starting to save!

cattie1

hi, just wanted to thank everyone for trying to help me, since coming on here 1 week ago i am saving aroung £10 a week, £40 a month::T that might not seem like much but i can start saving for xmas!!
i recently bought (well my dad did!) a massive bag of dog food-saving my £2 a week for the next month and a half and went to the butchers instead of buying supermarket meat (sorry veggies!) and froze half of it saving me about £10.
i'm also having a "cutting up the cards" day next week,so the temptation to use them has gone!:o
the only thing i need to do now is try to reduce my £500 a month payments to credit and store cards.:eek:
i know everyone hates loans but if i could get £5000 and pay £130 a month i would be saving £370 a month, unfortunately i have a bad credit score due to moving house and jobs, if any1 has any ideas or knows any loan companies please let me know.
Thankyou everyone for your help and support.
cattie.xxx:A

Bestthingsinlifearefree

Hi Cattie,

Good for you :beer:

Getting more loans is a bad idea but switching the debt to lower interest rates is a good idea. If you know what I mean.

e.g if you can switch 5K of debt from 15% interest rate to 5K of debt on 5% of interest rate that is good but to borrow more money just for the sake of borrowing is best avoided if possible.

Also if you borrowed 5K over a longer perid of time even though your monthly payments might go down overall you might end up paying more (so do all the maths)

Quite often ppl consolidate and reduce their monthly payments and then run up fresh debt.

Consolidating is often not reducing debt but just rearranging it. Ideally you want to focuss on REDUCING / AVOIDING debt rather than just rearranging it.

So be very, very careful with the old consolidation route.

Have you investigated if there are any Credit Unions in your area, as this can be a very cheap way of borrowing.

Keep up the good work !!

Best,

P.S have you got your OH to reduce the sky package yet ?

Verbatim

Hi,

Lowering the monthly payment isn't everything. If you take out a loan you could well end up paying MUCH more in interest if it's over a long period. Look at the total charge for credit and then work out what you'd pay if you left it on the ccs.

A further thing to watch out for with loans is that some will penalize you if you pay them off early. Check whether the terms and conditions will allow this.

Annie_Fanny

Excellent advice from the above 2 posters.

Also, and this is how I think about it, if you consolidate do you really want to be in debt for 5, 10, 15 years (or however long the term is)? What sounds like a good idea now may not do in 7 years say and you want to take a different direction in your life.

Also consolidation loans have been really well marketed and have seeped into people's consciousness as a pain-free way to pay off a loan. Don't be fooled the banks may act like they are doing you a favour BUT don't forget they are targeted by profit and that is just what they will do by getting you to accept a consolidation loan.

Best IMHO to target your debts strategically and get rid of them as soon as possible.

Good luck!

bobbadog

cattie1 wrote:

...a massive bag of dog food-saving my £2 a week for the next month and a half

Just a random point - if you know anyone who goes over to France and has room in their car to bring you back a bag of dogfood, I have no idea why but it's ridiculously cheap over there! My boyfriends parents dog is a training Guide Dog, and they get him that dry Pedigree Chum stuff for RIDICULOUSLY cheap, they're seriously considering renting a trailer and buying it in bulk (rather than squeezing it in on their booze cruises)

cattie1

thankyou to you all for your informative and helpful replies-i have considered the whole "getting more debt" but some of my store cards are 29.9%apr so i am gonna be paying them off till i am around 31! with a loan over 5years i will be debt free before i'm 30 (just!!!)
the only problem being with a low credit score i'm sure all loan apr will be high!
and yes my OH is looking in2 the different packages from sky.
thankyou you are all a bunch of sweeties!