£29,303...Enough is enough!

This may be another post that makes no sense to anybody else, but I'm trying to get my thoughts straight...

When I was checking tax credits a few months ago I had an alert pop up that I can open a help to save account. I can pay in a maximum of £50 per month and will earn a bonus. If I manage to save £50 per month for the full duration of the account (4 years) I will save £2,400 and be paid a bonus of £1,200. So, I am currently using this account to save my emergency fund (not my car tax, insurance savings etc, pure emergency savings).

DH is also eligible for one of these accounts, so we are considering opening one is his name too. I'm just trying to make sure in my own head that this is a better option than using that money to overpay our debts.

Our current DFD is 53 months away.

1. If I continue paying £50 a month into my help to save, but put the other £50 to overpayments, we will be debt free in 49 months and (if there's no emergencies) I will have £3,600 saved.

2. If I stop paying into my account, put the full £100 a month to overpayments, we will be debt free in 45 months but have no emergency fund/savings.

3. If we both pay into the accounts then in 4 years time (if there's no emergencies) we will have £7,200 saved between us. We could pay off the remainder of the debt at this stage and have around £3,300 left in savings. This would be paying the debt off a month earlier than option 1, so if I put that extra months worth of debts payments into savings, I would have nearly £3,900 in savings compared to the £3,600 in option 1.

Obviously, emergencies may happen along the way. I'm also hoping DHs earnings will go up, I'll make money on surveys etc so I can make more overpayments. So, we may not follow any of the timescales/targets exactly but I'm swaying towards option 3 at the moment.

Today I have done my weekly shop and my subtotal for the month stands at £173.17, although £6.99 of today's spend was a Christmas present, so technically only £166.18 so far this month on groceries (but this also includes theatre snacks for DD and I, facial moisturiser, and hair conditioner). This leaves £33.82 for next weeks shop. I don't think I'm likely to stay under budget as DC3s milk alone costs over £6. I hopefully won't be too far over budget and we're able to absorb the overspend this month, but I will need to work on a plan for next month which will include 5 shops, packed lunches for DC1 & DC2, and lunches to work for me.

Sold £24 worth of items today, so I now have £40 in the bank to pay for DHs birthday meal. £22.50 in my purse for DD and I to have haircuts, and £26.39 in my purse towards getting DHs car valeted and waterproofed. Once my PA studies are approved I can withdraw just over £12, which will cover remainder of birthday expenses and a little left over for savings/small debt overpayment.

I'm pretty sure I've been looking at the wrong figure for my hitachi loan, so my overall debt is £750 less than I thought. I'll update my figures once all of this months payments have gone out.

I've had a call from the PPI company today & they have found PPI on an old loan. I know I could claim myself (we did it for DH) but I honestly thought I'd never had PPI & I've had so many different loan & cc providers that there is no way I would have contacted them all myself. So I'm willing to give up 20% of anything they find, rather than never claiming at all. I've got no idea how much it might be, so it's another wait and see.

I have made some progress on the decluttering and currently have 30 items listed on eBay, plus a few I'm trying on FB first. I want to get as much cleared as possible before I go back to work, partly to boost our savings/debt repayments, but also to get the house low maintenance and clutter free.