Debt payoff 2026

[1AnotherOne]

Morning all,

anyone want to join in a tackling debt for 2026 thread?

As of today I have £18.4k debt. I have paid off 26% of my debt this year to bring it to this total.

I have two loans (£260pm and £350pm) both of which will finish this year in February and August so that will free up a good amount.

My biggest problem is impulsive spending so I’ve created a section in my notes to write down what I want to buy. If I’m still thinking about it after 60 days I will allow myself to buy it.

Is it best to pay off each debt at a time or throw any spare money across each of them?

I also need to get out of my overdraft this year and start building up a good amount of savings.

What are your plans for tackling debt in 2026?

Find out which debt has the highest interest rate

This is a good idea for a thread I think .

to help hold people accountable who find that helpful.

i have tried to be better with money this last year…. All the bills have been paid on time and I have put a steady £50 in my help to save and £10 in my s and s isa - every week / month so I have built up £1000 savings.

unfortunately my debt (not including mortgage) has just brushed £3000 .

this year I want to half my debt and double my savings!

Great progress!

yes - as with pp - pay off the ones with the highest interest rates first

love your 60 day rule

once you start clearing the debts - think about savings and protecting them by assigning them a purpose - this pot for unexpected nasty expenses, this pot for holidays etc

Thank you that’s a great way to do it. I thought about doing balance transfers but I can only get cards for less amount than my debts on other cards so not sure if it’s worth doing?

Thank you - I’ve seen the pots idea before and really like it. It seems Monzo is the best for this and I wouldn’t mind switching to Monzo but obviously will clear my overdraft before making that switch!

I have Monzo I love it. It really helps.

I would like to join please!

I have £6018.22 of debt on my 0% credit card. I’ve had this cc for approximately 5yrs and within this time the debt has fluctuated between £4k and £6k. I really struggle to fully get rid! But I need to try harder!

I usually pay off £250 a month, but then in summer hols and at Christmas I end up spending on it again 😩

I’m going to try a different tack this month, which is to pay all bar my bills on to the Cc, which would be £1500, then use the Cc frugally.

This may not be wise but I think if i see the big drop in debt at the beginning of the month it might spur me on to keep it down. Iyswim?!

13k loan to pay off here and i keep spending more than i plan to every month. Love the 60 day rule, i am going to copy this!

I would prioritise getting out of your overdraft first. This is often the most expensive form of debt. If you can't, switch your direct debits to just before you get paid so that you spend as little time with on your overdraft as you can.

You can switch banks with an overdraft but you would have to pay off the overdraft as part of the deal. There are a few banks at the moment offering money for switching. First direct offer £175 for switching your current account and has a £250 interest free overdraft

Look through your budget and work out what is affordable to pay off your debts. It's a false economy to overpay your debts to find yourself needing to put things on your overdraft or credit card later in the month

It is worth doing a balance transfer even if you can only get part of it you want as much as possible on the lowest interest rate and then prioritise the highest interest rates.

Great to have you all on board.

one thing I did this year which really helped was download the Financialle app (free) to input all my debts and adjust them each month. It’s really spurred me on to see how I’ve been reducing it down and that’s how I got the percentage pay off.

Hey, I'd like to join please!
We've just got rid of two loans this month for £85 and £135 so that frees us up a little bit and then our sofa finance (£53) ends in June and then we have another loan we which ends this year which is £214 so I'll be glad when that one has gone! Plus the little amounts of credit cards that all add up!

Good luck OP impulse spending is my weakness too but budgeting with the Financielle app and having a dedicated “fun money” pot to spend on what I like has helped massively this year, it hasn’t felt too restrictive. If you like the Financielle app, their podcasts are good too and the “playbook” in the app walks you through different debt pay off methods step by step.

They recommend the snowball method which I’m using - pay the minimums off all debts and throw any extra money you have at the smallest one. Once that’s cleared, add what you had been paying each month onto the minimum payment for the next smallest debt and it “snowballs”. Alternatively you can look at the avalanche method if that works better for you. Having an emergency fund saved up first has also helped me massively, my car needed work on it this year and having a little pot to dip into meant I didn’t have to rack debt back up again to cover it. Hoping to be fully debt free in 2026

I’d check out Moneysavingexpert and their ‘debt free wannabe’ forum - it helped me immensely when I was in debt.

Wow amazing - debt free for 2026 sounds fab. I will look into these. I have been using the snowball method so far I suppose. Just whacking any ‘leftover’ or Vinted sales onto it

I’d like to join too please! I’m on a dmp, but my defaults will be dropping off my credit score in 2026 which will be nice. I’d like to clear my dmp by the end of 2026 too, so that I can go into 2027 free from debt, £11k left to pay off, which is vastly better than the £30k it started with.
I'm going to use your 60 day rule OP, I’m an impulse spender too so I’ve already added 4 things I’ve seen over the last few days to the new list. We hope to move from a flat to a house in 2027 too so this is a huge incentive to reduce my spending. Is anyone doing a no/low spend January?

Wow you’ve made such an impressive dent already. Soon you’ll be at a single digit debt too, that will be such a great feeling.

I am definitely doing a very low spend January and want to take it well into the new year.

I don’t NEED anything. I have so many clothes, toiletries, make up etc. My other rule is to use things up completely before buying new. Eg. I have lots of different shower gels, even travel minis but I always pick up a new one every now and again. Now my goal is to use them all up before buying anymore.

I have listed lots on Vinted this morning and made £22 in sales already. I’m going to move all my Vinted profit straight to debts. Even if it’s a few pound here or there it’ll soon add up.

I am also branching out my side hustle this year (it’s linked to my skill set in my career) as I’ve taken on an additional client. My side hustle generally makes me around £300-800 a month extra but I do set aside a lot of that for tax. I’m scared to be stung by a big tax bill!

The Snowball method (paying off lowest loan first) rather than The Avalanche (paying off the loan with the highest interest rate) is the one advocated by Dave Ramsey. He claims that the maths says you should pay the highest interest rate loan first but if we were doing maths we wouldn’t be in debt now! I’ve been listening and adhering to Dave’s advice for the last 2.5 years… 6 months to go on a renovation loan…

As to tackling debt, look at the interest rates and any early repayment charges. Normally pay off the highest first unless theres penalties for early repayment however purely from a psychological standpoint, if you have small debts it can be worth clearing them. Well done! And good technique for impulse control

For spending I have a 3 times rule. I have to look at something and want to buy it three times before I buy it. If I still want it on the third time I ask if I can get it anywhere else for less.

For presents I have a strict rule on amounts and if there is anything over that I want I ask if others want to go halves. Since starting to do this with my family they have come to me too and we have bought some lovely presents but not individually spent more than we were doing.

If I've put it in my Amazon basket I straight away move it to saved for later so it not immediately in my face when I look at other things.

Some times a mix of approaches helps. If you have two debts of similar amounts but ones a higher rate it makes sense to pay off the higher rate first but if you have £1k at a low rate and £10k at a high rate you might find you get a bit of a boost by paying off the £1k debt first. Over the time it will be more expensive but the best method is one you can keep up.

If you do a lot of online spending go through all your accounts and removed stored card details and look on your online banking about setting up online spending limits. It is easy to go on and change it back to online but both actions add steps between looking and buying allowing time to think about the purchase.

Look through your budget and see if there are any savings to be had to ensure all your money is working for you. My partner has work perks and we get 2-4% off purchases as quite a few high street stores including supermarkets. It doesn't make a huge difference to the weekly shop but over the course of the year it makes a difference.

Some online spending can be good though, we make use of the subscribe and save on Amazon. If you get 5 orders at a time you get 15% discount. My daughter has a dairy allergy and needs oatly barista for nutritional reasons (not all oat milks are equal). This is £2.20 a litre in the supermarket but we pay £1.20-1.80 a litre on Amazon and get 3 x 6L delivered every month plus my daughters multivitamin and either her hair conditioner/shampoo. We save on the multivitamin and hair stuff too. She needs the multivitamin because of her limited diet. If there is anything you need monthly it might be worth looking at getting it automatically delivered especially if going shopping for it you are likely to buy other things too.

I have 10k of debt at the moment - 5k loan and 5k on a credit card. I'd like to pay half of it off in 2026 so that's my goal.

Can I join please.

I started 2021 with £35,555!! Between then and the start of this year I got it down to £9k (£8k was inherited but I paid the rest of by myself as a single parent) My god was I proud!

This year I relaxed a bit and we had a couple of nice holidays, a fancy health club membership and I needed a new car so had to take out a new loan. The current balance is £12,294.74 to be precise.

I also had £350 on my credit card from Christmas spend but I had a selling spree yesterday and made enough to pay that off.

I am not a big spender as such, but we do love to eat out, coffees and cake etc and that really does add up quickly. I have cancelled the fancy health club membership too. We definitely got our monies worth last year but I can’t warrant that cost again for another year.

I have a lot of available credit too in the form of a large interest free graduate overdraft of £2.5k and two credit cards with about £15k available. I rarely use credit cards though so I’m not worried about those.

I may consider Monzo to as I’ve heard good things about it and my son is at an age where he needs to learn more about money (I am worried he is becoming a little spoilt and needs to learn the value of money and earning it) and showing him the pots and budgeting would be good.

@Superscientist welcome! Some fantastic tips there. I do have a couple of subscribe and save items on Amazon but I need to look at some other stuff as at my PIL yesterday they mentioned getting some really good deals on washing stuff and drinks. I am very good at meal planning and don’t tend to sneak many treats into the shop but I could definitely get the food shop price down. I need to go through the freezer and cupboard this week and make an inventory of what I have to meal plan around that.

@PurpleSky300 that sounds a great goal! I would ideally like to get mine down to single digits next year. Anything else is a bonus really. I do have a lot of expenses next year - big birthdays, anniversaries and a close friends wedding so will have to factor in a bit of spending on those.

@ForLoveNotMoney amazing that you have done it before - you can definitely do it again! It’s so frustrating debt that you cannot even pinpoint what you’ve spent on.

well done on the selling spree. I do very well on Vinted. I made £40 yesterday listing bits and need to have a good sort out in the next few days and get some more bits listed.

I have also fallen into the fancy health club trap. Our local one is a 5 min drive/15 min walk and I’ve been lusting after one opening for a while. I did get an intro offer so although it is very expensive it is better than a lot of members are paying. I have been most days since it opened but I am off work at the moment. The true test will be once I am back to work. I am a gym bunny so I am hoping I will benefit from the cost.

I managed to get some great savings this year.

Our contents insurance was £35pm which I have switched and got down to £5pm. My phone was £35pm and is now £8pm on a different provider. Our life and critical insurance was a hefty £158pm and now down to £40pm!! I also switched car insurance from £55pm to £33pm. So some really great savings there.

I started the year with £9600 on my credit card and I'm now down to £2300. I had hoped to clear it by now but I've picked up lots of overtime and my plan now is to have it all cleared by the end of February. March at the latest. Feels good to be close!

I will be joining in. My debt is all at 0% but will be adding to it as my daughter is off to Florida to compete in April and i have also booked a trip for my 40th which needs paying off. Had a load of car issues last year that got put on credit card so want to pay those off so can concentrate on our trips.
I have been doing well on prolific recently but has put me into the paying tax bracket on it and i am a higher tax payer so now having to put some of my earnings aside to pay for self tax assessment next year.