Hi everyone,
Im brand new here and have been reading for a few days now. After reading all the positivity here I thought this might be the most suitable place for me to jump in!
First, the nasty part: Ive been in a ridiculous hair-on-fire situation for a very, very long time, which Ive been tackling for the last two years.
My point of origin in this journey was £46,993 in credit card debt. This has reduced over 24 months to £27,821. My take-home pay is £2750/month, so Ive been averaging nearly 30% of income going to debt reduction (in reality I started at 20% and worked my way towards 40%, where Ive been for the last few months). Ive got there by adopting Mustachian habits without realising thats what it was - no car (walk/bus to work, which is 6 miles away), no eating out, cooking everything from scratch, repairing clothes and only replacing things when totally unusable and replacement is absolutely necessary, and where possible, selling things I dont need. The silver lining is that this lifestyle is totally sustainable, and my quality of life has, if anything, improved. I haven't wavered once and am nowadays a very positive person.
I have a good net worth in house equity, however I want to completely ignore that for the purposes of this thread. Where Im falling down is savings & investments, which I have made practically no progress on whilst so entrenched in emergency mode.
I have a small emergency fund (£400, being build back up following an actual roof emergency), aside from that my current numbers are:
Savings account £135
S&S ISA (newly opened) £100
Premium bonds £25
so Im starting with an absolutely tiny
£260/£10000 or, of you look at the big picture,
-£27561/£10000
Currently investigating my employer's pension scheme and trying to tweak the numbers more, with a view to joining this asap (it will set back my debt-free date by up to six months), as I'm old enough that I should have a huge cushion behind me now, and other than the house I have nothing.
Whew, that was an essay :) I'm looking forward to keeping up with everyone's progress!