Luckycharm's debtfree and self-sufficiency journey

Luckycharm_2

Thanks lucielle and beanielou. I'm very pleased about it today. Also, I had £20 (ish) refunded to my credit card today by that robbing company. They still charged the international use fee for the refund to me but I can't be bothered phoning up about it. I've updated my sig. following this refund.

Last night I got a phone call about a new client starting in January and a possible second one too. Thank goodness. Business is slowly moving forward again.

My invoices have been received by the finance department and were being processed yesterday. Wage arriving early for the first time ever from that company. As a result of this, I think I have everything covered from now until the end of January. I'm never that organised. I don't know what's happening to me.

£300 budgeted for the MOT in January. Let's hope it's less. £150 budgeted for tax bill which can go straight to the credit cards as it's not needed. If I can bring Christmas in under budget too then all the better.

I'm going to wait until the wage has arrived to start paying money to different places. I don't want to tempt fate.

Scratch cards done today.

Matched betting- Victor Chandler are messing me around with a £50 free bet. Think the payment must have been slow coming out of my account. Will try again today.

Paddypower and Skybet just waiting for me to find a good match. I usually go with match odds only but I'm branching out a bit now since odds are so poor. I nearly bet on Joe winning on Sunday night but couldn't find anywhere to lay the bet.

Car- still not moving

Ebay- still haven't done anything

I did find £10 of Tesco vouchers in a drawer yesterday and saved £10 on the shopping. I'd forgotten they were there. (It's like throwing around £10 notes...I so need to pay more attention.)

Anyway, I have a busy day at work so shouldn't be sat on here posting all day.

Have a good one everybody.

Luckycharm_2

Forgot to metion my £1 a day has stopped temporarily. The payment went through 7 times, I went in to the bank to sort it out and they told me to just wait. I did that but now the £1 has come off AGAIN!

I've forgotten how to pay things manually. Do you get a slip or something? Will figure out how to catch up on payments today.

Luckycharm_2

And another thing...today I will not smoke any cigarettes as an MSE effort to save £12 per week.

I make no promises to myself that I can go without for the rest of my life but today I will not smoke. And that needs to be enough for now.

Happy money saving everyone.

beanielou

Great idea to take smoking one day at a time.

Luckycharm_2

I'm really impatient for this money to arrive. My wage should be here any day but the tax rebate could take a while. It's frustrating when you're paying interest every single day on debt. I'll have enough to pay off one credit card and one other debt, with nothing to spare.

I'll still have 2 credit cards and an overdraft to deal with. One of the CCs is interest free (until the end of March...and I was thinking it was June :mad:) so I'm going to challenge myself to pay off the other one before then. I'd like to pay off the overdraft first, just because that particular bank are a nightmare to deal with but the CC has higher interest so I'm going with that.

The balance on it is £3777.61. Can it be done in 3 months? I don't know but I'd like to try.

Two years ago my bank called in my overdraft with about 2 weeks' notice. It used to be £1800 and they reduced it to £450 (which is the current balance.) It was a terrible 2 weeks. I managed to juggle some cash and find about half of it and the other half got put on CCs. I've never trusted them since. I'd like to close this account and have no more dealings with them but at the moment it's just not possible. Also, my interest free CC is with this bank.

I need a new plan.

Luckycharm_2

My plan is:

Keep matched betting. I think I need to be less fussy about odds and get it moving faster. I'll get onto that today.

Sell the second car. I still haven't done anything about getting it going.

We're changing our phone and internet provider to a cheaper package and sky are offering a £50 M&S voucher for new customers. Plan to use this for food and put £50 from food budget into debt repayment.

Ebay! Why do I put it off so much?!

Scratch cards...£1.40 made so far :T

Mystery shopping. Nothing has come up in this area for the last week and a half. Maybe then loads will come at once?

To pay this CC off by the end of March I need to find £269.82 per week starting now.

Oh my goodness. I better get busy.

Have a good day everyone.

Luckycharm_2

So, my wage has arrived and I'm off into town to juggle some money and make some payments. I'll update my signature once this is all done.

I'm also thinking I should pay all the MOT money to a CC. The MOT is not due for 3 weeks so I could save some interest and then pay the MOT with the CC. Does that make sense? It means it won't be sitting in a savings account making very little interest.

I've done my scratchcards, matched betting is up to date (waiting for a game to happen tomorrow) and have almost completed the Christmas spend under budget.

Still need to fix the car.

Still need to put stuff on ebay.

Have a good day everyone.

Luckycharm_2

Just checked my MOT and it's not due 'til February 5th so the cash for it can sit on my credit card until then.

Just been for a look on some of the boards other than DFW. There are so many people who know so much about personal finance. Where did they learn it all? Was I absent from school that day? I'm trying to think past my debt free day to how I would manage my finances then but I really have no idea.

Just had to cancel a night out as it's snowing like crazy here and the roads are getting bad. I'm disappointed but hey, it'll save me some cash. Think I'm becoming obsessed. Or mean. Or maybe both. :rotfl:

Luckycharm_2

Just made a big payment to my nastiest credit card. £600 of extra money, £150 from tax budget I don't need and £100 of MOT money.

I've adjusted my signature and feeling chuffed. :j

Luckycharm_2

I'm now thinking that I should be getting out of the habit of using my credit card. So putting MOT cash on it to use later was silly. Plus it will show my debt as being lower than it really is.

I'm terrible at this. I really am. I have to check my accounts every day cos it all seems so complicated I can't keep track in my head.

Still, the last of the payments should happen on monday so then I can total everything up, see where I stand and start to make a plan for Feb.

Maybe I should put the MOT money in my matched betting bank account so I can get more bets on the go? Or would that just confuse me more?

Any advice anyone?