twinparents07's joint diary 'doing it together'!!

MinniMe_2

Just found your thread - WELL DONE on clearing the B&Q card - onwards and upwards for you two!

Happytogetdebtfree

Fingers crossed on days keep up the good work :-) xx

twindad07

Just got my Barclaycard bill yesterday and my APR has gone up again to 22.9%, thats twice in 2 months its gone up, even though I have made the minimum payment on time every month.

I rang them to complain and was told the APR might go up again but not down. They offered to reduce it back to 21.9% for the life of the balance, if I closed the account. That would mean paying £90 per month to pay off £18.

I told the guy that it was a struggle to pay the minimum payment, so he passed me over to the financial support department to discuss an affordable payment plan.

She asked what I could easily afford, so I said £70, her response was if you can afford £70 then you can afford £90!!! She then said the maximum payment for a payment plan was £40, so I said I can only afford £40 per month!!

I have this for the next 8 months before a review, 2 months where I can only pay £40 per month and they will still add interest at the current rate of 22.9% and charge me £12 per month for not making my minimum payment, then 6 months at a minimum payment of £40 per month - but I can and should over pay if I can, with an APR of between 0 and 1%, she said its usually 0% but sometimes 1%, either way it means my £40 per month will pay off twice as much as I am now.

I was told it could affect my credit rating, blah blah blah.

This means we can allocate extra money to other debts with higher APR's and hopefully get debt free sooner.

twinmum07

Paid £15 to the Virgin card.

Have a cracking migraine so feeling very sorry for myself - hoping I can treat it with tea and paracetamol but not convinced it will do the trick.

We did a stock check on the sale categories on the website so I can increase the discount today, hopefully get some sales in on the business. The business still owes just under £750 to suppliers but once that is paid it just needs to manage its overheads but we can hopefully start to take money back out of it for debts (my 3 credit cards are business debt not my own).

I have lost track of how much we have paid for the challenges so it might be nice to sit down tonight and have a look as it should hopefully be something we can feel really positive about.

twindad07

Its been just over a month since I joined and so far after interest has been added we have paid off over £700 on our debts with two CC statements still to come in. And one card has been paid off, unfortunately the next card won't be paid off for another two years!! But we can aim to bring that down by a few months.

Its nearly the summer holidays so I have 6 weeks off. We are going away for two weeks and then that gives me a month to make some serious ebay money. First stop upstairs cupboard, books and DVDs, then the garage with all sorts of random stuff followed by the loft with more random stuff that I have hoarded rather than thrown.

twindad07

PAD £7.71 paid to Virgin CC

mel19632

twindad07 wrote: »

PAD £7.71 paid to Virgin CC

This PAD seems to work really well for you! Keep up the good work. Saw that you have paid off £700 in first month, that is excellent!:T

Did you think about signing up for mystery shops? If you have spare time (which maybe you dont with three kids)! then they are FANTASTIC! Especially meals, cinema, trips to theme parks etc. They are free (or heavily subsidised) and mean that you can do nice things still, without having to pay for them yourselves.

We spent the last two years paying off debts, and without mystery shops I don't think we would have left the house....:rotfl:

twindad07

I've just emailed the referees secretary of the local sunday league, to register my interest in refereeing next season. The season starts 22nd august so plenty of time to get myself sorted with my strip and flags etc. Hopefully one game a week will give me about £20 and then I could if needed do Saturdays and sunday afternoons. But thats not something I really want to do, I don't want to take too much time out of my weekends - weekends are for family time.

I'm at work tomorrow. I've been part of a research project for the local education authority and have to present my work tomorrow. I hate working Saturdays but it is really good pay for what I've actually had to do.

I'll get paid for this at the end of July as well so it'll pay for a weeks spending money on holiday, so we won't have to dip into my normal wage for the holiday (first weeks spending money has come from DW doing some one to one tuition in her old school), it means we can still make our agreed debt repayments and have a holiday.

Ideally we would have liked to have put the extra money towards debt repayment but we had our LBM after agreeing to go on holiday.

twinmum07

mel19632 wrote: »

This PAD seems to work really well for you! Keep up the good work. Saw that you have paid off £700 in first month, that is excellent!:T

Did you think about signing up for mystery shops? If you have spare time (which maybe you dont with three kids)! then they are FANTASTIC! Especially meals, cinema, trips to theme parks etc. They are free (or heavily subsidised) and mean that you can do nice things still, without having to pay for them yourselves.

We spent the last two years paying off debts, and without mystery shops I don't think we would have left the house....:rotfl:

I tried mystery shopping last year but the only assignments I got were McDonalds and the very occasional KFC. They were always ones I was supposed to do alone so weren't nice things so quickly got fed up of doing them. I did do 1 OK weatherspoons one where we all got to go but I can't remember which company that was through.
Have I just registered with the wrong mystery shopping companies or is it just our area that is rubbish?

twindad07

I've been having a think about what I would like to achieve during the summer holidays and I've worked out that from tomorrow there are 50 days (51 actually) until the new term starts (I've still got 4 days next week of this term to go, but 50 days sounds better than 46!)

Anyway my(hopefully our, I'll speak to DW when I get home, or she'll probably read it before I get home) 50 days challenge begins tomorrow

I will edit these goals later, but these are my initial ideas, they are a mixture of money saving/making, sorting bits of the house and hopefully some exercise in there!

* maximise debt repayments by making no silly spends on holiday and hopefully come home with some money left over

* Clean, tidy and declutter the garage

* Clean, tidy and declutter the loft

* List on ebay anything from the garage or loft

* Sort out the upstairs cupboard and list DVD, CD's etc on ebay/amazon

* Sand and repaint the polyfilla that I did about a year ago!

* Attempt to replaster the playroom ceiling or look into how much it would cost for a professional to do it

* Referee some football matches - extra money and exercise

* Advertise tutoring ready for next term

A lot of the above are tasks that I keep saying I need to do, but then never get round to doing, hopefully having them on here might encourage me to do them.

PS DW feel free to add any more.