Crunchy's Final Debt Free Diary!

All accounts reconciled on YNAB last night. We will have to dip into the oil money £80 for a few things but we can make it up next month and at least it’s not a credit card.

I have a child at home with a sickness bug and the other one has their day off at nursery today so not planning on going anywhere.

Going to make a big chilli and a big lasagne today to stock up the freezer. I also have some bananas to use up and apples to make sauce out of.

Crunch xx

I don’t get stressed about it anymore. What’s done is done. I’ve learned that I need to think great about my life now rather than wait until it’s all paid off. I’ll still have the Sam problems as I do now and the £300 odd quid we currently pay on ccs will then be diverted to the mortgage so it doesn’t mean I’m going to be better off immediately.

I’m focusing now on why go over budget rather than beating myself up about it

Wx

Morning all!!

Currently trapped under a sleeping dog drinking coffee and it’s remonding me of the days 4 years ago when I would type updates on here with a baby in my arms. She is now 4 and sitting at the table playing on her laptop bossing her brother and her daddy around.

We have come so far in these last 4 years. This last year has been a bit of a blip in the sense that the debt has gone up rather than down but for good reason. I have had a lovely time off with the children and feel like I have found myself again and you can’t put a price on that. It also feels like husband and I are finally on the same page. We have been using YNAB now for nearly a month and identified lots of areas for improvement in our finances ready to start the New Year.

Our next steps are to get the budget in a good place and aim to get all this debt paid off by the time husband is 40 in two years time. We also have a house to decorate and a garden to landscape not to mention a big holiday coming up this summer.

Our theme for next year is to proactively plan everything and YNAB will help with this.

I’m promising to be a more regular diarist as well. It will be easier and more of a pleasure when the debt goes down rather than up.

The moment Christmas is over I shall be putting together a plan of action to help us achieve this.

Until then have an amazing Christmas everyone!!

Crunch xx

Evening debt free wannabes

Hope you all had a good Christmas. I'm currently looking at the finances by myself, the husband has gone to bed as he's not well. He always gets ill this time of year it's really hard to watch. He works so hard all year and I think his body just crashes at the end of the year.

Anyway, I just wanted to reflect on 2018 and set some goals for 2019 so here goes.

Wow 2018 was such a year of change.

I've been unemployed for all of it. Luckily husbands money covers the bills but this hasn't stopped us getting into debt. I have hate, hate hated that my business opportunity hasn't worked out the way I thought it would a year ago. It appears that I actually do love teaching but just hated having to juggle it with young children and husband working away a lot.

The bottom line is I can't change the past but I can change the now and the future. And I'm so ready to do so. I'm looking forward to starting my new job next week and I'm looking forward to getting on with it in a new mindset and be more independent of my husband. Not because anything untoward is going on but because I want to earning my own money again and actually be on an upward trajectory for once.

I've been going through his credit card and it doesn't look pretty and I'm about to add about £2000 plus to the virgin credit card at 0%. Our trial month of YNAB has shown us where we are going wrong so I have high hopes that we will work this out in 2019. I'm seriously thinking about going back to work full time in Sept 2019.

Debt as follows

Sains credit card - £5332 - will go down £70 a month this year with £45 a month interest!!! My plan is to 0% it as soon as possible and get it below £4k by the end of 2019.

HSBC 0% - £2750 - should go down to £1650 by the end of the year and all the holidays from 2017 should be paid off by the end of the year. It's nice that this is the most stable and inoffensive debt.

Virgin 0% I don't even want to think about this being £8900 ish next month but husband is committed to paying off £200 a month so this will get nicely down to £6700 ish by the end of 2019.

HSBC - the one that causes us all the rubbish. Well, we are not linking it to anything anymore(like amazon) and hoping that this and YNAB stops a lot of the overspending which is our downfall.

So our main goal is to stick to YNAB and not get into any more debt.

Should be simple and easy to do and I am feeling good about 2019 already.

Crunchy xx