Time to end 2 decades of being in debt..

E2006 · 14 May 2018 at 3:39PM

Well, as the title suggests, I’ve been in debt since starting uni 20 years ago, when I plunged straight into my 1500 student overdraft and student loans. I’d grown up in a family where pennies were always tight. I remember hiding from the coal man (we had a coal fire) because mum had no money to pay him but we needed the coal for heating and hot water. We didn’t have all of the things that other kids seemed to have (expensive trainers etc were an absolute no no) but what we lacked in material things was more than made up for in love.
Suddenly having access to so much money was just too tempting and I soon found myself with cc’s on top of the o/d and loan. I didn’t buy anything in particular, and despite having 2 jobs during uni, I was still always broke! I guess what I’m getting at is that I’ve ALWAYS been rubbish with money, and this has continued into adulthood. My husband on the other hand was always so good with his money but I’ve dragged him into debt with me and for this I feel so so guilty.

We both have good jobs but we hardly have any spare income. We always have to watch the pennies and I’m so exhausted with it now. It’s massively affected my mental health. A couple of years ago I started getting alopecia which my GP put down to stress - at this point I hadn’t told DH about the debt and instead was trying to hide it from him whilst still trying to keep up appearances. He was amazing when I finally plucked up the courage to tell him but sadly things have gotten worse not better financially since then!

For the last few years I’ve had my head completely buried in the sand and went from obsessing over every penny when I was hiding the debt from DH knowing little more that what my repayment was that month. I need to recreate my spreadsheet and start throwing some money at the debts. I’m hoping that posting here will help me find my focus again as I try to claw myself out of the s**t I’m currently in...

E x

efes_shareholder · 14 May 2018 at 4:15PM

Welcome

I'm a relatively new poster to this forum and my journey to being debt free has like yours just started.

for me , its about being accountable and taking responsibilty for our actions so well done on coming clean to your DH.

The one thing we all have in common is that we all need to change our habits to stop the rot and debt culture we have become accustomed too.

good Luck , I look forward to your updates

E2006 · 14 May 2018 at 4:28PM

Thanks efes, sadly I’m not new and my journey has started several times before but never actually ended. This time I’m determined though - I don’t want this to be my life anymore. At the minute I feel like I’ll never be debt free but hopefully once I’ve started seeing the numbers coming down I’ll feel more positive.

Good luck to you - look forward to seeing your updates

E x

E2006 · 14 May 2018 at 5:45PM

So a productive afternoon - I’ve just rang Santander because in my ‘head in the sand’ phase I hadn’t checked what the interest rate on this card is - it’s 34.9%!!!128561;. Knew there was a reason why my repayments were being eaten up by interest!!
I checked my Experian report and had been pre-approved for an Aqua credit card at 0% for 6 months with a balance of up to £1200. I’ve applied for that and have been accepted and am now waiting for confirmation of how much I will get but hopefully it will be the £1200 and then I can halve the Santander balance. I’ll have to pay off the aqua in 6 months though because theirs reverts to around 35% too after the introductory rate. Im therefore hoping to have paid off Santander and aqua by November.

E x

E2006 · 14 May 2018 at 6:05PM

So I rang Barclaycard (the biggest balance) to find out my interest rate (its 18.9%) and the lady handling my call asked whether I was trying to reduce my interest rate. She asked me to ring back next month and said they may be able to help with that then, but for this month, Barclays won’t charge me any interest at all! Hopefully that means my balance will come down into the 10k’s..

E x

RhiBi · 14 May 2018 at 6:18PM

Hi, welcome! I have a Next card and theinterest is awful isn't it. Mine was around £2100 in January and by the end of this month, it'll be below £1000. Next is just too easy to run up a bill with isn't it? I've done that by PADding (sometimes just £2 a day) and throwing spare cash at it. We've got credit card debt too unfortunately, so once the Next is paid off, we'll be doing the same for the cards!

Good luck

Littlebirdie · 14 May 2018 at 6:53PM

Hi,

Big well done on taking your head out of the sand - I've subscribed.

Good Luck x

beanielou · 14 May 2018 at 10:31PM

Happy shiny new diary

Storm89 · 15 May 2018 at 4:53AM

Hi happy New diary. Would be good to see an SOA and how much debt you owe in total. I also hid the debt from my husband initially & it made me so ill. I was rushing to intercept the post incase it was about credit cards haha feels so much better to be relaxed about it. We went on our honeymoon with the kids and if I'm honest I didn't enjoy it because I was panicky about the debt and my husband not knowing, I was so sick whilst on the holiday. 0% is definitely the way to go, although I would start to look for cards with longer terms than 6 months maybe ? Good luck x

pidge04 · 15 May 2018 at 5:53AM

The title of your diary really resonates with me.
I am determined that the next two decades will not be spent in debt. You have inspired me to ring my credit card providers to see if they can reduce my APRs. Best of luck to you!!! Wishing you well.

E2006 · 21 May 2018 at 10:19AM

Hi everyone and thank you for subscribing. This will definitely spur me on!

It’s pay day today so I’ve piggybanked what I need for the month - the challenge for me though is sticking to it! It works on paper but never in reality so the plan this month is to post on here before I impulsively spend on things that aren’t accounted for and hopefully that will dissuade me.

I’m going back to using cash on a weekly basis and leaving the card at home. I’m hoping if I have some spare each week I can pay that off Santander. It’s set at £100 per week and that’s for groceries, my Petrol (DH pays for his own) and anything the children need like DS’s music lesson and breakfast clubs. Going to Aldo today and going to do a cheap shop. I already have some meat and fish in the freezer so fingers crossed it’s a low spend this week.

I have a big bag of old clothes belonging to DD which I’m going to eBay and anything I make will go straight to Santander.

E x

Time to end 2 decades of being in debt..

Comments

Categories

Get our FREE Weekly email full of deals & guides - and it’s spam-free