Eager Elephant's Effective Everyday Excursion ...

beanielou

Keep plodding.

Eager_Elephant

Well it's been 3 weeks since I have been on - we managed to survive to the end of the month. :T
I managed to juggle the accounts around so nothing bounced and DH had his acupuncture - this was all helped by a refund from Capital One as DH had overpaid by £65 (well it was actually me but it is DH's card)

So the lead up to Xmas is always a struggle, we never save any money and so all presents have to go on the credit card.
Just checked my spreadsheet and we are still paying off last years presents as well and I expect if I go right back on all my credit cards I am probably still paying off presents from the last 11 years :eek:

As you will all know DH has depression and Xmas is quite a bad time for him because as a child he had really crap Xmas' - mainly his mum being an alcoholic and drinking all the time which caused arguments and also the fact that since he was little he had to wrap his own presents :eek: so it was never a surprise ( I think he had to wrap as his dad worked and his mum was too pi55ed).

The good thing to come out of this is that he is a fantastic present wrapper so I never have to wrap a present :rotfl:

The bad thing is that DH thinks that the children should get everything they put on their lists :eek: as he thinks it will make a better Xmas for them, luckily the children are not greedy but it makes for interesting debates!!!

So all the presents have been purchased on my Halifax c/c which I had transferred a balance away from in the hope they would allow me to BT some of my Barclaycard so that puts paid to that plan.

I also have an oil bill to pay, 2 months owed to the childminder plus Dec is due anyday plus the Council Tax is behind for the last 2 months on both houses so this will have to go on the credit card - I can't afford to be summonsed as well

I have just checked the accounts and things are very tight - I have transferred some money to the childcare account and when that shows in a few hours I will pay Oct childcare.

I have lost my debit card for the childcare account so had to order a new one today which has put paid to my idea of setting up standing orders on a weekly basis as I need a card to be able to do it.

DH is again mentioning the idea of having a joint bank account again as I am running his for him and having to transfer money in every month to cover his bills anyway.

Other than that things are quite rosy :rotfl:.

Relative has been conned by a company pretending to be Microsoft, he paid them £95 for some anti0virus stuff which you can download for free :eek:. He also have them remote access to his computer :eek:. Even after I told him it was a con he did nothing until 3 hours later when I practically forced him to ring his bank to cancel the card :mad:. So he cancelled the card but instead of ringing to check the transactions he said he will wait until the card turns up and then check at a cash machine :mad: - I so hope they haven't cloned his card or anything.

Just realised that I did not update month end total's for November so will do that in a minute.

Eager_Elephant

Balances as per statements:

Barclaycard - £7268.39
Amazon - £1129.27
Abbey - £1063.85

Total - £9461.51

Reduction - £63.77

No excuses apart from I have really lost my get up and go :mad:

Eager_Elephant

Oh yeah plus I have 2 x car bills to pay- mine is only £65 but DH's is £400+ :eek:

I was also sent a letter from Abbey about personal loans so thought that it might be better to have a loan over 4 years instead of paying for 25 years + with Barclaycard so I applied but I was declined.

I then applied with Creation (sub-prime :eek:) as even their interest rate is better than Barclaycard but I was blinking turned down there as well :eek:

This seems to have given me some motivation to get this all sorted once and for all. Maybe I can have a Xmas where nothing goes on a credit card ???

So I have big plans to put into practice but need to wait for my new debit card to turn up :rotfl:

beanielou

Keep plodding.

sashybo

EE, I must have lost your thread but have found it again and am catching up.

So sorry to hear about the loss of your cat. I would be very upset at the death of any of my cats as they all have their own wee personalities and keep us both company in the house.

Good luck with getting to grips with the debt - you're trying and that's the important part. So you needed to use the credit card but at least by paying money off it before, you had the credit available to use when you needed it.

Eager_Elephant

Well we managed to get through Xmas and my birthday. Just have DD's birthday coming up.

Most of the presents went on the credit card so won't know exactly how much until the statements come in. I did have £70 in Amazon vouchers from surveys and a competition so that really helped.

We kept to our limit with the people we buy for and not sure how much we spent on the children.

Have got lots of lovely food which will last us for ever :rotfl:. Having the last of the turkey tonight in a stew.

Have got loads of ideas to get the debt paid off which I will post about later.

I have also joined PWPS in her £2012 in 2012 which starts 1/1.

I have done my updated survey positions and some are at payout now so I will wait until 1/1 to cash out and then I can count them in the challenge :T (Don't worry I am not cheating PWPS has the same idea:rotfl:)

Eager_Elephant

Balances as per statements:

Barclaycard - £7238.73
Amazon - £1455.28
Abbey - £1053.21

Total - £9747.22

Owed from HH acc - £330.36

Total owed by me - £9416.86

Reduction - £44.65

(HH account is Household Account, this is the start of the Xmas presents showing on the statements)

Eager_Elephant

So it is 2 years since I started this diary so I guess this is my anniversary :rotfl:

Since Jan 2011 I have managed to reduce my debts by £1427.14 :j:T and if we include the car repair bill which fell due in Jan aswell I have actually cleared £2361.14 :T:j:beer::j:T

I know it is not loads compared to some but I am well pleased as some months my reduction has been tiny.

I also double checked DH's although last year I was not dealing with his debts as we had separated finances but I do know that in Feb 2011 DH had debts of 18k+ when in Jan 2010 they were only £10k+.
This Jan they stand at 18k+ still .

As some of you know I am helping DH with his finances again due to a long term illness he has. I actually think DH did ok to stand roughly still as he had a few months of no/very low pay.

DH has asked me to take over his finances completely as he cannot be bothered, usually I would have said no but as he is so ill I have agreed so hopefully I will be able to get this debt down for him.

Also this time last year I was on the verge of a big decision which would have ended our marriage but within a few days DH became poorly and is still poorly with no proper diagnosis :mad:. We saw his usual GP on New Years Eve, we have not actually seen his proper GP since all this started as DH tends to have ermegncies so we see the on the day doctors but this time I booked the appt in November as he gets so booked up. Luckily he has agreed to refer us for a second opinion to the top world specialist in head pain who does a clinic at our local hospital once a month so not sufre how long we have to wait but it will hopefully be worth it :T

So that is a quick round up of the year, next post will be my plan to clear loads of debt in 2012 :T

Eager_Elephant

So I am going to have a Plan A and a Plan B as one of my contracts at work finishes in March 2012 and I am not sure if it will be renewed.

So which ever plan I follow I am going to make £2012 in 2012 - this is a thread from Up Your Income but PWPS has done her own mini challenge which I have joined as I don't have time to follow the large thread.
Money for this is mainly going to come from surveys which I have updated and will post below - some are ready for pay out so this will give me a boost. Most of this money will be in the form of Amazon vouchers which I will save towards Xmas and Birthdays :j

I also have a second job which is relief but I can only do this one day a week as I work 4 days a week - this is not guaranteed and only gives me about £15 per week (if I work) but it is money none the less.

I also have approx 3000 books from when I used to sell on Amazon so I need to sort these - I did take them to car boots and sell at 25p per book but did not make much. At the moment I am taking some into work and just giving them away for free as I would rather free up the space than worry about a few pence a book. I will double check the valuable ones and get those listed.

I thought I might try to enter 10 competitions a day - I will only enter where I actually want the prize or can use it as a present so this will save some money.

I also do mystery shopping/audits occasionally but I don't take them all as it is not always worth it and I don't have the time.

Plan A (if my contract is extended) will be to pay at least £150 per month to my debts on top of the minimum payments. I should have this amount free every month after essentials are paid.

Plan B (if my contract is not extended) will be to pay just the minimum payments and up my available days for relief to 3 days a week and then use this in the challenge above and to also pay extra to my debts.

Plan for DH is that his account will run itself, usually I have to pay some in to cover bills etc which leaves me short but he got some backpaid wages this month so he has some extra which I will move to savings to cover his car bills and any needed to cover bills etc can come from there.

Also we are getting quite a bit of Tax Credits until April when my last year and current year income will both be high so we will lose about £50 per week then so in the mean time I will be using the extra over and above what is needed for childcare to pay down the household debts owed on DH and mine credit cards and then hopefully we can close some accounts.

I also still have 2 houses to run and this is likely to continue all through 2012 but I have budgeted all that in so we will worry about that another time except I still need to get a washing machine and chest of drawers but I am trying to do that from Freecycle so it wont cost me anything.