I’m keeping up with logging my spending daily and I’d recommend this to everyone.

This is mentioned in every book about getting out of debt and it’s so simple and such a vital step.

The key is to do it, and never miss anything.

As soon as you commit to do this, you’ll think twice before spending money and it’s worth it just for that.

I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve held back, not spent anything, or kept it to a minimum since I know it’s GOT TO BE logged.

Keep yourself to account! No-one else will!

Despite creating and submitting a sitemap, submitting the site to dmoz, and tagging the site on to the back of a couple of unused domains (and getting some traffic from this), and setting up Adsense and using PingOmatic – the site still isn’t showing up in Goggle.

The sitemap stats show 30 URLs in the most recent sitemap (should be 33 after my latest posts) and now shows 9 “Indexed URLs in Sitemap”, but still nothing show in Google.

Maybe this is the 6 month sandbox effect.

Maybe I’ll need to add links form other ranked, indexed sites.

I'll give it a maximum of another week, then I’ll add links from other indexed, ranked sites.

My evenings are when I need to focus on working towards my goal of paying off my debt in 2008.

The night before last was a very bad night, I didn’t do any outstanding work, wasted the whole evening on e-bay and spent over £400.00 on golf clubs, so it couldn’t get much worse (though I did managed to list my private number plate with bids starting at £1000.00)

Last night I did manage to finish off a task for a client that needed to get done and emailed this morning to let them know, so I can move onto the next task.

I feel a lot better that the task is complete, though I should have started earlier than 9pm and I could have either done more, or finished earlier and got more sleep.

I received the late payment charge for the credit card I forgot to pay over Christmas so that’s a waste of another £12.00 (as well as the thousands in interest every year!!!) and another blot on my credit rating file.

I haven’t received the last several statements for this particular card so that only serves to emphasis that I should MANAGE this myself.

I’ve kept the letter handy as a reminder to log all my cards, balances and payment dates over the weekend. This will be posted by Sunday night at the latest, so watch out for it.

Well, I bid on them actually. I’ve have to wait another 14 hours to see if I’ve actually bought them.

Desire is a terrible thing when you’re trying to save money and pay of debts!

I went into a local sports shop on Monday to see their swing clinic and I saw a set of irons that match the new woods I bought myself after Christmas. They had what seemed like an amazing price £499.00 when I’d seen them online for £800.00. It seemed a bit too good to be true so I was suspicious and it turned out I was right to be cautious. this wasn’t the fault of the shop, but my greed and desire. My desire for the latest top of the range clubs and my greed to get such a good deal.

It turns out that the club name is slightly different from what I thought it was and it’s last year’s model. It’s still a good deal, and with the limited amount of golf I play would have been perfectly good enough for me.

The dilemma is that with the limited amount of golf I play (though I am planning to rectify that this year) there absolutely nothing wrong with the clubs I have. They are 10 years old, but I hit the ball well with them and apart from needing new grips, they’re like new so I shouldn’t buy anything at all.

I did make the decision in the shop not to buy the clubs but since they have 2 sets in stock, I was obviously considering going back to buy them. As a result, I spent a few hours searching discount golf sites, and also e-bay and didn’t do the work I should have done (this work would have brought in extra money so this is a double whammy!).

I still think that buying last year’s model and a reduced rate is better than paying over the odds for the latest, shiniest model, buy i really should not buy anything until I’ve paid off a few credit card balances.

In the end, I found the newest model on e-bay currently for £250.00 so I am currently the winning bidder at £255.00. The sale ends tonight and I have set a limit I will stick to. If I don’t get these (about 50% of list price), I resolve to stop looking!

Tonight I will do the work I should have started last night and I’ll gather my credit card balances together and sell my number plate (I did some research and have started the listing – I just need to find and photograph the plates)

This evening, flushed with success from calling O2, I cleared out my paperwork trays to check for any impending credit card bills, to be followed by gathering them together to total the outstanding amounts and compare interest rates to decide which one to pay off first.

Unfortunately, I found one which was overdue and should have been paid by 2nd January. This means another late payment fee, and another black mark on my credit file.

I resolve to never have any other late payments from now on and to have an unblemished payment record from here on!

I’ll check the other card statements tomorrow night as it’s getting late now and plan so that payments are made on time.

I will log and total the debts here (including other credit cards and personal loans and overdrafts). The first stage is:

Credit Card A, balance £2,349.64, interest rate 1.597%, interest amount £36.80

Total known debt £2,349.64

(far from the total which I’d estimate around £40k! I’m mentioning this here so we can see how far out I turn out to be)

Total monthly interest cost £36.80

When I went though the paperwork, I found the retention certificate for the private number plate I had for the car I used to have. This plate is a luxury and cost me £1100.00 when I bought it. the retention requires that it has to be place don a car by the 19th of May or I lose the number. I plan to sell it (hopefully at a profit) but I will certainly not let it lapse and have a needless waste of £1100.00. I could put the plate on another car, but it wouldn’t match the current car, and i would make more sense to sell the plate.

I have been advised to advertise it on the autotrader website, so lets see how quickly i can get organized to do that.

Next Tasks: Log other debt here to total and prioritize, sell private number plate

I made the first very small step early this morning when I called O2 to cancel a phone account I have with them.

I took out an 18 month contract (about 21 months ago) as a way of getting an XDA Exec without paying for it in one go. I took out the contract which gave the XDA exec free, knowing that I could reduce to the minimum tariff after 6 months (provided I remember to do that the XDA Exec wasn’t too much more than buying it directly). I was really only interested in using it as an electronic diary and I’d used an iPaq and a Sony Clie successfully for several years.

When I reduced the initial contract on time (which itself is unusual for me) I didn’t notice until 6 months later that O2 hadn’t reduced the amount they were billing me. Fortunately, when I called to query this, they had a note of my request and back-dated the reduction, giving me a credit to my account (though not the actual cash).

I called to cancel the contract at the end of November to be told that I had to write to a specific address to cancel the contract rather than doing it over the phone (which is bullshit as I’ve cancelled contract with Orange and Three in the past without having to write to them). I sent the letter the next day and on Saturday received a line rental bill with no apparent mention of the contact termination.

So I called them this morning (which is much better than leaving it for months as I could easily have done) and they had no fucking record of my letter. They did agree to cancel the contract as of today and they will re-issue the invoice.

As far as my dealings with them have been concerned, O2 are either a shower of useless bastards, or are a bunch of fucking crooks – you decide!

So far, that was £20.00 per month saved and I was feeling good about myself…

I managed to pass through lunch without spending much, other than the cost of 2 Greggs macaroni pies (I could have doen better and made lunch in the morning, but that step will come).

I decided to focus on 1 main goal this year (2008) after reading this recommendation from Zen Habits. The goal I decided on is to Get Out of Debt. Given the amount of debt I have, I decided that a one year timescale was enough of a challenge to make it exciting, though it will be very tough.

This is my blog of my progress to date

I also decided, after reading another post, to make my blog entries very short – 1 sentence or paragraph only. This way I’m much more likely to complete one entry every day.

My first step is to make the decisions to get out of debt. My second step was to start this blog to track my progress and help keep me motivated.

My next steps will be to create a plan, and create a to do list here on this blog and track my progress through those items.

The first things to go on that list will be to start logging my spending (to help me “stop digging”), then to log all my debts and prioritize talking them. Next step will be to do what I can to raise some cash quickly, which will involve sell off some unused items (2 laptops (including the one I’m using to type this), a personalized number plate that doesn’t fit in with my current car, and some software I no longer need)

I’ll keep you posted.

Todo – Create todo page