Girl in Debt

This next 2 weeks is really going to drag, I have £94 in my current account £19 in my savings pot which autosaves and rounds up everytime I spend. I am also waiting on £37 of expenses waiting to be paid back from work, which is really annoying as that is from 11th June and should have been paid by now. So all together that is £150 til the 15th (well the 14th at 4pm... thanks Monzo) so for 13 days that is about £11.50 a day. I don't have any plans for the rest of this week or the weekend so really and truly no money should be spent, I have food so that is covered, I just have to be strict with myself. Next week though I am travelling for work on Monday evening, then back Tuesday afternoon. I know my colleagues are going to want to go out to eat/drink on the Monday evening but I am going to have an excuse in my back pocket. Because even though you can expense your dinner up to a certain amount, I don't want to spend the money in the first place and then have to wait 4 weeks to ge...

In 2018 my bank at the time decided to give me £17,000 which was completely insane. At this time my credit was great so there was no issue with them giving that to me, I think there was a phone call to run me through a few details but that was it. I was 20 years old and that was the most money I had ever seen, and it was in my account. My plan with that money was to spend £10k on this serviced apartment scheme, unfortunately for me it turned out to be a scam. Now I did get the money back, but I had to go back and forth for a long time and it was keeping me awake at night.  When I was in my last year at College I remember saying to my mum I really wanted to start my own business, I thought I would have a fashion brand or something but had no clue. When I started my first full time office job out of College it was all I could think about, being self-employed and not having to work. So when this opportunity came along, I was so excited at the chance to make money in property. All I wo...

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...