Clearmydebts - Diary to keep me away from the path of temptation

clearmydebts

Hi all,

Sent away for child benefit today and requested my tax credits form. It looks like we should get about £20 a week from that so hope to use that to overpay my loan. Every bit helps as they say!

too_much_debt

Hi CMD

How are you getting on during the days now?

The benefits do come in handy, I get £38 a month tax credits and £185 Child Benefit, I normally use the Child Benefit to pay my Barclaycard bill as I never get much more than that in my account at one time and my Barclaycard minimum payment is about £181.

How's little Max doing? Is he feeding better now?

TMD

clearmydebts

too_much_debt wrote: »

Hi CMD

How are you getting on during the days now?

The benefits do come in handy, I get £38 a month tax credits and £185 Child Benefit, I normally use the Child Benefit to pay my Barclaycard bill as I never get much more than that in my account at one time and my Barclaycard minimum payment is about £181.

How's little Max doing? Is he feeding better now?

TMD

Hi TooMuch,

Yeah - am delighted with what we are getting. I can make a goodish dent in the loan and then an even better dent when I go back to work (not that I want to think about that at the moment).

The days are going well although I don't seem to have much time between feeding Max and expressing, still won't latch so have given up

He is very good but I must admit I am looking forward to when he can see more and I can interact with him. How are you?

too_much_debt

I am OK thanks. Had an awful headache (migraine) yesterday and part of the day before, OH had to go into work a few hours late so he could pick the kids up from school as my car was being serviced and I would have had to walk there and back (about 20 mins there and 20 mins back). I have to take tablets (1 a night) to stop me getting headaches but I ran out of tablets and hadn't filled the new prescription, but I have now and thankfully my headache was gone this morning when I woke up.

I never breastfed any of mine, I tried with DD1 but didn't like it at all, I preferred to bottle feed so that OH could feed her. I never tried with the other 2 just bottle fed, with DD3 I bought the little bottles that they give you in the hospital, they sell them in Mothercare so I took some of them with me as I always used to hate asking for the bottles in hospital as the midwife's would give funny looks so I took my own to save having to ask.

I never really coped very well in the beginning with DD1 and didn't appreciate how much easier it is having one, as when DD2 came along DD1 was 13 months old, they fight like cat and dog now, it drives me nuts, long gone are the days when DD1 would sit in the high chair and watch the Book of Pooh DVD over and over again so I could get on or have a rest, it was bliss!!

savingholmes

Hugs TMD

CMD - sorry you are struggling with expressing. I breastfed both of my own - my second for much longer than my first though LOL.

Glad that you are coping well. I found that by 6 week's my DS's face was really expressive... I think they start getting easier / more fun from that point on

clearmydebts

too_much_debt wrote: »

I am OK thanks. Had an awful headache (migraine) yesterday and part of the day before, OH had to go into work a few hours late so he could pick the kids up from school as my car was being serviced and I would have had to walk there and back (about 20 mins there and 20 mins back). I have to take tablets (1 a night) to stop me getting headaches but I ran out of tablets and hadn't filled the new prescription, but I have now and thankfully my headache was gone this morning when I woke up.

I never breastfed any of mine, I tried with DD1 but didn't like it at all, I preferred to bottle feed so that OH could feed her. I never tried with the other 2 just bottle fed, with DD3 I bought the little bottles that they give you in the hospital, they sell them in Mothercare so I took some of them with me as I always used to hate asking for the bottles in hospital as the midwife's would give funny looks so I took my own to save having to ask.

I never really coped very well in the beginning with DD1 and didn't appreciate how much easier it is having one, as when DD2 came along DD1 was 13 months old, they fight like cat and dog now, it drives me nuts, long gone are the days when DD1 would sit in the high chair and watch the Book of Pooh DVD over and over again so I could get on or have a rest, it was bliss!!

Hope your feeling better soon

xxx

too_much_debt

Thanks SH and CMD.

Should be OK now I have my tablets.

clearmydebts

Hi all,

I finally got a balance transfer offer from Virgin so I am going to see what the settlement figure is on my loan and see if I can pay it all off this week with some of the baby savings and transferring money to the credit card.

We currently pay £272 to the loan every month so that would free up the money to pay off the credit card and then I will also pay in my child benefit and tax credits into it as well. The balance transfer is only til Nov but when I go back to work I have annual leave owning to me so hopefully will be able to pay off the rest of the money with that.

So all going well I might have my debt paid off by the end of this year and I can begin saving and overpaying on my mortgage. My plan is to pay off lump sums of the mortgage (i.e £5000) everytime I get the offer of a balance transfer from Virgin. I realise I am a long way off but it seems like I am on the final stretch of clearing the debt

too_much_debt

That sounds good if you can get a decent offer from Virgin.

I found out today that I'm paying 23.9% on my MBNA card now, I was lucky that I paid off over £8k last week when my Endowment money cleared into my account. So just need to hope that I get some decent balance transfer offers from any of the 4 cards I paid off last week.

How is little Max doing?

savingholmes

hi cmd - glad things are going well

TMD - yeah it is great to have cleared off that level of interest