Well I just had a bit of a wake up call!!!!!!

[Freespirit211]

My husband are in an unusual set of circumstances and as a result, we pay very low rent compared to your average person. Anyway, I worked out a monthly figure for how much we spend on things like birthdays, xmas. The expenses that are annual. Turns out, this is our second largest monthly outgoing now and I wasn't even factoring it in before. No wonder we are in debt!!!!!!

So glad I found all you guys on this forum. I really want to change my life and stand on my own two feet for the first time in my adult life. Your help so far has already made me see that there is a way out of this. Thank you.

Where is the debt? And can it be cleared if you cut birthday and Christmas costs right back?

I'm in the process of looking into that. Our debt is on a credit card (not on 0% - going to be applying for another card imminently). I have had loads of great advice on here in the past couple of days so I'm working my way through all of that just now. I've already come up with a cash flow plan and found some areas I believe we can cut back. The things that come up annually is what I'm now concentrating on, hopefully I can reduce those costs too

Reduce right back for a couple of years. When you are out of debt you can then be generous but until then make it clear to others that you are broke.

Put aside a small amount from each payday towards close family birthdays. Do the same for Christmas. (Known as sinking funds.). The more you allocate to that in your cash flow plan, the lower another category/categories will need to be.

Be careful playing with the sharks, 0% card can be useful for a while but you are just moving debt, not paying it off. Read the card small print, stick to the 0% eligibility rules. Only move the largest very high interest loan - but make sure you can pay it off within the 0% time period.

You CAN do this, you are now identifying areas in which you overspend. That is excellent progress. Start telling the money where to go, gain that control.

Remember: starter emergency fund first, then pay off debts smallest to largest, so you teach your brain that paying off debt is good.

We've had a wake up call this month too and finally doing something about it.
Feels good!