Working the Baby Steps

This month it is all about my baby Emergency Fund. 

Currently it is sitting at £300.00 and if I am really, really good about my spending this week it should be at £1k by the end of the month. Another £200.00 paid in next month and I would have completed my next goal to save six months wort of expenses into my expense account. 

Two goals to complete after that are:

1. Save for my tax bill in July
2. Save £1k per month for the next five months

Not exactly Dave Ramsey's Baby Steps but ether way I will have cleared an up coming debt while holding just over £1k in an Emergency Fund (step one and two) and would have started to save towards my fully funded Emergency Fund (step three). I don't think Dave would be opposed to my plans.

As a side note I logged on to Noodle, a free credit check site and found that my credit rating with them is 4/5. Which they stated as being very good and that I should be approved for most loans I apply for. What a laugh - okay I wasn't turned down for that last loan but I might as well have been! 

Noodle also listed me as not being on the Electoral Roll, which I am and received a conformation of that very fact today by post. So have placed an error alert regarding this to be dealt with by Noodle and will check the site again next month.

I'm Debt Freeeeeeee..........

I have done it again...... I am debt free again and this time I will not let things slide, I will save up my full Emergency Fund and stick to my monthly budget, where I will assign every pound.

How much will I need to save in my Emergency Fund?

Well that has been the question since the first time I became debt free back in 2011. Working towards a goal has been my saving grace when it comes to my finances and so I need a goal amount. A ball point figure that will cover all my needs for a three to six months period. Dave Ramsey's baby steps call for 3 to 6 months of expenses but my expenses are really low i.e. 6 months expenses would only be £1,200 which is not enough for an Emergency Fund. But that would be an amount to save towards. 

Part 1. of my Emergency Fund would be to save £1,200.

Part 2. of my Emergency Fund is to save a further £6k.

All going well - part 1. should be done by the end of May but part 2. is going to take a lot longer. It should be done by December 2016. This is budgeting £300 a month but I could pay more towards this goal depending on work.

Having an Emergency Fund is so important and I have learnt this the hard way. I got back into debt because I didn't have an Emergency Fund fully funded the last time. This time I will follow all the baby steps without question because I don't know better.

....Not long to go now!!!

 ....it's March and I am less than a week away from clearing my last debt and being Debt Free again!!!


I have one more loan to payoff and I can't wait to call my bank to get the settlement figure on Monday. Then I am back to Baby Step 1. Save £1000.00 to start Emergency Fund. Saving up £1000.00 shouldn't take 

too long and then I can jump to Baby Step 3. Save 3 to 6 months of expenses into savings. This is the fully funded Emergency Fund and the baby step I didn't really complete the last time I became debt free. I believe it is partly the reason I got back into debt back in 2013.

Getting Flexiable With Money

I am almost there!! As I stated in my last blog, I decided to sell most of my shares and use that money to help clear my Flexiloan account and then close it. And so last Wednesday I jumped online during a fee reduction period and sold the share for £1,900.00 which was a profit of about £700. Not something to be sniffed at as far as I am concerned. It is my first venture into share dealing and I only wish I had brought a whole load more at the start of the venture. Hind sight and all that good stuff. Anyway my Flexiloan is now down to under a thousand and I want to clear that using my Emergency Fund but will hold off until Monday as I don't want to risk having almost no cash in the account should anything problems arise.
Once that is all complete I will be left with my final unsecure loan account which I plan to clear by early February 2015. Then I can say I am totally debt free!! But only until I get my mortgage which should be around October 2015. Between now and then I am going to try and but as much as I can into both my savings account (for my proper Emergency Fund) and my mortgage deposit saving.
Is it me or is it really hard work to keep on the straight and narrow when trying to stick to a budget when clearing debt? I want to get debt free asap but still buy stuff (and I do need what I am buying) well some of it at least. I don't know if buying the next book in a series counts as needed?

Moving On Time Again

I am just back from a weekend away visiting my godchildren. As always I had a great time and spent too much money - nothing was budgeted, as the visit was a last minute decision. Last Tuesday I found out that my job would come to an end the following day. This was not totally unexpected.
During the Christmas holidays I had, had to cancel my Christmas visit to see my godchildren due to my job. So decided on the Wednesday that I would go and visit the children while I could, using my Emergency Fund to pay for all my purchases and then spend the last week of January finding my next job.
This will mean I am a week behind my February budget and will not be debt free until early March. Also I will need to repay my Emergency Fund. Of cause this all depends on my getting a job within in the next seven days. It is very do able but not guaranteed.
My main financial goal for January is to pay my taxes and this is still on-track. My expenses are all up to date and I have funds to cover my first week or so of expenses for February.
My lovely friends are all being so helpful with possible job contacts. So I am very blessed!
Lets see what Monday has to offer.....

One Step Closer

Another goal ticked off!!! I have paid off my Flexiloan and closed the account!!!
Yes - getting rid of credit is only a good thing. My Flexiloan account was keeping me indebt and costing my hundreds of pounds each year in interest. I cancelled the account at my banks local branch, using their phone to save myself money and was asked, "Why I was closing the account?" I gave my reason as - no longer needing the credit facilities.
I now have to get rid of the £300 overdraft on my current account (aka checking account) and I will then have cleared all my credit. That will kill my credit score for sure! I will have to have a check that out next year some time.
I've got Baby Step 1, my Emergency Fund account back up to £1000 and now need to clear my final debt, an unsecured loan which currently stands £1840.26. My current plan is to pay that down by February and then get on with Baby Step 3 - Save up 3-6 months expenses - in my case that will be about £6,500. So taking into account my current Emergency Fund, I will need to save £5,500 which will take me at least a year because I am also working on Baby Step 6.

But before I can get any of this great stuff done I have first to get past Christmas and my Tax bill which is due on the 31st of January 2015.
                                                        Such fun!!

Can't Wait to Dump the Debt!!

I have been crunching numbers to see how I can clear my debt quicker than my current plan of the end of March 2015. Dave Ramsey is always saying you should sell everything you can to clear your debt but I don't really have a lot to sell. I am a bit of a gypsy and all my worldly goods are in boxes or a couple of bags. But I do have some shares. Before I got into Dave Ramsey money plan I had been purchasing shares in two different companies and both lots of shares have done okay. I wish I had purchased more than I did as one of the shares has more than doubled in value. If I sell these shares and use most of my Emergency Fund I could totally wipe my Flexiloan and in doing so stop being charge the high interest rate each month. I could then build up my baby Emergency Fund again in December and clear my final debt (my bank loan) by the end of February. I don't want these two unsecured debts hanging around my neck longer than they have to be. And I can't wait to close the Flexiloan once and for all.
One of the shares is due a dividend payment at the end of the month, which would be added as shares and so I had planned to wait until that had happened before selling the shares but the company I hold the share with are having their monthly reduced transaction fee on Wednesday, which would save me much more than I would gain on the dividend payment. Now I could wait until next month for the next reduction in transaction fees and get both but then I would lose it all in interest chargers. So next Wednesday it is!
 

Not Quite by the Baby Steps

Okay - so I have been tweaking my budget to hopefully sort out my over spending of the last two months, which have resulted in no snowball payments and my going into my over draft on my bank account. Yes that is another credit I need to remove from my life but that is for another day.
I would like to be debt free (again) within six months so that is March next year. Between then and now is Christmas which is always a nightmare for personal finances, I have some ideas but more about that later, the other major player for my finances is Tax which is due on the last day of January.
Going my Dave Ramsay's Baby Steps Plan I am or I should be working Baby Step 2 - which is clearing all debt except the mortgage using the debt snowball plan. I however am also in Baby Step 6 - which is paying off your house early. It is a bit of a stretch but it is do able and it would mean only having a three year mortgage, once I get a mortgage, which hopefully will be towards the end of next year. If I can get rid of my debt by March getting the deposit for the mortgage will be much faster and I will also be able to move on to Baby Step 3 - which is to build up a full Emergency Fund of three to six months expenses.
The madding thing is I have had since February of this year to clear my debt that is more that six months but have had little progress until now.
 

Getting Gazelle Intense!!

 

Autumn is slowly making her presents felt, leaves are starting to change colour and fall. It's much cooler in the mornings and the rain is arriving with a little more frequency.  I am having to juggle my budget to account for clothing purchases which are much needed as I got rid of a lot of my old winter wardrobe when I moved jobs in April.
My snowball has been very slow in moving my debt balance and the big culprit is my Flexiloan account. Yes, I should have got rid of that along time ago but I hung onto it like a crutch and have paid the price for that. I helps me know how much I need in a fully funded Emergency Fund - at least £5k! And £6k ( my current Emergency Fund plus the additional £5k) would probably be idea for me.
My current debt balance is £6030.85, which means it is going to take me until at least March next year to clear my unsecured debt in full. And that is only if I am absolutely gazelle intense about paying it off. I am working on a zero balance budget - giving every penny a name and it is hard!
I have been listening to the Dave Ramsey Show on my laptop and I really do like his stance on Personal Finance. Listening to the show is good for me as it keeps all my goals to clear my debt in focus and is a great encouragement to continue with the slog.
Time to get gazelle intense about my finances again and be weird!

 

 

Ahhhhhhhhh........ computers!!!!!

Wow I can't believe it I have finally got back onto my dashboard page. This is truly a miracle. For the last few months I have only been able to read the blog but not add any. Perhaps that is a good thing. May be not, either way I am very happy to be back online again. And with so much to add, most of which isn't really so good. But at least I can update everything and sort out my finances (again!).

As of my last post I have debt to pay off in the form of two different loans. One was taken out with my current account bank and currently totals £3,683.34 and has twelve payments left to pay of £307.18. The second is from my Flexiloan account I still hold with my old bank. This is an open ended credit facility of £5,000 of which I currently owe £4,097.89, payments on this are monthly at £260.00 while there is a balance on the account. So my total debt as of today is £7,781.23.

On top of this I now have, what I am calling my mortgage account, into which I am making monthly payment of £760.00 which then has to be transferred into my home account in dollars. The final amount for this payment can fluctuate a little depending on the value of the pound.

My major goal for the year is to clear the debt a.s.a.p. and I will be stacking all my tax payments into the Flexiloan account to lower the interest I get charged month on month. This will be around £500.00 a month.

Monthly Budget:
                                                       Spending                    160.00
                                                       Expenses                    250.00
                                                       Tax                             502.00
                                                       Bank Loan                 308.00
                                                       Flexiloan                    260.00
                                                       Mortgage                   760.00

                                                       Total                      £2,240.00           

I am back on the cash only spending system I used to use when I was trying to get debt free the first time. And if I have done it once I can do it again!

This year has been full of changers - I have had to move house and have changed jobs twice so far this year which hasn't been great fun. My current job is okay but I am still getting use to my change of address and find my way in my new surroundings. It is all very "posh" but I am finding it hard to settle in. I am further away from all my friends and haven't found anything of interest to do in my time off. Lets face it, as lovely as Hyde Park is there is only so many times a week you can walk around it before you start to want to go down Oxford Street which is a big no, no, if you want to not spend any money.