How We Got Out of Debt

In the last hub you saw how we got ourselves way over our heads into debt, just a little bit at a time and ended up with no idea at all of how we could get ourselves back out.

The pressures of increasing debt, no money, two young children, and a daft dog called Henry were all taking its toll on our relationship and on our health.

The only time we seemed to have any problems at that time was over money and our views on money.

I would want to follow my mum’s way of doing things which was of not buying anything that I couldn’t pay for cash because I had witnessed at first hand how well this approach worked.

My husband's philosophy at that time was more of the 'live now pay later' leaning. My husband was a much stronger personality than I was, and still is come to that.

I always deferred to My husband after all he made the money that we lived off of and so I thought it only right that he should have the main say in how it should be spent.

Things had become so bad and we owed so much money that none of the money my husband earned was ours.

In fact we we had so much debt that we hadn’t got even enough money coming in to do anything but pay off the minimum amount on the debts that we had amassed.

When we paid the bare minimum allowed each month on the cards we were left with no money. Something had to change, something had to give we couldn’t go on like this and we couldn’t just do nothing because the situation was getting worse all the time.

My husband and I had a chat and we decided that it was time to draw a line in the sand and say thus far and no further.

We knew that if we didn’t take back control of our lives and money we were going to end up with less than nothing.

We had put ourselves into a position where our house could be repossessed and all those who thought that they had a claim on our money could take it.

We had already seen some of this happening as we increasingly lost control of how to spend our own money.

We could also see that if we didn't do something soon we could end up with a bad credit rating.

With a bad credit rating our ability to survive in the modern world would be greatly diminished. In a world where mortgages and hire purchase agreements were fast becoming the norm, a bad credit rating would badly affect us.

It is one thing not to have any of these things because you do not want them but it is entirely another when you are told by someone else that you cannot have them.

After talking long into the night my husband and I decided that drastic measures were called for, the first thing we acknowledged was that as long as we had any of the cards there was always the possibility that we would use them again.

There would always be something that would come up where we would be tempted to get ourselves out of a fix by using a card of one sort or another. I knew using a credit card wasn't the answer, it was an illusion, they didn’t so much give you credit but rather the ability to amass debts.

Debts that you have to repay, usually because you are in a mess you pay off the minimum so you are repaying at a much higher rate than you would ever agree to if you took the time to see how much they were going to charged you on your debts.

So that night our line in the sand was drawn we decided no more credit or store cards. So we couldn't chicken out at the first hurdle, got all our credit and shop cards together and we cut them up and threw the pieces on the fire.

With that action we made sure that spending any more on the cards was just not an option open to us no matter what the emergency.

A drastic measure? YES! Was it scary? You bet it was scary, yet it was also a liberating feeling watching the cut pieces of all the cards go up in flames; we sat there watching until there was nothing left of them at all.

The next payday we paid off as much as we could on all the cards that we owed money on. When this was done it left us nothing in our account to survive the coming month on.

We then drew out a further £30 in cash, which was the limit that our bank would allow us to go overdrawn on.

This £30 was all the cash that we would have to survive the coming month on, if we couldn't get it within our budget of £30 then we couldn't get it at all.

At last began to take back control of our lives and money, and of course the banks £30 as well.

This worked out at a £1 a day unless it was a month with thirty-one days in then it was slightly less.

I divided the £30 up so that I had so much money each Monday morning to spend that week in addition to the £30 each Tuesday I recieved my family allowance which was about a further £6.

My disposable income was £12.60p a week or £1.80p daily to feed and clothe two adults, two children and feed a daft dog called Henry.

Even in the 1970s this was too small a sum to do that, but it is surprising what you can do when necessity calls with just a little ingenuity and determination.

Now that I had a budget to live within one of the first things I did was not to buy any more branded items for example I would not buy Kellogg’s Cornflakes only the stores own cheap brand of the same item, this went across the board.

Next I found out where every supermarket in the town had their reduced items space where they put their items that were the end of a line or close to the sell by date, sometimes even some just out of date were also placed there at a much reduced price.

I also made it my business to find out when the staff usually put that kind of stuff out. Some did it early in the morning some did it late in the afternoon and I made it my business to be there as soon after they did it as possible.

Being there soon after the things were put on the reduced shelves meant that I got the choice of the best bargains of that day. I went into town to shop everyday on my bicycle sometimes I went in more than once and I would walk from one end of the town to the other just to save a few pennies.

I also went to the library and read all the local papers to see if there were any Jumble Sales advertised in the area or Flea markets and carboot sales.

If my children needed new shoes because they had grown out of their old ones then I would scour these places until found a suitable pair.

Most of the time the shoes and the clothing at the Jumble sales were in very good order as the previous owners had just grown out of them just like my children had grown out of theirs.

Now I paid anywhere between 20 and 50p for a pair of shoes instead of the £20 a pair that I had been paying when I was using the shop cards.

The Church Jumble sales we always the best the Church of England churches always had the best quality jumble.

Now I am not good at sewing or making things but when my son needed some new pyjamas I had a piece of material that some one had given me and we had a sewing machine.

I didn’t even know how to thread a sewing machine but I soon learnt, my husband use to joke that I would sew a button on inside out Lol.

Any sewing to be done and it was usually my husband that did it. My husband learned to sew in the Navy of all places, plus his mother was someone that made all her own clothes and knitted all her own jumpers and cardigans etc., so he had much more idea about these things than I did.

Still not having the brains to know how hard it is to make patterns and make something from scratch I set about making my son a pair of pyjamas.

The first thing I did was to get the piece of material and folded it in half inside out. Then I placed it on the floor and made my son lie down on top of it. Then I took a felt tip pen and I drew an outline around him leaving about three-quarters of an inch extra space all around. I then sewed around the outline I had drawn twice so that the material wouldn’t fray and then hemmed the bottom of the top and the trouser bottoms and the waist leaving a space so that I could thread the elastic through the waist.

I cut around the stitching leaving about a quarter inch between the stitching and where I cut I hemmed the neck and then I turned it right side in. Much to everyone’s amazement including mine, they actually looked like pyjamas and my son loved them.

I would buy the cheapest cuts of meat one such cheap cut was Breast of Lamb. I would buy breast of lamb and bone it make my own stuffing mixture.

I would put the stuffing on the boned breast and then roll the breast up and tie it and roast it in the oven with potatoes around it. It was very fiddly and it took a lot of time but it tasted delicious.

Even after we got out of our financial mess we still used to have breast of lamb as it was delicious.

I had a copy of Mrs Beeton's All-About Cookery which was re-published in the 1920 and it had many money saving recipes.

This book was so much more than just a cook book it taught you how to do so many things, like mending shoes, getting rid of every kind of stain and how to manage the household servants, this last one I found particularly useful(Lol.. I wish ).

We were soon living within our means once again and some weeks much to my amazment I actually had a little left to carry over to the next week.

One by one the cards got paid off, as each one finished we put the extra money towards paying off the next card until in the end everything was fully paid up and we owed nothing.

At long last we were debt free, it had been a long time getting here but in a way I am glad that I had to go through this.

That seems a strange thing for me to say but I say that I am glad that I went through it because I learned so much in the process. One of the most important things that I learned was not everything that I thought was a necessity was in fact a necessity.

Many of the things that I thought we could not live without we did live without, and do you know what we still lived well. Our values and priorities changed what we considered important changed also.

I am glad we got into money trouble as we found out we didn’t have to live like victims, that we were far more resourceful than we thought we were.

Strange as it seems it ended up being a very positive experience through which both my husband and I grew and our relationship strengthened.

I am not advocating that you get yourself into the mess we got ourselves into but if you are there already, be encouraged you too can take back control of your life and money and turn this thing around.

Don’t be afraid if we could do it anyone can and we loved living the way necessity first forced us to go. We loved it so much that once we were free of debt and free to choose it became it became our chosen way to live.

My husband had a couple of pay increases and we got to the point where we didn’t need to go into the red anymore. Soon we had money coming into our hands instead of all our creditors, and we could afford to buy new where we chose rather than where we could get credit.

I did buy new sometimes when I saw something that I really liked but I found so many bargains at the Jumble sales and charity shops that even when I had the choice often I would still choose to buy second hand.

Once out of debt we never put ourselves into that situation again we did get another credit card but only for convenience sake.

We use our credit card to book flights or to pay for hire cars etc., when we go on holiday. The things that we paid for on the card are then covered by insurance which has proved useful on more than one occasion.

The day after 911 we were supposed to fly out to the USA on holiday and all flights to America were cancelled we got all our money refunded because we had used our credit cards when we booked.

But now we never put anything on the card that we can’t pay off in full when the bill comes in. As we found out to our cost credit cards are good servants but very poor masters.