Up to your eyes in debt? Share our glasses and get it into perspective - a does get smaller problem shared

[TalkinPeece]

This new thread is loosely linked to several previous ones on the same topic.

We live in a society that makes it horribly easy to get into debt but makes it incredibly hard to admit you have a problem and even harder to get out of debt.
Everybody is welcome to share problems, ideas, solutions, but not be judgemental please

I am not in debt, any more.
Here is a link to some spreadsheets that might help explain how
SPREADSHEETS-for-Debt-Control-Budgeting-Mortgages-etc

and lots of people use this
YouNeedABudget

The important things to remember are

• yesterday is as past as the Crimean War

( we will not judge how you got into debt, but we will support you on the way out )

• this is an anonymous forum

( we will not tell your employer, family or friends of the reality of your numbers and we are here day and night )

• this thread is about supporting people through the huge mindset changes needed to come out of debt

( feel free to offload all of the feelings that drive you to want to spend, that make it hard to save and that generally make life crap at times, including getting those closest to you to recognise the changes needed )

Join in, bare your soul and come out the other end.
Its worth it.
You are worth it
The long term results for you, your partner, your children, and your friends and family are worth it.

FakePlants that sounds really positive. You need to change behaviour, which you are starting to do. You need to keep momentum going, as it's a long long road.

The credit cards are on 0% deals so you MUST pay them off before the deals end.

List in order of size, smallest to largest.
Have a small emergency fun of say £500, so you never resort to debt again (you don't want a car tyre or two causing you to go back into debt).
Then chuck as much as you can at the smallest debt, whilst paying over minimum on the other cards (so look at minimum payment and round up a bit). Once smallest payment has gone, chuck all the money at the now new smallest card.

To keep motivation going it can help to visualise the payments.

Charts like this can help to visualise the payments paying off the card.
debtfreecharts.blogspot.com/2010/08/visa-card-payoff-chart.html

Nannynick
My spreadsheet is free and available on Mumsnet.
And you are just describing snowballing.
That website is American - EU consumer law is different.

Sorry TalkinPeace, have I missed something... not sure the relevance of EU consumer law... if the 0% cards are not repaid back before the end of the deal, then EU law won't stop there being interest payments, will it?

FakePlants said "All the left over money will be used to take huge chunks off the credit cards" - which is exactly what I was encouraging them to do.
You said "throw everything possible at the card debt" which I totally agree with. Your spreadsheets are excellent for showing how quickly a card will be paid off when paying in a fixed amount every month.

Anyway... I think we are both saying the same thing, which is that FakePlants is doing great in recognising there is a problem and has come up with a way of freeing up quite a lot of money each month to pay off their debts.

Hi Nanny, that blogspot was a bit odd to my eye - I am pretty sure its trying to sell something
which is not ideal for people in debt

Ah, I was just trying to find something which shows a possible way of making debt payments more visual, which some people find motivating more than a spreadsheet. I expect PinInterest, Instergram or places like that have debt colouring charts.

Will avoid linking to that site again... I didn't read it very carefully, just found it whilst looking for debt colouring charts.

Funnily several years ago one of the posters on the early big debt threads did the spreadsheet and then printed it out - all 16 sheets - and laid it down the stairs for her DH to see when he got home ..... the visual impact of the number of payments needed helped him get his head out of the sand !

Well that's certainly making it visual