The debt free journey of an easily distracted Moog

LittleMoog

Morning Diary,
Had a lovely evening last night, went to a friends for tea and stayed over cos her OH is away at a conference. Lovely tea, Magnums for pudding, lots of gossip and a silly girly film. Bliss . Even better, she lives in the town which we're moving to later in the year, so I saved a days petrol (£11! :eek:) and only had a 15 minute drive to work this morning as opposed to the ususal 1hr15-ish!

Can't wait til we move, I'm so fed up of my commute. I've been doing it for over 3 years, but they've just started a load of roadworks on the stretch of the M1 I drive on every day. It's now a 50mph limit for the whole motorway part of the journey.
In order to cut down on petrol costs, I carshare with a girl from work but she only works 3 days a week on site, and does 2 days at home. She's only just passed her driving test as well, and when she drives us it takes 20 minutes longer each way!!! Not that I'm a speed freak or anything, she's just soooo slow. I have to say that almost 3 hours a day in the company of someone that you probably wouldn't be friends with in real life gets a bit wearing. There are days when I wish that she would just stop talking and let me listen to the radio! It was especially difficult during the election campaign, as we're from very different backgrounds and have opposite political views, so many long debates in the car!
However the carshare is a necessity, or I'd have no spare money at all each month with the price of petrol these days! Something else to look forward to once we move.

LittleMoog

I realised that I forgot to mention yesterday (easily distracted me!) that I received a cheque for the musical instrument I sold, £1868 after the shop took their commission
I'm dead chuffed with this, I wasn't using the instrument, and can hire one if I need it in the future, and they managed to sell it for 80% of the cost of a new one. They've had it for 6 months though, so when I rang for an update last week I was so excited to hear it had finally sold!

We're going to use this money to clear DH's RBS card, it has a balance of about £1200, but a credit limit of £1700, and they've just offered a 0% BT deal. Lots of our credit is currently on 20%+, so we're hoping to do a bit(!) of shuffling as follows:

1) Clear RBS card. Balance transfer MBNA (£1500ish @ 26.5%, limit £3000) (Current offer 0% for 9 months, standard rate 14%ish)

2) Pay the remaining money plus MBNA's portion of June's snowball towards Barclaycard (£3900, just gone up to 27.9% APR :eek:, limit £4000). Ask MBNA for balance transfer deal, and transfer rest of Barclaycard.

3) Ask Barclaycard for balance transfer deal and transfer Mint (£1600 @ 19%) and some from Cap 1 (£4500 @15%, limit £5000)

4) Ask Mint for balance transfer deal and transfer remaining Cap 1 balance

(5) put the Cap 1 card in the freezer for use in dire emergencies only.:o)

This may take us a few months, but should save us a fortune in interest even with BT fees, we currently pay £575 into the CC snowball, but we're charged £200 of interest a month.

Any thoughts/advice welcome

jtr2803

Hi again

The instrument sale is excellent news but I have to say I was immediately drawn to your magnum pudding, Hypno mentioned magnums on my diary thread last week and I have had them on the brain ever since! :rotfl:

Have to say I have only driven on the M1 a few times thankfully but everytime it has been horrendous, let alone sharing a car with someone you have no interest in for that length of time!

Do you have a planned move date yet?

Jody
x

mum2one

Just popped to say hi, you've done so well with the achievements already, as for Cuba, I'm jealous, I'm hoping for 3rd time lucky....... Was due to go to Kenya and Goa in 2002, but I fell pregnant, so they got swopped to Cyprus, Tunisia and Cuba.... then my GP wouldn't let me fly long haul, so Cuba got swopped to 2weeks in Turkey....... then finally booked last yr, to go end April this yr...... guess what I didn't go, the ash cloud........ holding of before I book, did get a refund, but put it towards Mexico, taking dd next yr. xx

LittleMoog

jtr2803 wrote: »

Hi again

The instrument sale is excellent news but I have to say I was immediately drawn to your magnum pudding, Hypno mentioned magnums on my diary thread last week and I have had them on the brain ever since! :rotfl:

Have to say I have only driven on the M1 a few times thankfully but everytime it has been horrendous, let alone sharing a car with someone you have no interest in for that length of time!

Do you have a planned move date yet?

Jody
x

They were the new Magnum Gold, with caramel ice cream inside, and they were especially yummy, although I do work for the manufacturer, so I would say that

The M1 didn't used to be too bad, but my heart sank in January when I saw the sign "Road improvement works starting 13th January until 2013". 2013!!!!!

We're hoping to move in October, although there's no fixed end date to our current contract, we just have to give a month's notice. We decided not to move sooner as we only moved to this flat last September, and there are roadworks along the road that hubby will use to commute to work which won't be finished til later in the year. Hopefully by the time we move they'll be nearly finished.

So we'll start looking in late august, with an aim of moving by the end of October, and being settled in time for Christmas.

LittleMoog

mum2one wrote: »

Just popped to say hi, you've done so well with the achievements already, as for Cuba, I'm jealous, I'm hoping for 3rd time lucky....... Was due to go to Kenya and Goa in 2002, but I fell pregnant, so they got swopped to Cyprus, Tunisia and Cuba.... then my GP wouldn't let me fly long haul, so Cuba got swopped to 2weeks in Turkey....... then finally booked last yr, to go end April this yr...... guess what I didn't go, the ash cloud........ holding of before I book, did get a refund, but put it towards Mexico, taking dd next yr. xx

THanks for popping in, it's nice to know people are reading I feel like we've made a good start, especially as I got my bonus in April, so was able to pay off a big chunk with that, but I thought starting a diary would help me stay on track in the months when we can only make the normal payment, IYSWIM

Cuba was lovely, but I wouldn't complain about Cyprus, Tunisia or Mexico either I haven't travelled much, we spent family holidays on the coast in Yorkshire when I was little, so only really school trips, one trip to greece when I was 7 and a few trips with DH. It's something I'm looking forward to when we're debtfree, I love citybreaks, and I'd love to see more of Europe.

jtr2803

julespickles wrote: »

They were the new Magnum Gold, with caramel ice cream inside, and they were especially yummy, although I do work for the manufacturer, so I would say that

The M1 didn't used to be too bad, but my heart sank in January when I saw the sign "Road improvement works starting 13th January until 2013". 2013!!!!!

We're hoping to move in October, although there's no fixed end date to our current contract, we just have to give a month's notice. We decided not to move sooner as we only moved to this flat last September, and there are roadworks along the road that hubby will use to commute to work which won't be finished til later in the year. Hopefully by the time we move they'll be nearly finished.

So we'll start looking in late august, with an aim of moving by the end of October, and being settled in time for Christmas.

om nom nom a magnum gold...I can see this being bad news for any prospective weight loss!

October sounds like a good plan, I think historically most people try and buy early spring and summer so thats when the market is likely to go up a bit (I could be talking utter twaddle of course but it kind of makes sense!). A new home for xmas would be fab :j

We would like to move soon but we really want to buy so it is going to mean staying here for at least another year, maybe more, ho hum - it's a roof over our heads!

Jody
x

LittleMoog

The XBox game I ordered for DHs birthday (2 weeks away) arrived today, and he wheedled me into letting him have it early. He's promised not to be disappointed that he won't have a big present to open on the day. Of course he doesn't know that his only other present is a new phone sock which I'm knitting for him! I think he probably thinks I've got something else up my sleeve. Sadly not!

Anyway, have since spent all evening watching him being a virtual cowboy in the wild west, ho hum, bored bored bored. (where's a yawny smiley when you need one? we've got one on our communicator at work, not sure what business purpose that solves!). It has been a long time since he had a new game though, so can't complain too much. Nothing I really wanted to watch anyway....

LittleMoog

jtr2803 wrote: »

om nom nom a magnum gold...I can see this being bad news for any prospective weight loss!

October sounds like a good plan, I think historically most people try and buy early spring and summer so thats when the market is likely to go up a bit (I could be talking utter twaddle of course but it kind of makes sense!). A new home for xmas would be fab :j

We would like to move soon but we really want to buy so it is going to mean staying here for at least another year, maybe more, ho hum - it's a roof over our heads!

Jody
x

Indeed, we'd like to buy somewhere as well, but realistically we'd need some spare income each month in case of things like boiler emergencies, or interest rate rises, so we've decided it's best to be as debt free as possible before we go down that route. Plus we've only got about half of the deposit that we'll need at the moment, so no chance of a decent mortgage. Still once we get rid of the CCs we should be able to save up pretty quickly, since we'll be so used to living on a small budget
Plus since we're moving to a new town, we want to get to know it before choosing somewhere to buy, make sure it's near the good schools etc so we don't have to move again for a while.

LittleMoog

Arrrgh! My carshare's driving was particularly bad this morning, when we were coming off the M1, she suddenly decided that there were 2 lanes to get onto the roundabout, even though there's only ever been one! As a result, she ended up stuck in a really awkward position and had a mini panic attack! She must have driven to work 20 times by now, how can she suddenly decide that there's an extra lane?! It's just a wide bit so lorries can approach the roundabout at the right angle!!!

Anyway, then she seemed to lose all road sense, so at every rounabout, and in all the villages where you have to pass parked cars etc, she couldn't work out who had priority. It took a long time to get to work! Feeling quite stressed out still, have already had 3 cups of tea and I just can't calm down :mad: