One Debt vs 200 Days

Nichelette

Old diary here: https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/1234365

This diary has been inspired by the one debt vs 100 days challenge. I would have liked to have joined it, but they're part way through, and to be honest I don't think 100 days is long enough to clear the debt I'd like gone. If anyone else would like to pay off a debt in 200 days then feel free to join me, it's nice to have the company and it's also a good motivator .

As you can see from my signature I currently have £6916.65 left to clear on £11,200 of borrowing. *Tecnhically* this is in my dads name, I'll explain more...

A few years ago my parents divorced, part of their agreement was that my dad and us kids (that was me, one of my sisters, and brother) could continue living at our family home until the youngest child left education. I graduated in 2008 and came back to live with my dad - my university was only 30 miles away so I moved back home for my final year to save money. My sister will graduate next year, and my brother finished college last year and chose not to go to uni.

Due to this, last November my dad had to pay my mum a lump sun to pay her off for her part of the house. He had been made redundant about a year prior to this, and having been in his job for over 25 years got a lump sum (albeit the government minimum). He tried to extend the mortgage slightly, but as his new job pays a third less than his old one, his income multiple no longer covers the whole mortgage (it's about 20k short). For this reason I've had to go on the mortgage with my dad. To be honest I hate this, but it's the only way I'll ever be able to save for my own house as renting would prettymuch leave me with nothing to save.

To get the rest of the money to pay my mum off my dad took out the loan I mentioned earlier. I'm currently paying this off as a rent of sorts. I could pay the mimimum but a) I don't want to have this hanging over me forever, and b) I need to make sure the extra 20k is somehow paid off of the mortgage so I can get my name off to get my own house. My dad is giving me a bigger chunk of the house in return for this, so I will get my money back eventually, but to be honest I want to be financially 'free' now because it's going to be enough of a struggle saving for a house as I'm desperate to now.

This is the first phase of getting rid of the loan, I've calculated that as things stand I'd have to pay off £34.58 per day to get rid of it in 200 days. The loan is with Zopa so I'm allowed to make overpayments which obviously saves me interest and in turn allows me to pay it off faster.

I'm going to try and do as much as I can to make extra money. I already sell vintage style jewellery which is one of my hobbies (look at my homepage if you're curious). My job doesn't exactly pay brilliantly (about £49 a day after tax), I'm only employed as a temp as the company won't give anyone permanent jobs at the moment due to the economy, and I'm overqualified for it. I'm going to start looking for a better one soon, though to be honest I don't have a clue what to really look for as I seem to lack the qualifications or experience for nearly everything I see. I'm also going to give selling anything I can a go.

Anyway, this is getting quite long so I should probably be quiet for now. Here goes...

Cloudy456

Hi - just read your post on my diary so thought I'd pop in on yours and wish you luck! Sounds like you've been through a really hard time and have a far more solid reason for your debt than just over spending like me! So that means you should be in a good position to budget and get somewhere fast. Starting my diary has helped me loads and kept me really on track (well most of the time anyway!) so I hope yours helps you as much. Best of luck and I'll be watching out for your progress!

wendz86

Hi,

Nice to see the new diary! I am sure you will manage to get that loan gone in 200 days.

Good luck with the job hunt as well.

Nichelette

Thanks Cloudy, I'll be keeping an eye on your diary too. Although I'm not too bad with spending money the two things I have real problems with are food (really need to take lunch to work more as we have a cafe thing upstairs so it's really easy to spend money), and clothes. The easiest way to avoid the latter is just not to go into town at the weekend as I have no willpower and will buy something if I like it, it's not really a problem during the week as I work in Horley which prettymuch only has loads of charity shops and a Waitrose.

I think I'm going to record how much I'm knocking off of the loan in a bit of a strange way, that's because the overpayments go by direct debit and it's not like a credit card where I can pay a bit off every day. Once I've made an overpayment I have to wait about a week or so before I can make another, so I'll transfer money into the loan account and keep it in 'storage' til I can make the next overpayment. Oh, and the monthly payment will be taken tomorrow so that will give me another chunk to knock off.

Day 1

Money paid to loan account: £34.58
Overpayment paid today: £0
Loan remaining: £6916.65
Total to be paid per day to hit target: £34.58

Nichelette

Thanks Wendz, I hope you're still enjoying your new flat

mariagti

Happy new diary hun!

Wishing you well on your extra money making!

Nichelette

Thanks Maria, I hope you and bump are doing well .

Todays totals are below. I was bad and spent £2 on lunch at work because I was so hungry and there isn't really anything I could take from home for lunch . Have moved the lonely £70 I had in my ISA from the £365 in 365 days challenge because there isn't much point having it in there when it could come off of the debt, I'll have enough time to save when I've paid the loan off. The montly payment of £104.85 came out of the bank today, but it takes the figures on Zopa a couple of days to update so I'll leave the overpayment figure as £0 until it updates in a day or two. I've got £190 saved in the loan account towards the next overpayment .

I also need to start thinking about my overdraft. I have to pay another £500 off this year, I know it isn't for at least a couple of months yet but I need to see when it went last year so I can prepare for it.

Day 2

Money paid to loan account: £70.00
Overpayment paid today: £0
Loan remaining: £6916.65
Total to be paid per day to hit target: £34.75

Dinah93

Best of luck Nichellette, I'll follow this diary, be good to get updated on current money making methods as I'm going to be back to it come autumn. Dinah x

Nichelette

Thanks Dinah .

I've just been thinking, I've checked and it's 201 days til christmas. Paying the loan off for christmas would be the best present I could have so fingers crossed. I need to think about extra ways of making money. Ideas are as follows:

* Ebay, much as I hate it - maybe part with my corsets even though it makes me sad
* Continue doing surveys for vouchers to pay for christmas and birthdays (or possibly ebay these for the cash, need to decide as I have £40 in vouchers which I can redeem from consumer pulse).
* Really push my jewellery
* Saving scratchcard money - I used to be really good at this but since they took away all the double scratches and bonuses the 10p a day doesn't add up too quickly so I started playing it hoping I'd win something. I've got 2, and even if it takes me a couple of months to make £10 that would be about £60
* Use any cash from P*necone/lightspeed/pure profile etc towards the loan (have a £35ish cheque coming from global test market)
* Start doing one poll again even though I find it annoying
* Possibly start dooyoo again, I got a fair few crowns which paid me extra, so a few decent reviews could get me a bit of extra cash
* *ponders* there must be more than this...

Oh, getting a better paid job lol.

Also, I can save money by:

* Taking my own lunch to work
* Not going into town at weekends (this is the only way I won't buy clothes, I have absolutely no will power when it comes to clothes)
* No more buying books til I've read the ones I have
* No more buying tolietries til I've used up what I have. I arranged it all nicely yesterday so I can see what don't need to buy.
* Stop having pizza/meals out til I've got rid of the loan, it won't be that long if I behave myself.
*Aim for NSD's
* Getting petrol from Tesco - It's the cheapest place and I can get clubcard points

yukkibear

I can't believe you've got the loan down to in the 6's already, that's amazing. I can see you paying it off before 200 days.

In a similar time scale I need to save approx £2700 and pay off another £1300 which works out at approx £20 per day for me.

AnnieG

Hi
Just wanted to say hello and good luck... you sound determined which is great! I'd love to have a look at your jewellery, and will look tomorrow. At least you've got something you can sell!
Must dash now but have subscribed so will come back and see how you're getting on :-)