The Debt Free Roll Of Honour

Whoop whoop .... made it :j

Answers
LBM was back in 2012. I had been promoted at work and was told I was been flown out to Argentina in two days! I was struggling to work out how to pay for my expenses before I could claim them back! My credit cards were all full and, although I had a works Amex it did not work everywhere!
My debts were around gbp19k
I then contacted PayPlan who were recommended by a counselling line available through work. They set me up paying gbp100 per month to start. Debt free date was somewhere around 2025 (minimum). I kept this up and just increased around gbp20 a month. Then, due to a change in circumstance (remarried so two household incomes) I have been able to blast the debt this final year at gbp450 per month:D

My pearl of wisdom is to allow yourself enough money to live. I will not lie when I say I exaggerated my expenses. I thought initially that I would be paying this back into retirement and there was no way I was going to have my time with my children spoilt. I massaged the figures shamelessly and justified doing so by knowing I could have gone for an IVA or full and final settlements rather than choosing to pay my debts in full. Remember a DMP is an informal agreement so you do have some leeway. I think my creditors accepted by plan simply because I always managed to increase it annually.

The entire site has been my saviour and Martin Lewis my god.

I do have a credit card now but the balance never exceeds my savings. I use it for the protection it provides rather than it making me it’s prisoner.

Good luck everyone xxxxxxxx

ST xx

I have paid my last credit card debt off today
It does feel good!

a.The date of your lightbulb moment
Sometime around June 2011. We found out my wife was pregnant with an unplanned 3rd child. This threw me in to a blind panic as the previous 2 periods of maternity leave had stretched our creditworthiness (and available credit) to the absolute limit. By now we were only just treading water and the prospect of losing half of our income for 9 months meant losing our home would be a real possibility
b. Debts at their highest
£47,352.19
c. Debt-Free Date
16th November 2018
d. Your one pearl of wisdom.
Face up to it. Don't hide from your debt. As soon as you face up to it you are on the road to being debt free. It may feel like this day will never come but it will
e. Links to the MSE guides that helped you
Stupidly I didn't really use this board until I was close to the end.
f. Which forum threads helped you
'Debt-Free Wanabee'
g. And if you had a debt diary on the Debt-Free Wannabe board (DFW), a link to it

I was £28k in cc debt when I had my lbm in 2010. I became debt free in about 4 years, with everything paid off. I can't find my posts in here because I didn't log in for a while and forgot my id. I did have a bit of a wobble after buying a car using an interest free cash transfer but glad to say I do have it under control. I do have cc debt on 0% and fortunately enough savings to cover it. Hope every one hangs in and doesn't panic, it's a horrible place to be but you can get out of it. I'm hoping I can pop in and offer some advice, just because I've been there, done it, had the stress the worry and eventually dug my way out, debt is a darkness but it does lighten.