Getting it together...one £ at a time!

I also booked some work travel this week and used TCB for the bookings where possible, so my cleared balance is £1.20 but my pending balance is now up to £106.58 (total £107.78). The main bulk of this is from my summer holiday booking, but a few pounds here and there from work travel all adds up too if i can get it.

I'll look forward to that cashing out - will be going straight into my CC

*Off to shine my halo at my MSE-ness...

Balances and paid amounts
Loan: £6,316.92 / £15,792.30 (£9,475.38 paid off - 60% paid)
CC1: £4,404.97 / £4,804.97 (started from scratch in July 18) £400 or 8% paid off
CC2: £3,971.14 / £5,031.14 (£1060 paid off - 21% paid)

Total: £14,693.03 / £25,619.44 (£10,935.38 paid off, 43% paid)

Good things:

• 43% of total debt paid off (edging closer to half way!)
• Loan is 60% paid off (only 12 payments left!)
• Credit card 2 dropped into the 3ks!
• We have paid a few £s short of £11k off the debt so far.

Not so good things

• We had some setbacks this year and added a little to the debt
• Our 0% has run out on CC2 and we can't BT it until our new mortgage goes through at the end of January - this will be happening as soon as I get confirmation from the lawyers about the mortgage, but will add slightly to the debt depending on fees. It also means of the £60 we paid this month, only £40 came off due to interest. Could be worse, but could be better!
• All of my extra overpayments that I have been doing this month (over £200 so far) have been to pay off the photos that we bought of the kids at the end of last year. I haven't included this in the total above as I don't want to skew my numbers and this will hopefully be paid off next month anyway.

Goals for February

• Continue to overpay wherever possible
• Clear the balance of photography account by overpaying like a maniac
• Keep the motivation up with surveys and TCB to make a bit extra
• Keep to my budgets (and be more mindful of spending) to make sure i can follow my savings and overpayments that I have planned
• Get total debt into the £13ks
• Get loan into the £5ks
• Get BT sorted for CC2 and make CC1 a priority for overpayment
• Pay £900 towards debt in the month of February (keeping on top of my Pay off your debt Before Xmas 2019 £10k goal)

:money:

Days until pay day:12
Loan payments left: 12 :T:j
Childcare payments left: 19

foxgloves wrote: »

Well, Homegrown...it's lovely to hear you find my diary motivating. Back in my Spendy Decades, if anyone had told me that one day I would have no debt & would be inspiring others to budget, I think I would have collapsed onto the floor laughing so hard that I may have needed paramedics!!
As you will by now know from my diary, I was a terrible fritterer of money & so very wasteful. It says a lot, doesn't it, that since taking redundancy, we have lived on half our previous income with virtually no change to our lifestyle. We did reduce cars from one each to one to share, but that was for environmental reasons too, as I felt I could easily walk or cycle my little local journeys. So the equivalent of my professional salary must have been servicing debts, running a 2nd car & frittered away.
I am so grateful for the day that LBM struck me like a thunderclap!!
F x

It's a horrible thought thinking that your whole professional salary was being effectively wasted :eek: It's an unbelievable turnaround in attitude that you've made and I'm glad you're in such a good place now and able to have a nice life on just one salary.

I'm envious of all your growing and picking and cooking - i have neither the time, the skills or the green fingers to pull off such an exciting project but I always envy those who grow their own fruit and veg. I've been toying with growing some rosemary and thyme in the garden this year (in a pot) to see how I get on. I hear that they're pretty hard to kill. And I'd love to have them for cooking. My dad grows his own so i should just get a clipping from him, do some research and give it a go but having never done anything remotely garden-y in my life, it seems a little daunting!

Much of our debt came from having two maternity leaves (second unexpected :eek:) in two years and not having enough time to build up a good buffer. We also moved house in the interim to a much bigger place (which we can afford - not outwith our means). But spending 20 months paying two kids' full time childcare (£1.5k per month) while both earning a moderate salary was crippling. Now we have one at school and one who gets 15 hours funding so we spend a lot less on childcare now (but still £800p/m) which is enabling us to pay down the debt at a reasonable rate.

2020 will be our year! Youngest goes to school, freeing up a lot more money, our loan will be finished and we'll have a little of the CCs to clear, then it's operation 'Let's get this house in order'.

Thanks so much for stopping by and sharing your pearls of wisdom and debtisodes

Just spent the last 3 hours mapping out our budget and projected expenses until June!

Of course it's flexible but i like to have it there so that at a start of the new month, i'm not starting from scratch. Just tweaking what I have depending on what the latest is.

It's all looking healthy enough!

Off to bed with square eyes now...night all.