Girl in Debt

Tesco loan - £15,412 Window finance - £3,490  Tesco loan arrears - £2,180  Payday loan £1,334  Car finance - £1,171  Credit card 1 - £1,161  Mortgage arrears - £737  Bank overdraft - £450  Holiday - £325  Credit card 2 - £190  Credit card 3 - £184  Whew that is a lot of debt I know :/ BUT I have a plan and I am sticking to it (mostly). Now I am a fan of the snowball method but I am doing things a little differently. The loans that have a set end date this year, car finance, payday loan, and holiday I am letting them end naturally. I aim to have my mortgage arrears paid off by August payday, Tesco arrears shortly after that and the rest are ad hoc. The reason I am doing it that way is because it feels like it makes the most sense for me. Arrears are bad to have on my credit report so I want them gone and I don't want to be harrassed about them. Credit cards don't really scare me, especially card 2 and 3 because those are such small figure...

Well... where do I start? The figure above skyrocketed when I first moved out and got my own place. All of a sudden I had access to £3k+ overdrafts, £15k loans and multiple credit cards. Never did I think it wouldn't be as simple as just paying it all off month by month. Never did I think I would take a hit in my salary, redundancies, covid, a string of low paid jobs and all the rest of it. But I can honestly say that I have learnt so much over the last 8 years, about finances, debt and most importantly myself.  I have been an impulse spender, someone that never bought new clothes or shoes because every penny was accounted for bills, debts and food for the month. Today, I am someone who earns a healthy wage but that number still looms above my head and I want it gone before I am 30 which is only 2 years away. As I document this journey I will tell some stories along the way of how I got into this mess. If you are expecting this to be a neat and polished blog then you have come to t...