small amount of debt but.....

dizzyblonde85

Hi all,
Sorry if this is not the right place or there is a similar post.....
I am in the situation of having a smallish amount of debt left(all relevant though). I have £800 on a credit card (tesco clubcard), im into my overdraft by approx £500 (arranged overdraft with nationwide) and a student loan of £5500 (not bad after 4 years at uni.)
To be honest I'm not even counting my student loan what with current rate of inflation etc, and it automatically gets deducted from my salary anyway.

So in total I have debts of about £1399 (+ student loan).
I am a physiotherapist in the NHS so lucky in terms of having pretty good job security and my actual take home is approx £1300 a month, more often than not it is more as I have worked a weekend or been on call.

My difficulty is this.... I am currently lodging with a friend and my partner is living with his parents. We would both love to live together and at the moment can only dream of buying our own place. We applied for the government schemes, mychoice homebuy (which then ran out) and ownhome (which is due to run out) and are looking at homebuy direct now as well. But actually half of me just says stick it out and save.... but that seems like it will take a long time.

After all my outgoings I have about £400... my question is do I put it all towards my debt, start to save some of it, save all of it?? I did have a lot of debt ( £13000) and I know I now only have a small debt but it is lingering and just doesnt seem to move/ hasnt changed in about 2 years..

Any thoughts or suggestions would be greatly appreciated

Diz
x

Meenu

I would save at least half of it, I know for shared ownership schemes you have to have £2k saved
Good luck

dizzyblonde85

Thank you, I do have a small amount of money that I can use when I am at the homebuying stage from my parents

josephine82

use it to pay off your debt. definitely. If you have money from your parent for home buying then definitely use the surplus to get rid of your debts. It will be better when you have your own home, (well mostly your own) then you will have more money to furnish, pay rent/mortgage etc.

Well, thats how I see it and what I'm doing!

Jo

RAS

Your first issue is what is the APR on the debts? This dictates which you pay off first.

lyndasharp

If you have £400 spare each month, then you could be debt free in 3 - 4 months. Personally I'd get that sorted first, and then save. Have you thought about renting somewhere with your partner first, it'd give you both a chance to save up?

dizzyblonde85

Thanks all, other half not keen on renting just because he sees it as money down the drain! Stipulation on the money from my parents is that it is specifically for the homebuying process.
Will just have to wait and save some more
Thanks