Well I'm back! After clearing my debt in 2010 and staying debt free for a couple of years I'm now back to square one. Mainly due to OH's work being so erratic (he is a sub contractor in the building trade). He has weeks at a time with no work and when he does get work the pays not great - but anything is better than nothing. My wages cover the bills and food thankfully but nothing else.

Anyway a combination of OH not bringing much in and not budgeting properly has led to me building up credit card debt again (thankfully at 0%) of £5368.95

I have realised that the only way to stay on top of things is to stick to a budget. What we were doing before is spending the money before we had it on a credit card and then clearing it at the end of the month. But OH can be at work one day and laid off the next so we didn't always have the money to cover what we'd spent and this is where we have been going wrong and how the debt has built up again by me having to transfer it to a 0% card.

What's happening now is I'm trying to stay on top of things by having a "pot" of money in my monthly budget and sticking to that. Once I have cracked this then it should be easy to stay out of debt when it's paid off.

At the end of the month whatever OH has earned is split as follows:

50% is for petrol, OH's work expenses/mobile phone, and anything else we need that month

25% is for holidays (I know we shouldn't be having holidays whilst in debt but they keep us smiling through the uncertainty)

25% is for paying off the debt and when this is paid off this will become savings.

So far I've stuck to this for two months. It's hard at times but this is the only way to do it. Should OH not bring anything in one month then I'm afraid we'll have to dip into what little savings we have in our emergency fund. BUT NO MORE ADDING TO THE DEBT!!!

Currently the debt is split between two cards:

Barclaycard £1800 0% until September 2013 -so this must be paid off first

Halifax £3568.95 0% until 2015 - so a bit more breathing space on this one but still want it paid off asap.

I'm doing the grocery challenge and the virtual sealed pot and doing well with this. The VSP will pay for Christmas.

Decided to do a new diary as it helped so much last time - so here I go again on my second debt-free journey. Determined this will be the last time.