Learning to be an Adult

So for as long as I can remember I have been rubbish with money. Since the age of 18, when I first got a credit card, I have seen credit as free money and would spend the money on my credit cards/ overdraft etc willy nilly with little thought into how I was actually going to pay it off.

When I left university in 2011 I had a student overdraft, 3 credit cards, a phone contract I couldn't afford to pay, a couple of catalogue accounts and a store card. This totalled around £5000 ish. Having debt was never something I’d thought about as it had been manageable as I was lucky to have various part time jobs throughout my 3 years at university so although I was spending beyond my means because I had a way of paying it off I’d never really thought about it being a problem. It wasn’t until I moved in with my now ex-boyfriend and I decided to move halfway across the country to be with him, with no job to go to it made paying my bills rather problematic. As it turns out creditors don’t take particularly well to not being paid! Who’d have thought it!

Cue me almost getting a CCJ, which if it hadn’t have been for my amazing parents lending me the £600 I would have, many missed payments and several defaults. It also took me a year to get a job after leaving uni and when I did it was only 30 hours a week which paid minimum wage so most of my £750 a month wage went on paying off the debt I’d accrued. It took me a couple of years to finally pay off all my debt but I did finally get it all paid off and in about July of 2015 I was finally debt free.

This lasted all of a couple of months as my ex decided that he wasn’t going to pay the council tax bill so we got a demand for the whole year. This wasn’t a conscious decision but he was awful with money and is the sort of person who would just spend money when he got paid until his card got declined not really giving much thought into what other bills still needed to be paid. I think he felt I should be paying the bills, which to a point he was right, but as I was at home with our young daughter at the time working wasn’t really an option. He also never really understood that if I wasn’t going to earn enough to cover childcare then there wasn’t much point me working. He then informed me that I needed to find the money for it, as he paid for everything else, so I withdrew the money off my various cards in order to pay it. There is a reason why he is now an Ex – one of which is to do with money and the way he constantly made me feel guilty for not working, whilst I was raising our daughter when I was on maternity leave for the year, He never saw our finances as joint and even to this day I still believe that he feels I owe him for the fact that he ‘supported me’ during the time I didn’t work after uni and when I was raising our daughter! Anyone enough of that for now. Essentially after finally paying off my debt I was now back in debt again and my ex used my cards at several points as he ‘didn’t have the money to pay for fuel etc’ despite having a job paying £37k a year!
Our relationship generally went downhill from there and whilst I was not working but having to buy the food for the house, fuel for my car and generally doing stuff with our daughter I managed to run up loads of debt again. This time including payday loans an overdraft and a massive overpayment of childcare grant from the student loans company, due to their incompetence. By the end it got the point where I was withdrawing money off one credit card to pay another just because I had no other way of paying the bill each month.

At the end of 2016 my ex walked out, which at the time was heart breaking, but I now realise it was the best thing that could have happened. It’s not until you have a bit of breathing space form a relationship that you realise just how bad things were. Why I stayed in a relationship with a man who emotionally blackmailed me, cheated, lied and generally made me feel worthless for nearly 8 years I will never know.

Once our relationship ended I was thankfully in a full time job earning a reasonably wage but now had the added pressure of having to afford childcare and rent and all the household bills. Which is what led me to calling Stepchange to arrange a DMP. So I’ve been pootling along with that for a while now but I feel that I haven’t really got to grips with this budgeting malarkey. I still feel I waste money unnecessarily and whilst it isn’t a huge problem as for the first time in years I am in complete control of the household budget, I know bills are actually getting paid on time, I just feel I could be better with what I spend my money on.

So I’ve taken the step to go into a self-managed DMP, I have, this week, informed my creditors, that I will be doing so and have told them I will be making token payments for a period of 6 months. I have realised from spending time on this board that I need an emergency fund as at the moment I am well and truly screwed if my car, for example, needs work doing to it. And although my budget I initially did with Stepchange allowed me to put money aside for such things I would keep it for a couple of months then it would get spent on Christmas, birthdays etc or just going out for the day.

So whilst I feel more in control as I know the bills are being paid I have decided to create this diary to keep me on track with putting money aside for emergencies and generally just not wasting money on rubbish!