Loan consolidation

Loan consolidation can be a way to get control over a dysfunctional financial situation but usually only as a once off measure and with other action to understand and address overspending. It's definitely not a prudent way to fund an €8k holiday and continue living beyond one's means.
 
Bit of an update, I downsized car and consolidated debts with loan at 6.8%.

Debts down to 14k, that is only debt outside of mortgage.

5k of my shares from work have matured, I am going put these towards the loan and want to have the rest paid off by end of year.

I still need to budget properly and tighten things up but hopefully heading in right direction.

I will update all of my info shortly.
 
Down to 6.5k debt now.

Upgraded wife's car by a few years, bought a car needing work and saved alot carrying out the work myself, I took her old car.

Went abroad for a family holiday again this year, I know some will say we could have done without again but I'm glad we went considering the weather we had.

Have started a rainy day fund with 1k.

Aiming to have debt paid by January at the latest and start overpaying mortgage.
 
That's good work but did you ever sit down and objectively analyse your incomings and outgoings to understand exactly where the money is going and why?
 
ClubMan said:
That's good work but did you ever sit down and objectively analyse your incomings and outgoings to understand exactly where the money is going and why?
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Had a go but finding it hard to get the wife to buy into it.

I have a spreadsheet setup but haven't stuck to using it, this is something we need to get going on.
 
Spud81 said:
Had a go but finding it hard to get the wife to buy into it.

I have a spreadsheet setup but haven't stuck to using it, this is something we need to get going on.
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For what it's worth, if cash is rarely used for purchases then most or all of the necessary info should be available via online banking. I can fairly easily analyse my actual annual expenditure by exporting 12 months of current account transactions to Excel and then cruncing the data a little to get totals for different categories of expenditure (groceries, electricity, broadband, insurances etc.). And sometimes you'd be surprised by what you think you spend under a heading versus what is actually spent!
 
Check out a guy called Dave Ramsey on You tube. He's a bit preachy but gives excellent advice about getting out of debt.
 
ClubMan said:
For what it's worth, if cash is rarely used for purchases then most or all of the necessary info should be available via online banking. I can fairly easily analyse my actual annual expenditure by exporting 12 months of current account transactions to Excel and then cruncing the data a little to get totals for different categories of expenditure (groceries, electricity, broadband, insurances etc.). And sometimes you'd be surprised by what you think you spend under a heading versus what is actually spent!
Click to expand...

I'm going to sit down at the weekend and go through the last 12 months, I've downloaded the An Post money manager app too, with the only debt outside of my mortgage almost cleared I need to make a budget and stick to it.

I wasn't going to go near any more of my shares from work but I have some more maturing in November and I think it makes sense to put them towards the remainder of the debt and hopefully make my first mortgage overpayment before the end of the year.

I'll work on building the rainy day fund and savings in the new year, I also need to start looking at AVC's towards my pension.
 
I’ve been looking at this thread since it commenced. I wasn’t worrying for @Spud81 as he’s a high earner irrespective of his spouse’s earnings. The debt in question is nearly cleared and under control. Only danger I can see is some kind of uncare where the debt rises and into some form of uncontrol. Drive on you’re doing well - I reckon you don’t need to change anything and don’t let anything change you.
 
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