Aeshna - Scared but determined!

fiestaman87

My first post so go easy on me!

Aeshna, first of all may I wish you the very best of luck in dealing with your problems. The first thing that you have done correctly is recognise that you do have difficulties and that you need to sort them out and prioritise them NOW!

It has taken me till the age of 36 to realise that I need to do something about my debts and your situation and your new-found self-belief has made me stop and think about things.

Admittedly I am not quite so deep in the 'mire' as you seem to be but I do have a lot of debt and it needs to be tackled.

So, once again, the best of luck, girl. You can do this!

Aeshna

Hi fiestaman87!

A big welcome to the DFW forum and sincere thanks for making your first post here one of support for me, I'm really, really grateful *hug*

If my situation has helped you by making you realise it's time to reassess, then I'm glad (that's kind of weird, but I hope you understand what I mean!). Hand on heart, I'm not usually so organised or motivated, about anything it has to be said, but I think lurking on the forum and having my lightbulb flicker for a bit while I took in the huge amount of information and advice on here, made me strong about what needed to be done before I realised I had to do it - just having the information about what to do and who to speak to is half the battle. It's not what I need to do that I'm unsure about anymore, it's just how difficult it may or may not be to keep my chin up as it's going to be a long haul. I'm really not expecting it to be easy, but I'm chuffed with myself for making a good start, even if I do say it myself.

If you haven't already done so, I can only recommend looking through various threads on this forum, because aside from the invaluable advice everyone gives, its really confidence boosting to see that so many other folk have been exacty where you and I are, and the support is incredible. Take time out to sit down and work everything out, precisely, don't guess and then make sure you post back here where you'll get tons of help and support! You can do it too, you just need to take a deep breath and go for it! Come on, we'll do it together!

Aeshna

Karmacat

Hi Aeshna :wave:

You're absolutely right about having the information being half the battle - even on this site, where its laid out specifically for us, and we know its free, there's so *much* of it, and the various routes to debt freedom *are* so varied, its too much to take in at once. :cool:

You do sound organised! One thing about the cashback sites tho - don't join all of them (its no big deal if you have, its nothing bad!) its just that about 80% of the offers on them are identical - Sun Bingo, for instance, or cashback from Marks and Spencer. For actual cash, and promptness of payment, quidco seems to be best - I did greasy palm for a while, but they didn't pay me for about 4 months, and you can't contact them online about payment of a total amount, so I ended up physically writing to them, which was weird - they then paid me right away, but I shouldn't have had to do that.:rolleyes:

The others I use are ipoints and maybe mutualpoints, pigsback used to be great but no longer. Toluna, which is partly a survey site, has the surveys come to you, and also polls on the site, sent in by members, which you get points for answering.

Things like that are a slow build up tho - for actual monthly cash in the bank, I'd say go with quidco, look at the quidco thread on the freebies board, use it for big stuff like home insurance together with a comparison website like moneysupermarket.com, read the warnings about there never being any absolute guarantee for cashback, and dip your toe in slowly. :money:

Sorry this is so long!

fletch3163

Hi there

I've read your thread and think you're doing a fabulous job of dealing with your lot. To take control of such a thing is a task in itself isn't it? There's never any glory after the event so it sort of makes it doubly courageous to face it so well done.

Re Quidco, you could try doing what I did. Last Christmas I had workmates use my account to order online (Harpers Bazaar) and got their cashback. Bit cheeky but added a wee bit extra to my pot. I've even been cheeky enough to offer my Boots card to strangers in front who don't collect the points. I never could tell which saying was true "I want doesn't get" or "if you don't ask you don't get" :rotfl:

Anyway, good luck to you. We're all in varying degrees of the same smelly stuff and this kind of support (both contributing and "eavesdropping") is priceless.

Quick thing before I go, how do you wrap snow? My 11 year old has asked for SNOW for Christmas and I wonder if the weather will do me a huge favour and save me a bomb!! It snowed here this morning but the rain has taken it away.

Have a good Sunday one and all.

dancingfairy

The best advice I ever heard about a DMP was budget, budget, budget - for absolutely everything as you will not be allowed any more credit - if you think you can do your shopping for say 100 pounds put 130 on the form say - this will protect you if prices go up , or you have a crisis or you want to buy christmas presents etc as I am not sure there is much allowed for presents/entertaining. Budget for everything - sods law says the washing machine will break, the car will need servicing etc, etc so have a budget for everything.
Save up everything in a savings account until which time as you can make full and final payments to a creditor (offer them a lump sum settlement). If you make any money through overtime - again save that up for emergencys or the odd treat here and there. Obviously you don't want to be changing the amount every month to your DMP as they will then start expecting it and you may then not be able to get the overtime (IYSWIM) and it will take the companies a while to get used to your DMP.
I hope that makes sense in a roundabout way.
Oh and if the worst truly does happen you can reduce your payment 1 month if it is something really dire - you just let CCCS know and they let your creditors know.
df

Aeshna

Hi Karmacat!
Thanks for your advice about the cashback sites - it did occur to me that they were only going to be useful to me if I was buying something - and of course I want to keep my spending to a minimum! However, I've signed up for Quidco after looking through the various threads here, so it's good to see it looks like I made the right choice! I've signed up for some of the suvey sites, including Toluna and pureprofile, not sure how profitable they'll be, but every little helps. After seeing the thread about Qype the other day, I managed to get signed up for the Amazon voucher challenge, and I'm now halfway there - I still have two gifts to get for xmas, and one of them is going to be bought from Amazon. I had another look at it today, and they've reduced the price by 40%, so if I get my Qype voucher and use that, it'll work out that I'll actually only pay less than 20% of the original price!!!!!! Oooo and if I use cashback site too......!!! Please never apologise for posting a long thread (ahem, I'm very guilty of that!) because every bit of support and advice is very very welcome, thank you again *hug*

Fletch hi, and thanks to you too for your support! The amount of information on here is absolutely staggering, but if I hadn't taken time to read through for a while, I wouldn't be here dealing with things, so it's brilliant! Re the snow - in all seriousness, have you considered getting the tin of snow that's on offer these days (I think you mix it with water or something!) I can't remember where I've seen it before, probably play.com or something similar - I suspect this might be easier than running outdoors in the middle of the night and scooping up a ball of snow before it melts by morning, tucking it in the freezer till xmas.....

Dancingfairy, thank you so much for your advice about budgeting. This is the bit I do find most worrying, as it would appear I haven't been budgeting AT ALL - I don't even know what I've been spending on grocery shopping , so this coming month will be interesting. It's good to hear your advice on the extra money that I get too, I was very unsure about this - so any extra I get via overtime or eBay, I'll tuck away for emergencies and with luck it'll still be there for full and final offer time. Obviously any extra I get before the DMP starts, I'll throw at the payday loans, desperately want rid of them. I really don't want to start messing about with my DMP, except to increase the payment when my mortgage arrears are cleared, so thank you for keeping me straight with this.

I sat down last night to list everything on eBay, but it suddenly occurred to me halfway through the first listing that there is not a penny in the bank, so I assume I won't be able to complete the listings until there is, since there will be no way of paying the listing fee! Frustrated that I'm on a roll and will now have to wait till next weekend to sort that out.

Good grief, I've just realised how I've been babbling on! Thanks again everyone!

Aeshna

consultant31

One of the best things I ever did was start following advice on the Old Style board.

I don't buy much in the way of cleaning products any more, other than Stardrops which lasts for ages and only costs a little over £1.50 and is brilliant for everything! Also white vinegar is great stuff and if you have a Chinese supermarket (or in my case, a farm shop) you can buy in a huge 5 litre bottle for about £2.

The hints and tips on how to save money on food are amazing and you really can save a packet every week. My personal favourite is to shop either very early, when the supermarket has just opened, or quite late, just before they close, and get as many of the bargains (brought down because it's near or on it's sell-by-date) as possible and freeze them for later. Then once a month I can eat out of the cupboards/freezer with just a trip to the shop for fresh milk etc.

Good luck and (((hugs)))

Incidentally, your electric bill does look high and I really think Sky should go for now (get freeview perhaps).

Aeshna

Hi consultant31, thanks for your support *hug*
One thing I've very guilty of is getting microwave foods, partly because of the kids social lives, they like to eat before I get home from work, particularly my youngest, and I'm not keen on letting her cook without supervision. However, my bf keeps asking what I want for xmas, so I've told him I'd like a slow cooker - I can prepare everything the night before, and the kids will then have a ready-cooked meal that's nutritious and hopefully cheap, without me having to worry about them cooking. I've already started doing things like freezing home-made mash to make life easier for them, but I really do need to head off to the old style board and start with a plan to make sure my grocery budgeting works.

I know my electricity is high, but it does include arrears, and the only thing not electric in the house is my central heating. However, I had a rather interesting chat with British Gas yesterday as for the last couple of years I've been questioning the repeated address errors that seem to crop up periodically on my bills - long story short, I live in a flat in Scotland, and we have the habit of writing our house address at 1/2 Scotland Road = building number 1, flat number 2. However, the bills I'm gettting for my electricity, while addressed to 1/2 are billing me for electricity at 2/1 = building number 2, flat number 1 - which is a different house across the street!!! It got escalated yesterday and they're looking in to it anyhow. I'm not getting my hopes up, but will wait and see.

Aeshna

HelenKA_2

it suddenly occurred to me halfway through the first listing that there is not a penny in the bank, so I assume I won't be able to complete the listings until there is, since there will be no way of paying the listing fee! Frustrated

No, it's ok, the listing fee is charged after the sale has taken place, via paypal if you have that account. I've read that the best time to list is Sunday evening so I always do it at that time now. Must be doing something right as this evening I've made £30 from 5 items after sellers fees:j

Aeshna

Thanks for the heads-up on that Helen! To be honest the reason I thought this was because when I started up all the new details, it passed me through to add a card to my paypal account. When I tried to put the card details for my new Co-op Electron card in, it tells me that it's been declined and to contact my card provider. I registered with Co-op for online banking just after that, and he explained that it may have been rejected because it wasn't set up for online use. But when I tried again later it still wouldn't take it, and I assumed it was rejected because there is no balance in there yet. I had an existing paypal account that I didn't want to use to be honest, just to have everything as a clean start, but I've listed a few things this evening using that one as I just didn't want to wait any longer! From the sounds of things this was a good move if Sunday's are the best days! Fingers crossed, the bits and bobs I'm selling won't generate a fortune by any means, but every bit counts and I just want to throw extra every penny at getting rid of these debts, even if it just a few pence, it'll get sent to my creditors.

Aeshna