My Debt-Free-Wannabe Diary

DontDoDebtKids

Spent £100.73 this week :eek: and had FIVE no spend days :j. So a mixed result.

Spending Summary

£44.63 Petrol
£1.70 Lunches at work
£49.40 Going out (Curry & Drinks)
£5.00 Wedding Present

Total £100.73

Left until 27th August :eek: :eek: :eek: £29.31 :eek: :eek: :eek:

ALSO: MS payment was still not taken this morning and it turns out, when I investigated on internet banking, that the direct debit had been cancelled :mad: Why??? I didn't do it and haven't changed it over to Alliance & Leicester yet delibarately. THEY HAD BETTER NOT CHARGE ME :mad: I made the payment manually but it went today so it'll take three days to get there. Should I phone them and complain? Or wait and see what happens?

DontDoDebtKids

Phoned MS and told them that something had gone wrong. Got them to cancel the £20 charge they were planning to "apply to my account" :mad: and set up a new direct debit to come from my A&L account.

Will phone them back on Thursday to check they've got the money!

DontDoDebtKids

OK. Some rather good news.

As normal, got my rental income today = £654.86 so not going to go completely overdrawn today.

But, got my payslip today and I have been promoted and given a bonus so I get £3986.53 tomorrow. Holy moley! :money: :money: :money:

Taking my spending money of £714.67 and my joint account contribution of £200 from that I am left with £3071.86 in my HSBC account. Overdrawn by £1082.52 at the moment so balance will go up to £1989.34.

That's loads to put towards debt clearing but should I use it to pay off some of the dreaded Egg Loan or should I save it for now and pay off Capital One when the interest rate goes up from 0%?

I just re-read my payslip and I paid a whopping £434 towards my student loan this month - so far £946 this tax year. Blimey. There can't be much of it left at this rate, surely?

Imelda

hey DDDK,

Well done on the promotion!

I too am nearing the end of my dreaded student loan, the SLC are pretty crap, I rang up for a balance and the most up to date one they could give me was for April 2005!! Aparently they don't get the figures from the IR until September. Anyway, I knew I must be coming to the end (from the figure the SLC could give me, my P60 and my payslips this financial year to date) and so I photocopied all my documents and sent them off to the SLC. They replied promptly and have given me a rough estimation of when I should be all paid up (they can't tell until September for definite) and then it takes up to 42 days for the IR to stop taking payments. Therefore my last payment to the SLC will be 25th September 2006. I will hopefully get a refund of £30. Maybe you should consider doing that too? It seems the IR will continue to take payments until the SLC tell them to stop, the SLC can only guage when that will be based on your contributions for the previous year and so if, like me, you get a good payrise/ bonus you could be paying extra for months. Sorry I have waffled! Well done again!

DontDoDebtKids

Statement of Affairs

Account Balances

HSBC £1989.34
FD £0.00
A&L £714.67
Joint £211.34
MS -£746.03
Total £2169.32

Debts (to clear)

Capital One £3260
Egg £6756.05
Lloyds £1986.28
Amex £6123.16
Total £18,125.49

Debt Free Date

If I up my monthly debt payments to £1200 and I pay £1500 off my Capital One balance with my bonus for this month, my new debt free date is:

:money: NOVEMBER 2007:money:

Wow that's down to 15 months!

DontDoDebtKids

Right, I needed a motivational boost as all these large negative figures are quite depressing really :mad:

So, I paid £125.49 towards my Capital One card through Internet Banking.

I now only have £18,000 in unsecured consumer debt.

DontDoDebtKids

Imelda wrote:

hey DDDK,

Well done on the promotion!

I too am nearing the end of my dreaded student loan, the SLC are pretty crap, I rang up for a balance and the most up to date one they could give me was for April 2005!! Aparently they don't get the figures from the IR until September. Anyway, I knew I must be coming to the end (from the figure the SLC could give me, my P60 and my payslips this financial year to date) and so I photocopied all my documents and sent them off to the SLC. They replied promptly and have given me a rough estimation of when I should be all paid up (they can't tell until September for definite) and then it takes up to 42 days for the IR to stop taking payments. Therefore my last payment to the SLC will be 25th September 2006. I will hopefully get a refund of £30. Maybe you should consider doing that too? It seems the IR will continue to take payments until the SLC tell them to stop, the SLC can only guage when that will be based on your contributions for the previous year and so if, like me, you get a good payrise/ bonus you could be paying extra for months. Sorry I have waffled! Well done again!

That's scary. I'm going to wait for my student loan statement next month and then see how much I have left to pay off. Hopefully not too much...

DontDoDebtKids

I thought I'd post a quick update on this as have been busy...

Present Capital One Balance: £3,134.51

Quidco earnings tracked: £156.32 (£114.32 this month) + £50 expected from A&L = £206.32

Rpoints: £15.16 (to hit bank account soon) + 2000 (£20) for signing up to Cahoot Savings Account and £5 Rpoints bonus = £40.16

Matched Betting Profits: £10.62 + £20.22 (from Bingo to arrive soon) = £30.84

Bonus Money to go towards Capital One: £1,500

Total Earned: £1,777.32 leaving £1,357.19 to go

DontDoDebtKids

A good sign!

I was offered two free tickets to a concert tonight (good seats too!). So you're thinking, well take them then! The only slight problem was that tickets were for a concert in London so would need to rush home from work, get train tickets to London (never cheap) and get food/dinner near concert venue as wouldn't have time to eat food first.

So, by saying thanks but no thanks I've saved about £20 for train tickets and £10-15 for food (or £5 for a sandwich I suppose).

DontDoDebtKids

Time for the report of my fourth week of having a spending diary.

Spent a total of £239.60 this week :eek: but:

- £31.45 are expenses which will be paid back to my bank account fairly shortly
- £1 was spent on a SIM card in order to get £20 cashback (Quidco)
- £85 was spent hiring a car when in fact cashback (Quidco) and my share being only half brings this to a more reasonable £39.05
- £50 was changed into foreign currency that I haven't spent all of
- £60.90 was spent on travel insurance (my half is only £30.45) Update: decided this to be paid from the joint account

I actually only spent £11.25 this week :j :j :j

Spending Summary

Lunches : £2.70
Car Rental: £39.05
Forex: £50
Food, Sweets & Magazine at airport after waiting in stupid queues at Heathrow while people asked to test their milk, take their shoes off and generally not allowed to have any luggage at all: £8.55

Total : £100.30