DFSD's motivational ramblings...

debtfreesomeday

I decided to check my credit report today after being turned down for a few 0% credit card deals in the last few months. Strangely, there doesn't appear to be any searches on my credit account, except my mobile phone contract taken out in January. I have applied for cards since, I have no idea why I have been turned down and why the searches aren't showing?! Any ideas anyone...

skysky69

I applied to Barclays a couple of months ago and they rejected me. They did give me reasons why though in the rejection letter. They said that it was due to the amount of credit I already had and they thought that would be irresponsible lending. I actually think this is fair enough - had they done this a long time ago, maybeI wouldn't have as much debt as I have now! It doesn't help now though now when I want to get my cards onto the lowest rates possible

debtfreesomeday

Well I've phoned up to find out why I was turned down by Halifax, and according to them, I am currently committed to too much credit for them to offer me a card. I have cancelled all my cards that I've cleared apart from a Lloyds one which I haven't used for about 5 years! I'm scared to cancel it in case it p*sses them off and they ask for all my loan money back in one go! (They did that too me when I left uni, and asked for all my overdraft back, forcing me to get a loan out with them, thus starting the huge debts around my ankles ever since :mad: (I went down the road of consolidating that first loan before I knew better ).

I have an egg card with zero on which is cut up and a credit limit of about £5000, virgin credit limit is £6500 with £3669 outstanding on it, I guess it's the two loans totalling around £19000 remaining that is putting them off. I wanted this card to help me reduce my debt by not paying any interest on the remaining card balance though! GRRRRR... oh well, I shall phone mr egg up when the virgin 0% is up and ask them what they can offer me in terms of a balance transfer.

Today I have also applied to open another bank account to manage my money better. At the moment ALL of our bills come out of my personal account (hubby has a basic account due to being made bankrupt 6 years ago - he pays his share of the bills / debt repayment into my account monthly). We have an e-saver to save the insurance / tax / etc into, but I could do with another one for anything I have left over personally, although this is likely to be used for debt repayments as usual anyway! :rolleyes: We'll wait and see what they come back with. Although again, I was a bit reluctant to apply for it in case they say no and again want all my loan money back! (Can you see I'm terrified of this happening!). Hubby doesn't have access to my account so it's hard for him to pay for food / petrol etc if he has the car, we really need one that is joint for all the groceries and bills etc.

Anyway, we'll see what Mr Lloyds says.

debtfreesomeday

I've just paid another £300 off the credit card, which should come out in time for payday in two days. This leaves the outstanding balance now at £3369.66.

They added a 33p interest charge on for that bloomin' unfair charge a couple of months ago - grrr. :mad: Anyway, it's going down, feels like slowly, but I guess we've already paid off over £3000 of that card now, plus over £1000 from the other cards we had which are now cleared, all within less than a year. I suppose we are doing well, but it doesn't feel like it when we constantly have no money.

I did another survey this morning, that's £3 in the paypal account. There was £3 in there already from a previous survey, but had to pay ebay fees of £2-something from that.

debtfreesomeday

ok, so I'm desperately trying to remind myself how well we've done here as I can feel my motivation and will power lagging... :wall:

Have just worked out that we've paid off a total of £4148.38 in credit card debt in 10 months. It would've been more than that but we added to the credit cards at one point by about £500. :mad::o

We've paid off £3852.30 on the loans in the same amount of time (although they don't seem to have gone down by that much either!).

Altogether, that's pennies over £8000 we've paid off in 10 months or £800 a month!!! Urgh, that's why we're always skint! I can't wait until we're debt free so we're £800 a month BETTER OFF!:eek: Never ever will I get into this mess again!

wantabetterlife

Hi DFSD, just catching up on your diary. I cant believe you have paid that much off your debts in such a short time! You are doing brilliant and will soon see light at the end of the tunnel. Paying off your debts certainly gives you a new perspective on money, like you i would never make the same mistakes again!
I think the key to your success is that you make several small payments throughout the month because otherwise the money just disappears from your account.
Well done:T:T

debtfreesomeday

Hi wantabetterlife :hello:

Thanks for the encouragement, looking at your signature you're doing great too! We always found the overdraft SO difficult to pay off when we were a large amount overdrawn every month. Well done and keep up the good work. :T

Yes, I think you have a good point about the 'small and often' payments. I definitely like to do that with anything we make in the month either via Quidco, surveys or by selling on Amazon / ebay etc. We do have to pay the £300 off straight on payday every month though otherwise we find it goes on 'other things'!

When we come back from our hols we shall hopefully do a car boot sale as I've been gathering stuff in the garage for ages - anything we make then will also be going to pay off the credit card as an extra little bit. I hate doing them, especially when they start so flippin early round here (5am - 6am!!!) but it's worth an early start to make a bit of money and clear some stuff we no longer need I guess. Although hubby doesn't always agree - he hates doing them more than I do!

Lloyds have opened up the other account I requested, so we shall be juggling our money a bit better this month, hopefully. One of the accounts, we're going to make a joint account on Saturday, out of which, will come all the bills and petrol and grocery money. We shall put in about £1500 a month to that which will cover all the bills and shopping / petrol. Hubby will have a debit card for this one too so he can pay for petrol and groceries etc when he has the car. He currently doesn't have a debit card and it's quite difficult sometimes for him when the car's running low on petrol or I ask him to pick up some shopping.

We shall be keeping the e-saver account into which we shall pay £50 monthly for our car insurance, car tax and house insurance for when those bills are due in February, August and November respectively.

The new 'third' account, shall be an account to put in any 'spare money' :rotfl: I have left over from my salary after my contribution to the bills and also the money for the £300 credit card payment we make every month. (I like to be in control of this payment as it makes me feel a sense of achievement every time we pay it! Hubby is now great with money after having financial troubles years ago, but he's not great with dates and remembering to do things - I'd never sleep if I left it to him to organise the bills!).

Out of my 'surplus' money (yeah, right!) I shall use it towards either covering any amount we have gone overdrawn, or little things for the house / garden we may need, or extra payments to the credit card if we can afford it. basically, it's money to be used in whatever way is necessary at the time.

Hopefully this will seperate things a bit more clearly so that we have different 'pots' for each purpose. At present, we never really know how much we have left over after paying for everything because it's all in one account.

:D:D

This morning I was brave and phoned Lloyds to cancel my credit card which has been sat doing nothing for about 4 years now. I never use it and it has a £4800 credit limit on it. I just cut up and bin the new cards when they send them. As per a previous post, I was a bit scared to cancel it in case they asked for my loan back (past experience has left me over sensitive with them about such things!). Well the lady I spoke to was lovely and it's all cancelled. :cool: I figured I might as well try and clean up my credit file a little and get rid of anything I don't use.

I also phoned Next yesterday, as, after checking my credit file, I discovered they still hadn't closed an old account. I bought one thing from them last year but returned it, then asked for the account to be closed immediately. The customer service person swore blind it was closed but it doesn't appear to be on my credit file. I shall leave it a few more months and check again; not that there's anything owing on it or anything but I don't want all these dormant accounts open against my name really.

debtfreesomeday

We had a few little spends on bits and pieces at the weekend, plus a meal out, but this was all budgeted for and came out of our 'surplus' pot.
We're finding it really useful having the extra bank *pot* to put all our left over money in - it really helps us to clearly see how much money we have left without eating into money for the bills, debts, groceries and petrol. We actually have a bit of money to put into our account today :eek::rotfl: which has come from money owed to us as well as gifts from our lovely families for our anniversary. Total left in the 'surplus' pot, will be approx £200 once this is paid in. :j £100 of this is already earmarked for some garden stuff needed, so we have £100 left for non essentials stuff which should be plenty considering we're away and won't be using petrol / spending money for a couple of weeks in May. Payday will also be less than a week away once we get back and do require money!

I've done a few surveys since my last update, have also been screened out of a few. :rolleyes:
Haven't sold anything else on Amazon for a while, but have put our 'live' listings on hold for a while whilst we're away. I'll get back to doing all that once we're back.

I defrosted one of our freezers last week and transferred it all into the one under our fridge (we have two small-ish size ones!). I thought there's no point keeping two freezers running half-full. May save a little teeny bit of electricity that way :cool:. We're also running the other freezer and store cupboard down and using stuff up from it - hence we've had a few odd meal combinations of late!

When we get back from hols, we're starting from scratch with the groceries - we're starting a health and fat-fighting kick and going to try and lose some weight. We're going to stock up on healthy stuff and lots of fresh fruit and veg and plan our meals better.
We're cooking a piece of lamb from the freezer in the slow cooker today though for our dinner tonight, along with some veggies and spuds. (My:A folks :Abought us 2 lovely pieces of lamb last time they were up - a real treat as we never buy 'joints' of meat as they're so expensive!).

No extra payments made to the virgin card yet but I'm considering paying the odd 66p off of it! They keep sending me credit card cheques through the post, encouraging me to transfer other balances and get even further in debt. The cheeky :mad::mad::mad::mad: 's know the 0% is running out in 4 months and then they'll whack the interest up sky high.

I did have a pay rise this month as expected, but it was very small - only £8 more this month than I got last month! BUT - then I remembered I got paid backpay last month which was owed to us from April last year, so I'll have to look at Feb's payslip to see how much extra I do get. I think it works out at around £40 - £50 a month extra once the taxman, national insurance and pension have had their cuts.
Hubby also had his first pay cheque from new job, he earns a bit more and is able to pay in an extra £75 to the bills account now a month. :j

We're also canceling our gym membership when we're able to from June 1st. As the summer's coming up, we figured we'll get the exercise for free instead!
That's a whopping £69.05 a month we'll be better off between the two of us. That'll help with extra credit card payments for sure!

debtfreesomeday

Total in surplus account is now £203.61, so I've transferred the £3.61 across as an extra little payment on the credit card.:j

New balance now: £3366.05
Hmmm, that .05p is gonna annoy me! :think:

debtfreesomeday

Not much activity on the DFW front today. We spent £100 on the garden materials last night, as budgeted.

Also popped into Aldi and bought some ice creams as a treat and some breakfast bits for hubby to take to work today. Shifted the money over from our grocery budget so all treats paid for and tracked!

We have another slow cooker meal on today, last night's was lovely. :cheesy:
We're using up the last little bits of veg etc. that we have in before we go away.
We have our meals planned from now until we go away - all from the freezer, store cupboard and empty-looking fridge so we don't need to buy any ingredients at all. We're having bolognaise or chilli tomorrow night, hoi sin & spring onion chicken and noodles on Friday night and there's a pizza in the freezer which hubby will probably have Saturday night and I'll have whatever we have left/ I can find!

I have about £8 in a survey account, of which, I can withdraw £5 and have to make the rest up to another £5. Was going to withdraw it to paypal and pay it off the credit card, but realised I will be charged a fee by the evil paypal :mad: so will leave it in there to build up I think.

I can't believe it's only Wednesday, I keep thinking it must be at least Friday!