Debt accumulating again

I was doing okay on managing my finances and slowly starting to come out the other side of the expense of moving and starting to be more positive about everything but winter has had a toll and the overdraft and credit card have crept up again with very little to show for it. So, I decided to bite the bullet and post the totals here so that I can (hopefully) take pleasure in seeing those amounts come down. They can't get much higher since they are both more or less at the limit as it is.

Overdraft on 28 Feb 10: 2363
Credit card on 28 Feb 10: 1995,86

To people who don't or never have lived on credit, these will seem like huge amounts. They are. But as someone who spent many years living in the boom time Ireland which encouraged many other silly people as well as me to spend obscene amounts of credit, they don't stress me too much. But then again that's mostly because I try not to think about it. But this card and overdraft are my safety net for emergencies so I need to free them up again just in case. I have started saving a bit over the last few months and I am happy that I am putting enough away to cover my annual expenses as they arise plus a little bit more. I also recently started paying into a pension - could have waited another year to do that and put the money on the card/overdraft instead but I had already been over a year without a pension and didn't want to leave the break any longer than that. And I am one of those strange people who somewhere along the way lost the ability to save properly and finds it easier to pay off debt instead. I am trying to change that and was being quite successful but the move has knocked me off-stride entierely and it's just as much of a struggle, if not more, to get back again.

In addition to the card and overdraft I am still paying off my Irish loan and there is another year and a half to go on that. So although I earn a decent wage, lots of money is already spoken for by the time I get it.

The overdraft and credit card are both Irish so I usually transfer money from my German current account as soon as I get paid to cover my loan payment (plus a small standing order to charity) as well as a payment to my credit card and round the amount up so that at least a small amount goes towards the overdraft as well. Generally the plan is that whatever I then have leftover cash in my current account at the end of the month I will then transfer that as well. Don't often have much left though. Working on it, which I will try to post about later.