DFSD's motivational ramblings...

debtfreesomeday

Hi skysky69 - you have mail x

debtfreesomeday

The details for claiming my wii prize came through today so I should have that within 28 days. :j Also, my phone I ordered yesterday was waiting at the post office for me this morning - very impressed with the quick delivery!

Last night we had another cd and dvd amnesty and sold them on music magpie. We kept back the ones that they offered less than £1 for (15p for a dvd?!?) and will keep these for a car boot sale. We got rid of about 8 and got offered about £25 for them so am happy enough with that. We'll just wait for the freepost stickers to arrive and them post them off and wait for our cheque to arrive.

I have started to gather stuff to do a car boot sale - we both HATE doing these and only do about 1 or 2 a year, but we have lots of stuff from the move and loads of dvds and cds as above that we need to get rid of. We shall do one in a couple of months around Easter time when, hopefully, it's a bit warmer! Hopefully get a few £'s back from that and clear some things we no longer use.

Another NSD for me and also entering lots of competitions daily now when I'm bored and get chance to do so.

We have decided to put all of the cashback from the phone as an extra payment off the credit card. The 0% ends in August and we definitely won't have paid it all off by then, but I'd like to reduce it as much as we possibly can and then TRY and get another 0% deal from somewhere. We've also got to start paying for our sofas in October at £100 a month for a year so we want to clear as much debt as possible by then so we can afford it easily. We're also due some money from Quidco - about £32 this month so, if we can afford to, I shall make an extra payment with that too. Some larger payments are due from Quidco in a few months, plus I will be getting a pay rise in May, so we shall throw everything we can at the credit card to reduce it as much as possible.
Hubby has an interview for a slightly higher paid job next week too, so hopefully he will get that and we'll have a bit more money spare.

I'm so glad I cut the egg card up though. There have been times in the past couple of weeks where I know, if it was still useable, I would have spent on it. Not frivolous things, but stuff that I know we need but can't afford yet (like a mattress!). I'm glad I made the right decision there.

debtfreesomeday

Thanks goodness it's Friday!

Another NSD today, and I had a survey emailed to me so another £3 earned there. :j I'm leaving the survey money to build up in my paypal account for a while and when I have over £50 I'll use it to pay a bit more off the credit card.

We also sold some more surplus household bits last night and made another £20. :j The quest to sort the car boot sale stuff continues!:rotfl:I plan to have a good tidy up and sort out this weekend and put it all to one side in the garage. Means I'll have to tidy the garage first though - I'm sure I'll find more stuff to get rid of in there!

debtfreesomeday

Morning..

No snow here yet, a few light flurries but nothing settling much as yet...

I received an email from Quidco today to say they've paid this month's earnings into my account - it's about £31 something which is great for doing nothing!

I checked my bank statement online this morning and the bl00dy water company have taken our direct debit out twice this month! I've phoned them up and they disputed it but it was in front of me in black and white! They finally found the problem but they can't refund the money, they're going to put it as a credit on my account Grrrr... :mad: They had taken the second payment from an old direct debit which was cancelled from my account so I'm really annoyed that they have managed to take it in the first place.

We did get a much-needed bargain at the weekend - we got a display fridge freezer for £550 OFF! - for the grand price of £109! Before we would have paid for it on the credit card but I'm happy to say it has come from a little bit of savings in one of our Isa's.

Have also sorted out a lot more stuff for a car boot sale, and also some things for the charity shop. We're still waiting for the postage labels from music magpie. We also sent off the claim voucher for the nintendo wii I won last week, so that should be with us within a few weeks I guess.

I've also cancelled the insurance and 'tech help' things that came with my new phone. They give it to you free for a month but I made sure I cancelled it asap as I don't want to start paying for that!

Oh, and the diet continues the DFW way - I cancelled my ww online subscription a couple of weeks ago and am doing it at home by myself - so far, so good!

DFSD

debtfreesomeday

Woo hoo! :j Just had an email confirming another of my books has sold via Amazon for £8.84. That's another £8.84 off the credit card.

debtfreesomeday

We had snow! I had a day off work yesterday as we couldn't get in due to the snow. I had good intentions to sort through some paperwork and clean through the house a bit, but that went out of the window when we decided on a neighbourhood snowman-building and snowball fight competition! :j

Still, I did manage to cancel my car insurance renewal which was much more expensive than other quotes, and I did tidy up a little bit. But I also managed to spend nearly £7 on 'stuff' at our little corner shop which I didn't really need and am now quite annoyed at myself for.

Quidco earnings have been paid into my account for this month which will cover a tank of petrol for the car - we need to fill up in the next day or two.
We're pretty skint already this month but am desperately trying to cling onto a positive bank balance and not slip into the overdraft. Hubby has said he will cover the shopping for a meal when we have friends over in a week or two as he has a little put aside for such things, so that is a great help. Other than that, we'll just have to spend on absolute essentials only for the next 3 weeks. We've got the money for our car insurance put aside so it could be worse I guess.

DFSD
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debtfreesomeday

Morning

I had quite a productive DFW night last night... I sorted out a load of clothes, some for the charity shop, some new with tags on stuff for ebay and listed 10 items on ebay. Only for 99p starting price but we'll see how they go, it's better than throwing them out I guess. I'm not much of an ebay fan now due to the extortionate fees but I thought I should list a few things and make even a little bit of cash back on them.
We also sorted out lots more books and surplus stuff for the car boot sale we're planning to do in the spring. We have quite a lot of stuff for it now, and my cupboards are a bit clearer.

Someone is interested in our old fridge that we're selling so hopefully that will go soon and be another £20 made.

I've received the labels from music magpie to send the DVD's off, but I just need to get some packaging material and then I can send them off. I also have the Amazon book to post too but I shall wait until the snow clears a little!

We did have to spend some money today and fill the car up with petrol - we spent £36. You can tell petrol prices are slowly creeping up again.

We also are getting to the stage where we really need some fresh grocery shopping in. I shall make an online order for the weekend I think, we'll see how much money we have left in the pot to spend, if it's less than £50 (free delivery) then I shall go out and get the shopping in a supermarket myself and stick rigidly to the shopping list!

debtfreesomeday

Urgh, Monday morning again already...

This week starts with us in the overdraft :mad:, so we've made the decision to transfer £200 from our ISA into the bank account, this should cover the overdraft and leave us with enough until pay day. If there's any left in the bank account at the end of the month it shall be put towards the credit card as an extra payment. We should be getting a little bit of money back in this month - about £25 from music magpie (we posted the discs on Saturday) and £20 from selling our old fridge. The intention is to pay this off of the credit card as well, but we'll have to see how it goes!

I'm not banking on making much money from ebay - out of the ten items I have listed, only 3 have bids on and these are for 99p.

I also sorted out our car insurance last night, which expires in 10 days. The cheapest I could find was £257, with £28 CB through Quidco. I was hoping for a little cheaper / more cashabck, but I guess it's quite a bit cheaper than our renewal quotation so I can't complain.

Other news - we've worked out that we can afford to pay an extra £80 - £100 a month off the credit cards in the months of April - June. We shall be getting some extra money back in those months and it will help to pay off the credit card a little quicker. :jIn August I have to try and find another 0% deal as ours will be ending. :shocked:

I continued to enter lots of competitions at the weekend too, and some this morning - hopefully the big win is just around the corner!

We also ordered a big shop, with Asda this time, as we found sainsburys a little more expensive. It arrived yesterday, along with our bargain £6 smartprice 4 slice toaster, after our last one got a little spark-happy. :eek: Of course, I got free delivery with a code from this site :T and ordered all smartprice / basic brands, but we're well stocked now for a couple of weeks!

xx

debtfreesomeday

Well a direct debit has come out of my account to pay £25 off of the virgin credit card (even though I cancelled it a while ago?! ). Maybe I didn't cancel it in time for the payment to be cancelled? I'm not sure, but I will keep an eye on it and make sure they don't do the same next month. I figured there was little point me setting up a direct debit for the minimum amount as I pay £300 extra to the card every payday without fail. At least then I am in control of when the money is taken. I'm happy for the extra £25 to be paid off of it for this month, it means I'm less than £2 away from having cleared £2000 on that card since September / October .:j Only another £4495.64 to go... I can manage the 64p at the moment!

We've worked out that we can pay at least £2500 of it off by August when the 0% runs out, hopefully more if we make some savings elsewhere and do a few boot sales. This means there will be less than £2000 on it and, if we can get another 0% deal, may be able to pay it off by the end of the year. That would be an amazing Christmas pressie and fabulous way to start the new year! Then we could start with overpaying the Lloyds loan. Woo hoo! :j

debtfreesomeday

:mad::mad::mad: I am fuming this morning. :mad::mad::mad: I checked my bank account and credit cards online today to find that Virgin have put a £12 charge on my account because they couldn't take the £25 extra direct debit payment because it had been cancelled. I argued that I have paid massively over the minimum payments every month, including this month, and that direct debit had been cancelled at least a week before the day they were going to take the payment out. It was no good though, they won't remove the charge. I asked if it would affect my 0% agreement and it doesn't so I guess that's the main thing. It's so annoying though, £12 is extortionate, I'm not happy about it at all.

Deep breaths.... I'm calm now.....

My ebay items are ending today, about £18's worth so far. Not much but better than nothing; although most of this will probably get swallowed up in ebay fees! There's currently £6 in my paypal account from doing surveys, I'll transfer whatever we make from ebay and then wait until there's over £50 in there and use it to pay off another chunk of credit card (and avoid paypal's withdrawal fee for balances under £50). :mad:

Got my phone bill in for the first 'bit' of month, was expecting it to be £15, but it was nearly £18 - they have charged me for an itemised bill and also I forgot VAT would be added on top of that. Oh well, such is life I guess. I'm doing my best to let things wash over me today!

DFSD
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