The big challenge - pay off £20k by Christmas 2010

bLaZiNgDucK

Hi All

It was all going sooo well and well its all gone abit pete tong, have started a diary to try and keep me on track will attempt to do better next month.

Well done everyone keep up the good work I shall be backwith you next week.

Duckie:o

gailey_2

Right need to update as got my figures slightly wrong.

confered with hubby last night about debts paid so far and looked at statements havent added in for dec

me-£80barclays od28/12/09
hubby -£30 interest on his current account od roughly same as mine but when you work out how much interest 12*30=£360 a year for £2700od mines £1750 and costing mesame which means we as couple paying £720 a year
enough for a family holiday!

Feel ashamed never noticed this before.Is it just me but having od never seemed that scary compared to loan or credit card?
I guess its fact you not having to pay a fixed amount back by certain date that makes a difference.

or fact that having od last 10year just seemed norm since student days,most of my freinds lived within their od to credit/boom years.
I think first 5years were interest free but last 5years paid £1800 to banks for having anod thats not evenincluding ridicolous charges on top which run into thousands!

its scary to workout total figures but oddly makes me fee lhappier as more in control,no beer goggleson for me!

so question/advice needed re overdrafts.

how many of you doing this challange also have overdrafts to payoff included in total debts and how do you priorterise what should be paid off first.
interest rates.

im planning catalougue first as 44%interest rate-hoping be gone by april
barclaycard 29%but think thats gone up!-gone by nov
overdraft says 1.49%
loan-not sure need to check.

not sure what rates hubbys paying?

wondering if he should move his current account currently with santander /abbey but he also has cc with them and imconcerned they may offset and take from his account.

whats best move account and try get another bank to match his od?
not sure that would happen asguessing credit rating not too good.

or move account to basic account and setup standing order for £50-60 monthly to paydown od.interest added 30quid per month sowouldonly be paying £30 a month so not much would be a start!

so dec total should have been £665paid.

Jan need to add

hubby £200payday loan plus cant remember if mentionedhe paid£103of his santander card yesterday plus £56 i paid to additions this month.

so total so far paid as today=£1439!

but we have more payments to make this month

me-next directory
me loan
me -barclaycard not sure how much much as i can afford
me od-exited as nearly back withinlimit!

hubby-tesco card
hubby-bank charges/interest

roughly another £356 on top of £744 already paid up this month.
Thats shocked me to be honest as if everythings paid then will mean we paid£1100 between us both and only hubbyworks and an a horrid month so theres hope for rest of year!

It will be huge motivater and achievemnet if I can find a job and keep living on basics then i feel hopeful we can do it!.

hubby has £10,000 cards+od
me £5000 od,card, cat and loan

havent included hubbys loan in this as seemstoo huge figured we pay everything elsethenfree upmoney to pay off loan early as taken out over 6years, year half already paid can then 2011triple monthly payments £1155 which will hopefully mean 2011loanwill be gone too!
2012be all about saving for house deposit+sharesave comes out

right best go im waffling and finacial daydreaming!Just proud we getting through this month!

The mountain seems bit smaller than I thourght!

poohbear59

S.Worth wrote: »

Erm, you haven't got a sig....:p

Oops!!

milliemonster

Paid another £52 towards the debt today, added a fair bit on this month though due to falling off the wagon somewhat but overall total still coming down so not all bad, just have to get my MSE hat back on now

debt.b.gone

Just a quick update from me...have been keeping up with the challenege although not posting much! I bought myself a pad and pen which seems to being used more!

So far i have paid off £1190.13 towards the big 20k!! not bad but could do better!! Unexpecte bills keep landing though..so hindering my debt busting slightly!!

x

sarahs999

Gailey, I know just waht you mean about overdrafts being less scary than credit cards and loans. And in fact they are, because no one makes you pay off a certain amount of your overdraft each month like they do with CCs, so if you're having a bad month, you just soak up a bit more debt.

But we realised late last year that we too were paynig silly money for the sake of having overdrafts. Our total overdrafts (including joint account) came to £6000! So this is what we did.

Saved to pay off the smallest in one chunk (£1000, joint account). Did this in November.

Then in December I balance transfered my sole account OD (£1700) to my virgin card - both virgin and egg will allow you to do that from a current accuont and Virgin just happened to be offering me 0% on it. I've already paid back £700 of that, so £1000 to go.

Then this month my husband has applied and been accepted for a Virgin card himself, to transfer his £3300 OD to them (again, 0%).

This means we're starting again from positive balances in the new year. I'm happy to say it's working well for us. It's a big trust thing for hubby to do this as he's hopeless with money (he'll agree). But I really wanted him to pay off his own overdraft rather than me organising and paying it off with our joint money, so that he really understands just how long it takes to pay something large like that off when you've run it up. As I said to him, I could take it off your hands but then you'd just forget about it and rejoice in having a 0 overdraft, while I get all the worry about it. This way it's fairer and encourages him to be more responsible. I'll still be looking at his statements each month though!

So I think if you can get and properly manage your BT, then you should do it. Virgin offer is still on.

madmich666

Hi all

Finally I have paid some bills. Ive overpaid to southern electric and paid the normal 'nominal' amounts to other debts.

total paid today was £24 not alot but will go up alot when i pay my dad back. off to up dated my sig.

S.Worth

gailey wrote: »

so question/advice needed re overdrafts.

I'm no expert on this, but I think shifting the debt to zero % should be your first priority, can you switch the Santander CC to VIrgin? I've just done it the other way!) Then once you have the best rates you can, you clear the highest interest first. Loans can be tricky, as sometimes they make you pay the whole lot including interest whether you pay early or go full term so it may not be worth repaying it early.

As far as OD's are concerned treat them the same as any other debt, yours sounds quite expensive?

I've done my monthly budget now and the first thing I did was clear the OD so that finances were easier to follow, now I only have to use the OD if something hits a fan. This went against the above advice, as the OD was 0%, but it makes it easier for me to follow where the money's going if I start from zero rather than a negative figure (multi tasking is apparently not a male strong point, maths and worrying about money at the same time gave me headache!). Also it cheers me up to see the bank account positive all the time .

HTH,

SW

starnac

PAD of £2.50 for me today (wednesday)

juicygirl

Hi all!

Today is a good day for me, finally got paid for work I did last September/October that I thought I could kiss goodbye too! Anyway it came in today so after I put some away for tax I was able to pay £400 to my Egg loan and £337.35 to my ISA.

Absolutely delighted. It was money I wasn't expecting so I just treated it as if it didn't exist and used it to make payments

Sig updated!

To everyone else - it's nearly the end of the month so heads up and keep going, some bigger payments wil be just around the corner for us all xxx