End of July Update

Well I have added my tax bill, which is now due, to my debt balance which brings it back to just over the balance I had a the start of June. Gosh it seems like a big step backwards. Still on the positive side I have paid £1,429.19 off my last credit card, better than I had planned and really once that is paid off I will feel I have clear my debit. Okay I will still have debt but it will be all relating to 2009 and not debt I have been carrying around for the last decade. And of cause I want to clear it also.
Anyway this month my budget was divided up as follows:

9.6% Expenses

85.1% debt

5.3% Spending

Next month I plan to clear my last credit card, cancel it and then to start clearing my tax bill which I will probably transfer to my Flexi account. (Yes, the account I should have cancelled but am glad now that I didn't) I will wait until I start getting calls from the Revenue it's self before I do so. Hopefully I may have paid it off before that happens.

For August my goals are as follows:

Clear my last Halifax credit card £1085.18 (+interest)

Pay towards my Tax bill £1,133.23

Keep to my £5 a day spending plan

All Things Are Possible!

I have taken the challenge of having a "no spend week" and will put my weekly spending money towards clearing my Halifax Credit card. A card I should be able to clear by next month.
My extra work is only going to fetch me an extra £450 and not the £700 I had hoped for but still - something is better than nothing.
I have £2.08 in my purse from last week which I will add to my emergency fund. My little red purse has been put away for the week as I don't need it.

Anyone else game for a "No Spend Week"?

Go on....... Go on.......

Little Update

Had a great week last week with my £5 a day and ended it with just over £15 in my purse. Down to half my total weekly spending allowance of £30.

No More Spending is going on a No Spending Week but as I have already been out spending a little today I would like to have a go at a no spend week next week. Last year I did do a lot of no spend days which was okay but sometimes I found that I would then spend more on another day.

Do you find that sometimes it takes forever for payments to arrive on credit card accounts?

I am still waiting for last weeks payment to be credited to my Halifax card account and will be making another payment on Thursday/Friday (depending when my pay cheque clears). Luckily Halifax allow you to make as many payments as you like, unlike some cards, which is news to me.

Planned snowball payment for the month - £1,200 (so far have paid £558).

I Ought to Know

I should hang my head in shame as I have clocked up over £700 on my only active credit card.
That's the bad news, it's aways good to get that out first and the good news is well the insurance company has sent me a large cheque relating back to the holiday I had in Turkey back in May. It is however £200 less than what I was expecting and less a further £75 excess fee.
Also, during my little break helping friends move house I spent £50 having my hair done, £100 dinning out and £150 in a gift for the new house. In total £300 was added to my credit card - breaking my don't add to my debt balance rule.
Truth be known I had spent £70 a week earlier on clothes, as I was fed up with what I had in my wardrobe and also I had been trying to find jeans at charities shops but I couldn't find any thing I liked or that fit me. Always the problem when your shopping in charity shops.
Last weekend I spent £45 on a cardigan from Oasis and some beauty products for £32 - I had just had my last catch up lunch met with a really good friend who is moving to NYC at the end of the month. So I was feeling a little down, hence the little shopping spree.
Needless to say I have now cut up the card so I will not be popping down to Richmond anytime soon with it.
So all in all that is £722 added to my debt total and at the end of this month I have a whopping £1,927 of Taxes due for the last tax year. Not good when I am so close to my goal of clearing my debt in August. Still I am hopeful that the extra income I hope to earn in the next few weeks will cover it and more!
Should I beat myself up about this? I should, I ought to know by now.
I have decide to cancel all my cards (not just chop them up and keep the account open) and just keep my debt card. Well I can't do to much damage with that, as I don't have an overdraft and you can't spend what you don't have.

So Go I

I haven't been giving myself goals of late, which was brought home to me when reading DebtHater latest post. In fact re reading my first January post the only real goal I had was to get debt free this year - sort of stating the obvious really. I have been encouraged in the past by other blogger's to make some plans and goals for the future and that is something I just never feel comfortable about. I have no idea why? Some kind of mental block or something maybe. My own personal, weird little blind spot.

Time to step out and make some goals for the rest of this year!

Goal 1. Clear my debt my August 2009

Goal 2. Clear my Tax by October 2009

Goal 3. Complete my EMF Account by October 2009

Goal 4. Start a regular payment towards my building fund

In November/December I am planning to go home for a visit so will need to save up for my airfares and spending monies. For this I will need a minimum of at least £1k and most probably more, depending how long I'm away. Sorting out internal transport costs for trips around the country will be a good idea now, as I could get some good prices if I book early.

Four goals and some research to get on with, I will be off....

July Update

I did even better than planned for June and found an extra £150.13 to get my end of month balance down to £2,514.37. I also paid off my second to last credit card in June but as yet have not closed the account, I have destroyed the card and haven't used the account since about last year. So one credit card to go and I would have cleared the £20,056.05 that I started blogging about in June 2007. My DFD should be August 2009 - it would have taken 2 years and 2 months to achieve but oh the joy of getting rid of that big black shadow over my pay cheque.
On the last day of July my next tax payment will come due but as this is not old debt I will list it as a new debt to clear. Once that is all sorted - I will really have to move on to planning what happens next.
This month I plan to pay £1,200 off my credit card which will bring my balance down to £1,300 this should then be totally cleared by August. But I may well be able to clear even more as I have some extra work lined up for the latter part of this month. The details haven't been worked out so I will have to wait and see.

I Hope I Never

UNDER 3K ALERT UNDER 3K ALERT UNDER 3K ALERT

Yes I am under 3k and also down to one credit card, so until it is cleared everything is going onto my final card. It is really amazing that after two long years I am down to only one debt account. Once that 3k is gone all my debt will be new - it's not stuff I have been carry around for years and paying lots of interest on, my only interest now is to keep out of debt.

However if I don't sound too enthusiast about all of this, it's because I know that at the end of July I have a large tax bill due. According to my calculations, I should have to pay £1,927.24 to Her Majesties Revenue and Customs - I don't think I am incorrect in my figures. So in August I will have to add this to my debt total. But as I have already said this will be new debt not old, so I shouldn't feel so bad I guess.

I have revamped my budget again to include my tax payments, something I had been doing last year before I went on holiday but then stopped and used the monies to pay off my debt. Compared to most people my budget is tiny (really, really tiny) i.e. I don't have a car or a mortgage nor do I pay rent and I don't have to worry about food or any household bills (power, gas, etc.). Once I have cleared my last years tax bill and am all up to date on my current tax bills I will have to take another look at my budget and make some major decisions on what I want to do next with my life.

Also I am hoping to receive a cheque on Friday from the insurance company relating to my holiday in Turkey last month. So it will be great to clear that off my credit account.

I hope I never have to deal with long term debt again.

All In A Year

My blog is 2 years old!!!!

When I started my blog, I was sure I'd be out of debt within 18 month or 20 months tops! By the end of the first year I knew that, that wasn't going to happen. Life happens - you don't always know what is around the corner and you can only plan for what you know. Also, it is a learning skill to get out of debt, you don't need to learn to get into debt but getting out is a major change of lifestyle which you must work at.
At the start of June last year I owed £12, 671.77 and I am now down to £3,764.50 at the start of this month. To get passed that £10k figure was such a relief. Now that I am down to the last few thousand I really just want it gone - that monkey on the back of my finances that stopped me doing anything with my finances. Not so long to go now and it will be gone - I can't wait!
I have been reading posts that people have made about keeping your credit card accounts open once you have cleared them. Cutting up the cards etc. so that you don't use them but keeping them open to help your credit rating. Now the information is mostly from the States and I don't know if it is the same here in the UK or in other Commonwealth countries?
The other side of the argument is the Dave Ramsey approach of getting rid of all your credit cards and only having debt cards. That sounds a little scary, especially after my trip to Turkey were I needed emergency credit in a hurry. An emergency fund of £1,000.00 wouldn't have cut it!

Have you cleared your debt? What did you do?

In Regards To Myself.....

Have you noticed? I have been refreshing my blog (a little) - adding some more info and have now included some saving goals. Saturday marks my 2nd year of my blog and I am closer to my goal that ever before and I really believe that without my blogging about my debt I don't think I would have gotten this far. Reading other peoples posts about getting out of debt has been a great help in giving me new views on budgets (yes Super Careo - the dreaded "b" word), spending, saving, snowballing, snowflaking and so much more. To all the blogger's I have on my blog roll - thank you! Even if you don't know it, your blogs have been a great help to me and that is why I have included them on my blog.

With regards to my saving goals I have been re-reading Dave Ramsey's 7 Baby Steps and well yes, I have been doing doing step 2 before step 1 but we are all different and what works for me may not work for you. I never know, when sites or blogger's talk in US dollars, if I should convert that to pounds sterling or just treat the dollar as a pound. Does anyone else have this problem in the UK?

Well my Emergency Fund goal is currently £1,200 but I hope to increase it some time in the future. My Building Fund goal is just a figure I pick out of the air, once I have cleared my debt and my taxes I can really work on what I want to do for this goal and how achievable it will be.

On my £5 a day last week was not a good week and I went over my plan for the week by about £30 but this week I am back on track.

June Update

The 13th of June will mark my second year of the "getting out of debt slogg", which I had originally planned to have achieve by October 2008. Obviously I didn't reach my goal but I figure you have to aim for something and now two whole years later I am so much closer to my ultimate goal of being "debt free".
In June 2007 I was £20,056.05 in debt, all of it being unsecured debt, credit card, loans and tax's bills. I have now paid off £16,291.55 in the two years I have been blogging and am down to the final £3, 764.50. All going well I should be debt free by the 16th of August, however debt free may be relative as I will still be paying off my 2008-09 Tax bill which comes due on the 31st of July and will not be cleared until about September I guess. Either way though by mid August I will have no more credit card debt or loan debt, which is what I have been dealing with for the last forever.
I still haven't heard from the insurance company regarding my refund of my godson's medical charges while we where were on holiday in Turkey. I am owed about £3,000.00 so as you can image I would like the monies sooner rather that later. I haven't added this to my figures and don't really want to as I will be getting payment eventually.
My goal for June is to pay £800.00 to clear my snowball credit card and then £300.00 off my other card. This will mean I will only have one card left to payoff.
At the beginning of June:
Three years ago I owed £8,037.44
Two years ago I owed £16,169.04
One year ago I owed £12,671.77
This year I owe £ 3,764.50 ....... and I will owe £ 2,664.50 by the end of the month.