Newbie's Diary!

louiseypees

Hey,

I know I'm new here but I think I need to keep record of what I'm doing to keep myself motivated!

About a month ago, I had a bit of a lightbulb moment. I've never been hugely in debt, but uni left me with some nasty credit cards and a couple of defaults on my file. This was something I'd carried on, and last month I had:

• £1200 on a Vanquis Card (I know! but it was the only one I could get at the time) at a horrific 37.7% APR
• £2000 on my Barclaycard at 20.9% APR (which is apparently their "graduate rate" :rolleyes:)
• £2000 overdraft with Barclays (Additions account) at 6.9% + £6 a month fee
• £300 loan with Barclays
• £80 Capital One Card at around 30% APR
• £5580 of interest-paying debt and no savings!

I was horrified that I was paying so much interest, more than anything. Since then, I've improved my situation a bit:

• £3500 on an Egg Card at 0% until January 2010
• £2000 on a Virgin Card at 0% until March 2010
• No overdraft (well, I won't when it's been moved over to that Virgin Card anyway - it's in the post!)
• Empty Barclaycard at 19.9% (which I'm planning on replacing with one with a better APR - honestly, I've been with them 7 years! Disgraceful!)
• Closed Capital One + Vanquis accounts
  
• £1150 in Egg savings at 6.55% :j

By January 2010 I should have:

• £2520 on Egg
• £1440 on Virgin
• £4271 in Savings (I have another £150 to go in this month and then will be a minimum of £200 a month going in there - hopefully more though!)
• A nice new bank account with Alliance and Leicester, who hopefully will pay me lots of interest and not take the mickey like Barclays have done!
• This all equates to about £7k better off than I was last month - which is hugely encouraging!
  

Because I won't be paying any interest on my debts (yaaaaay!), my focus for this year is saving, saving, saving. Unfortunately I'm in this situation in the first place because I love spending, spending, spending. This is why I need to keep the diary!

My aim is a big one - I want to have £5k+ in savings, and have all debts on new interest free deals (or paid!) for the start of 2010, so I can buy a house with my lovely other half. This means I need to at the very least find another £800 before then - ideally an extra £4800! Ouch!

I've already started the ball rolling - I've asked for statements of all my credit card charges over the last 6 years so that hopefully I can claim them back. Hopefully bank charges will be declared illegal so I can claim them too - this would probably solve my problem immediately!

BUT in the meantime I need a back-up plan! At the moment it's dooyoo and quidco, but I doubt they're ever going to make me millions, so any support is appreciated!

Sorry for the long post, I just wanted to get it all written down.

I've been hanging around these forums for ages and never written anything yet - be gentle. :rotfl:

Honky_tonk

Hurrah! A new Diary!

I like the diaries on here, trouble is I'm also new(ish) here and (sorry everyone) havent had the commitment to read aaaallll the others! I shall read this from the start and keep up with it!

Now, I'm no fiscal genius (check my signature if you dont believe me! ) but it looks like you have a plan! A cunning one at that!:T

So, keep it up and I'll (attempt) to keep up with it!

HT

Jesthar

Hi, Louise, and welcome!

Congratulations on your excellent start, especially on getting rid of Captial One and Vanquis!:T

One thing to remember - once you have done your balance transfers to your 0% cards, cut them up so you can't be tempted to spend on them too and wreck your 0% rate.

Forge on with claiming credit and bank charges, and let us know how it goes - we like a good success story! If you do get them back, as your debts are currently at 0% interest, you could either invest the money you get back in a high paying savings account, then use it to pay off the debts in full at the end of your 0% deal, or just go straight for the security of paying them off in full and being debt free!

If you do decide to get another credit card, be careful not to get carried away with it! It would be better to keep it for emergencies and large purchases (for extra protection) rather than use it for normal shopping. You sound as if you have this well in hand, though.

If you're worried about your spending getting the better of you, how about signing up to the monthly No Spend Day challenge? You can find the November thread somewhere in this forum (it may be a few pages back), and it's a tremendous motivator!

Finally, if you'd like the lovely people around here to help with ideas on where you could save even more money, you could complete and post up a full Statement of Affairs (SOA) for scrutiny and suggestions - the link is here:

http://www.makesenseofcards.com/soacalc.html

Congratulations again on your progess so far! :T


~Jes

Nichelette

Welcome to the forum, you'll probably find that this is the most friendly board on the site. I'm in a similar situation to you but I'm only really trying to clear my overdrafts which are still 0%, whilst saving for a house deposit. I'm going to ignore the student loan unless I end up in a well paid job somewhere (unlikely). I've also been doing odd things which will earn a bit of extra money & have been keeping track of these on my diary. I've made about £70 in 3ish weeks which has surprised me!

louiseypees

Yay thanks for the encouragement guys!

I've had a busy moneysaving time of it!

Last night my Virgin card came through (which excited me loads as it's pink!) , so the overdraft is well on its way to becoming history - I'm so relieved! That £300 interest saved over the next year, and I'll actually start paying it off now, which was just never going to happen.

I've made the decision to sort out all my Christmas shopping now so I can relax and enjoy December. I'm rediscovering the joys of Quidco in the process!

Unfortunately I got distracted though! But it's all good stuff - I've applied to have my old phone recycled with cashinmyfone - £25 for that, plus a tasty £4.50 cashback (I must dig out some more old phones!); and I've just cut my weekly spending a little bit by subscribing to one of my favourite magazines - getting me money off the face value and £5 cashback!

Quidco now stands at the grand total of £13.65 - but I'm going to apply for an Alliance and Leicester account as soon as my overdraft transfer comes through, which will be another £50! I'm already on my way to that £800 extra savings!

I also got a bit of a bargain on a Christmas present for my boyfriend on ebay, which he'll love and keeps me under our budget (I've paid for most of it with dooyoo vouchers!).

Just waiting for a £25 amazon voucher to come through from dooyoo now, and I can start buying things for my dad! :rotfl: After that's through I think I'm going to start getting my dooyoo money in cash and saving it - every little helps.

Making £35 through Quidco in a day (even if some of it was the phone money) has really excited me - I'm starting to think I can actually make a real difference to my finances with these online money-making schemes!:j

louiseypees

Oh and thanks for the concern Jesthar - I'm not planning on using my other credit card at all though - emergencies only is my new policy. And only emergencies that I won't be able to wait 3 days to pay for with my savings at that!

louiseypees

Well it's been a while! I've had horrific flu for the last week and a bit and have barely been able to lift my head off the couch, so apologies for completely neglecting the diary! Hopefully won't happen again!

Only small amounts of money saving have been going on. I'm on a diet at the moment, so am making sure only food on the diet is being bought online from Tesco.

I've also been making a concerted effort to buy all my Christmas shopping online through cashback sites. After a few purchases, a current account switch over and an emergency "quick, let me use a Quidco click through" moment when my other half was buying a new laptop online at the weekend, my Quidco balance is now at a rather tasty £73.64! :j

I got paid for a little bit of freelancing I did recently in cash over the weekend, so that's another £50. It's still sitting in my wallet and I'm trying my best not to fritter - this is tough! Hopefully some more freelancing will come my way soon.

On the Christmas shopping front, I only have 1 present left to buy, which is for my Dad. Good news on that is that I have a £10 Amazon voucher from dooyoo with his name all over it. I've neglected dooyoo over the last couple of weeks too as I've been ill, so there's no more coming from there for a little bit. Still, I have time to get writing and buying I guess.

Anyway, on that note I might start spending today's writing energy on dooyoo where I'll get paid for it! :rotfl:

dancingfairy

Wow - think how much progress you've made in such a short time. You'll be debt free in no time if you keep this up (avoiding the flu of course).
df

louiseypees

Thanks DF - avoiding the flu is definitely on my moneysaving agenda!

louiseypees

Only a little post today as I haven't done much moneysaving while I've been ill. BUT this morning I had a lovely free coffee from Cafe Nero after filling up a loyalty card. Naturally I had the largest coffee on the menu - with soya milk. This ramped the saving up to about £2.60, which I'm feeling pretty smug about, as the coffees I used to fill up the card were mainly small ones. Hehe.

Brought my lunch into work today, and am going to keep doing so as long as I'm on this diet. I've found this saves a whole bunch of money. Plus I'll hear next week whether I'll be able to save about £200 more each month. Details to follow!

louiseypees

Hmm. I'm feeling a bit down today and saving money suddenly seems a lot less exciting than, say, spending it on shoes. I think I'm just feeling rubbish because I'm not all that happy in work. This is something I'm trying to sort out, but you know when you feel like you're banging your head against a brick wall?! Fingers crossed it will all come good over the next week or so.

On the money front, I got loads of stuff through from Alliance + Leicester about my tasty new current and savings accounts. They're doing all of the switching from Barclays for me, which I'm pleased about - the thought of doing it all myself filled me with dread! :eek:

I'm tempted to move my savings out of Egg now they've dropped their rate but I can't quite work out whether mine has actually dropped - they're pretty vague on their site. In any case, I think A+L will work out better for me. To be honest, the interest rate isn't the biggest thing - the fact I'm actually saving, and already have a nice little emergency fund is what amazes me!!

On the house front, things aren't looking the best. My other half's bonus was cut from 25% of his annual salary to less than 5%, meaning that he can't start saving quite as easily as we'd anticipated. Let's just hope those house prices keep going down next year (apart from those houses belonging anyone reading this, anyway!) so that we can buy cheap .

I need some motivation today. It's all feeling a bit thankless. At least I'm more sorted out now anyway I guess - it's doing the work for me now, I don't need to be motivated every day.