Debt Diary 2008

BelfastGirl_2

Here is my SOA - I finally got round to doing it! My notes in red

Statement of Affairs and Personal Balance Sheet

Monthly Income Details
Monthly income after tax................ 1530 Doesn't include income from 2nd job - at least £400, usually around £700 (sometimes wonderfully more!!)
Partners monthly income after tax....... 0
Benefits................................ 0
Other income............................ 200 Usual mileage from work
Total monthly income.................... 1730

Monthly Expense Details
Mortgage................................ 324.45
Secured loan repayments................. 0
Rent.................................... 0
Management charge (leasehold property).. 0
Council tax............................. 37.19
Electricity............................. 37
Gas..................................... 0
Oil..................................... 50
Water rates............................. 0
Telephone (land line)................... 17
Mobile phone............................ 35
TV Licence.............................. 11.61
Satellite/Cable TV...................... 36
Internet Services....................... 0
Groceries etc. ......................... 250
Clothing................................ 20
Petrol/diesel........................... 160
Road tax................................ 10
Car Insurance........................... 31.65
Car maintenance (including MOT)......... 20
Car parking............................. 0
Other travel............................ 0
Childcare/nursery....................... 0
Other child related expenses............ 0
Medical (prescriptions, dentist etc).... 10
Pet insurance/vet bills................. 19.06
Buildings insurance..................... 22.26
Contents insurance...................... 0
Life assurance ......................... 50.66
Other insurance......................... 0
Presents (birthday, christmas etc)...... 15
Haircuts................................ 10
Entertainment........................... 60
Holiday................................. 0
Emergency fund.......................... 0
Total monthly expenses.................. 1176.22

Assets
Cash.................................... 0
House value (Gross)..................... 125000
Shares and bonds........................ 0
Car(s).................................. 8000
Other assets............................ 0
Total Assets............................ 133000

Secured Debts
Description....................Debt......Monthly...APR
Mortgage...................... 61000....(324.45)...4.89
Total secured debts........... 61000.....-.........-

Unsecured Debts
Description....................Debt......Monthly...APR
Egg Loan.......................12263.....291.......0 payment break until Dec 08
Monument credit card...........3330......100.......20.9 Interest rate due to rise in Oct
Capital One....................1550......47........16
barclays overdraft.............1120......0.........0
A&L Overdraft .................200.......5.........0 £200 paid today
Halifax Overdraft..............750.......11........0 £450 paid today
Lloyds TSB.....................3370......73........14.9
A&L credit card (MBNA..........3713.36...115.......27 £1215 transfered to Barclaycard @ 6.5% 2 weeks ago
Family.........................0.........80........0
Total unsecured debts..........26296.36..722.......-

Monthly Budget Summary
Total monthly income.................... 1,730
Expenses (including secured debts)....... 1,226.88
Available for debt repayments........... 503.12
Monthly UNsecured debt repayments....... 722
Surplus(deficit if negative)............ -218.88

Personal Balance Sheet Summary
Total assets (things you own)........... 133,000
Total Secured debt...................... -61,000
Total Unsecured debt.................... -26,296.36
Net Assets.............................. 45,703.64

Created using the SOA calculator at https://www.makesenseofcards.com.
Reproduced on Moneysavingexpert with permission.

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I haven't included the income from my second job - the hours I work are not guaranteed, but I do get first refusal over permanent staff doing overtime and agency staff. And the least number of agency staff I have ever seen working there is 3 in a shift! So while not guaranteed, it is pretty assured! The debt on the credit cards and overdrafts refers to Aug '08 statements.

I've had a look at the payslips of the second job (which I see largely as my debt fund!) and I'm a little frustrated that I have earned around £5000 since April and a gift of £3000 from my mum (good story with this!), and show only a drop of £3300 in the amount I owe. :eek: Now I have done some (much needed) decorating and renewal in my house as well (thank God Ikea came to Belfast!), and I realise that about £250 has been eaten up by interest each month. But still, I think I can do better!!

OK i"m not gonna let this get me down, I'm just going to step it up a gear! No more furniture buys until the new year, except for the coffee table I'm saving for! (£70)

BelfastGirl_2

Hi all!

I'm feeling pretty happy today! I work for a charity, and our funding has been capped from April 08, and we were all told at that time that we would not be getting any of our increments or cost of living increases as there was simply no money for it. The Board of Directors met last night, and they have approved a 2.5% increase in our pay, back dated to April and paid at the end of this month! So that's about £300 gross in about 3 weeks, and an extra £50 gross a month after that. Great!! Another extra payment off all that debt!

It's pretty amazing what can happen. I don't know what some of you think of the "Law of Attraction", stuff, but I have to say that I have had some interesting experiences over the last few months, including the £3000 from my mum, and now this! But perhaps, just coincidence.....

BelfastGirl_2

I've found over the last few months that when I set myself some challenges with my finances, sometimes I manage (and feel appropriately proud of myself) and sometimes I don't. The latter has been the case this month; I've had to transfer back the £200 I had transferred to clear an overdraft. I probably didn't need to transfer the whole lot back, but didn't have the time to work out exactly what I would need.

Just heard today that PAYE has changed - which gives me approximately an extra £50 per month, and then we have that 2.5% increase back to April 2008. So it should be around an extra £350 (gross) in my basic salary this month (£200 of which is ear marked for transferring back, yet again, to the overdraft!)

Including income from my second job then I'm hoping to get enough to be able to pay:
£200 to the other overdraft (reducing it to around £100 instead of £750 at start of this month)
£300 towards oil
~£700 to the credit cards - £50 to capital one; £100 to Monument; £75 to Lloyds TSB; minimum to the new Barclaycard, and the rest to the A&L card (hopefully about £450)
That should leave me about £600 for living expenses for the month.

I just wish I could see these balances go down faster!

BelfastGirl_2

Hi!
I got in my first Barclaycard bill, and I can now confirm that I did indeed get the 6.5% balance transfer rate for the life of the card. With the small amount I was able to transfer across (£1215), there was added on a grand total of £5.11 in interest! Now, I worked out an approximate amount of interest that would have been added on in the card I transfered the money from, using proportional amounts. Not entirely accurate, but near enough - and I could not believe what I was seeing. It came out at about £26 for the same amount. Now I know I say "29.9% interest - that's extortionate!", but it really didn't seem that bad until you see it in real money terms. That's >£20 difference every month. >£240 a year. And of course, in real terms it would actually be a lot more than £240 a year, if you were to think about paying in, say £50 each month. In the barclaycard, that would reduce the balance by almost £45, in the other one by only £24 each month, so the amount of interest being added on to the barclaycard would drop much quicker.

This has come at a good time too, when the interest rate of another card has jumped up to 25.9% from 19.9%! But over all the cards, it's looking like the amount of interest being added has dropped by around £15 per month (just waiting on one more bill this month)

I've also cancelled PPI on the 2 cards that had it (might claim that one back. I don't remember being asked about whether or not I wanted it. And I have a rare genetic disorder, and can recall a long time ago my consultant telling me that I would not be wise to get private health insurance, as so little is known about my disorder that they could argue that just about anything I would get could be related to this condition.) The cancelled PPI was costing me more than £60 per month. So now I'm in the lovely position that instead of almost £300 of payments each month being gobbled up by interest and PPI, it is now about £205. I'm really looking forward to seeing the bars in my graphs start getting shorter much faster over the coming months!

BelfastGirl_2

I got my regular salary pay slip, and with the back paid 2.5% and the PAYE change, my wages are up about £250 this month, and got a good payment from my mileage too - about £215. I haven't got my pay slip yet from my second job, but should get around £900 or so (I'm also owed some holiday pay on top of that, but at the minute I'm budgeting for £900). When I have paid out all the direct debits, that'll leave me with about £2000. So here's the plan:

1. Oil is ordered - lovely to see the price down a bit! 900 litres ordered at £479. I pay them a standing order of £30 a month, and they told me that I have paid £240 into my account so far - so this is costing a further £240. Great news since I had a figure of about £300-£320 in my head! Good start!

2. I noticed when I logged into one of the old accounts with an overdraft I was expecting to be reviewed in October, that this is now set to be reviewed next June. I was going to clear this by next month, but it's interest rate is less than the rate on some of the credit cards, so for now I'm in no great rush to clear this, so I'll probably pay it £100 to reduce the balance a little.

3. The other overdraft with Alliance and Leicester is £200, and costs me £5 a month for the privilege! That works out at £60 per year which is a massive proportion of £200. So i've already transferred £200 from the other old account (which I'm in no rush to clear now), so this A&L account will now be more than cleared. I'm leaving a little money in to make sure there's enough to cover the next £5 charge, so I'll get no more of them!

4. I'll pay the minimum amount on all the credit cards (already set up to pay on future dates) except for the MBNA one. I'm going to throw at least £700 at that one (bringing the total paid to the credit cards to £960 or 33% of income); hopefully more depending on the second wage. I'm so excited - this is going to take the balance of that one below the £2000, and POSSIBLY even below the £1500 mark! Of course I could pay the £100 I might pay towards the overdraft towards this credit card instead, which would definitely drop the balance to below £1500. That could be a big psychological boost, and, of course would also help me towards my goal of all the balances being below £10000 by Christmas. Any thoughts?

5. With all of that paid out, I'd be left with about £700 for the month. Now if I could just stop smoking, I'd only need £500!

I worked 2 of the best shifts I've ever worked over the weekend, and I'm now giving myself 2 weekends off to give myself a rest! I've been working every weekend for a year now, except for when I've been unwell, so I want to spend some time recharging the lagging batteries! I get so impatient with seeing the balances drop much slower than I'd like, so I push myself to do more extra hours. Originally I was going to just do 1 night a week, but tend to do 6 nights in the month now (at least!) But I don't want to make myself ill, with the result that I couldn't do anything at all. Which would leave me in a very desperate situation.

BelfastGirl_2

OK - I made my decision about what to pay the £100 towards, after playing about with my spreadsheet to see what would be the best option, with the goal of <£10000 owed to credit cards before the end of the year. If I were to pay the £100 towards the overdraft, it would make things very, very tight. So I've decided to put the money towards repaying the credit card instead - so £823 goes to that credit card on Monday. There is a further £257 going to other ones to cover minimum repayments. That represents 36% of my salary this month - I'm pretty proud of that! In fact I was only going to pay £793 to the main credit card today (to make up a nice round number of £1050 total), but discovered that paying £817 it would increase the % to 36%, then had to round it up to get a round total number, hence £823. Now how anal is that?!! That leaves me with approx an extra £70 to find before the end of the year, based on me paying a total of £570 at the end of October and November to all the credit cards. My calculations are approximate, so it might well be less. At least that will be easier to find than £170!

Interestingly, £70 is the amount I paid for a coffee table yesterday. I was taking one of the young women I work with to Ikea to help her furnish her house, and found tucked inside my catalogue a voucher for £10 if you spend £60, which they must have sent me a while ago. I'd forgotten I had it; the expiry date was the 30/9/08 - and I'd had my eye on this coffee table, and was thinking of buying it in the new year. But with £10 off, and time running out, I decided to make good use of that voucher! It looks great too!

Other good news - got another letter about Agenda for Change, and it's looking like I'll be owed at least a few hundred pounds for the time I was employed full time (so from 1/10/2004 to 3/1/2006). The letter said "if you are owed arrears a cheque will be forthcoming" - would be amazing if it arrived before end of November, to impact on those balances of mine!

This is the first weekend of my 2 weekend break from my second job. No plans as yet (though I am considering putting a lick of paint on the bathroom), but mostly I'm planning on plenty of rest, sleeping until I wake up. I'm wanting to catch up with some friends who I feel I've been neglecting recently, but would prefer that was next weekend, so I can relax and get a break from being around people this weekend! I know that probably sounds terrible, but working where I do, being with people can feel pretty overwhelming and tiring a lot of the time. It's the reason I bought my house 10 years ago; so I could afford to live alone!

BelfastGirl_2

Forgot to say that this month the total amount of interest being added on finally was below £200! Another goal achieved!

BelfastGirl_2

Well, this month, my budget has been looking really good. I paid off all that I'd planned to - so that MBNA card will definitely be below the £1500 mark when I get the statement in, in fact it's looking like it'll be about £1360! I'm pretty proud of that! Today I've closed one of the old current accounts I had, the overdraft of £200 was cleared earlier in the month, and I left a few £ in there to cover the £5 charge for using the overdraft. That's now gone out, so that is one debt (small though it may be in comparison to others!) cleared and the account closed. Achievement!

You know, this whole journey of getting myself debt free this way is really teaching me to appreciate the value of money, and changing completely my spending habits. The day I bought my coffee table, I met a very old friend. She made a comment to me about maxing out credit cards, with the perceived attitude that this was a good thing. I was horrified. More so by the fact that I thought that way myself not that long ago. I've tried to get myself out of debt before, using really stupid ways and ignoring the rule of not borrowing to get out of debt - a loan (which I'm still repaying), a remortgage (which doubled the repayments). And I learnt absolutely nothing from those methods. In fact I got worse. I had a friend who once called me "Queen of the impulse buys". How right he was. I remember going to a shop with him - he was looking for a new midi system. He didn't buy one; I did. Well, he wouldn't recognise me now! I'm looking a new TV. Before I would have looked online, then ordered one without a second thought. Now I'm researching, finding an affordable one that'll meet my needs. And (here's the big one!) planning for when I can buy one. I'm thinking January sales (local electrical shop has great sales) but ONLY if 1. those credit card balances are <£10000 in December's statements, and 2. if I've worked enough at the second job in November to earn at least £1500 (I've 2 weeks holiday from my normal job). Otherwise I'm putting it off until I get the cheque for the pay owed to me from some years ago.

Being in control of my finances, and therefore being able to sleep at night, is probably the kindest thing I've ever done for myself. I've some distance to go yet, but I am getting there. I keep imagining just how good I'm going to feel when I reach that goalpost of no credit card debt.

BelfastGirl_2

I made out a new updated list of short term goals to keep me focussed on the task at hand! There is still the <£10000 by Christmas, which should be achieved (hopefully a bit over £9900). But another goal should be achieved before then - the MBNA (A&L) card should be below £1000 by the time my bill comes in around the 25th November.

For the new year, my first goal is to get the rest of that card paid off (by the bill in February). Next one is to get the total interest being added on to these accounts to below £150 (it's at about £175 now). These 2 goals may well be achieved at around the same time! This is great to see as at the start of 2008 I was paying a total of £250 interest each month. So now I love knowing that when I make my monthly payments, £75 more is being used to reduce the actual balance than at the start of the year.

I've also managed to put aside £420 this month to cover Christmas and other expenses that might come up (like making sure that I have enough to reach that Xmas target!). It's not something I'm used to - having some "rainy day" cash - and I have to say it's feeling good. And I've hit the credit cards with another £700 this month too. I'm looking forward to the end of the year so I can look back over the year and know I've had a year to be proud of!

BelfastGirl_2

I am delighted to say I am well on target to reach my goal of <£10000 credit card debt by Christmas. And this month I've just reached that other target - I've reduced A&L credit card which was £4000 down to 3 figures. It's looking like it'll be cleared completely by the end of January. I've just finished 2 weeks holiday from work (due back tomorrow) and I've earned myself a fantastic £1400+ in that time from my second job, so that's why I'm pretty confident that I'll have that A&L card paid off by the end of January, instead of february as I had originally thought!

I am back to paying off my loan this month (I took a 3 month payment break and used every penny of the usual payment to reduce this other debt), so while I've seen a great fall in the balances of these cards I'll need to satisfy myself with a less dramatic result in the coming months. But, as long as they're going down!!

Oh, and other good news - my mum phoned me a few weeks ago and I was telling her about my slowly dying TV. I told her I'd started doing some research and had seen a few I liked, so was planning to get a new one in the January sales. My mum, bless her, said "I was phoning you about what you need for Christmas - why don't you let me help you out with the TV?" and a few weeks later paid some money into my account towards it. I had thought I wanted a particular TV at £650, but did some more research and got another, very good, TV that better meets my needs for £550. I'm pretty proud of the fact that I had budgeted for it in January, but was able to afford to get it in November and still meet the goals I've set myself!