Reach for the stars...

MrsMoo2U

Oh Nic, you do make me smile. I will even forgive the ears comment. Really? I never noticed his ears. Too busy looking elsewhere and listening to the chocolaty voice.
Rang a friend, she calmed me down a little, although it took her telling me about her grandson being in hospital with meningitis to put my problem back into some kind of perspective.

Wish I had a friend to pop in on, nearest one is 120 miles away. Still I have Moo and he seems to know that I need cheering up right not..

Karmacat

Yep, I don't have "popping" friends either ... internet definitely keeps me sane. Nic, how amazing that the firm contacted you when they received a blank form! Visualising like mad for you.

Butti

* Feels the need to go and look up Michael Buble's ears*

MrsMoo2U

Just went to take a a look at Michael's ears (any excuse for an oggle me) Anyway, I have decided that the reason that I didnt notice is because both of my brothers have sticky out ears and so its just normal to me but .... yep he does have sticky out ears. I find it cute myself. Wonder if my hints will mean that Santa brings me his new dvd?

Butti

niccatw wrote: »

:rotfl:

Butti, visualise the job you want, not the one you're applying for (if you know you're settling) and hopefully that job will materialise. I'm with MrsMoo; when I can see myself doing it, at some point I probably will be!

How will this help me on Friday when I am visualising being in a social housing development job and am being interviewed for a housing strategy job, especially given that I don't find strategy very exciting. I find building and furnishing and doing exciting.

Or am I supposed to get through Friday visualising strategy being exciting and then visualise my vocation after Friday.

Maybe I should just visualise a glass of wine.


B

niccatw

MrsMoo, I find sticky-out ears cute too, but they don't half distract me. I think I'll skip the psycho-analysis on that one though!

Karmacat - I know! I so would have treated it as survival of the fittest! If you can't send the right form in for the job, can you really be fit for that job!!! I suspect (if I get to interview stage) that the next stumbling block is likely to be that interviews take place when I am on holiday. However, I am visualising myself playing with a Kindle by a swimming pool - not answering questions for a job that sounds rather scary!

Butti, obviously you ought to be visualising a stepping stone and you being soooooo fabulous in the strategy job than it morphs into social housing development because you are being head-hunted! Simples.

Rather chuffed that I managed to get the word discombobulated into general conversation today. You just can't beat a bit of discombobulation!

niccatw

Nicca would like it to be known that perhaps a particular bank was indeed being extremely effective in their customer service. And that perhaps a particular loan account may have been taken offline because it was, in actual fact, closed due to being paid off.

Nicca doesn't want to get ahead of herself and be overly excited by this however as she doesn't really understand the jargon letter that arrived today with the statement. However, the jist seems to be that the interest has been adjusted in light of the overpayments and the statement would suggest a loan rebate of £879.46 and an "interbranch early repayment" reduced the balance to nil. Thus the balance part of the statement says "account closed".

Before celebrating, Nicca will check with the bank that it is, in actual fact, closed and find out where the recent overpayments that have not been credited to the account are hiding!

If the account is really paid off though, then Nicca should probably apologise for slagging off said bank. She probably won't though because banks are banks after all!

niccatw

Uhm, I should probably shuffle in humbly to admit that said bank has credited all overpayments to my current account and nothing is lost in transit anywhere.

It does seem very likely that the RBS is actually, eventually paid off!!

Maybe I just can't believe it because it has been such a drag! The RBS loan started life as a professional studies loan for my second degree. And at that time it was with HBOS. By the time I qualified, HBOS no longer did professional studies loans so it was a bit of a pallava trying to figure out what to do next.

Which would have been so much easier had I known about MSE at that time! Because instead I was niave and young and really had no idea about financial management, so the bank's financial adviser took me for coffee and we discussed what would happen next. What happened next was a stupidly large overdraft that cost me about £80 a month in interest. And essentailly my payments weren't even touching the sides!

It took me two years and a discussion with the adviser in the RBS, with whom I was opening a new bank account, to realise just how naive I had been. Thus the RBS loan was born.

I wasn't any less niave though, because I consolidated other debt to that loan. So what started life as a £10k professsional studies loan became a £20k loan.

And still I thought nothing much of it. There wasn't really any need to realise just how much money that was as I was renting and using credit cards if I needed to and I was earning and managing my payments each month. So it wasn't until I bought my flat that I gave myself the fright of my life with my monthly outgoings and realised I needed to sort it out!

Funnily enough, it co-incided with me joining this site! Though I didn't have the focus I now have. Which I think is just part of the process! It's very difficult to post your first SOA. It's even more difficult to accept the advice/criticisms/questions of "objective bystanders". But the more I started paying things off and the more I started understanding me and what I did and did not want to cut back on, the easier it became.

But is also, I believe, to do with keeping this diary. It keeps me on track, and brings me back on track when I fall off the wagon. So if you are reading this and wondering if you should start a diary - go for it! As you can tell, it doesn't have to always be about the money. Or the boss .

So, rough calculations are that my total debt is now sitting at £8.5k.

Next stop: Northern Rock. The Northern Rock debt is the 5% they loaned me as a deposit on my flat. Once it is cleared I can move to a new fixed rate (assuming there's enough equity in my flat, which may be negligible) when I need to. If I moved just now, I'd need to split the mortgage from this amount and the interest on the amount left with them jumps right up!

I'm not sure of the best way of overpaying this one. I think it might be to move overpayments to my bank's affiliated savings accoount (as it can be done quickly online) until I have the full amount and then send a cheque. I should be able to do that within 4-5 months I reckon. :j

Slow and steady wins the race (or at least, it does when you are the only one in the race).

I know I should get excited at this point, but I just get impatient!

psychopathbabble

Wow that is amazing news Nic! Did you not see the payments going back into current account? :rotfl:

niccatw

Na, they were "lost" for a few days and I don't routinely check that account as it's the one my pay goes into and then is syphoned off to various other accounts for direct debits and stuff. So it's generally empty by the 3-4th of the month and briefly full again on pay day.

By the way, I love the dress you are wearing in your night out piccies (the blue one). You look fab.