A thread for people trying to pay off debt?

[moneyworries8]

Would there be any interest in this?

I'll start us off. I'm 30, a SAHM with 2DC.
Our debts are:

£4,000 loan that we've been paying off for 6 months.
£2,300 on a credit card

The debt is manageable but I've had the realisation that if something doesn't change, these figures are going to get bigger and bigger. I know it's a hard time of year to start but I don't believe in "waiting until the new year!"

We could post on here for advice/support as well as sharing our successes (and failures, but hopefully there won't be many of those) with each other. I feel like I need some people to help keep me on track.

So, is anyone interested?

My earnings dropped by a third this year, which hasn't helped matters.
Have you adjusted your payment on account?
And remember that with payments on account, the worst they can do is charge you interest at 0.25% - they CANNOT fine your delaying those payments

And move everything you can onto the 0% but keep the payments the same - then you can whump that bill

Morning all,

Been reading the thread and it's all very encouraging!

We have quite a few CC between dh and I. I need to tot up all the debt probably 10-15k. Mainly accumulated from first house purchase, car loans, and first baby. Second baby is now on its way! So another maternity leave pending.

All are on 0% and we have fixed direct debits so that by the time the 0% ends, the balance will be cleared down.

Each month though we are struggling because we are spending a lot on eating out mainly. Essentially getting ourselves into more debt So I really want to use this thread to motivate me to whittle this down and try and pay a bit more into cc / set up emergency fund.

Dh is of the opinion that it's 0% so why bother trying to pay it off any quicker than when the deal ends. It's annoying though because it would give us better cash flow and relieve some stress!

I would love to jot down each spend - is it best to do this by date or by category? I can't decide. I feel like I should buy a nice 📓 dh won't bother logging on a WhatsApp chat so that idea is no good for us

agreyrock I would log both date and spend. So rule columns in a notebook and then enter by date. I would call the columns (off the top of my head, I don't keep a spending diary) food, car, children, bills, extras. Rule more columns than you think you'll need though, more expenses always pop up!

Oh that's fab idea why didn't I think of that lol

@agreyrock for eating out, could you try looking around for deals? We like eating out but use a taste card and generally eat out on a week night to get the best deals. You still get that time together then but without a massive financial blow.

Another tip would just to agree on, say, 3 really frugal months with no eating out. It will give you a chance to make a decent dent in the debt.

DP has a big excel spreadsheet to track all spending. Then he can track totals and by different categories too.

@NeverTwerkNaked thanks for the ideas! 💡

After saying I had £500 for the month, i now have only £250 and we're only a week in. But... I've got a food shop being delivered today which should do us until next weekend so I suppose if i don't spend anymore before then, I'm on track. December is a hard month to cut back 😅

Yeah December is really hard! I'm trying to just track spending this month, tweak the budget so it reflects what we actually spend. No point in frugally budgeting £200 for food if we usually spend £650. I reckon we could limit ourselves to £600 in normal months and save the £50. I realise that's a huge amount of money but as per my previous post, DH insists on quality food.
Then next month we can start saving /paying off debt.
I'm also tracking our Christmas outgoings (including putting our parents' presents on the cc😔) so we can work that much into a savings account for next year.
I said to dh that we should consider not going abroad this year until the cc is paid off. That's actually the majority of our cc debt, a trip abroad in the summer and Christmas 2016. Nothing major and we have family abroad, free accommodation, so it wasn't a week in the Maldives or anything but flights, car and food add up. £1000/£1500 each time, interest each month and boom, there's the cc maxed and the holiday is long forgotten.

@BonBonVoyage can’t you just get your parents token gifts? I would never want my children to get deeper into debt just to buy me a gift.

I think your dh needs to work out what's more important - being debt free or spending a lot on food and holidays. There's no point you worrying about the debt if he won't get on board to help cut it down. If it's causing you a lot of stress I think it's a shame he won't prioritise paying down the debt for your sake.

never we should have just got them token gifts but they're really good to us. They will be getting us expensive presents and I suppose we don't want to give them something small when they'll be spending money on us. My fil will give us a voucher for a shopping centre that is equal in value to the present we got him. That's a coincidence, we didn't stick to a number, but what we got him cost that much. So we will have that voucher to spend in the new year. My DM spends a lot of money on us throughout the year. But she has a lot of money and doesn't / wouldn't understand that we don't. She wanted an I pad for her birthday!!! (I bought her other bits and pieces, I couldn't stretch to even a share in an iPad.)

It's interesting to see my attitude to spending/presents as well as my DH's. Easy to put it all on someone else but I'm not blameless.

And RedDead you're also correct about DH needing to prioritize. But for him, good food is the priority. Paying off debt is not. He has agreed that it makes sense that we'll stay put this year until the cc is paid off. One problem is that he always thinks his businesses are about to start making money so we don't need to worry about the debt, we'll be able to pay it off in one big lump. I've set a deadline for this to happen (end of this month / year) and I will be returning to work full time when if this fails to happen again

He will mind our DC so we won't need childcare.

It's nice to be able to say this to someone else, I don't like to talk to my friends or family about it because everyone else seems to have it all running smoothly

Like you we have £6000. £4000 on a Next account and the rest on overdrafts. I did just save and pay £200 off one of the overdrafts but the bank messed it up and wiped the od completely Ruined the good feeling it gave me when we couldn't do the good shop!

I’m going to join. Just marking for now but will post horrific amount we are in later. Have had to take a massive salary cut this year so it’s all got out of control 😢

Just coming on to say that I'm with Stepchange and they made such a huge difference. Sadly the level of debt that me and my stbexh had was so great that it was definitely a contributing factor in the breakdown of our marriage. Just an accumulation of debts for household repairs and renovation that spiralled. We've been on a DMP with Stepchange for two years now and I can honestly say that I will never have a credit card again. I use a prepay MasterCard as my 'credit card' for purchases like presents etc. I do everything via Top Cashback and will never buy anything online without a promo code. In short, the way I think about and manage money has completely changed. The DMP was due to last 7 years but since we've separated we will now sell the family home in the Spring and use it to pay off the debt sooner. The only issues we've had is that we're both in new relationships but due to our shot credit ratings cannot be financially associated with them for a while to come yet. But I'd rather that than the state I was in 2/3 years ago.

Also just to add, I can't think of one occasion where not being able to get credit has impacted on me. We renegotiated our mortgage and car lease just before we went on the DMP. I can still get good deals on my mobile phone contract. I guess my message is don't be afraid of going on to official debt management unless there are specific circumstances where you rely on having a good credit rating.

That should of course say FOOD shop!

BonBon
Your DH needs to learn to live within his means now because otherwise when one of his ventures makes money, he'll spend stupidly and leave you in a worse place.

Gifts for parents. Sorry but I fundamentally disagree. You buy gifts that you can AFFORD
I spend a lot less on my brother than he does on me. But he earns five times what I do
so our "relative" spend is the same.

Talkinpeece you're right. I think we'll have to have a serious conversation after Christmas (me and DH I mean).
I always feel like such a nag though when it comes to money. It's the main thing we argue /niggle about. And I also feel that I'm being negative re his ventures if I say that they're not going to work. I feel like the op on the other thread that you may have seen whose DH spent £75 on shoes. I identity with her. My main spending is 99p books on kindle, mummy and baby groups (£2/£3 a go) and my hair done every 4 months. But DH sees something online, wants to buy it so he does and then I seem like a killjoy who thinks he doesn't deserve nice things (my words, not his). And because we don't have a proper conversation with a "mutual" decision - namely the one that I want - to stop spending money on the Internet, then I bring it up again and I'm nagging.

I know how this sounds and I know what I would think if I read it on someone else's thread but we have got bad communication around money and I feel like we're caught in a negative loop.

Please be gentle with any comments / advice

we'll have to have a serious conversation after Christmas
Nope.
Do it now.
As I said to a poster on the other debt thread.
Start to talk every day for five minutes
and every week for half an hour
if you leave it till after the excesses of Christmas you will be angrier
start to clear the air now

Yes, his business ideas might make you a mint.
But if they do it has to be a no stress debt free mint

I can't imagine how stressful it must be worrying about debt while your dh keeps digging you further into the hole I also think you should talk to him now ... before he decides he deserves nice things in the January sales!

It's not even that he'll be shopping in the sales. It's more that if he sees a book referenced on a blog or podcast that he thinks looks good he'll get it. He doesn't intend to spend money.... He just does. I'm going to ask him to look back at his amazon or whatever and total how much he's spent this year (as suggested further up) and not even tell me the amount. But just keep it in mind. And I'll do the same and show him. I imagine There'll be a vast difference. That might inspire him not to click the "purchase now" button

Bonbon
Get him to remove his card details from Amazon and ALL OTHER online shopping sites
so that buying stuff becomes a conscious decision.

Get him to log out of ALL online shopping sites and untick "stay logged in"
so that buying stuff becomes a conscious decision

Get him to keep his card wallet on the kitchen counter
so he has to go and collect it to key in the details

so that buying stuff becomes a conscious decision

its not about stopping him spending
its about getting him to think about what he is spending

Yes, good idea.

He's not a bad person, he just is impulsive. That will hopefully help. I also will suggest writing down things we want to buy, then reviewing it at the end of the month - what was a passing fancy? What would we still like? What do we actually need? My family were careful with money growing up, we would all have had savings accounts etc. He didn't have that early "grounding".