:48PM

fatrab wrote: »

Hi, Just catching up on your diary since you were good enough to read mine!!

One thing I will say, porridge sachets are extortionate compared to a bag of porridge oats. I reckon my morning porridge costs me 5p per portion. Sure, it's only a little saving and it's fractionally harder to make, but how much are the sachets costing?

I was actually thinking about this in the supermarket on my lunch break - I think the boxes I get are 8 sachets for £1.00 but it will be a lot cheaper buying a big bag!

I'm fortunate that I live with people who are almost family and my rent covers food, the only down side is I don't have much control over the meals to be able to make lunches from them for the next day - I do where I can but it feels much more straightforward at the moment just making sandwiches

Thank you for the well wishes! :j

onedaysomeday · 14 March 2018 at 10:57AM

(second time having to type this out as page crashed whilst trying to post before :mad: )

Well - I woke up in a positive mood today! Several times actually! I woke up at 5.30am to do my workout DVD and still have pain in my legs from a long run I didn't cool down from on Sunday, so I was positive I should wait until tomorrow to do it instead. Then when I woke up again at 6.30am I was positive I should have just gotten up at 5.30am regardless as I felt much more groggy and grumpy the second time around :rotfl:

All jokes aside, I really do feel positive and determined today!

My foot injury is back, I either haven't let it heal properly or gone in too much too soon with the long run I did on Sunday. However it's not at the point it was when I took a break before (i.e swollen and causing me to limp because I ignored it for several weeks) so hopefully it won't take long to heal up and I will actually just ease back into it once I am pain free again. This time round though I do need to actually do some other exercise (hence the workout DVD) as it made me genuinely miserable and irritable just sitting around for weeks, not helped by the weight gain. Lack of endorphins from exercise = stuffing my face to make myself feel better = feeling more miserable because I've stuffed my face = lack of motivation to exercise = feeling more miserable. I won't lie, I was a complete witch (except not quite witch

) to a lot of people too.

I've discovered that although my old current account is now closed, the two savings accounts I had through that bank too are still active and running, so they will be used going forwards as two pots for presents in the year, and the other for car maintenance etc. My PO Saver will be used for my emergency fund, and once I have bought a car my other current account will be used to save for any other purchases I need to save up for.

I have listed four items for sale this morning. My other tasks for the day include:
- Setting up SO's for new savings pots
- Finding out how to obtain my online statements for my closed account. It says on the site you can view them for closed accounts for upto five years but isn't showing me anything
- Find out if I can pay in old £1 coins to my new current account - I found 4 in an old coat pocket :rotfl:
- Keep an eye out for surveys :j

Debt Free By 2019?

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