Minty's capital one diary...

mintymoneysaver

Okay, so dh and I have deliberately gone and got ourselves into debt again for a holiday, although there is a method in our madness. We had no debts, but also no savings at all, and we came to the conclusion that we needed a family holiday. Haven't been away all together for two years, dh has been really stressed at work etc.

So we took out a 0% till next summer credit card. Had to buy school uniforms and stuff which we couldn't clear last month so transferred this to it, bought flights, hotel, train tickets, disneyland Paris tickets etc. Anyway it's ended up as approx £2500 ( will update when I get bill) However as I say it's on 0% and the theory is that dh can get to his shares from work before the 0% is up and use some of those to pay off what's left of the balance. However ideally I want there to be as little balance as possible by then, so this diary is to nag me into paying off as much as possible as soon as possible.
Ths month will probably only be the minimum payment as we also now have an overdraft as we took out cash for spends.
Today's job is to transfer the 70 euros we have left back to cash and pay that off the overdraft.
Have a few other little debts ( less than £100 on each ) to clear too, so will update all as I clear them.

Aim for payday is to clear the overdraft, ( have to have £100 cash spare too for daughter's school trip and trumpet lessons) pay min balance on the Cap one and see how much is left to put towards the others.

Would appreciate peoples's support on my self inficted debt! ( but it was worth it, we had a great time!)

thepinkladez_2

sounds like you have a good plan in action. maybe you could set up a s/o to pay off the minimum amount at least each month and then make extra payments with any spare money you have? do you know how much you need to pay per month to have cleared the debt by the 0% end date?

LilacPixie

Ideally you should set us a direct debt/ standing order for the minimum payment and then fling anything extra into a savings account so it is earning you a little extra until next summer.

A&L are offering an e-saver account 6.5% AER and £20 cashback via quidco at the moment. Other option if you will have over £50 a month is legal and general are giving £110 cashback via quidco for an ISA but you need to deposit £50 a month minimum. SOmething to consider??

mintymoneysaver

Thankyou both. I have already set up a direct debit for the minimum payment, which this month is £71. The actual debt is £2379.90.
We have approx £700 spare a month, but this pays our 'family cleared every month' credit card which pays for clothes, school trips, birthday presents etc so there often isn't a lot of it left.

This month, that card has £77 to be paid off, we need to pay the £71 minimum balance and we have an overdraft of £466 to pay off. By throwing a bit of extra money at that we will also have enough for the £100 needed for the school trip and music lessons.

Lilac, I know that in theory the savings idea is a good one, but if I save the money I'll only find something else that needs doing with it, so I'd rather pay as much off as I can. I have set up online access so that any extra money I get can go towards it. I am currently owed about £60 for some at home testing that I did but I could be waiting a while for that, but it will go off this debt as soon as I get it.
I get paid on Thursday so will be able to update more then...

mintymoneysaver

Well I get paid tomorrow and my own ' pocket money ' account has stayed £13 in the black so that can go towards a bit more of the debt.
One good thing is that I thought I owed about £100 on my tesco credit card but have realised today it's only £24 so I can clear that as soon as I get paid tomorrow.
I have an RBS card which doesn't have internet access and I think I owe about £150 on that, but I won't be able to update that until I get the statement.
DH's money has gone in so the overdraft now stands at £166 but that will be gone tomorrow too.
So this month's aim is to spend as little as possible, and try to put a few little bits towards the Cap one card, I'll update as often as I can!

mintymoneysaver

Wahay! Been paid, so paid the £13.33 I had left in my account straight off Cap one, and cleared the Tesco bill.
Now when the minimum payment comes out it'll take the the bill down to £2200 something. I think my aim for now will be to get it down to the next hundred each month, and see how I go from there!
Don't you just love payday!

mintymoneysaver

nothing to do with money today, except that I plan to spend very little. Last day of the hols as I am back to work on Monday ( 6 weeks still goes very quickly) DD1 and 2 aren't back till Wed but it's going to be a big jump for dd2 as she is off to secondary school with her sister. She looks so grown up in her uniform but she is very small for her age and looks more like a 9 year old so I am more worried about her than I ever was about the bigger one! It's a lovely all girls church school so I don't worry about bullying but she just seems so young! She has great problems in controlling her emotions and gets stressed very easily so I think we all have a tough few weeks ahead.
So today will be spent doing all those last minute checks of everything. I know we still need bobbles and clips but apart from that I think they are pretty much sorted, badge needs to be sewn on blazer.
Grass needs cutting so DH can do that while I have a go at the weeds in the front garden and we will hope in vain that our luggage from easy jet finally turns up, nine days later! It's like trying to get blood out of a stone getting information out of them!

mintymoneysaver

Well, the luggage finally turned up 10 days after we lost it! Case is a right mess, so I shall be writing a strongly worded ' dear sir' letter to easyjet and any compensation we get can go toward this credit card bill!

penguin83

Hi Minty - glad you have got your luggage back but OMG 10 days!!! Good Luck with your letter to them.

Hope DD settles into school quickly x x

savingholmes

Try and keep on track. Is it worth posting an SOA and seeing if anyone can suggest further cost savings....

mintymoneysaver

Hi saving,
All of our bills come out of another account, and believe me I couldn't get them any lower if I tried! So the money for this bill has to come out of our extra money, which as you can imagine can vary month to month. Hence an SOA wouldn't really work in this case. I know how useful they are though, it did wonders to my bill account when I first arrived here!
What I really need to do at some point is get some savings behind me so that I can have holiday money but we never seem to have any spare!