Which order to pay debt? Noob Moneysaver :-)

jonnysmile

Kevicho wrote:

SOA would be helpful, to be honest id concentrate on the 8% card and pay the minimum on the others until it is paid off

Your spreadsheet figures are wrong, the payments add to 310 rather than 285 :S

As for the other debt, would the OH give you a month or two without paying to help you sort this out, (its in their benefit too!)

The first thing id do is pay off CC2 using CC1, to get rid of the highest interest and also get rid of one debt, then id cancel the card (unless they can offer you free interest on balance transfers or similar), this will help your credit rating for future 0% balance transfers

Next the £125 into the Other section, id reduce to a hundred (if negotiation fails) as this is interest free (cant afford to be sentimental here )

If you can get this reduced or free for a few months id concentrate on the 3rd credit card

id seriously Consider moving the remaining 300 credit and move that from credit card 1 to the 3rd on to get that balance down

So then ou should have CC1 £1960, CC2 £2515

if you have £310 a month for paying off, this wont be fun, im going through the same at the moment stopping in to pay debts, but keep looking around this site, there are so many freebies and ways to have fun on the cheap that this will become possible,

anyways back to payments

Id pay 60 to credit card 1, 150 to credit card 3, and the 100 pound to the other (or to credit card 3 wherever possible)

By the end of the year you should be down to around 2.5k in debt (rough figures below)

cc1 cc3 other
Jan-06 1969 2515 1700
Feb-06 1915 2367 1600
Mar-06 1861 2219 1500
Apr-06 1807 2071 1400
May-06 1753 1923 1300
Jun-06 1699 1775 1200
Jul-06 1645 1627 1100
Aug-06 1591 1479 1000
Sep-06 1537 1331 900
Oct-06 1483 1183 800
Nov-06 1429 1035 700
Dec-06 1375 887 600
Jan-07 1321 739 500 2560

Hope this helps

*damn dodgy formatting!*

Wow that is VERY helpful, thanks for your time working all that out. Yes ive just realised I worked out the £285 based on only putting £100 to the other debt. I could stretch to £310 as im no longer buying sandwhiches everyday from asda but instead taking a packed lunch to work.

I need to keep the other debt at £100 as she relies on that to make her bills balance :-(

I'm going to ring cc1 in a mo and see if they can do so, I think they charge a 2% of the transfer handling fee, would it still be worth it if they do?

The card does run regular 2.3% per annum for 6 month deals on balance transfers so it might be worth keeping?

Credit card one is 5.76% per annum for life whereas ive discovered credit card 3 is 1.9% per annum till june, would I be best keeping that £300 available until June so I can get that amount at 1.9 as opposed to 5.76?

Will post my SOA as soon as ive written them out.

Cheers JS

jonnysmile

ms_london wrote:

You said that you are preparing a SOA and will post shortly. How much each month do you have after your debts? What is your income? I can appreciate that £285 is a lot to be repaying each month, but you have two choices, you can either a) keep repaying this amount and take X months to repay your debt, or b) up your repayments for say 6 months and be debt free that little bit quicker.

I appreciate this might not be possible, and I can appreciate that a lack of disposable income might make socialising hard, but if your friends are true friends I am sure they will understand - perhaps a few of them are in the same boat? Have you talked to them about it? Could you do cheaper things together?

Obviously, until we see your SOA, it's hard to make any suggestions, repaying debt is hard, but you will only need to do it the once, and then it will be gone.

Ms_London

Hi,

I am verging to the paying off a little more and finishing the debt quicker frame of mind at the moment. Its going to be a hard year and beyond

Soa coming up asap, just working on it now !

Thanks

jonnysmile

anything obvious ive missed out? :eek:

tomstickland

You're putting £20 per month into savings. Use the savings to pay off some more debt and pay the £20 towards that too.
I'd do some phone restructuring too. You're paying for Broadband, line rental, cable TV and mobile phone.

skintchick

Right, someone has already mentioned your cable TV, phone landline and internet, so all i will say is they seem high.

Why are you spending £33 additional to your landline charge on the phone? And another fiver when you 'free' minutes run out?

I have a BT landline and onetel for calls and Virgin mobile (no line rental fee) and pay no where near what you do. Can you call people less?

Your water could be reduced by going on a meter too.

HTH

Kevicho

With regards to Cinema, you can do this cheaper by

1) Sign up with seefilmfirst, recently ive found two posts on here with free films so i can go for free , also take you own sweets, bottled drink to make it cheaper
2) If you love films have a look at the dvd tarting section on this site, free dvd's rentals so you can watch films (albeit not the very latest), this will save on travel, food etc - just get some cans in , no more noisy idiots chomping crisps or whatever and you dont feel like an idiot whne you need the loo

jonnysmile

tomstickland wrote:

You're putting £20 per month into savings. Use the savings to pay off some more debt and pay the £20 towards that too.
I'd do some phone restructuring too. You're paying for Broadband, line rental, cable TV and mobile phone.

Have put the money I have saved straight onto the cc2, with the high interest Future £20 are going to the debt fundas well.

Cable tv and landline come as 1 package which should be £30 but im getting it for £19.99 after following martins existing customer phone call. That includes every channel but movies. Broadband is also discounted by £5 a month when I called up and complained new customers were getting a better deal. Cant see a way round this as if I go with another broadband provider ill need a BT line, which will be a minimum of £10 a month line rental and Ntl family pack should be £28 alone, so I can't see a better solution to this.

Mobile is essential its my main method of communication and ive reduced my bills down from last year an average of £120 with a 3g price match which just about gives me enough minutes, I have to restrain myself to stay within 500

jonnysmile

skintchick wrote:

Right, someone has already mentioned your cable TV, phone landline and internet, so all i will say is they seem high.

Why are you spending £33 additional to your landline charge on the phone? And another fiver when you 'free' minutes run out?

I have a BT landline and onetel for calls and Virgin mobile (no line rental fee) and pay no where near what you do. Can you call people less?

Your water could be reduced by going on a meter too.

HTH

As far as I can see for the packages im on I think its the cheapest I can get, unless someone can correct me? I rarely use the landline it just comes free with ntl family pack tv, my mobile is main method of contact and when I do get up to the free minutes I use 1899 or if im going to ring a lot of landlines I use 1899 to save my x-network minutes.

Ive had a water meter at my previous house and it actually cost me more :-/ I do use a lot of water too many baths/showers/watering the garden!

jonnysmile

Kevicho wrote:

With regards to Cinema, you can do this cheaper by

1) Sign up with seefilmfirst, recently ive found two posts on here with free films so i can go for free , also take you own sweets, bottled drink to make it cheaper
2) If you love films have a look at the dvd tarting section on this site, free dvd's rentals so you can watch films (albeit not the very latest), this will save on travel, food etc - just get some cans in , no more noisy idiots chomping crisps or whatever and you dont feel like an idiot whne you need the loo

Ive seen these DVD rental companies where you borrow three DVDs for as long as you want, watch them and send them back in exchange for another three. The price if I recall was something ridicously cheap like £10 a month, I thought it was a con lol.

Like the idea of bottled drink and own popcorn at cinema its too easy to save £5 a time with my pass then spend that on £3 drink and £2.50 popcorn, great idea. Do they officially allow you to bring your own food into cinema? Obviously id put it in a bag, but if you just strolled in drinking a can with a bag of popcorn under your arm would they try and confiscate it?

Thanks everyone for continued advice, - going to try and reduce the grocery bill this week

jobbingmusician

jonnysmile wrote:

Ive seen these DVD rental companies where you borrow three DVDs for as long as you want, watch them and send them back in exchange for another three. The price if I recall was something ridicously cheap like £10 a month, I thought it was a con lol.

No, not a con - why should it be? Punters probably won't have any one film for more than a week, on average. The firm will get bulk discounts on postage - so they'll get about £2 a rental for very little overheads (Also, if you shop around, you'll get 3 rentals a month for A LOT closer to £5 than to £10! :j )[/QUOTE]

jonnysmile wrote:

Do they officially allow you to bring your own food into cinema? Obviously id put it in a bag, but if you just strolled in drinking a can with a bag of popcorn under your arm would they try and confiscate it?

Yes, pretty sure they would. In fact, I've been challenged taking things into cinemas before (and into London shows!) - smuggling's the answer. I get really narked that they try to kidnap you so that you can eat only THEIR lousy food!