TestCall's First Steps

TestCall

Hello everybody!

First of all, I've been a lurker here for a very long time. Thanks to everyone who's posted on these forums, you've been very informative.

Now, let me introduce myself. I'm male, 21, single, blue eyes, brown ha... oh wait that's not very relevant! I live in Surrey, and I have two jobs - one full time and I'm on the staff bank at my local hospital (flexible hours - whenever I'm available and they need somebody).

I don't have an accurate SoA for you all yet because I tend to bury my head in the sand and not keep records, however I've got myself all set up to start keeping a tab on things from tomorrow. I'll give you the key bits of information in this post though.

First, my income. My main job has a variable salary. It's made up of my basic salary plus a vaiable component for each day I work and commission.

Out of this comes my pension salary sacrifice (5% of basic salary - £49), health insurance (£30), buy-one-get-one-free share scheme (£30), share options scheme (£100), union fee (£11).

After all of this, I can come out with anything between £750 and £1600. Either extreme is rare, and I usually take home £1200-1300.

My second job is hourly paid so obviously depends on how much work I do. The least I've ever got from them is £200 in a month, though I can get more. Only problem here is that I'm taxed the full 20%.

So, my outgoings.

I share a house - rent plus bills works out as £420.

Mobile phone works out at about £50-80.

Petrol - not had my car long but I've budgeted for £100 next month.

Gym - about £50.

Sadly, these are the only expenses I have a real idea about. Food, cigarettes, everything else - I just don't have a clue. This is how I ended up in debt - no self control.

So, my debts:

Car Loan:
£6473 remaining.
Only 2 payments made out of 60 Monthly £159.
14% APR

Aqua Card:
£956 balance. £1250 limit.
35.9% APR

Vanquis Card:
£650 balance. £750 limit.
39.9% APR

Barclaycard Initial:
£245 balance. £260 limit.
27.9% APR

Capital One:
£180 balance. £200 limit.
34.9% APR

Littlewood Account:
£50 balance. £700 limit.
0% APR

Finally, I have a £1500 overdraft, which I believe is 17.9% but must check. I tend to use the whole lot every month.

My credit history isn't great - too many searches, two late payments in the last two years and only been in the country for three years.

As of right this very minute, my total overdraft/card debt is:

£3245

Add on car loan:

£9717

Though bear in mind this is at the start of the month - it's taken into account debt repayments and rent for this month but not other bills and outgoings.

Phew... this is complicated.

I think that's about it. Hopefully I'll be able to come up with a decent plan at the end of the month when I know where I stand spending-wise. In the meantime, I need to cut down on my reliance on junk food and takeaway and just keep a closer eye on everything.

Any questions please ask - I've probably missed bazillions of things.

Thanks all!

TestCall

TestCall

Oops, meant to add, car tax and insurance has been paid up until June next year, haven't really thought about how I'll pay next year - was planning to put it on a card when it came about, also its first MOT next July. Suppose I should start thinking about this too.

boredofbeingathome

Hi and welcome to the boards. Of course your details are relevant we are a nosey lot...and have daughters the same age, not that i'm matchmaking or anything:rolleyes::rotfl:

Good luck with your Debt free journey.:D

TestCall

Haha!

Thanks for the good wishes!

shaun40400

welcome to the mad house that is the dairy room testcall
their are loads of good folk on here that will guide you to the promised land,with info and help
and other that will kick you up the asre!! when you need it,,
me im barking ,,,,so wont be much help at all:rotfl::rotfl:
you need to do a proper soa,and start a spending dairy...

welcome aboard you have taken the 1st step:T:T

POSITIVE_AND_FOCUSED

Ive found having a spending diary is really helpful! Good luck!

penelopedee_2

Hello TestCall - good luck with the debt busting.

I agree with the previous posters, start a spending diary. Much easier to see where the money's going when its written down.

Just re-started my DFW journey - so happy to nag you if you need it (I'm going to be here for quite a while:o).

The only obvious thing I can advise is to start bashing the card with the highest interest rate first - use the snowball calculator (not sussed out the links yet but I think its on the set messages at the top of the DFW board).

Lemon_Tree

welcome to the boards you'll get lots of help here. Your mobile phone charge looks huge is there not anyway you can reduce this? sounds like you need to start a spending diary so you can see what you do actually spend/waste each month. It's always a shocker but it will help you fully work our your SOA. You need to work out how much you spend annually on your car, divide by 12 and then start saving that each month, that's the only way i can cope - saving each month for the annual bills.
good luck, debt free isn't an unachievable goal but will take some changes and some work

TestCall

Lemon_Tree wrote: »

Your mobile phone charge looks huge is there not anyway you can reduce this?

My basic contract (iPhone) is £45, on top of that I call family in Ireland a lot, so can't really do much from what I can see.

Fire_Fox

Welcome to diaryland!! The first thing I notice is your most expensive card is 40% interest. This means that everything you spend is costing you 40% more than the headline price as you are not using this money to pay off debts. So .... have you cut up those cards yet? And have you found the demotivator?
http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/protect/demotivator/

Do you really need the £30 health insurance at age 21 and the £100 share options scheme? The BOGOF shares and pension sound sensible tho!! There are health insurance schemes (Bupa/ PruHealth) whereby you effectively get a free gym membership if you attend regularly:
http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/health/cheap-gym-membership
Without being rude it's pretty pointless paying out £50 a month for the gym when you smoke and eat a lot of junk food and takeaways (I am qualified in smoking cessation, nutrition and fitness!).

How far into the iPhone contract are you? You can usually drop one level after nine months, and possibly renegotiate the deal entirely if the contract is nearly up? I would recommend you speak to O2 and/ or your landline provider to see if you can get inclusive calls to Ireland in future.

Car - do you actually need to run this? Is there any possibility you could walk or cycle (instead of gym!), use public transport, car share at work or a combination? I would suggest you add up how much the car actually costs you over the course of the year (tax, MOT, insurance, depreciation, repairs, petrol, loan interest) and see if you'd be better off without it. Often when people have a car to enable a second job the cost of the car negates all the income from the second job - as you say it's taxed at 20%. :rolleyes:

Hope that helps!

TestCall

Righty, so, my main post for today. I'm going to try and be disciplined and post something substantial each day.

I've been thinking about my cards. Should I just stop using them and pay a reasonable amount off each month, or should I keep using them and pay more off to save on interest? For example, if I do some of my shopping or put my petrol on a card, then I can budget to pay that much off the card because I know I can then spend it. Wait, I'm confusing myself!

In my first post I put up my figures minus this months payments, so I thought that was cheating a bit. So here are my proper figures:

Vanquis - 39.9%
Now: £721.07
Paying £71 this month.

Aqua - 35.9%
Now: £1018.05
Paying £52 this month.

Capital One - 34.9%
Now: £190.59
Paying £10 this month. (Already paid minimum payment after statement came out.)

Barclaycard - 27.9%
Now: £252.74
Paying £7 this month. (Already paid minimum payment after statement came out.)

Overdraft - 17.9%ish
Now: £1161.52

Littlewoods - 0%
Now: £85.51
Paying £35 this month, and next month, then about £15.51 and it's gone.

So, what I'll do, I'll use the before-payment figures above for my debt as of today, then the first of each month I'll compare using the same figures.

I'm going to focus on just my card and overdraft debt at the moment. Yes, my car loan is a debt but it's not urgent. If worst comes to worst I sell the car, take the equity hit and that's that. That aside, I can't overpay, so the only option is to start saving once I've got the cards paid off until I reach a settlement figure. So, I'm not including it in my main debt figure.

I don't really know what to do with my overdraft - it's my lowest rate so leaving it until last anyway.

So, my total do-something-about-able debt as of today is £3429.48.

My to do list:

• Need damage to car repaired - someone hit it in car park and ran. Scuff on bumper, £140. Plus treating her to an alloy wheel repair £60. Total £200.
• Lodge cheque for £150. Payroll took it from me for my contributions to last year's share scheme which I stopped and cashed in to pay my car insurance. They've done it again this month so another cheque will come in the middle of the month. Total £300 back.
• I have €470 cash to change back to Sterling. Not sure of best place to exchange, usually use my bank (Lloyds). So being very pessimistic rates-wise and budgeting this as £350, anything extra is a bonus.
• Need to budget for next month. Was away from work all of July because of surgery at the beginning of the month, so basic pay only next month. After tax, deductions, will work out at roughly £750. Ouch!
• Try to get more hours at second job.

So, in total, £550 extra this month, £200 will go to car repair, £350 Vanquis. That's the plan at the minute anyways.

If anything else pops into my mind I'll be back in a flash!

And thanks everybody for your support so far!

TestCall