I can't beleive how easy it can be

Bonglecat

Well here comes the confession then bbb, I'm actually a bank manager. Not one in the branches, I work in the Head Office now doing Corporate stuff, but I did work my way up through the branch network. So I did at one point give people this advice as a job, oops. But I hope this makes people feel better that we get into a pickle too, oh and my bonus wasn't in the millions either. LOL

Bonglecat

Help I need to be stopped!!!

As I'm away from home this week and on my own, I've gone a bit crazy. I actually spent £7.50 on lunch yesterday at Waitrose £5 of it was on a Bento box which I didn't particularly enjoy. Then I took 2 drinks out of the mini bar goodness knows what they will have cost. Plus feeling a bit miserable makes me what to soothe myself with food, not good.

Today I met an old colleague for lunch we went to Cafe Rouge and I used the last of my £10 Tesco vouchers which covered most of my share. But I had croque saumon fume and ate the lot, not good for diet, I will have to hit the hotel gym again tonight. :j (that's me doing jumping jacks!!)

M&S Visa £7109.10, Catalogue £132.68, Personal Loan £936.68, Overdraft £Nil =
Total Outstanding Debts £8177.46

weight lost 11lbs to loss 24lbs

newmee

Just read this through and wanted to say Hi and well done. Keep up the good work. it's pay day for me today and i might well have been inspired to work out that budget i have been planning to start for several years :whistle:

Bonglecat

One thing I've never mentioned before is my method for paying all my bills. I've always done it this way since I was about 20 (before any household bills really), as I've mentioned recently I work for a bank and this bank used to have an account called the Household Management Account. This involved listing all your bills for the whole year dividing by 12 and then putting that amount each month into an account, it didn't matter if a bill came in before you had enough money, if it was on the schedule it would be paid, of course since this did involve a sort of overdraft you had to pay a fee.

Inspired by this account I made my own up, my bills are either monthly direct debit or paid annually. I keep a full record of what they are and am constantly checking and reviewing it to make sure the right amount goes in, it has a small overdraft limit on it in case of emergencies and since I've been doing this for nearly 20 years I rarely use it as the money is almost always already there. So what happens is that on pay day a standing order takes the bills amount from my main account and the bill paying account is left to it's own devices to pay all the bills. That way I know that the money in my main account is for food, petrol and a bit of fun stuff. :beer:

The reason I'm bring this up now is that I usually round up on my calculations for this account and looking at it this week I had about £100 surplus built up. So I decided that despite th fact the catalogue was 0% I would pay it off just to get it cleared and off my mind, so I did!! :j

It also means that I know have £36.13 cash back to spend with the catalogue or £27 if I want a cheque. I think that will be enough for a sundress for my holidays so I'll hold off and use it in a couple of months.

On that score the weight loss isn't going very well anymore since I joined the weight loss group at my gym it's stopped. One trainer thinks I need to step up my routines to shock my body and another thinks I need to drink more water (as food is currently going in but not necessarily coming out ) but I think that whenever I put myself under any pressure to try and lose weight I somehow sabotage myself . I think my next step is to look at portion sizes again and try to cut these down even further.

But Friday is pay day again which means another payment off the loan so that will be down to 3 payments left :j:T:j very excited about that. I have also managed 3 months of savings without needing to touch them, I'm thinking one more into the savings then I might pay another £500 off the credit cards whilst it's still on 0%.

I will update on Friday or Saturday just for the pleasure of showing the reduced amount on the loan .

M&S Visa £7109.10, Catalogue £Nil, Personal Loan £936.68, Overdraft £Nil =
Total Outstanding Debts £8045.78

weight lost 11lbs to loss 24lbs

Bonglecat

Yesterday I went to the dentist at 2:00 and then went home to "work from home" but I used the time to call the bank and see if I can arrange a personal loan to repay my husbands credit cards. £13296.34 on one and £11955.15 so in total £25251.49 for which we were making minimum repayments of £265 and £483 respectively (why the higher one had lower repayments is another conversation about credit card companies trying to screw money out of you, I mean what would they do if we actually paid it off!!!! :mad:) Anyway due to the consumer credit act we can obviously only borrow £25k max but I now have enough savings to cover the small short fall.

Well after an hour on the phone and being referred to underwriters, who were very interested in the 2 little sole accounts we have that only have expenses in and Corporate Card out, I finally talked them into to it, with the promise that we will close off both the credit cards as soon as the balance is paid and reduce the limit on my M&S card. :beer:

We looked at the repayment level and I was thinking it would be about 6 years or so, but when I said repayments between £500 - £600 (so that we save a little on what we are repaying at the moment and give us a little more monthly wiggly room) they said £580ish would be 4 years !!!! 5 years would be £483 which saves us £260 per month on repayment, tempting but I want this gone asap. :cool: Then the guy tells me that in recent months they have brought in a feature where you can make overpayments whenever you want, no penalty, your repayments don't change but the term comes down. :T So I thought what the hey go for it. This way some of the monthly savings can go on the M&S card, the rest into the savings account and we can make lump sum payments as and when it builds up. Yippee!!! :j

So all we have to do is go into a branch probably on Thursday to sign, and then make the credit card payments. I will be standing over DH whilst he calls the credit card companies to ensure he closes them off. Then I will give him a 2nd card on my M&S account FOR EMERGENCIES ONLY, as I pointed out to him last night, with all the other savings I've made there should be absolutely no reason to use a credit card anyway as we have the money in our bank accounts. I went on to the M&S site to see if I could order the card on-line (you can't) and noticed they now have an on-line limit reduction option, my limit was £8,400 I have now reduced it to £7,500 and will keep it moving down in line with my repayments. I figure the most I will need on a credit card limit is £5,000 that is allowing for ash cloud style disasters which necessitates hotels and flights, unlikely but...... And don't forget that is total family credit card limit as DH won't have one of his own.

So I can't tell you the relief, we were never worried about making the payments but before I got them on to DD my husband would never open the bills so I had to guess how much to send and sometimes got it wrong which caused charges. My main concern was the fact they never reduced and I honestly couldn't see how we could make a real reduction in them, now I know that within 5 years it will be gone. The other thing is that going from Ridiculous% APR to 6.2% flat means that instead of paying somewhere in the region of £7,000 :eek: a year in interest with practically no capital reduction we will be paying £4,500 in interest in totally over the 5 years. Oh I can't tell you what this means to me. And it's just occured to me that we can get the cards paid off before the next payment is due and the loan payment won't come out until May so that means another £680 which I would pay off the M&S card with :beer:

I have also decided that I will cancel my catalogue account as well that has a limit of £7,500 on it and I've never been more than £1,000 in debt with them. But the point is I rarely ever go (pleasure) shopping now but the Littlewoods site can be so tempting and I don't need that in my life.

M&S Visa £7109.10, Catalogue £Nil, Personal Loan £936.68, Overdraft £Nil =
Total Outstanding Debts £8045.78

weight lost 11lbs to loss 24lbs

Bonglecat

Just got back from the bank, signed the loan forms the loan was drawn-down immediately and they made 2 x £10k payments (their limit) to the credit cards. I will be able to finish off the rest on internet banking tomorrow. :j Got the new MBNA bill just this morning so I know exactly how much to pay to clear it and hopefully we'll get the Barclays any day. This also means that the £680 usually spent on paying these off this month will be able to go on to the M&S credit card and then next month the £483 loan repayments will start going out. And to make sure I've already cancelled the Direct Debits to both credit card companies.

It also means I can reduce the amount going into the bills account by £200 and up savings by the same. So my plan there is to get £1000 emergency fund and then save up lump sums to reduce the M&S card, which is my main focus now. Once my little loan is repaid in July I will put the £234 to the card too.

I've also got the confidence now that we can afford to get some jobs done, firstly we need to get the toilet sorted. The inlet into the cistern isn't fully closing off and so it drips into the cistern which in turn drips out of the overflow. I'm sure it's a simple job but I'm not willing to give it a try. So I called the plumber and he's coming tomorrow morning, hopefully it won't cost too much but I've got £100 ready just in case. :cool:

And I've finally got hubbies permission to call a painter and decorator to start work on the house. We've been here 6 years in July and nothing has been done. It didn't matter at first as the decor was quite nice and neutral but it's getting shabby now. Plus I'll finally feel like it's our home rather than a rental, which it isn't.

So all in all I'm rather happy at the moment.

M&S Visa £6931.38, Catalogue £Nil, Personal Loan £702.51, Overdraft £Nil =
Total Outstanding Debts £7633.89
Savings £980

New Joint Loan = £29023.63

weight lost 11lbs to loss 24lbs

Bonglecat

Just tell me if I'm getting over excited but I made the final 2 payments to the credit cards today and I'll get DH to close them off tomorrow and I've ordered him the 2nd card on my M&S card (for emergencies only!!) . Then I took the £680 which would normally got to the credit card repayments and put £80 into the savings and £600 to the M&S card. :j

But now I'm also thinking can we afford to start overpaying on the mortgages. We've got 2 as I had a fixed rate on my flat and it was cheaper to keep that as it was and transfer over to the house then start from scratch, so that one is only £31k and the repayments are £161pm if I could double those well..........:cool::cool::cool:

Oh and BTW the plumber is actually here apparently the bits can't be fixed so it's a case of replacing the inside workings and well that's not simple with old and new size pipes etc. So all in all £80 but again on the plus side I have it available and don't need to borrow

M&S Visa £6331.38, [STRIKE]Catalogue £Nil[/STRIKE], Personal Loan £702.51, [STRIKE]Overdraft £Nil[/STRIKE] =
Total Outstanding Debts £7033.89
Savings £1060

New Joint Loan = £29023.63

weight lost 11lbs to loss 24lbs

Bonglecat

I checked out the M&S card and they have now received both of the payments (i.e. my usual £180 and the extra £600 this month) So with my balance at £6331.38 I decided to reduce my credit limit again 2nd time in as many weeks :eek: I'm so pleased that I managed to reduce this by £800 this month and the limit from £8400 to £6500. I've also decided that instead of reducing what goes into the bill paying account by £140 (saving from putting DHs credit cards on to a loan) instead to up the M&S payment from £180 to £300 per month. I've even set up a Direct Debit to this effect, so I can't back down now. That means in 2 months it will be under £6,000 and I might even reduce the limit again at that point.

I feel like I'm wishing my life away but I can't wait to get my personal loan closed. I considered using the savings but I wouldn't get a lot of interest back (if any) the repayments are affordable and I do want to use some of the savings to get soem jobs done, the toliet cistern being one case in point. Next new Mortice locks on the front door and them getting the bedroom decorated. But anyway once that is gone (repayments £234pm) I will up the M&S card payments to £500 per month just in time for the 0% period to end.

I've used the catalogue cashback to buy a sundress in size 14 very pretty and that means I can now close the catalogue credit account down :j As for the weight loss still not a lot moving on the scales but I measured myself and and my hips and waist have both gone down by 3 inches I am doing a lot of weights and stuff so perhaps the fat is going down but the muscle is going up?

Anyway off to London at lunchtime for the rest of the week so really need to take care of a) what I eat, no cooked breakfasts etc. b) exercise, the hotel does have a gym and I have put my kit in my case and c) how much I spend on lunches, since I have no other option and around Canary Wharf is not cheap

M&S Visa £6331.38, [STRIKE]Catalogue £Nil[/STRIKE], Personal Loan £702.51, [STRIKE]Overdraft £Nil[/STRIKE] =
Total Outstanding Debts £7033.89
Savings £1060
£2 Coin pot Holiday Savings £32

New Joint Loan = £29023.63

weight lost 11lbs to loss 24lbs

Bonglecat

Looking on the forum I see that a lot of people keep track of their original amounts to show the level of progress. So I thought I'd have a look. See below:

Light Bulb moment June 2010 :idea:

Credit Cards £10524.91
Personal Loan £6088.42
Overdraft £1000 1st a/c and £600 2nd a/c

TOTAL £18213.33:eek:

January 2012

Credit Card £7645
Catalogue £234
Personal Loan £1405.42
Overdraft NIL

TOTAL £9284.42

M&S Visa £6331.38, / 10524.91 = 60%
Catalogue £Nil, / 234 = 0% with £4.99 cashback
Personal Loan £702.51 / 6088.42 = 11.5%
Overdraft £Nil = / 1600 = 0%
Total Outstanding Debts £7033.89 / 18213.33 = 39% :j:j:j

Savings £1060
£2 Coin pot Holiday Savings £32 :cool:

:eek:New Joint Loan = £29023.63:eek:

weight lost 11lbs to loss 24lbs

Bonglecat

Didn't do too badly last week although naturally expensive even in the staff canteen you are looking at £3.50 for a sandwich, damn London prices!!!! But at least the expenses budget covered all my meals as I didn't have any alcoholic drinks. After having the bottled water in the room on the first night (desperation and the horrible London tap water) which was £3.95 I found a newsagent on the way to the hotel where I could get 1.5l of Evian for £1. So that comes from my £3.75 per night incidental allowance.

Weekly shop was okay this week too £57 from Asda but that did include £5 for 3 trays of bedding plants, £24 for a months supply of cat food and treats. The reason for such a small shops was that last week instead of cooking any of the food I left him he ate frozen pizza for 3 nights (I got a multipack from Lidl last week worked out £1.50 per full size pizza) and then a Chinese takeway on one night. :mad:

I'm also joining the Debt free by Christmas 2012 group. I know that can't include the new big loan but it's an incentive to get my debts cleared. So 3 months and the loan is gone, I'll then up the regular DD from £300 to £500 which will mean by Christmas £3,400 just on regular repayments. So my challenge is to find another £3,000 from somewhere. First point of call is the Wedgewood dinner service, the Dartington Crystal wine glasses and the Aspinals briefcase, hopefully I can get something out of these. Then a balancing act between making up some savings, getting jobs done around the house and reducing the debt. :cool: