Reducing Debt - being accountable and taking responsibility

Afternoon Peeps!

Not much to report today. Managed a NSD yesterday and will be having one today.

I've been trying to make some payments to my Partnership Card over the past few days (CC3 - I use it for food and fuel spends and pay off in full every month) and have been wildly unsuccessful. I've unconventionally used it for presents spending this month and I wanted to pay it off as I went along, so my current balance matched my fuel and food spends in YNAB. All seemed perfectly logical to me. However, it seems that credit card companies don't let you pay off your spends willy nilly. :rotfl: I think I've made too many payments this statement period and thus any further payments I make until statement day (which is tomorrow) will be classed as putting the account in credit. Doh. Need to hold back my enthusiasm. Its not a bank, its a credit card!

Other than that, I have a couple of visits into the office planned this week and have breakfasts / lunches already prepped so hoping to make them NSDs too aside from having to put fuel in the car.

Dinner can be whatever we fancy off the list of food we have stuff in for. Need to chat to DF as I might have to get stuff out of the freezer and time is ticking for it to be safely defrosted.

I've got a call into the mortgage broker and waiting for a call back - I'm going to start that ball rolling I think, just to see what the process is and how much my existing debts may matter in terms of the borrowing amount and rate. If they don't matter too much, I may chat to DF about just getting on with things and putting the house on the market now. The house I have my eye on to look around is still on the market and I've been thinking more and more about what our life may be like if we moved there - it feels good and I think I may be tempted by it, but we need to market and sell ours first!! Oh look, the impatient tendency I spoke about earlier on in my diary.... :cool:

Back to work I go...

DSL :j

Ahem. Went via the pub rather than the supermarket on the way home

Still, I didn't spend any ££s as I was driving and had a couple of soft drinks bought for me so all in all, a lowish spend day just £15 on fuel for commuting. Good times.

Will need to pick up that fruit tomorrow morning from the supermarket though.

Working at home tomorrow, so no fuel or lunch costs. :T

But...I'm going out for dinner tomorrow night, so it might be a wee bit spendy though all budgeted for.

Lots of diary updates to catch up on here today - will get back to it after I've cooked dinner (from the freezer! :cool:).

DSL :beer:

Good news, folks.

We got a decision in principle for a mortgage that would more than cover the house that were interested in. We've got a fair bit of equity in our house and so are aiming for a LTV of around 73% - 74%. The broker seems to think our finances look good and there shouldn't be any major problems borrowing what we want.
However, the monthly mortgage payment will be nearly three times as much as our current mortgage payment :eek: All the more reason to get that 3-6 month emergency fund built and the CC debt paid off as soon as possible!!

The credit card debt didn't seem a big issue (given the outstanding debt is set against our joint income rather than my personal income). I asked the broker how it would be considered by lenders and he said that lenders generally calculate 3% of each outstanding balance as a fixed monthly repayment. He didn't seem bothered by my £9k. Phew.

Now we can get the ball rolling more confidently and look at marketing our property and maybe take a look around the one that is for sale.

DSL :j

Sometimes, life really does get in the way of debt slaying!

I went to the dentist this morning to see about my broken tooth - he thinks I'll need a crown. I've opted for a tooth coloured one, which will cost me £400 :eek:

I've a few options to cover this cost including reducing November's CC overpayments by £400 or temporarily borrowing £150 from my car maintenance savings and deferring the hit on overpayments until January when the service is due. I'm tempted by the latter.

In the past, I wouldn't have worried about it and just put it on CC2. Goes to show how my mindset is changing because now the consequences are reduced debt overpayments and that is mildly frustrating. I'm happy with that as it means that overpaying has become more important that sneaking it on a CC and dealing with it later (when later never comes until its too late).

I've also got £390 car insurance to pay for in December. Again, this will need to come off CC over payments for that month.

So, all in all, I'm probably going to lose some momentum in debt repayments over the coming months but I'm hoping my budgeting will keep me at an acceptable pace to achieve my short term goal - I'm already 44.65% there with 3 pay days to go.

DSL :j