Well it started out with the whole country being on fire. Then we had floods and the Covid19 virus hit, then the toilet paper shortage. So how has the massive shutdown of the country and industry affected me? Well I didn’t work for more than six months in my regular job. But it did mean I wasn’t going out – nothing was open anyway. Silver lining was that my mortgage was put on hold whilst Covid19 ran its course. So like most people I was given a respite from my mortgage. Meaning my biggest monthly cost was gone and I was able to put anything I had extra away.

So am I still in debt? Well yes and no. I still have my mortgage that has been pushed down as much as possible, but there is no credit card debt. Selling off the few shares I had (before the massive drop in the market due to Covid19) meant that I was able to put the money into an offset account against the mortgage. Treating it like it was already on the mortgage has meant I do have a little buffer, but one I won’t access unless it is urgent.

I had been looking after my daughters cat for about a year, as she was almost blind and had started to wander from my ex’s house. She was already old when we adopted her, but she passed recently at almost 21 years of age. The kids were devastated, but I also lost my nap partner, she used to always hop into bed next to me when my back was playing up. She always liked to have her naps next to me, never on me, she used to make sure she had a tail or paw touching me to make sure I was still there. 😉

What does the rest of the year hold? Well now I am back doing some work, I am doing the mad saving for christmas, and trying REALLY hard to not spend too much on crazy halloween stuff to decorate my house. Plus I need a new couch, so there is a big chunk of money about to go on that too. The big decision is between a fold out bed type couch or just a regular one. Small apartments tend to need that type of couch.

The big TV. I had promised my kids a bigger TV this year with my tax return, but with a much smaller than expected return due to my decrease in working hours meant no big TV. But helping my ex move into a new place meant the leftover extra TV she didn’t want ended up coming to me. The kids were happy now that our family movies are not being watched through the computer monitor, but through the bigger TV. It isn’t a smart tv or anything like that, but a large flat screen LED will do the job.

I have done virtually no extra freelance work in the last year, but I still have had a trickle of income from my print on demand online stores. For something I haven’t pushed for ages it was nice to see I am still getting that ongoing return for the work I put in at the start.

Hopefully now I am going to be able to start crushing the mortgage and get to a point where I can pay it off and use my little place against a mortgage for a new place. Rental income from a paid off apartment where I live would be enough to help cover off almost all of a mortgage for somewhere slightly bigger (as in extra bedroom and double the living space). Meaning I would be able to put all I earn against that mortgage and pay it off quickly.

That was always the end goal, get to a point where I wasn’t stressed about money or living paycheck to paycheck. Nice to be seeing progress towards that goal, and definitely good to feel like I am out of the tunnel of debt I was travelling through.