Hi All
i have roughly 3 months until I am debt free IF I’m sensible.
To a lot of people the debt I have/have been in might not seem much but to me it is huge, and has been a massive weight around my neck.
I wanted share my progress and to ask for your stories of dealing with debt to help me stay motivated for this next few months. They’ll be tight months but I tell myself it will be worth it, unfortunately I can sometimes feel the temptation to just extend my repayment period by a few months to ease things up, but I’m aware that’s how I got in this mess so please help me stay strong.
For context, I’m mid 30s, married, No DC, long term disabled in receipt of ESA, PIP and HB
DH also long term disabled in receipt of PIP and the ESA/HB are joint claims.
i got my first credit card in 2015 when I was single and managing my money well in an attempt to improve my credit rating incase I ever needed it in future.
initially all went well, I made small purchases and paid it off monthly, so they kept increasing my credit limit.
I started going through some family and mental health issues, and around that time saw an ad for a casino site where you got free play, having nothing to lose I whiled away a few hours and win a few hundred pound.
This quickly escalated to me spending real money and then having to put everyday purchases on the CC, I paid most of this off, and stopped gambling but recognised my biggest trigger was stress and decided to move away from those causing it.
in order to move, a lot of the associated costs (van rental, a few new bits of furniture etc) went on the CC
The move wasn’t the magic wand I had hoped, although on the whole it’s absolutely one of the best thing I’ve ever done I was very lonely and down for a time and reverted back to gambling.
Over time, I opened a couple more credit cards, then some store cards when I needed/wanted certain items and then when my carpets got ruined by my DIY decorating I took out a loan with a ridiculously high interest to pay for new flooring.
I kept up as best I could with monthly payments for a long time but all the CCs were high interest so I never seemed to be getting anywhere.
Met and married DH (very small wedding, very cheap) and combined finances. He had a couple of debts but these were actually fairly easy to sort and more due to him not fully understanding complex money matters rather than being unaffordable. So he was debt free before we married.
A month prior to our wedding (Sept 2020) I decided I needed to take action and contacted stepchange
At that point my total debt owed was around 16k I set up a DMP for £500 a month and stuck to this for around 18 months. in that time when I did have any spare money I also manually paid down a couple of debts
so paid 10k in total between September 20 - March 22
During this time I terminated a BT contract because there service was absolutely horrific which ended up with a bill of about £650 due to termination fees, which I was unable to pay due to the high DMP Payment
So went to collections.
I had also traded in my iPhone and gotten a contract for a Fairphone as they were supposed to sustainable, last longer, be easier to repost etc
But I just couldn’t get on with the phone and then realised that while EE was charging me £800 on a contact for the phone, they’re basically worthless when it comes to selling them. So ended up terminating the EE contract, and the remaining balance £812 went to collections.
in that time we’ve genuinely needed some new furniture and a washing machine and I’ve gone second hand and as cheap as possible, and I’ve had to travel a little due to having a sick family member
But the debt is always foremost in my mind and I do try to keep spending to a minimum, I am human tho and occasionally splurge on things I shouldn’t, like too many takeaways.
As of today
I have £1300 left on Stepchange which will be gone by May
And have just agreed settlement figures to be paid in March in respect of both BT and EE it’ll be saving about £250 on those debts but it’ll be a tough month.
All that will then remain at that point is both mine and DHs current phone contracts (mine £10 pm his £30)
I know the end is finally in sight and that given our relatively low income, and the horrendous cost of living (my gas bill just came and is £355!) I have done incredibly well to have cleared around 13k in 2.5 years but I still continually feel stressed, skint and depressed about the whole thing.
I often debated reducing my monthly payments by a hundred pounds or so just to ease things up a bit but my fear is that I’m just prolonging the agony and that £100 will likely just get spent on nothing.
How can I stay motivated to get through the next couple of months?