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?

I need to check the Interest but the Next one is lowest, then the Barclaycard one. The Virgin one is the largest amount with the highest rate I think, but I need to check.

How quickly can you pay off the £80 one? Personally I’d pay that first (if you can do it quickly) then move onto the highest rate one. You have got this!

I would pay the £80 off to give the boost of going from 3 debts to 2. Have you looked a balance transfer to a 0% card for the other 2 debts?

Thank you, good advice. Not looked into 0% transfers, will do it.this week.

I’ve made quite a few dents in debt payments as I’ve done quite a lot of side hustle work this month.

i’ve also transferred some to future investment but not loads. My main goal is to get the debt paid off and then focus on saving for the future.

I’ve done pretty well on the no buy. I haven’t made any frivolous purchases like I would normally. Did get my hair done though but that was desperately needed!

I don’t want to read and run, but I just wanted to say well done to everyone who’s tackling debt proactively. I went through this myself a few years ago after building up around £50k of debt through poor financial management. I’m happy to say I’m now debt-free and in a position where I’m saving and managing my finances much more positively.

I agree with prioritising the highest interest rates first and making use of any 0% options available. These may become accessible as your financial position improves, so it’s worth keeping an eye out. In my case, a 0% option became available after about 12 months and made a significant difference to the amount of interest I paid.

One thing that really helped me was using an Excel spreadsheet to plan payments and track progress. I recorded my position at the end of each month or quarter, and seeing the debt steadily reduce gave me a real psychological boost — it genuinely helped me feel stronger than I had been 6 or 12 months earlier. I’m sure there are plenty of apps that do this now, but for me the key was being able to clearly see where I stood at different points in time. ClearScore used to have a timeline feature that visually showed debt decreasing, which I loved, but unfortunately they’ve since removed it (a shame, in my view).

Good luck to everyone — I’ll keep following along.

So I am checking in as it’s month end ….

positives -
paid 150 off cc 1 (minimum was £18)
paid 150 of cc2 (minimum was£46)
paid 150 of cc3 (minimum was £120)

next month I need to look at these a bit smarter, as some interest is higher then others - but it’s very tempting to pay off the smaller ones.

over paid mortgage by £111.

opened an easy access and set up a £5 per week deposit through jan.

all bills for feb are paid - and I have left £100 per week for food and spends (will need to be slightly careful with this , but kids dinner money has been paid for the month so should be ok)

bad news -
we needed to put in a new boiler the first week of the year. We borrowed £2000 from in-laws to put towards it . (Lucky as its interest free) paid the first £500 back today so stands at £1500.

total end of January.

Savings :£1120
debt : closer to £5000 (not including mortgage)

So this month i have:

Made a £300 overpayment on my loan
Not bought any new clothes! I came close but resisted!
Avoided extra spends on my eldest childs hobby (dance - eurgh - so many invoices 😭)
Made a list of affordable days out for youngest child
Spent money more wisely ie if i want to get a coffee i will take the opportunity to meet with a friend as well
Made swaps ie mcdonalds hot chocolate instead of costa or starbucks (i actually prefer it...)

Using gemini to help with budgeting which has been incredibly helpful!

Hope everyone is getting on ok!

Hi all please can i join you?
I really need to clear some debts so I can reduce my working hours (I keep getting burnt out)

i bought a house last year which needed more work than I had budgeted for, resulting in loads of debt. It’s all 0% which is good and 3 of the 4 debts are on track to be paid off by the end of that term. But I really need it gone quicker, if I can cut £400 a month of expenses I can drop a few hours.

so I’ve got:
Barclaycard £5964
Lloyds £930
chase £2300
first direct loan £20,000 (argh that was the roof!)

Im wondering whether to tackle Lloyds first just to get rid of it & reduce the others to minimum payments? I over pay on all at the moment.

advice appreciated

What are the interest rates on each?

CC: £5169 on 0%

I had a pay rise in Sept, but xmas got in the way so ended up just paying the minimum off (£220ish) each month.

But for Jan & Feb I’ve paid £500 off. Pluss save £500. Which is great!

I made £60 on vinted in Jan too!

My 0% ends in March so I’ve been shopping around and I’ve found the best deal to be Lloyds with 2.99% transfer fee then 0% for 35 months.

I’m hoping to pay £1000 off next month bike the transfer to reduce the fee.

Looks like some good progress in January everyone!

Looking at the psychology is as important as the decisions that make financial sense. @Bhbhhnhnvvghk and @PuzzlingRecluse
Tackling the loans with the highest interest rate first makes the most sense but if you have one smaller debt you might find the sense of achievement of getting rid of one of your debts gives you a bit of a boost. This may make sticking to your plan and avoiding temptation so that you are able to pay off the other debts.
If you have loans of similar rates you there's two approaches one where you split the overpayment across all of them so you are slowly chipping away at each of them upside is they are all going down, downside is the progress might feel slower. Alternatively you do the minimum payments on all but one of them and then put everything you have into one of them. You will see a bigger difference on the one you are targeting but you might be disheartened that you aren't making progress on the others. A hybrid approach where you put most of the overpayment into one of them with smaller overpayments on the others. Say you have 3 debts and £500 available for overpayments you might do £350 on one £100 on another and £50 on the last.

Hi there

I'd like to follow along too please. Currently working my way through credit cards and prioritising overpaying a loan. Have already paid off one card and a Next catalogue account which was so good to get rid of!

Agree with you @Superscientist it is definitely motivating to knock the smaller debts off first. It helps if you can have things on 0% but getting some quick wins has really helped to keep my motivation up.

The other tip I read and have kept up
is to pay a set amount to each debt, even if it's just to round up the £. As you pay down each debt, even those you aren't prioritising/ are only paying min payments on, the minimum amount each month will reduce over time. I have set
my direct debts to what the min payment was when I started focusing on my debt. For example £80 on one card where the minimum is now £67.00 as it's reduced over time and is based on a % of the balance. For me this helps with budgeting as I know exactly what each bill will be each month and can allow the same amount for it. It it allow me to overpay each card by a small amount each month, even just £1/ £2 but longer term will make a difference.

Thanks everyone, all my cards are on 0% the loan is 5.9%,

the one I’m concerned about is Barclaycard are the 0% ends soonest (Nov) and the interest rate will be eye watering if I can’t transfer it.

I think I do need to target one as that will help to feel a bit more in control of it, I might target Barclaycard as much as possible for next few months even though it’s second largest - just to increase the chances of moving it!

Yes that makes good sense. The guides around avalanche vs snowball are well and good but sometimes you might have to do something a bit more custom to get rid of a debt that is more concerning/ pressing or for example a debt to a family member.

Also before you do a transfer have a look at the transfer fee if there is one- there often will be to transfer the balance to a 0% card and so that can be taken into account as it will add to the amount owed.

@PuzzlingRecluse
Mathematically paying the first direct loan off as has highest interest rate will mean you pay the least going forward
From a mindset part of view paying off the smallest debt of £930 may give you the psycholigacal boost of knowing you are the sort of person that can get rid of debt
if the chase one is at 0% just make minimum payments

the debate is will you save more paying of the 20,000 at 5.9% as much as possible
or reducing the barclaycard debt to as little as possible before Nov,ember

That really turns on whether you can add some to your 0% at chase, how likely you are to get another 0% transfer

the question is how much to minimum payments add up to each month and how much extra can you throw at the debts, you indicated possibly £400 a month which would knock lloyds out by easter completely, 400 from April to November is 2800 reducing barclays to just over 3000 which makes a 0% transfer
I think having a definite target say paying off lloyds and having barclay down to 3000 by Novemeber is doable if you could reduce expenses even further it could be quicker

As of yesterday I have now cleared my debt in full. It's taken a year and a lot of sacrifice but I'm over the moon to finally be debt free

Definitely not easy - Well done Op 👏
That must be a weight off your mind. Are you now thinking of channelling that money somewhere else?

Well done op!!!!
Thank you for advice so far, just to add I need to pay off the debt to get that £400 a month I don’t currently have that spare. It’s all a bit tight. Paying off the debts will definitely help.

I’m looking for some advice please, I’ve just received some back pay of £600. What would you do with it?

I can nearly (bar £50) pay off one of my credit cards Lloyds

or put it towards one of the larger ones

any thoughts welcome! Thank you 😊

@Laf90 well done! Here's to a debt free future

@PuzzlingRecluse what is the situation with your Barclays card now? I think you said previously this is the card that has the shortest 0% period left.

Hi it’s on £5831, the 0% ends November I think

What did you spend on to rack up that debt?

Really not the point of this thread, which I thought was to be supportive? If you must know it’s from work to my home.

Edit to add - was significantly more than anticipated & could not wait

Apologies if I’ve misunderstood your tone