TMWM

I set up The Money Wise Mum blog following it’s Instagram page to document the ups and downs of my debt pay off journey.

On Instagram I was welcomed with open arms to the finance community. They gave me so much support with my own journey, a blog was the natural thing to do.

I find that writing away my ups and downs helps me compartmentalise my fears and I really enjoy sharing the great parts of my journey as well. I have learnt so much over the past year and want to share that with others in the hope it helps them to.

Being a single parent is hard and sometimes if feels there are so many things against you, it’s 2 steps forwards and 5 back. It’s a real struggle to see the other side.

But I started with debts over £35k and with perseverance I have managed to get them down to £16k.

And you can do it to.

Start where I started and just face your debts and well just start. See where you get in 12 months from now and you may be surprised how far you come.

12 months on, what do the figures look like on my blog?

I now have 96 of you lovely people following my journey and the ups of downs of paying off debt

A total of 262 Likes across my posts

2,415 Visitors to The Money Wise Mum site

6,813 Views on my blog

Money my blog has made … 0.86 😊

That my friends is my first amount of passive income, along with my dividends of 0.19.

My daughter laughed her head off when I told what I made £1.05. I told her to ‘watch this space, madam, the only way is up!’😊

This week I have been focusing on my overall financial position and have been ringing and emailing all the companies I’ve previously worked for to see if I had a pension with them. Some pensions I knew about as I remember signing up to them, but as I’ve also had a couple of part time jobs alongside full time jobs, I didn’t want to risk missing one so just called them all.

I was pleasantly surprised and found to have a positive net worth for the first time ever! Although, this is the first time I have ever really looked at my net worth, I still need to make that big house purchase, so I doubt it will still be positive in the next 12-18 months.

I did check in with where my figures stood by comparing October 2020 to October 2021 and this was a nice boost which I’d recommend anyone to do as it can show how far you’ve come

October 2020 V October 2021

Debt £20,524.49 V Debt £16,000.54

Investments £0 V Investments £102.34

Savings £500 V Savings £1468

Child Investments £0 V Child Investments £202.15

Child Savings £500 V Child Savings £500

I’ve paid £4523.95 off debt, increased my savings by £968 and started investing for me and my daughter totalling £304.49.

I know people usually advise not to start investing whilst on a debt pay off journey but the reasons why I’ve started it early is

1) I want to get into the habit of saving long term sooner rather than later

2) I want to make the most of compound interest

3) I’m treating the payments to each ISA as a bill and have no intention of touching/cancelling them and

4) I have been involving my daughter in the process (she’s 9) so she can start her investment education early on. Nothing too heavy of course, but she likes to see it moving and I’m encouraging her to develop patience, which I believe is a key life skill to learn.

Those aren’t massive numbers I know and I see people with a lot more, but I try to not compare myself with others as they are different people, have different lives, earnings and are at different stages in their financial journey. The only things that matter are my numbers are going in the right direction.

What I’ve spent this week?

£22.00 on my daughter’s holiday club for a day in the half term

£31.00 hair (covered by sinking fund)

£10.27 Macdonalds

£24.70 Just Eat Pizza

£6.50 Security light bulb from B & Q

£20.00 Petrol

£47.26 Food and bits – Slightly over the £30 budget but this did include a bottle of wine and some treats for my daughter as it’s half term week

In hindsight looking at this, I shouldn’t have spent money on the takeaways and gone over budget, but you can’t be perfect all the time and this is me NOT BEING PERFECT LOL. I am in fact reigning it in a little as I have a few nights out planned and don’t want to overspend as well as go out.

I’ve made a few more sales on Vinted taking my total in the Vinted account to £14.00. I still need to upload some more but it’s gone really busy right now with Halloween parties, anyone else feel like this? It’s like since covid everyone makes a huge deal of all these types of events. I mean it’s nice and everything, but I just feel really busy all the time!

I’ve paid a total of £326.19 off my debt in October. It’s a good amount but unfortunately those are just minimum payments. I can’t seem to find enough money to make overpayments, even though I work two jobs. I do feel hugely impacted by the loss of my maintenance from the ex and having no pay for August. I’m hoping things right themselves soon when I can pick up more parcels in the busy delivery period of Christmas.

Christmas Tracker is in course and will be uploaded soon!