To slow down on my clearing credit card debt quest?

[Onlyrainbows]

We've got just below £4k in credit card debt. Can't remember how much there was originally but I think it was around £7-8k at the start of this year. The debt is down to my husband overspending over the years and a few months of redundancy last year (my end). We now have a decent joint income and live a fairly comfortable life, however I'm always stressing out that I want to clear them before the 0% ends (one is first of January 2023 and the other one is in a year or so). However, I'm always stressing that they need to be cleared and get a tad annoyed that I never get to "enjoy" my money, because the priority is always to clear the cards.

You will be able to enjoy your money sooner by just hammering off the debt. It's not your money until you don't owe it to someone else!

If you start paying interest on it you will kick yourself as it will cost you much more to pay off.

With the price rises etc I would keep focusing on the debt, but that obviously has to be sustainable. I would probably allow myself a nominal sum per month so I could buy an ice-cream/Kindle book etc every so often just because what you don't want to do is end up so fed up you give up all together.

Debt free wannabe on the money saving expert forums can be an excellent, if harsh, place to visit with these issues.

Even with the current balances it would be around £150 to transfer it to another card. I'm thinking of paying £200 a month rather than £500+ that I'm currently aiming for.

Do you have an emergency fund? Are things going to tighten for you with cost of living increases?

If it was no to the first, yes to the second, I would be paying the minimums to fund the other two, and then look tomcard switch to extend the 0% personally. Otherwise you will be back in debt at the first hurdle if there is any problems?

Cut the cards up.

Pay minimum on the longer zero percent one, and clear down the other before the end of December. Then clear down the other one. Do them both as soon as you can and you can start to enjoy the money that isn't going on the credit cards.

If you can do them both by the end of this year you won't have this hanging over your head come the start of next.

Work out how much you need to pay on each card per month to clear the card before the interest free period ends. If you are paying over this, you could cut down the repayment and still not incur any interest, so free up a bit of spending money.

Personally, I put money in a savings account and pay it all off at the end rather than monthly. But this takes a lot of discipline! You still have to make the minimum payment. And you don’t have that nice feeling of reducing your debt month by month.

whatever you decide, make sure to pay off before the end of the interest free period otherwise you are throwing money away!

Dropping your payments from 500 a month to 200 is quite a lot and will definitely means it’s all hanging over your head for longer.

I’d keep going to be honest. Or maybe drop to minimum 400 a month so you have an extra 100 a month in your pocket.

but to be honest I’d keep going. You’ve done well to get it down and as we all know know we never know just what is around the corner. Much better to be debt free.

Pay off as quickly as possible before the interest rates rise again. Have a big clear out of your house and sell off old stuff to put towards debt repayments. Cut your cards up so you can't spend money on rubbish and get the debt cleared.

Start building up a savings fund by transferring money to a fixed term notice account or premium bonds. You need to switch your mind set from spending every last penny to saving for a rainy day. You're clearly living beyond your means so what's your plan for the expected rising costs in the autumn?

Why would I need to cut the cards? I don't currently use them. We don't have an emergency fund per se but the DC have £1k or so in savings so I could always use that. From January we'll have £500 extra in the bank once the childcare funding kicks in. We make enough money now that if there's an emergency we can more or less cover it (of up to £500) without having to use any other funds.

Can you work out how much you need to pay off each month to clear it in time? My only concern with that is that if you spend it and then something happens you may not have the emergany fund.

At the moment I'm not living beyond my means :/ and I've never used the cards for anything frivolous. They were a life saver when we needed them.

Most likely I won't spend it on anything, but I simply don't want the mental.load of "clear them or you're in trouble" when realistically I can just transfer them to another card (if needed). It might happen that it's not needed at all, because I don't generally spend that much money.

It's only £4k! Use savings to pay it off.

Why are you so worried if it's debt that your husband ran up? Why isn't he paying it off?

I'm guessing it's a card in your name. Big mistake.

Pay the one off first then ends this January. How much is that total?

if your currently paying back £500 a month, I wouldn’t drop to £200. Maybe £300 to one that 0% finishes in Jan, and £100 to other one. That way you gain £100 extra at the moment but still paying back .

£400 a month on £4k, it should be paid off by next May.

You're soo close to the end! Just keep going

Welly DH now puts all of his income in the joint account (he didn't used to) so he's paying as much as he can now!

Pay it off. Seriously. The faster you pay it off, the sooner your stress free life begins. I will never forget the day my pay cheque came into my bank account and stayed there because it wasn;t eaten up by overdraft and other debts. I felt so free.

But one thing you should do is allocate a small amount of money to fun each week, maybe £20-30, and be inventive over how far you can make it last - take a picnic and bottle of sparkling wine to a local beauty spot, or get tickets for a try-out show for a comedian you like (the new material try-outs are about £12-15 instead of £25-30). That's enough to afford the cinema once a week, or a cocktail each at a fancy bar or breakfast at a nice cafe, or a takeaway (though supermarket ready meals are a fraction of the price and often nicer)

I would bust a gut to get it paid off before the 0% ends. If you do, you will feel so good about it. And also, having hardship while you pay it off will discourage your DH from being careless with money again. And paying it off to a deadline will stop you slipping into that dangerous mindset of 'everyone has debt, it;s normal' and constantly living beyond your means, which is money down the drain in interest charges.

The wonderful feeling when you've cleared debt can't be underestimated.

If you don't have anything specific you want to put the money towards instead, I'd really try to keep going with the £500. Otherwise you'll look back and feel as though you've frittered money with nothing to show for it.

Perhaps hold back £100 or so in august to pay for summer hols treats. Likewise December. That won't make a huge difference to the date you'll be debt free.

Have you created a spreadsheet showing how the debt is reducing? A visual reminder can be very motivating.

He overspent all the money while living in hardship (which why I almost divorced him!!) In that sense he'll never learn his lesson. Right now, we live a fairly normal life / easy life. If we want to eat out or go to the cinema it have a night out and hire a babysitter we just do it. We also went on holiday and spent £3-4k on it (which didn't end up on a credit card). We don't live frugally and we're not increasing the debt, we're decreasing it at a decent pace. But all the money that's spent is usually a family thing. So I end up with no "me" money.

It also covered a period of the OP's redundancy so it's debt from both of them. Buy hey its MumsNet, must be all the bloke's fault.

OP keep going paying it off. Once the mental load has gone you'll feel a huge relief and can start saving.

I mean over 4 years he overspent by around £15k or so... I just covered the hole. I'm sure if he hadn't done it we'd have savings and this would never have incurred the credit card debt ! (But that's a different topic altogether).

If you have no "me" money can you allocate yourself say £100 a month pocket money (which will feel like lots compared to nothing) but not allocate a full £300?

£400 Vs £500 will halve the time it takes for it to pay off compared to reducing to £200

Continue to make paying them off your priority. Interest rates are going to rise over the next couple of years. Pay as much as you possibly can off every month. It will be tough during the process but will pay off massively in the end.

So ... eating out, going to the cinema and a £3-4K holiday aren't "me" money?

If I had £4k of debt, I wouldn't have been spending that much on a holiday, for example, and I would have cleared the debt by now. I agree with PP that you are living beyond your means, and would also say that your general attitude means that you are likely to be plunged back in to debt again if the going gets tough again, and it might be even harder to clear it next time. My advice is to pay off the debt ASAP and get some savings built up (dipping into the kids' savings should only be a very, very last resort) so you have a buffer for the next rainy day and don't get into the same mess again. Once the debt is paid off, that's the time to start thinking about "me" money, in my opinion.

Thanks Red that's exactly what I was thinking.

@Onlyrainbows what do you want to gain from this thread?
Have you thought about living frugally for a couple of months and just clearing the debt.