A Valleys Adventure

starnac

Christmas is officially over. We had a lovely day though and DD had a good day even though she didn’t really understand what was going on. She still has presents left to open! We were very good and only bought her a few presents as family and friends were buying for her and we put money in her bank account as well. This way she didn’t end up with too many presents and we didn’t over spend on her either. She’ll appreciate the money more when she’s older anyway.

Nothing much going on in the DFW stakes since I paid off £210 to the mint card. I’m hoping that 2010 is going to be a good year. We’ve already saved 12% of our deposit but I’m starting to worry that we won’t be able to afford to move and pay off our debt next year. Whenever I’ve got a bit of spare money I spend ages deciding where it should go….should I put it in our savings so we can buy a house and have our own space or should I make an overpayment on one of the debts so we can be debt free quicker?? I know I can’t do both but what I want is for at least one of the debts (probably the mint card) to be gone by the time we buy a house (which I hope will be the summer)

I feel that our whole life is on hold and we’re getting nowhere.

starnac

oh dear. i finally had a go at the snowball thing and that tells me that mt DFD is April 2016. that's 6 years away :eek: there's no way it's going to take me that long. i want to be debt free by the end of 2011 hopefully earlier. using my own calculator that means i have to pay off just short of £500 a month to clear it all by dec 2011 :eek:

starnac

i've been playing with the snowball thing and think that april 2016 isn't right. the reason that's coming is because the Barclaycard is on a DMP so DH pays £80 a month. that's fixed and we can't overpay due to the DMP which is why the snowball has given me such a long DFD. i have asked DH to ring Barclaycard and ask them to cancel the DMP now and just go back to how it was in the hope that we can overpay and start to rebuild his credit rating. DH is a bit wary of doing this as it's on a very low interest rate and cancelling the DMP will mean that the interest rate will shoot up meaning the actual amount coming off the debt each month would be lower. I think that repairing his credit rating is more important so i'll have to try to convince him now in january.

lucielle

Didn't want to read and run. Can you just leave off the barclaycard for now and concentrate on the others. It is accruing low interest, whilst the others I'm assuming will be higher. Once you have got rid of them throw everything you've got at the Barclaycard.
L

beanielou

Have you put your name down for social housing?

catspaw

I agree with beanielou: get on the housing list.
I know you are saving to buy somewhere but on a DMP is that going to be feasable?

starnac

we haven't got our name on the housing list. do you think it'll be that hard with the DMP? that's one of the reason i want DH to cancel it. i knew we'd have some difficulty but i didn't think it would be too bad. do you think i'm kidding myself??

catspaw

Getting on a housing list won't be a problem, a mortgage migght be with a bad credit record.

Renting shouldn't be: some agencies ask for a credit check and some don't.
I wouldn't worry too much though. Put your name down.........and while you're waiting your debts will still be going down.

starnac

thanks for the reply catspaw. i will look into it.

i signed up for the 1 debt vs 100 days take 2 challenge yesterday. my target will be the mint card balance. i managed to pay off £1k last time the challenge was run so hopefully i'll clear the same again if not a bit more.

starnac

We’ve had a lovely few days here thanks to the snow. DH had 2 days worth of work cancelled (bad for debt busting) but it was good for us as a family as we got a load of sorting done. DH and I went through all DD’s baby clothes (can’t believe she used to fit in them *sob*) and toys and sorted through them. We’ve put some into vacuum bags to keep in case we have another one, and others into bags to give to charity. Once we’d started we just kept going. We sorted out a lot of boxes. We’ve still got a long way to go but it feels really good seeing what we’ve done already.

I’ve started going through all my craft stuff and have brought a box to work with me tonight to sort through and take photos of things to list on ebay. Hopefully I’ll declutter and make some money at the same time. That’ll be really good.