Slig's Debt Free Wannabe Journal

slig

Hello! I'm so pleased to have found this site, I think it will be really motivating
:cheesy:

So my plan is to drastically reduce my debt over the coming year and a bit. I plan to move to Australia for a year in 2010, so I want to be in a financially better position by then.

Here's my debt:
MBNA Credit Card - £1361.65
Overdraft - £1505.69
Barclayloan - £2860.27
TOTAL: £5727.61

I also have a student loan, but I think of this as nice debt not evil debt, so I'm not including it. Hope that's ok!

I think I can get rid of my credit card balance by around Christmas, if I try really hard. Then I want to get out of my overdraft, and then start saving.

I'm not sure what to do about the loan, my original plan was to keep paying it off as I have been (I pay £122.77 off a month, I think it was 3 year term and I've probably done about 9 months so far), and save up enough to cover 12 payments while I am abroad. But I don't know if there might be a better way to do it. Suggestions welcome!

My spending is fairly low already, I buy relatively few non-esentials and I'm looking at how I can reduce expenditure further. Also I'm lucky because I live at home so I pay only £80 rent a month, and no bills. But as an office temp I don't earn a huge amount.

I've made some baby steps today (after spending the whole day looking through this site ); I've cut up my MBNA card (I don't use it anymore so there is no point in having it), and I used a voucher to get a free Krispy Kreme rather than buying chocolate for tonight (my biggest vice!)

I am also going to close my Tesco Credit Card account, it has no balance on it but I keep it because it is my clubcard, so I am going to get a new clubcard and ditch the credit card.

Any suggestions or tips are very welcome.

slig

Forgot to add, I paid an extra £5 off my credit card today (I usually just pay the minimum by direct debit), and a few weeks ago I actually started opening my bank/credit card statements! I also kept a money diary for a week, and I now regularly check my online banking statement.

doodledo_2

Hi Slig and welcome to the forum

Good luck with paying your debts off. Moving to Aus will be brilliant motivation for you.

If you have read other posts on here you may have seen people talking about SOA's (statement of affairs) it may be worth you posting yours to see if any of the lovely peeps on here can save you some money. www.makesenseofcards.com/soacalc.html

Any possibility of selling some bits on Amazon/Ebay to chip those debts away a bit quicker?

Good luck with your journey.

savingholmes

You can post your SOA using makesenseofcards - then we can perhaps help you more in terms of how best to pay things off.

With regard to your loan is there a penalty to paying it off early? If there is there may not be any point in paying it off early and you would be better focusing on the other two. If there is no penalty - then look at the website whatsthecost and their snowball calculator to work out what order to pay things off in - hope that helps!

slig

Statement of Affairs and Personal Balance Sheet

Monthly Income Details
Monthly income after tax................ 1187.33
Partners monthly income after tax....... 0
Benefits................................ 0
Other income............................ 0
Total monthly income.................... 1187.33

Monthly Expense Details
Mortgage................................ 0
Secured loan repayments................. 0
Rent.................................... 86
Management charge (leasehold property).. 0
Council tax............................. 0
Electricity............................. 0
Gas..................................... 0
Oil..................................... 0
Water rates............................. 0
Telephone (land line)................... 0
Mobile phone............................ 20
TV Licence.............................. 0
Satellite/Cable TV...................... 0
Internet Services....................... 0
Groceries etc. ......................... 100
Clothing................................ 5
Petrol/diesel........................... 80
Road tax................................ 10
Car Insurance........................... 20
Car maintenance (including MOT)......... 12
Car parking............................. 0
Other travel............................ 0
Childcare/nursery....................... 0
Other child related expenses............ 0
Medical (prescriptions, dentist etc).... 2.5
Pet insurance/vet bills................. 4
Buildings insurance..................... 0
Contents insurance...................... 0
Life assurance ......................... 0
Other insurance......................... 0
Presents (birthday, christmas etc)...... 20.8
Haircuts................................ 18
Entertainment........................... 30
Holiday................................. 0
Emergency fund.......................... 0
Total monthly expenses.................. 408.3

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

No Secured Debt

Unsecured Debts
Description....................Debt......Monthly...APR
MBNA...........................1361.75...30........20.83
Overdraft......................1506.69...0.........0
Loan...........................2860.27...122.7.....16.9
Total unsecured debts..........5728.71...152.7.....-

Monthly Budget Summary
Total monthly income.................... 1,187.33
Expenses (including secured debts)....... 408.3
Available for debt repayments........... 779.03
Monthly UNsecured debt repayments....... 152.7
Surplus(deficit if negative)............ 626.33

Personal Balance Sheet Summary
Total assets (things you own)........... 0
Total Secured debt...................... -0
Total Unsecured debt.................... -5,728.71
Net Assets.............................. -5,728.71

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

======== Enter any other useful information below ========

e.g. the number of adults & children in the household, the number

of cars included in the SOA or anything else that may be useful.

Effy

Hi slig, if you have £600 odd surplus a month you could be extra frugal chuck it all at your debt and clear the lot and have time to save for oz, how lovely to get away from it all and know you have a clean slate to come back to. Welcome to mse anyways, im quite new myself but it is addictive and i find it really helps to keep me motivated, good luck with it all im everso envious of your year in oz! :0)

slig

SOA posted above. It was hard to make it accurate as my circumstances have changed so much over the past year (was away travelling for 3 months, and before that saving to go away). So this is quite a guesstimate, though even with a substantial margin of error it looks like I should be able to make good headway with clearing my debts.

I know my overdraft is not interest free, but I couldn't work out how to find out the rate! Also, the credit card APR is an estimate as they charge different rates for different things - this is the higher rate used for when I paid some money into my bank using a credit card cheque- that makes up about £500 of the balance, the rest is at a marginally lower rate.

slig

One week since I first posted, so here's an update.

• Paid £250 off my cc today.
• Paid about £9 off cc during the week.
• Put about 8 books on Amazon, have sold 3 so far, including one today at £14.99:j . All profits are going on the cc.
• Applied for a permanent job at my old workplace, so fingers crossed. It would be a slight pay increase from what I'm on now, and would give more job security.
• Really needed a new mascara, so bought Eve magazine for £3.40 with the free mascara
• Was disappointed that my food shopping cost the same as normal. I think I should only need to do a small top-up shop this week though