Tondella's (epic) debt-free journey

A question about : Tondella's (epic) debt-free journey

Hello there!

I've been a member of this board for nearly a year now and started my debt free journey last November. Briefly, OH and I got engaged and decided to tackle our credit card debts with the aim of being debt free for when we want to have children.

After a big flurry of activity in the first few months as we set budgets, transferred our credit card debts to lower rates, got rid of unneeded expenditure and knuckled down to repayments I became a bit of a lurker. Things were busy at work so i had little time to come online, and everything was ticking away.

However, I've just installed free Orange broadband and so now i can log on from home! I've been meaning to pick things up on the repayments front as I think that now i am settled into my current budget it might be time to trim off a few edges. Plus, with the wedding next month, we have about £3k of payments to make over the next six weeks, which will bring my debt total up again. At the moment my debt free date is March 2008, however next Summer I will be moving out of London to live with OH at his next posting. I'm not sure that i will be able to find a job at the same salary so it's important that i make the most of this time to pay off as much as poss.

I'm going to post my SOA, and I know what you are going to say about the rather generous clothing and miscellaneous spending allowances ... but here goes!

take home pay £1641
outgoings
rent: £450

BT phone: £22 - the account is in credit cos i barely make phonecalls, but this is the minimum DD amount they allow

Orange £25 (£20 monthly plus £5 of charges at the moment, a combination of the end of my free text offer plus the odd daytime call - i upgrade this month and am looking for a £20 package that gives texts and anytime calls, and i need to go back to being more disciplined about my calling habits)

TV licence - £10.99
Water - £15.82
Elec/gas - £27.50 (recently switched, think this might be overpayment but need to wait for first couple of bills)

council tax - £33.00 (yay, westminster!)
student loan - £57.11 (about £500 left to pay)
total £641.42

allowances
food: £35 per week
entertainment: £20 per week
gym: £45 per month (i normally payg at 4.50 per session, but on the run up to the wedding have joined so i have no excuse to not exercise)
travel allowance: £40 (for train journeys home and the odd tube journey, not always used as I cycle into work every day)

here are the ones you will have a go at me for!
clothing: £80 per month
beauty products and any gifts: £60 per month

This leaves me with £500 per month towards the credit cards, £564 in a four week month. I won't post OH's budget here for simplicity, however he contributes £904 per month to repayments, rising to £1154 next month as he has just sold his motorbike.

Our minimum repayments are currently £575, so we are overpaying around £800 per month.

My goals for August:
to get the most out of my food allowance. This is something i haven't yet got to grips with, I used to shop at the local veg market, however I can only go on saturdays, and got out of the habit after spending a few weekends away from London. I don't have a freezer, and i have three small shelves for food storage + fridge. So I haven't been able to take advantage of bluk bought meat etc. However I could do more meal planning and my shopping list could be better planned.
- shop at the market more regularly
- menu plan
- try out some value recipes

ebay some more stuff
collected especially from home on my last trip up there.

to plan at the start of the month for major expenditures so I can adjust my regular spending accordingly. Example, this month i have my hen party and a christening.

to keep a strict spending diary and follow the mantra: do i need it? do i already have it? can i find it cheaper somewhere else? for everything i buy!

to open a nationwide account to take advantage of the good exchange rate when we go on honeymoon.

my brother has offered to pay me for some writing, although we haven't yet agreed on the amount, so i need to get that done too.

All earned money will go onto debts

Best answers:

• Hi Tondella, it seems that you have made great inroads into your debt, when are you getting married? Is there anyway you and OH could move in together before next summer and therefore reduce your bills?
• great to see u back Tondella and fantastic progress on ur debts
• Hi Tondella,
  Well done on starting your diary - I'm finding mine really good fun and a great inspiration.
  Don't worry about justifying everything to us - IMHO if you are paying that amount off your debts then you would go stir crazy if you didn't have a little something for entertainment/clothes every month.
  For the food challenge, check out the Old Style board for tips and also maybe join in the DFW Grocery Challenge? Here is the thread:- https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/....html?t=229933 - you can join any time with any amount - just set yourself a challenge.
  My reasons for wanting to become debt free (or as near as d*mmit!) are the same as yours. We are engaged but no wedding plans yet - we just can't afford it. However my main reason for hoping to become debt free is because I want to have babies and be able to take some time out from work, if possible.
  Why not see if you can make some extra money out of your writing? Bag yourself a copy of The Writer's and Artist's Yearbook 2006 from the library (sorry if this is the industry you work in or this is a really obvious suggestion) to see if you can use your skills to earn to odd couple of hundred squid here and there by writing articles and letters for newspapers and magazines.
  I'll be keeping in touch with your story. Good luck!
  scottishspendaholic x
• Like you said - clothing and other bits is way too much. Just think - if you made the most of your existing wardrobe, you could pay everything off loads faster!
• Thanks for the positive responses guys! I'm really overwhelmed. Just thought i would answer some questions.
  We're getting married in seven weeks (yikes). Unfortunately there is no chance of us moving in together until next Summer as I work in London and he in Portsmouth (he's military like your OH). However I have told my boss that i will be leaving next Summer to coincide with OH's next posting. OH lives in mess at the moment, and we are considering a married quarter when we do move, which will help us out massively.
  Jamesie! so good to see you posting here, how are you?
  Thanks for the words of support SSS, I do feel bad when i see others scraping by to meet minimum repayments and I'm spending their food budget on clothes. I do try to buy investment pieces which will last a long time (by which i mean M&S black trousers, not Armani suits!). Problem is I sold so many of my clothes on ebay (not that i was wearing them alot) and now the wardrobe is bare!
  as for the writing, it's just some simple essays that he needs to go on the web, I don't think anyone else but him would pay me for them!! But thanks for the compliment.
  Ooh, I've just made another goal - to read the tightwad's gazette, I've just ordered it at the local library. Can't wait to see what all the fuss is about.
• BT will do a whole of balance direct debit, which, if you're not spending any money, will be less than 22 pounds. I know, cause I have one after getting fed up of them having 60 pounds of my money sitting in their accounts!
• WTG Tondella!! Good luck with the forthcoming wedding and living in MQ!!! I gre up in them as a kid...great-times...ooo all those men in uniform.....mmmmm...oops I digress!! Keep up the good work!
• Nice to see you back! We get hitched in seven weeks as of tomorrow, how freaky is that? We're 16th September.
  We managed to keep our wedding budget down to Ј2k. Scottishspendaholic - PM me if you wanna know how we did it! I reckon we could have done it for Ј1.5k but we got a bit greedy with some stuff. lol
  Our debts are now down to Ј5600 for me and about Ј20k for OH (still need to get him to work it out exactly). We've paid a ton off whilst paying for the wedding too.
  Have you worked out a budget for living together yet - is that what you're gonna do?
  I'm going to hopefully be moving into married quarters with OH which will save us a fortune on rent, food, his petrol and phone bills!
• 16th of September for me too! Crikey you have got cracking, when you first came on here you weren't even engaged! The wedding is an MSE one, but more in the sense of getting value for your money than doing it the cheapest way possible. I can hand on my heart say that we have put our money where it counts to us the most and I am really looking forward to the big day, expecially as OH has been feeding our wedding cakes for the past two months - cannot wait to get my teeth around that!
  It's going to be quite hard to budget in advance for us living together. rent will go down heaps, especially moving away from london. However, OH gets such a bargain in the mess (food, council tax, utilities all for approx £250) that i think our food bill will shoot up. He is getting better at turning appliances off though. Petrol will go down and we'll try and get a joint gym membership. The biggest thing for me is that my wage will almost definitely decrease, possibly quite drastically (£8k ish ). I'm considering retraining as a chartered accountant. Any MSE-ers out there who are in the process of getting their ICAEW and can PM me with the lowdown on what the training contract and day to day work is like?
  Well done on the debt total btw, didn't you start off on something like £18k???
• I should add also that on marrying OH I get a forces spouse rail discount card - upto 30% of fares. yes! yes! yes! How i have missed that since i finished my studies!
• Tondella, 18 months ago, I owed Ј10649 and he owed about Ј32k. He's sold him motorbike recently to wipe his credit card debt, and he was nearly in tears doing it. He then sent me a text message pic of his card cut up.
  More recently he's been saying it's good not to have to find somewhere to store it where it won't get knocked over, and it's saving him lots on not only the credit card repayments, but also in servicing costs.
  We're getting there, I intend to get debt free asap now, as once I move to be with him, my job security isn't guaranteed any more with him gettig posted even next year maybe. His debts can tick over more nicely with his salary. he's going to help me pay off mine, then we're gonna finish his off together.
• aah yes, I remember our spooky conversation about both dating motorcycle riding military men. Mine's just sold his too (dance of joy!), if we weren't getting married on the same day then i really would start to wonder?!! Unless he's thinking of dashing from one church to the other? He's not persuaded you to get married in Lancashire has he? !!!
• Nice to see you're back Tondella, I always enjoy reading your posts and was wondering how things were going.
  getting close to the wedding now, you must be getting excited.
• Hi there! Thanks for your post, good to see you on here.
  Yes, we're getting sooo excited about it all, had a few wedding chores to discharge this weekend, including choosing our readings, which was a lovely thing to do together. Big changes are afoot after the wedding too, I am considering a career change when i move to live with OH next summer, however alot hangs in the balance. More on this later, perhaps!
  Looks like you are making great progress on your debt, when was your lightbulb moment? are you going to overpay your student debt when your personal debts are over or will you let them take their course and start saving?
• I won't clog the official grocery challenge thread up with this as i think it is too detailed, but I wanted to post my meal plans and shopping list up as this is one area that i am having real trouble with. Any advice greatly received!
  OK - meals for saturday 29th to friday 4th
  sat lunch - tuna sandwiches, crisps, for two
  sat dinner - homemade pizza with cherry toms and herbs, for two
  sun lunch - tuna sandwiches, crisps, for two
  sun dinner - halved jacket potatoes with insides scooped out and mixed with cheddar (catchy name!), broccoli and carrots, leftover salad, for two
  mon lunch - left over potatoes, salad from work
  mon dinner - gillian mckeith's chickpea burgers, carrots
  tues lunch - tuna sandwich
  tues dinner - leftover chickpea burgers, broccoli
  wed lunch - tuna sandwich
  wed dinner - green tagliatelle with cherry toms, olive oil
  thurs lunch - tuna sandwiches
  thurs dinner - remaining pasta and cherry toms
  fri lunch - tuna sandwich
  shopping list for this week as follows
  market shop
  strawberries Ј1.00
  cherries 1lb Ј2.00
  1lb onions, 2lb carrots Ј1.00
  toothpaste Ј1.00
  total Ј5.00
  sainsbury's (herefter shortened to JS) tinned tuna in spring water x 4 Ј2.29
  JS tinned kidney beans Ј0.45
  JS porridge oats Ј0.57
  JS fast action yeast Ј0.65
  taste the diff salt and vig crisps Ј1.29 (large bag)
  JS tagliatelle Ј0.82
  JS vegetable oil Ј0.60
  JS 7 seed mix Ј0.78 (for on top of my porridge)
  JS buffalo mozarella Ј0.63
  JS cheddar Ј1.42 (couldn't hack the basic one, had to go back to this one)
  JS harvest grain loaf large Ј0.72
  4 baking potatoes (poor selection at market) Ј1.15
  4 pink grapefruit Ј1.00 (on offer)
  cherry toms Ј1.41 large punnet (none at market)
  bananas Ј0.76
  JS non bio washing powder 2 for Ј2.50
  fairy liquid Ј0.98
  toothbrush 2 for Ј1.99
  bodyform 2 for Ј2.00
  washing up sponges Ј0.45
  total Ј22.46
  i'll need to buy milk, bread, and broccoli in the week. It looks better than i had thought, I'm sure i bought more at the market, but i cannot think what!
• Hi 8pnoodles
  Could you post some details of your £2k wedding budget? My daughter is planning to get married next year and would love some money saving ideas to help with our planning.
  Thanks.