Debt support thread #2

[Nerfmother]

Here we are! Can't be bothered to think of an exciting title, sorry

Kinky we are just vack from the Lego Movie too - loved it! We didn't do 3D, too damned expensive so after your comment I'm glad we didn't bother. We took our own snacks as always. I make up little bags of treats and the kids get much more than they would have done if we'd bought them there.

It was very funny! Glad you liked it too aleC4

Just closed down a CC account. It had no balance, but it felt both scary and liberating.

I'm in a big dispute with another one at the moment, but once I've sorted that out, I'm closing it too.

That will be 2 down, 2 to go. Unfortunately, those last 2 are the ones with the mega balances...

Afterthought, you're not on your own there! I spent a very long time in cheap horrible jeans while lovely well cut stuff sat unused waiting for a wedding or posh occasion!

Just got £400 cash for DPs broken old car...woohoo!Thats going towards the one aim picking up on Sat...

Phew, 9 items on ebay, ending next week. It's such a bloody chore getting stuff listed, fingers crossed I make something (ideally £100 to chuck at Bastard Overdraft).

Slowly getting to grips with ynab. One more stupid question - how do I make the desktop version sync with our phones?

Afterthought...I know. I have to have some savings.
Not having savings is why we had to use a cc in the first place :(
Sadly a water tight roof and hot water and heat are a necessity (especially in January when its snowing! Have you noticed boilers never break in summer?)
No idea what to do really.
Kitchen got to be sorted. My brain hurts :(
If we keep £1k in savings it means we have £3k to sort the kitchen...

badvoc although it's a sod having to go into savings, you will feel so much better if the kitchen is sorted out, especially if electrics are dodgy. If you have 1k still, that will give you a nice buffer for white goods and car emergencies, and you can build it up again.

FWIW I have nothing saved. Am crap.

I know what you mean about these kinds of decisions making your brain hurt.

Sigh.
Every decision we seem to have made since 2006 has cost us money/been wrong.
Oh well.

We have zilch savings and no particular likelihood of gaining any in the immediate future. £1k is a good buffer to have till you can build it back up Badvoc.

themoneyone I made it work by following an online tutorial. Dropbox was involved, but I can't remember how I did it! Well done on the ebaying, I have a mission to list 2 items a day this week.

mum2fergus great news about the car, well done

I have been reading about different debt repayment plans today (mainly Dave Ramsey's debt snowball v the old school tackle the highest interest first). I can see the appeal of the debt snowball thing, but I just can't cope with the idea of unnecessary interest accumulating, so I think we'll be going old school when we start making repayments in (touch wood) June. I just can't bring myself to raise an emergency fund first, but have promised myself that we will start putting something towards an emergency fund within 6 months of starting debt repayment.

Badvoc I feel the same sometimes, but if ever there was a good time to be a future-thinker rather than a past one, this is it! I am a massive future thinker so am now spending too much time dwelling on could haves and should haves. No point punishing yourself.

You are absolutely right and the decisions we made were based on the info we had at the time. Dh and I have always been very risk averse which has cost us a lot of money over the years tbh.

I use my credit card balance rather than cash savings
only if I cannot cover the balance by the end of the month do I pull from my mortgage overpayment account (which is better interest than savings)

Hi TIP...sorry (as I said, my brain hurts today) what do you mean?

badvoc
I do not have "an account" with savings in : I just have leeway in an account that will cost me diddly squat

I'm not a believer in savings earning 1% when people have debts costing 18% IYSWIM

Totally agree with the series of bad decisions. Ours started in 2006 too. DH and I were talking about it yesterday. House sale fell through then, that, if it had gone ahead, we would be in a very different financial position now. Ended up in a house that needs loads doing to it. Have thrown money at it, and you wouldn't know. Is very depressing. When we were finally getting a handle on debt, DD got seriously ill and it all went downhill from there.

It's a fresh start though. We can do this!!!!!!

yesterday is as past as the Crimean war .... look forwards not backwards

We've made loads of poor decisions, or ill informed decisions or had bad luck, ill health etc but I just can't keep thinking about it. Then I start losing faith in my ability to change he things and spending too much time on the what ifs.
What has really helped (and sounds weird, so bare with me!) is imagining myself at 70, looking back and thinking 'why didn't we just not buy comics and clothes and days out and pay some of this off?'

Kinky, we can!
TiP I think it really helps having you here making sensible noises, as you are like where we want/will be

Ah. I see.
Yes to bad luck and ill health. Had our fair share of those too :(
My head is spinning with it all :(

Head also spinning and feeling ridiculous here too .

I torment myself every now and then with the what if we had actually done the sensible thing and overpaid the mortgage over the last few years when interest rates are so low instead of just sleepwalking through it all. Why did we blow so much money on ridiculous stuff when the house needed repairing and now we don't have the cash to do so 15 years laterthe bloody house is collapsing around our ears note to self..

My mum died when she was 60 and I have this frantic air of wanting to do everything now and never putting anything off but I need to inject some sense into that theory too.

I do like the idea of looking back at 70 and thinking what a good (if worrying) time we had but I don't want to be destitute at that age (if I'm still alive obvs)

Nooooo Burma not looking back thinking 'what a bloody good time we had' ! Looking back, by your one bar fire, small bowl of porridge, thinking 'why didn't we just not buy stuff and pay the debt off?'

That will be me age 70 - one bar fire if I'm lucky and chewing on a bit of cardboard !

I make light of it but I do get utterly miserable about it sometimes a lot

Grr, need to phone the gym later - we cancelled my membership to end last month, and DH's to end this month (we joined a month apart, this is the earliest we could cancel), and they have just taken the full amount for both of us by DD. Am cross with myself that I didn't cancel the DD and pay for this month's manually, but it would be nice to be able to expect some honesty from companies we deal with! Also need to chase British Gas for £75 that they owe us from the last house. Grrrr.

In other news, we are completely broke as almost all the month's DDs came out this morning - obviously I knew they were coming thanks to YNAB, but it's always depressing to hit zero on the 3rd of the month!

I am on a mission to eBay everything we have in our 'need to eBay this one day' pile over the next week or two, both to clear some space and hopefully get a bit of dosh in. There's nothing terribly exciting in there, but fingers crossed we'll get £100 or so in.

Here you go:

www.kinkonauts.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Corgie-If-you-believe-You-will-succeed.jpg

Nothing like an inspiring picture to get you fired up on a Monday morning...

We ARE the corgi!!!