Me and DH both had comfortable jobs, everything was going fine. Credit cards were just a convenience, and I didn’t worry too much about racking up a balance because I knew we’d be able to pay it off at the end of the month. Most months was paying in full and occasionally in installments.
We then ended up losing our jobs and used our side hustle as a main source of income. It was a massive change in lifestyle. We went from being financially comfortable to constantly feeling worried. Caused a lot of strain on our relationship also. We were hoping it would be temporary and dipped into our savings to cover the essentials but as the time went on without finding another job that was paying as the same as we previously were, we burnt a huge hole in our savings and then turned to credit cards for day to day. It somehow worked for ages until it didn’t and reality hit. Most of our money was basically going to pay the card bills down each month.
I had £12K in credit card debt and the minimums kept creeping up. Nor did the balances ever seem to go down..The stress was a lot for our family especially when not wanting to share with anyone outside of it. Saying no to plans, no gifts made us feel really bad.
Just felt so bad about it all for a while and din’t know where to start. Earlier this year I spoke to a friend about it who is good with money and she gave me a good push. I’ve been dealing with head on and now have paid off £9K with £3k to go. Should be done by the end of the year fingers crossed.
I was about to go to all sorts of extremes before but realised I didn’t have to. Most of it is just about having a plan and sticking to it especially a monthly budget. Some of the advice out there can be a bit confusing like getting a debt plan or going bankrupt but there isn’t needed a lot of the time.
For my budgeting I downloaded YNAB and put all my details in there to figure out where our money was going. DH & I put all our accounts into, personal and joint. You fill it all manually but it doesn't take too long. I then ended up selling loads of things on FB marketplace and depop. I had and never used and made big lump sum payments to each card above the minimums. I looked at getting a loan to paying it all off into one payment but didn’t qualify for most of them. I then came across an app on the app store called incredible which handles repayments for you which was helpful.
I also listed out all the “little treats” as well. Things like my daily starbucks coffee, which I saved on by just making at home instead of taking away. Anything non-essential really. We cancelled lots of subscriptions that we weren’t really using (Netflix, NowTv and a lots of channels we had on prime and didn’t know about).
Every tiny bit we saved or made we paid off our debt and can’t wait for it to all be cleared.
It’s honestly been a very long and exhausting journey but really happy of the progress made. Hope anyone going through similar sees this and knows there is a way out. Start with the smallest thing you can do and work from there.
Reposting this from a throwaway as don’t want DH to see I’ve told everyone online 😂