Thursday 27 October 2016

Getting somewhere

Update for the end of October:

Credit card: $2,190.33

Personal Loan: $28,975.55

Total Debt: $31,165.88


Starting to see some improvement. This is the right direction at last!!


Monday 10 October 2016

Smarter and harder

One of the things I think I can do to help myself out of this self-dug hole is to work both harder and smarter.

Smarter:

I've recently received a $20 per fortnight (which is my pay cycle) boost in pay, thanks to our enterprise agreement annual increase. That has been added directly to my credit card payment since that is the most pressing of my debts and the one I'm most keen to kill off first.

I've also decided to stop transferring $50 into a savings account each fortnight. If its sitting in the savings account, I tend to spend it. I'm not good at saving at this point in time, and I think that is a symptom of my focus being on debt reduction. Putting it into one account just to transfer it out and spend it is just a stupid waste of time and its not getting me anywhere. So instead of not-saving it, I'm just going to put it to debt. I won't spend it if I've paid it off debt. If it isn't there, I won't miss it.

That boosts the credit card payment to a whopping $520 a fortnight.

I'm also in line for a potential raise at work, which would equate to about $140 a fortnight before tax. I'm not sure how much tax will hit it, but I expect that about $100 of that would come home to me. So that will be added to the credit card too if it comes through. The bonus with that one is that if it does come through, it should be backdated to early August, meaning a good solid lump sum to go straight off the debt - five pay fortnights worth it should work out to.


Harder:

My second job has managed to hold on through the season, despite my fears that I was going to lose it completely. It looks now that the manager there will keep me on, and my shifts are secure for as long as I want them. Through the winter, for various reasons, I'm only able to do one shift a fortnight, which equates to about $55 after tax in my account.

As spring has now hit, I'm able to do three shifts most fortnights and that means that my pay for a fortnight is around the $150 mark, depending on hours.

So far, I've worked a mix of one shift fortnights and three shift fortnights over this financial year, but haven't been paid yet. I'm expecting a lump sum payment of those shifts that I've worked to come in this week, and all of that will go to the credit card. I expect this will be north of $500 in a lump sum, which will go directly to the credit card.

As fortnightly payments for this second job come in, they'll go straight to the credit card too.


I'm hoping that this smarter / harder tactic will help me make a sprint towards zero on the credit card before the end of the year.