This was a terrible day for me, when I was 16 I bought a boat with my dad and we used to go finishing in it. It cost £300 then and is now worth £150, so I thought, Instead of paying the docking fees and maintenance fees of the boat, I should sell it. So I did, I got the £150 for it and sold it to another family who wanted to have the same great experience me and my dad have had, I put it on eBay as I thought it would be easier to sell on the Internet instead of trying to sell it offline with local news papers. I also managed to get £50 back from a tried, he had owed me that money for a very long time.
I had the money as credit, transferred straight into my account to make sure I didn’t spend it on unneeded items. This should help with my debt problems a little more and is a step closer for me becoming debt free. I am glad I am getting closer to my goal and I am doing with without loans and with little financial help.
I will be going through my loft tomorrow to have a look through all the rubbish I have that I could sell on eBay or at the local market. This again will aid me with my financial situation, even if I only manage to make £10, it’s better than nothing. Every penny really does count when your in debt, even the dirty ones on the floor!
£26078.44 is the figure I have left to pay of my debt.
I am sorry I have not been around since Thursday I have had other things that I have needed to do, I will give a short summary of where I am at and what I have been doing the last 3 days.
Friday
Friday was a normal day for me, I managed to get a promotion like I had said, always ask, if you dont ask you will not get. Do not be worried about asking, do not feel aquard, your boss will probably feel the same as you do when you ask him so do not worry about having the chance of losing your job or coming across as rude.
How to ask
I wont go into to much detail, but I must say this, if you are going to ask for a pay rise you need to have a reason why you deserve one. Do you deserve one? Are you lazy, helpful, overworked for the price?
Before I went in to see my boss I had pleanty of information backing up why I deserve a payrise, I took my job CV in to show all of the work I had been involed in, my productivity percentage level, which is 100%. I also asked for a few references from others around the office who I had done work for, i.e. line managers. They where all happy enough to back my decision and told me I deserve it. So I went for it and coincidently, I GOT IT .
Saturday
Saturday was a busy day for me, I had to go shopping to get some essentials, I no I am trying to clear my debt, but it is my partners birthday soon and I can hardly be so nasty as to say, No sorry your not having anything, I am saving, remember you still need to enjoy the perks in life, dont sit in all day trying to pay off your debt as It will only become harder for you to pay. So yes I spent quite a bit as its a milestone age, but who cares? I made sure I had the money and it was my money I had earnt.
Sunday – Back to the wine bottle
Today I have managed to put £30 in the wine bottle and I have also called Sky to cancell £20 worth of chanells that I NEVER watch and will never watch, following this I decided to call my mobile phone provider and apply a 30% disscount coupon I had been given. I have two others, The best comment reply to this post will get them.
I have also started to earn revenue from this website and I want to thank all of the members who have started signing up and becoming a part of my life on the internet.
So no over the last few days I have not saved much, but why does it matter, I have cut down on spends and also managed to save a little and I have still managed to enjoy my weekend.
Sorry that I didn’t have anything to write yesterday, but to be honest, becoming debt free is not about taking actions every day, I must still make sure I am enjoying myself and getting out.
Today in work I had a hard long think, I remembered when I last visited my bank, they asked my about my pension scheme and I said I had one, but truth be told, I didn’t have a clue if I had one. So I took it upon myself to call my HR department and find out what my pension deal was. Apparently I had not opted into my pension, so forms where sent via fax and I filled them out. This is a big step for me and a luck one too, I could of ended up only getting a state pension when I could have a very profitable one also from the company I work for.My pension scheme is also very promising offering me a 3:1 payback on contributions I make.
This has everything to do with debt, it wont help you pay off your debts now, but could secure your future when you are older, meaning you can enjoy your final years instead of worrying about debts and payments. No it hasn’t helped me clear my debt and yes it is costing me monthly to contribute towards my pension, but in the long run it will be well worth it.
On another note, I saved £25 in my wine bottle today and £1.50 in a little box I have made for spare change in my office draws. The wine bottle experiment is working and I am still too lazy to smash it and clear up all the glass to get to the money.
So today its £26334.94 – £26.50 = £26308.44 left to pay
Today I have not come up with any ideas on how to cut down my debt, nor have I paid off any of my debt in any form. So I headed over to Youtube to grab a video for you all to watch I will have more to say tomorrow as I will be thinking tonight of ways to cut down on my debt. Thanks for reading/watching.
Today I contacted a Insolvency Service to help me with my debt, it is a government funded scheme that helps people to stabilize their debt and write off as much debt as possible in the way the client can comfortably afford. I used this option instead of filing for bankruptcy as the courts where asking me to, this means I pay off a set amount which is £300 monthly over the next 5 years so that’s £18000 of my debt and the rest is debt that I have to figure out how to pay myself. I can afford the £300 a month bill so this will help me yet again stabilize my finances and get me out of debt and hopefully debt free by 2013 as I am going to try and pay off more than £300 monthly and try to hit double that at £600 with help from my family and saving techniques I have acquired and wrote about on my blog.
Please follow me on my journey and give me ideas in the comment boxes below, to help me get to my goal. It is a long hard graft but it will definitely be worth it in the end.
Current debt = £26334.94
Unfortunately I didn’t manage to save anything today, but I did manage to secure my debt and come to an agreement so I wont have an additional pressure of debt collectors visiting my house for the next 5 years.
Here are a few of my plans on how to get out of debt below.
· I am planning to hire a professional who can assist me. Accountants, advocates & credit analysts are qualified with these issues & can every now and then get involved on your behalf & provide you all kinds of breaks that make it simpler for you to embark on paying off credit card arrears without ado.
· I am willing to cut down on expenditure. Loads of citizens’ endeavor paying off credit carddebt at the same time as concurrently living the similar standard of living they have been leading from the very beginning. This is more often than not probable, in view of the fact that the things you bought are what have put you into this condition in the first place.
· I am trying to figure out a feasible financial plan & trying to bond to it day by day; after that, similar to a dieter, if I have a day where I make a mistake & expend cash on various frolicsome things in that case I won’t hammer myself up over it. I will simply get back on trail without more ado.
Today I have paid off £300 of my debt through using my wages.
So today its £26934.94 – £300 = £26334.94 left to pay
I am now four days into becoming debt free, I have today contacted my bank and asked for a smaller overdraft, to my disgust HSBC tried to charge me £30 to change my overdraft, with the possibility of being rejected, so I closed my account with them and went next door and opened an account with Lloyd’s TSB. Lloyd’s TSB offer a much better service, with friendlier staff.
Cutting up the card
Today I decided to make the drastic action to cut down on my debts and decided to cut up my credit card to make sure I didn’t use it to further, put my self in debt. I used a shredding machine for safety and then disposed of it by throwing it on a fire I had made in my back garden to clean out all of the clutter of branches that had fell of my trees. I believe this will be another great action to help cut down on my debt.
Also today I received money in the post off my parents, which I put straight into my wine bottle, they sent £200 as they have been reading my blog and want to help me out every now and again.
So for today that’s £27134.94 – £200 = £26934.94 left of my large debt.
I noticed a while back that my new car was costing a lot on fuel, so today I put some plans into action and here they are:
Cruise Control – My car is fitted with cruise control, but I have never ever used it, but then again, why am I not using it? It saves on fuel as it keeps the revs steady. I drive along a freeway all the way to work and anything over 20mph can be set to cruise control.
Cleaning my car- My car was full of junk, so I removed all unwanted items/junk and threw them to one side, the heavier my car, the more petrol it needs to move it forward.
Tank Overfill- I have always added that extra bit of petrol into my tank, meaning the tank is overfull, making the car heavy and reducing performance, a little research I did today advised to only fill the car to 3/4 full, this will allow for greater performance and also will help contribute to cutting down on the weight of my vehicle.
I have also managed to put another £10 in spare change into my bottle today and also received a lovely cheque from the tax office, which they owed me £650 for mistakes with my tax.
So that’s £27,794.94 – £10 – £650 = £27134.94 left to go of my debt.
It is now day two of my quest to become debt free, as I have already shown in the last post I have a large debt of £27,894.94. As I sat down in work today, I though to myself, there are only two ways to go, in debt or out of debt, so it is rather obvious both can be done.
The Wine Bottle Experience
Here was another one of my wild ideas to save money, which today has worked as I have saved £40. Here is how you do it.
Step 1 – Buy a cheap bottle of wine worth around £2 at the most which is rather large
Step 2 – Empty the bottle by drinking the content or throwing it away
Step 3 – Clean out the empty bottle
Step 4 – Any spare notes you have, shove them down the neck of the wine bottle. Its now impossible to get the money out without smashing the glass
These steps are ridiculous, but I am trying to outline how EASY it is to start saving. One thing I will say about putting money in the bottle is, you will lose interest if it’s not in the bank, but to be honest, if it is in the bank, I would spend it.
So that’s £40 to take away from my debt, which my creditor’s are giving me time and have stalled my payments for 2 months to help me pay my way out of this mess.
Jam Making
Today, after messing around with the wine bottle, I decided to make some Jam, there are plenty of old people and young families on my estate, so I thought to myself… Why not bottle up the Jam and sell it? Which is what I did, after driving down to a glass supplier, which gave me bottles for 10p each, I began making my Jam and knocked from door to door for 2 hours taking orders for the jam. I managed to make £60, which went straight into my wine glass.
That’s all i have done today, but its made me £100 less in debt, so here is the sum so far £27,894.94 – £40 – £60 = £27,794.94 Left to pay.
OK now its easy to see, I have a lot of DEBT. I ended up in this position, mainly due to one fact, I was so unorganised. I am now 25 years of age and need to become debt free as I have a wife and two small children.
My debt started when I was 18, I started a new job and spent before I earned the money, not realising that I had no overdraft and got huge charges as I didn’t read any letters from the banks as I thought, I owe nothing, so it must be junk. O boy was I wrong, by the time I reached 19 I had finished my first year in University and was £3000 in debt from paying without a student loan and borrowing money from the bank, add the £900 I was in debt from ignoring letters from my bank.
When I turned 20 I started living with a new partner, when we split up she cleared our joint bank account and took the car which I had stupidly signed under her name for insurance purposes. So I was left with no savings, all my wages gone for that month and no car.
New Car
I had to purchase a new car and decided to spend no more than £500 as I could not afford the costs. My insurance for that year also came to £1300 this is without mentioning my tuition fees of £3000 for that year! My debt was now £8700 and the bailiffs where starting to come around.
Cutting it short
To cut a long story short I am now in £27,894.94 debt and growing, my aim of this blog is to keep me on track and to help others see the ways I have wrote off my debt. I may fail, I may succeed, but I will note EVERYTHING I did on here. So from today the figure of £27,894.94 is going down and not up and my creditors are going to see their money being paid back. I have no other option, I have started by making small amounts of extra cash online by doing online surveys. I have also asked for a pay rise which I am being considered for and I am talking on an extra job which will pay an extra £100 a week for 10 hours.
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