How overspending by a small amount on a regular basis spiralled into serious debt.

Thank you everybody.

I'm over the initial shock and just concentrating on the practicalities now. Am doing my best to keep the costs to what I can pay back immediately when I get paid at the end of the month (and since Avant are raising their interest rates I have absolutely no desire to let this become debt that drags on - I am deliberately putting stuff on that card and will clear it in full straightaway while just making minimum payments on the already existing debt for next month). So far I've booked a one-way flight (don't actually know when funeral will be so it was just easier to get one-way and I'll book the return when I know, probably for Saturday) at a cost of 213, car hire for 155, hotel for the night I arrive 49. A very generous friend has offered to let me stay with her in Inchicore so I'll need the car for getting over to Killiney and ferrying who/whatever needs ferrying while I'm there. Assuming another 200 or so for the return flight and petrol and eating costs if I'm careful it shouldn't go too much above 800. I think I'm kind of hoping that saying that out loud, so to speak, will help me to stick to it.
 
Janet.

So so sad to hear your sad news. Take care of yourself and i know this a money advice forum but i'd say please don't stress too much about money now if at all possible. You have enough to deal with now at this terrible time.
 
I sympathise most of all -

- but I have 3 credit cards that I got in the good times (one's work, and one's my own)...but for some reason I have one with a 60k credit limit. People often ask me why I keep it but it's my running away money
 
To Janet
Deepest sympathy on your loss following a long list of unfortunate personal circumstances. It reminds many of us just how close we can be to simular situations without really realizing it.

Amtc: Your comments on the run away made me smile. On the morning I got married many years ago my dad put a little Post Office savings book in my hand. It contained the savings he had made for me since I was a child. While he didn't actually call it "the run away money" I got the message. Over all the years since my OH would not allow me to spend it on things for the house or children. It is regarded as mine to do as I choose with it. It's not Mega bucks but it's the safety net.
 
Janet said:
My hopefully final setback came in March when a close family member asked for help in clearing ESB arrears as they were about to be cut off. Arrears turned out to be over 1,000 and although many would say I'm a fool for doing it, I paid.

but in this case, I know I will always do anything I can to help.

it's one of those situations where I'll never take my own advice and more fool me for it.

If even one person, seeing it all laid out in black and white, can relate any of this back to their own behaviour and see where they're going wrong, then laying out my own folly for the world to see is worth it.
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I am that one person Janet, I read the thread yesterday and I'm so sorry for what has happened to you. The day before, on Sunday a close family member asked me for money, and I'm well known on here for always saying neither a borrower nor lender be, and I said yes, and they already owe me money. But I'm glad I said yes and your posts have really helped me on this. I won't go into it and my reasons for doing so, despite having agreed with Mr. Bronte that I wouldn't loan any more money. But he agrees with my decision, due to the circumstances.

All I can say to you is continue with what you are doing, you are undoubedly a very kind person and I hope that sees you through this unbearable time. I wish there were more I could do for you than posting on an anonomous website.
 
"All I can say to you is continue with what you are doing, you are undoubedly a very kind person and I hope that sees you through this unbearable time. I wish there were more I could do for you than posting on an anonomous website."

I totally agree with Bronte on this. I am truly sorry for your loss, and wish you strength and courage through this awful time. May your sister rest peacefully in a different realm.
 
Janet said:
Assuming another 200 or so for the return flight and petrol and eating costs if I'm careful it shouldn't go too much above 800.
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Hahahahaha. Do we have a "you're so funny" emoticon? Obviously not having had a car for the last few years has distorted my memory of how bloody expensive the things are! Just my return flight was nearly 200 and I spent what felt like a fortune on petrol (when on earth did things get to the stage that a Corsa needs 70 quid to fill it up even when it wasn't even three-quarters empty?), not to mention M50 tolls. Okay, I could have driven other ways but the convenience far outweighed every other consideration given the circumstances.
Final tally on my credit card was a bit more than 750 but I also ended up spending nearly 400 in cash (perhaps half of which could have been avoided, I suppose) and mobile phone top-ups (from my already overdrawn BoI account). However, I decided that clearing my "new" debt immediately would leave me feeling more like I have stood still than anything else and so have changed my mind on how to tackle this.

I got paid early this month, i.e. yesterday so what I've done is to clear my Mastercard (which was what I used to help someone out with their ESB bill earlier this year). I made a slightly more than minimum payment to my visa and the same to the overdrawn BoI account - firstly to just have paid something but mostly also to round the numbers off. Am I the only person who does that? ;)

Next month I will clear the visa so that I am left with just one debt. And then we'll see. I had been toying with the idea of a week's holiday somewhere cheap but sunny at christmas and am still torn about that. There's no doubt that I really can't afford it, which should be the end of that thinking. And yet I have a feeling that anything that will help me get through this winter would be a good thing (timing of christmas is because of mandatory two-week holiday from work). At the moment, I'm leaning towards debt-free being a better feeling than Malta in December but am not making any decisions. If I end up clearing my debt in November/December/January it would be great. I might decide that waiting until January/February/March doesn't make that much difference though. A lot might even depend on what kind of winter we start having - snowy and bright or grey and drizzly, big difference between the two. And if the dentist's appointment I have in two weeks brings expensive news then all bets will be off anyway.

Sorry to be boring on about this now but it's helping me work things out and keep my focus so I'm just going to go with boring ye all for now. :)

And let's focus on the positive - the visa card has gone back in the drawer and won't be coming out again unless there's another emergency. A few years ago I would have kept spending for another few months before coming back to my senses!
 
Janet said:
... the visa card has gone back in the drawer and won't be coming out again unless there's another emergency.
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I should know better than to express a thought like that. After all, some people do call their emergency fund their "Murphy" fund. I had just logged on to check that the payment had gone through on the Mastercard and to enjoy the sight of a zero balance and my glasses fell off. Perfect. Is that ironic? Never sure ever since that Alannis Morrisette song.

It's not a very serious break and might be reparable and/or I can search out my old glasses and use them for a while but I was actually at the eye doctor less than two weeks ago and found out that my prescription, after about 20 years, has changed. I was going to wait until the new year to get them (if I've been wearing the wrong ones for a while now another couple of months won't matter) but maybe this is just a sign from the universe to get it sorted now. Le big sigh.
 
Janet said:
On another thread someone asked: in response to my post saying


Since my answer became somewhat long, I decided to split it into this new topic in order to not let that thread get too off-topic. Hope that's okay with everyone.

It's actually very easy. And obviously that's something of an oversimplification but it went something like this: starts off with just a few hundred on a credit card (being 'sensible' when I first got a credit card I set the limit at 500 pounds, which was about what I earned per fortnightly paycheck at that time) because you haven't really figured out the whole budgeting thing yet and since everyone is throwing money around like mad you must surely be able to at least go to the supermarket without having to worry about what anything costs. But then you can't pay it off so just make the minimum payments for a while and then the bank ups your limit (they were still allowed to do that at that time) and you think great, pressure is off. But you still can't/don't pay off the balance and over time it creeps up more and more.

So you think well, I'll get a loan to pay it off ('cos interest is lower and that's what 'sensible' people do but unlike said senisble people you don't chop up the card). So now you're paying a loan with payments that are too high but instead of doing a proper budget and cutting down on expenditure you're finding yourself using the credit card to buy all your groceries. No money left over at all for things like clothes so although you only buy them when absolutely necessary, you end up doing something like going shopping as soon as you get paid just so you can buy a new suit for a job interview and between that and making a loan repayment and making a maybe slightly more than minimum payment on the credit card as well as potentially having cleared any overdraft you might have run up on your current account, there's not a whole lot left over for the rest of the month. So credit card and overdraft come into play again. And then after a year or so of that you decide to consolidate your debts because that's what sensible people do.

So you get a big loan to cover remaining loan balance, credit card and overdraft and the bank says well why don't we round it up to [nearest thousand] so you have a bit of leeway and a chance to sort yourself out. So you do that, maybe go away for a week to relax but still don't cut up the credit card or cancel the overdraft facility and for a while everything's going according to plan but then you have to move house unexpectedly so there's the cost of deposit, double rent because you have to start paying for the new place before you've finished paying for the old one, hiring a van and buying a fridge because you've moved into an unfurnished place (with second hand furniture donated by a family member). So all of a sudden there's a couple of hundred on the credit card again. But your loan repayments are taking all your spare cash so now that you're also trying to pay off a credit card again you're struggling every month and end up dragging out the card or using the overdraft to pay for a bit here and a bit there. And you feel like you're constantly paying off debt but never getting anywhere. Don't forget that all the time interest is building up as well.

And then you decide it's all getting too stressful and it would be just better to get a bigger loan and have one payment so you again go to your nice helpful bank and consolidate your debts, again taking the slightly more than you need that's offered because it'll take the pressure off. And this time the loan is to be paid off over three years. And things go well for a while. But then something else happens and because you have no savings and the loan repayments are taking up most of your spare cash (because you still haven't quite gotten the budgeting thing down, although you're trying a bit at least) it's back to using your money as soon as you get paid and then having to use credit card and overdraft (neither of which have been cancelled) to pay for the basics.

So it was perhaps two years of careless spending, followed by three or four of trying to get out of debt but not really having a clue, still doing silly things and sort of thinking that it wasn't a big deal anyway because sure everyone else you know is in the same boat. And now six years of properly dealing with my debt and getting a handle on finances (but still by no means perfect).

When I finally started to really get a handle on finances it was because I was also in a terrible job situation and badly depressed and decided, many years overdue, to go for counselling. That cost 70 euro per session and I needed to make sure I had the money every week - that was for the first few months, after that I changed to a different job with lower pay and could only go every second week but the key difference was that I knew that and made changes to what I was doing with my money based on what I was earning rather than trying to carry on doing the same things with less money. I had been using an excel spreadsheet to 'manage' my budget since the laser card had been introduced as I had ended up in trouble a few times because of transactions not appearing for a few days and me forgetting about them. But it was a really eye-opnener to sit down and start properly managing my money. My previous model had relied on checking my bank account to make sure there was enough money in it whenver a standing order was due to come out and hoping bills wouldn't be too high to pay when I receive them. Now I actually wrote down what my fixed expenses were, including things like rent, bus ticket, an amount for phone and esb and the 70 a week for counselling. And realised that once I'd done all that plus left a bit for making some payments to debt, I only really had, say fifty euro a week leftover to spend on everything else (food, going out, presents, clothes). Plenty to live on perhaps but if you're eating lunch out every day, you'd have already spent more than that, even if it's just a sandwich, packet of crisps and bottle of water. It took me a while but I finally got to the point where I consolidated for a final time and took out a loan for what was by then a very large amount of money, fixed rate this time and no delusions that I would pay it off earlier than the five year term. I never did cut up the credit card but reduced the limit to a small amount and paid it off in full every month.

All went well, and I even managed to finance a move to Germany. Unfortunately four thousand euro worth of dental work has left me a year behind with being debt free. My loan was cleared late last year and I expect to have cleared the final debt from the dental work by May.

And that is how spending a small amount more than you earn every week can spiral into more debt than you would have thought possible. A bit of carelessness, a pinch of stupid behaviour, a touch of depression, (not to mention a fervent desire, regardless of how irrational, that the millennium bug will wipe it all out) and, it must be admitted, a smidge of what can only be called an unjustified sense of entitlement (every else goes out to eat every week so I will too, etc.) and all of a sudden the girl who at fourteen was earning five pounds a week working for the family business and still always had money to loan her elder siblings is the one up to her eyes in debt.
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Hi Janet,
This is a great post about how debt can happen to any of us. It should be a sticky.
Im very sorry about your sister.
Cas
 
Janet said:
Hahahahaha. Do we have a "you're so funny" emoticon?
Click to expand...
Maybe the sarcastic rolleyes fits the bill? Looks like this... :rolleyes:
Janet said:
Sorry to be boring on about this now but it's helping me work things out and keep my focus so I'm just going to go with boring ye all for now. :)
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Work away, it is telly without the sound and pictures and yet still better than some of the offerings that make it to the airwaves!

Janet said:
I should know better than to express a thought like that. After all, some people do call their emergency fund their "Murphy" fund. I had just logged on to check that the payment had gone through on the Mastercard and to enjoy the sight of a zero balance and my glasses fell off. Perfect. Is that ironic? Never sure ever since that Alannis Morrisette song.

It's not a very serious break and might be reparable and/or I can search out my old glasses and use them for a while but I was actually at the eye doctor less than two weeks ago and found out that my prescription, after about 20 years, has changed. I was going to wait until the new year to get them (if I've been wearing the wrong ones for a while now another couple of months won't matter) but maybe this is just a sign from the universe to get it sorted now. Le big sigh.
Click to expand...
Ooops:eek: but the universe is right, wearing the wrong prescription is straining your eyes, better to change the glasses.
 
so-crates said:
Work away, it is telly without the sound and pictures and yet still better than some of the offerings that make it to the airwaves!

.
Click to expand...

That's a good way of putting it. In any case if boring us helps her though it's something positive all the same. So far though I'm not bored. I like when people work things through.
 
Right then, another payday, another few fleeting seconds of feeling "rich" before all the money gets sent off somewhere else again.

Have just put through the payment to clear my visa. I also made a payment to my mastercard, which will leave it in credit to the tune of 100 euro. I may travel to Frankfurt at the end of the month (costs around 80) so that money is there if I do and if not, will sit there earning me interest. It's a German mastercard and they work slightly differently here and on my particular card interest is charged from the day of spending, regardless of whether you clear the full balance or not at the end of the month. However, since I can earn interest (at ECB less 0.5% I think it is), even if it's just a small amount, it makes more sense to put the money straight onto the card rather than leaving it in my current account where it earns nothing.

So, that just leaves me with the overdraft on my BoI account, which currently stands at just about 2,500.

I did get glasses and managed to keep the cost of that to 95 euro so not too bad. I'm definitely not going away anywhere sunny at christmas but have arranged to house-sit for a friend in Frankfurt over New Year's so will get a bit of a quiet break anyway.

At the moment I plan to clear an small amount of the overdraft in December and otherwise try and enjoy the festive season. I already have a long weekend in Dublin booked for the beginning of the month (around my birthday) but almost everything has already been paid for months ago (flights, hotel, 2 x NCH concerts and a friend is treating me to a flotation session) so I'm going to go ahead with that. Main object is actually to go to the Arts and Crafts fair in the RDS - I've been saving change in a sealed pot all year and am taking whatever is in that to buy myself something nice. The bulk of the overdraft would normally then be cleared by the end of January.

Unfortunately when I went to the dentist a couple of weeks ago for a check-up I found out that I had a huge cavity underneath an already large filling. So was back to the dentist a couple of days ago and he drilled it all out and tidied it up and put in a disinfectant type temporary filling. He wants to leave it now for a month or so and then he will check if the roots are still alive (they certainly hurt like the devil the last couple of days! Never had electric shock-type toothache before). He thought there was a very good chance that I wouldn't need a root canal but it depends on how it reacts/heals over the next few weeks. At the very least, I'll need a partial crown. Worst case scenario will be a root canal and full crown, I think. I do have a supplementary dental insurance but am only in the third year of it so only get a limited amount paid out. Will have to wait and see what happens in December, how much the estimate is, how much the health insurance will pay, how much the supplementary insurance will pay and then how much I'll have to fork over myself. A few hundred at least, I assume. So it may be the end of February (barring any other emergencies) before I actaully clear the overdraft.


Bright side: only one debt left.
 
Just thought I'd pop in with another update in case anyone is interested. November and December were a bit of a struggle when it came to spending if I'm perfectly honest (the same kind of careless little bit here and little bit there spending that got me in trouble in the first place). The struggle wasn't only with spending really and I suppose also not entirely unexpected.

At any rate, I took the two weeks off at christmas to start doing things like cooking properly, menu planning and that kind of thing and it went fairly well. Except for a two week wobble due to waking up on New Year's Day with a cold, I've been managing okay as regards spending, eating and general living. Currently that means that I'm not much further along than I was at my last post in October. Still have kept from using the credit cards (or at least paying money on to German mastercard before charging something to it) though and have just the overdraft, which stands at 2,400 today. However, during the last while, some new expenses have come up. Actually, some of them are not so much new as just ones I hadn't really been thinking about.

I did get new glasses - went to a place called Fielmann, which is a bit like SpecSavers so not too expensive - 95 euro (10 euro of that is for an insurance which means the glass are (nearly) free and you just pay for extras like thin plastic instead of heavy glass - good thing is that the insurance also covers normal stuff like breakage and prescription changes of over 0.5 so if my prescription does change the same amount again within a certain amount of time, I won't have to pay for new lenses).

Then I was found by the television licence people. This charge become compulsory for all households ('cos people like me who don't have a television probably do have a PC and so they made it compulsory) at the beginning of 2013 so I knew I'd get a notification to pay at some stage. I did mean to start putting the 17 euro a month aside but never got around to it so that's straight up a bill for something over 210 euro as well as this year's first quarterly payment due.

I avoided a root canal but had my first appointment to get a partial crown fitted yesterday. Prep work all done and will be back in two weeks to get the crown fitted. Cost is estimated at nearly 700, health insurance will pay 170 and I'm hoping my supplemental dental insurance with cover about 450 but have to get the bill and send it in before I know for sure. So I have budgeted 500 in February to cover the bill but should get most of it back.

My shoes badly needed resoling so I got that done, too. "Only" 40 euro but it is all those things that build up. I have various problem with my feet, wear orthotics and bought really good shoes about a year ago and prefer to pay the costs to have them maintained than try and find well-fitting shoes in an ordinary shop that I throw away after a few months. Unfortunately, yesterday the new sole started to come away from the shoe. I called in for them to fix it and he told me that because the insole was worn away, even fixing it wouldn't hold for long. So that's another 32 euro to get new insoles - they'll be leather though, so should hold for a good while and he kept my orthotics to make sure he can find the spot at which the insole needs to be especially reinforced so hopefully that'll be the end of shoe expenses for the next while.

The bill for my choir weekend at the end of February arrived and I paid that 190 as planned. But February's budget has to include the cost of the train ticket there and a small amount of spending, too.

My annual subscription to choir (140) falls due at this time, too so that has to be paid. I do have nearly 300 euro in my annual expenses account so could cover it immediately but will wait and pay it at the end of January and not transfer anything to my annual expenses account. So I still have a small buffer.

I started a course to become certified as a translator in September and the second semester starts in February. I had, of course, signed up but wasn't really thinking about the fact that that would mean fees had to be paid again. So, that's another 320 that needs to be paid. I want to do the exam in October so can't put it off and hope to use the qualification to be able to earn some extra income in future so it seems worth it, even if it means delaying debt pay-off slightly. I got a notification today that the money won't be taken from my account until mid-March, though, so what I had planned to go towards that from February's budget will go to overdraft and I'll move it to March's budget instead.

At the end of January I will plan on paying 400 to my overdraft. Actually, 410, just for the psychological boost of seeing a 1 at the start of the number instead of a 2. I'm trying to comfort myself with the fact that for the first time in years, for a few minutes each month when I get paid, my net worth isn't a negative figure. I picked up the forms from the tax office today to get started on my tax return. Still waiting on a couple of letters from various places for that but want to have it all ready to go as soon as everything arrives. When I get my refund (last year's was around the 600 mark), that will go straight to overdraft. And I'm waiting on a letter from Vodafone to find out how much they owe me after not having been in touch with them for about 10 years in relation to dividends on the shares I got way back when via the eircom debacle. I'm sure that'll be at least a tenner! With the whole Verizon deal to take account of, too, I may even be close to having another 50 to send to overdraft.

Generally I'm trying to just get myself together again (and although annoyed that I kind of fell apart a bit I am proud of myself for reining myself back in so quickly) and move on. Without all of the "extras" above, some of which were just due to bad organisation/forgetfulness on my part, I would be clearing about half my overdraft when I get paid at the end of this month. But I know I need to have a balance between life and debt (hey, that's practically a pun! :D) and am, if not quite happy, at least content enough for now with how things should play out in February. If no further big expenses or unusual circumstances come up I'm currently hoping for debt-free by May. Time will tell.
 
I hope 2014 sees you getting rid of the overdraft Janet.

However, regarding the t.v. licence my understanding is that the broadcasting charge is not coming in until 2015.
See here:

http://www.irishtimes.com/business/...-public-service-broadcasting-charge-1.1507400

Citizen's Information (a government website) says explicitly that you do not need a tv licence if you only watch tv on your computer:
"You do not require a television licence to watch television on your computer or mobile phone. "

[broken link removed]
 
It's intresting to look back on previous posts and see where I intended to be by now in comparison to where I actually am. It has been a tough enough few months. Financially, I haven't been keeping to as strict a budget as I should have, partly because after years of always making plans but never getting around to doing anything, myself and a small group of other Irish women living here have finally started doing things. So I've spent more than anticipated on nights out (no very expensive ones, sometimes nights in where the only expense is a bottle of wine or two for the group, or my contribution to a meal) but on balance it has been worth it. Of course, my Vodafone/Verizon "windfall" has financed quite a lot of that too. :p One thing I also spent money on was an ArtCard - costs 54 euro and gives me free entry to almost all of the museums and art galleries in the area. Hope to make lots of use of that in the coming months - if I use it just once a month I'll already have more than broken even.

We've just gotten paid and I've sent off a big chunk of money to my overdraft. When that goes through, it will stand at 1,200. What's left for me to spend for the month isn't a huge amount but I want to use up the rest of what's in the freezer and jars from last year anyway, so won't really be doing huge amounts of shopping except for milk and cheese I don't think. And with a nice four-day weekend for easter to look forward to, brighter weather and only one or two social outings planned, I'm feeling optimistic enough at the moment. I do need to get my bum in gear and get my tax return done - I was missing another couple of pieces of information so need to chase those and get it submitted. If I could get it in and have my refund issued before June it would be great, as I'm heading to Dublin for a very good friend's wedding and would love to also be celebrating being debt-free at the same time. :)
 
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