Any help welcome

x_raphael_xx

GAH! Wrote a huge reply out then was logged off and lost it! Had to re-write the whole thing! :mad:

jamesd wrote: »

x_raphael_xx, I see that you have (or had) a credit card with a 17.9% rate. What is the available credit from that and all other sources? It's quite possible that it's better to use your credit card for purchases to pay off HFC Loan 1 first.

At the moment I have £200 saved on credit card (limit is £1700), certainly not enough to pay off HFC 1, and I'm aiming to pay another £200 on top by October to cover my car insurance payment.

jamesd wrote: »

I see that you used to owe your mum 700. If she's willing, add what she'll lend you then repay her using the HFC 1 repayment money plus what you're currently saving for debt repayment each month. Well worth asking HFC for an early settlement figure to see if it's doable within six months or so.

Mum is now paid off (yippie no £100 a month payment for me!), however she's not well off herself and has just had to pay £600 for her dog to have an emergency hysterectomy due to an infection on the uterus that caused internal bleeding. Pooch was lucky to survive and is now recovering well.
So I can't (and won't) borrow from Mum again. Dad is a student on his 2nd re-mortage so no point in asking!

jamesd wrote: »

If you let me know the available credit, how much the monthly payments are on the current debts and how much extra you're paying/saving I'll work out what's the option that saves you the most money.

At the moment I'm paying monthly:

£44.19 ~ Bank of Scotland (17.9%) £707.04 ~ Though I'm paying this off in August.
£49.98 ~ HFC 1 (28.5%) £1299.48 left to pay. ~ Monthly payments will go up to £100 when BoS paid as I will use money that would have been paid them.
£85.64 ~ HFC 2 (21.8%) £2226.64 left to pay.
£50 roughly onto Credit card (17.9%) ~ Limit £1700, current cash on card £200.

I have used snowball and this seems to be the best order, apart from the Credit card, which I'm planning to tackle last as I still occasionally use it (not often!) and the interest is variable and the lowest percentage.

jamesd wrote: »

If you also have savings intended for paying the car insurance in a lump sum it's likely that it's best to pay monthly so that you could use the lump sum money for the HFC 1 repayment if that's the only way to do it. The insurance part will cost more but the savings on HFC 1 will probably save you more than the extra cost.

Never thought of it that way! Good point.
I've just done a quick online quote and the cheapest came back as £315.03 for full payment, or £352.85 for installments so thats only a £37.82 difference! (I calculated this incorrectly at first and came up with a difference of £110.28, so it was a good thing I was logged out & had to re-write/re-calculate!:D )
I'm definately sure the HFC 1 early settlement figure will save me more than this, I will pop into town sometime soon and get a quote from them to give me a rough idea.
So that another £20-£30 a month I can throw at it!

jamesd wrote: »

Hmmm... I see that you can get other loans but at rates over 30%. If it's the only way to repay HFC loan 1, what you can do is get a 1 year loan for the amount you need for HFC 1, save your repayment money from HFC 1 and then do an early settlement of the new loan as well. Bit cheeky but it'd do the job and paying 30-40% on 500 or 1,000 for a few months to clear the HFC 1 earlier would save you money overall.

I don't quite see what you mean by this? Do you mean get a loan just to cover HFC 1? Surely getting a higher rate loan to pay off one account will just cost me more?

HFC seem to be the only place that will offer me a loan, and at 33% I don't think it would be benefical to start a new agreement with them.
Especially as I hate them so much and I've had so many problems with them in the past (calculating loans wrong, sending me other peoples paperwork, rude staff:mad: ) I would rather have no more dealings with them and can't wait to get rid!

jamesd

Lets look at repayment of HFC 1's 1299.48.

First, you think you'll be able to pay off 707.40 for BoS in August (or offer less, but not good to have a write-off recorded). 1299.48 - 707.40 = 592.08 more needed. 200 available on the credit card (for goods like non-perishable food and such not cash advance) leaves 392.08 to find. Do the car monthly and "aiming to pay another £200 on top by October" if it happens leaves 192.08 to find to repay HFC 1.

Payments on HFC 1 are 49.98 and there are 2 or 3 between now and October, another 99.96 or 149.94 that you don't need to find.

Since you still needed 192.08 it looks as though you can repay HFC 1 in October or November. You probably are saving as well so it looks as though September or October is doable.

Is anything there not possible or wrong? If not, then waiting two or three months to get rid of the bigger 28.5% loan clearly beats paying off the just over half size 17.9% loan.

On the car insurance, cash price is 315.03, cost of credit is 37.82. 37.82/315.03 * 100 = 12%. Effectively 12% interest. That's much cheaper than HFC 1 so definitely worth doing.

You'll still have to make up the 200 from the credit card but that's also worthwhile since it's only costing 17.9%.

I'll write about borrowing after we finish this bit of discussion since it appears that it won't be useful to do it to repay HFC 1, except for from the credit card and (in effect) the car insurance.

hypno06

Quidco is fab - check it out at www.quidco.com

You have to register and they take £5 each year as admin cost, but not until you have received cashback of that amount IYSWIM!

So, with your car insurance, say you are with Prudential as an example. Your car insurance costs £450 a year. You do it via quidco, still go to the same prudential website to get your quote, renew your car insurance for, say £450, but then get say £100 cash back from prudential through quidco!!!

It takes a couple of months to get the cash back, so don't rely on it and very occasionally it doesn't validate and you have to chase it, but generally there is easy cash to be made just by going through quidco for things you normally use anyway!

So house insurance, car insurance, switching electricity, opening bank accounts, buying from tescos etc etc etc can all be done through quidco and will all give you varying amounts of cash - sometimes as a percentage of what you spend, sometimes as a fixed amount!

Our second car was due for insurance in March, cost us £180 but we got £120 cash back, so net cost just £60 for the year!!! Can't be bad! Main car is due for insurance this week, the best quote comes with cashback of £40, bringing it down to well below my previous best renewal quote!

Hope that helps - we love it here!

x_raphael_xx

jamesd ~

I have £707.40 left to pay on BoS, but expecting a early settlement figure of around £600 (based roughtly on a quote last month).

I understand the reasoning about paying off highest rate interest first, however a few months ago I finished paying a small HP agreement (around £150) and the psychological boost was amazing. I am keen to get rid of this smaller loan as it will be £700 off my total, and instead of having 3 loans and a credit card, I will have 2 loans and a credit card!
And I can get rid of this in August, if I have to now drag this small amount on for another few months I wouldn't feel I've gotten anywhere.

Plus I plan on using the payments that would have gone to BoS as extra for HFC 1, bumping up the minimum payment of £49.98 to £100 a month, halfing the remaining term straight away!

hypno06 ~

Sounds fab!! Do you get cashback for just searching? or do you have to buy something? As I don't buy many 'things' or treats etc, just grocerys, I don't usually shop at tesco, and Asda now charge for delivery! I will certainly use it for car insurance thou! If I can get my yearly insurance for £40 I'll be laughing!

jamesd

x_raphael_xx, how about deciding the latest date you'd be willing to wait to pay off HFC 1 and asking them for an early settlement figure for that date? Then you'll be sure that you really couldn't get it done without it taking longer than you're wiling to wait. Or you might get a happy surprise and find you can do it.

I really don't like the thought that you might just barely miss getting rid of it... but you do definitely have to do things in the way that keeps you committed to getting them done.

x_raphael_xx

Right, okay, had BIG think about this.


I know I will have the £600 required for BoS in August, plus a friend is going to pay me £200 that she owes me sometime next week (hopefully) this equals £800.

With the minimum payments on HFC 1 the loan will have roughtly £1150 to pay (minus early settlement reduction) in October. This leaves me just £350 left to find.
£200 I have budgetted to be on my credit card ready for car insurance by October and I could 'borrow' £150 off my credit card!!


I will nip into HFC on wednesday and see if they will give me a settlement figure for October, thou the useless pillocks will probably tell me they can't. I asked for a printed statement of my accounts a while back, and the rude woman argued with me for 20 minutes, claiming that she couldn't do it, before giving in and printing me a copy from her computer! :mad:


I am taking this up as my challenge then : To pay HFC 1 off in October!

Now I don't feel so bad about pushing BoS to the side, thanks jamesd!:D

jamesd

Well, that post made me smile. Hopefully they get it done properly and you find that you can get rid of one of the loans that most annoys you!

While you can ask for any date, don't be too surprised if they say that they can only give you one for 28 days from the day you ask. It's pretty new so their system might not be set up to let them do it for any date or they might not yet have learned how. If this happens, just subtract the payments for the extra couple of months to get an amount a bit above what you'll really need. Then you can get another one later.

Also ask them what the lowest value loan they do is. Then I'll tell you a really cheeky way to save two or three months interest on HFC 1. Almost guaranteed to make the people there look gobsmacked.

x_raphael_xx

jamesd wrote: »

Well, that post made me smile. Hopefully they get it done properly and you find that you can get rid of one of the loans that most annoys you!

While you can ask for any date, don't be too surprised if they say that they can only give you one for 28 days from the day you ask. It's pretty new so their system might not be set up to let them do it for any date or they might not yet have learned how. If this happens, just subtract the payments for the extra couple of months to get an amount a bit above what you'll really need. Then you can get another one later.

Also ask them what the lowest value loan they do is. Then I'll tell you a really cheeky way to save two or three months interest on HFC 1. Almost guaranteed to make the people there look gobsmacked.

Well, I decided to ring them this morning, I didn't ring the local branch but the National number. I got through to an automated service and was expecting to be passed through to a real person, but the computer asked for my details, and gave me a settlement straight away! It expires on 14th August, but gives me a rough idea what I can expect in October.
It was a nice surprise! I was expecting around £1200, but was given a figure of £982.30!!:D So this is definately do-able by October!

So lets make it interesting and bring it forward 1 month. Lets see if I can clear it in September!

jamesd

Excellent news! Now, here's where I get cheeky.

current APR 28.5
/ other APR 177
* redemption value 982.30
= 158
* 0.75 fudge factor
= 118

That means it would be worth borrowing 118 at the horrible Provident 177% APR if that was enough to repay HFC 1. Any less and you're saving money, any more and you're losing money. The fudge factor is in there because the calculation is only approximate.

Now lets try the HFC rate of say 35%:

28.5 / 35 * 982.30 * 0.75 = 600

So it's worth borrowing up to 600 from HFC at 35% to repay the larger 982 loan early. You pay a higher rate on the 600 but save because you're paying it on a lower amount of money.

Of course, it'd be a bit cheeky to borrow some money from HFC just to cost HFC money by repaying the bigger loan, then repaying the smaller one early in a couple of months.

So, after your friend repays the 200 you could see about borrowing whatever you need to pay off HFC 1 next week, up to a maximum of 600, leaving you with the new smaller HFC 3 loan to pay off by September or October. And since you're saving interest you'd probably be able to do it in September or maybe August.

Of course this does mean that you still have two HFC loans for a couple of months - but it would save you a bit of money and one would be small.

HFC 2 is a bit too far away from repayment for this to be doable. At a guess the early repayment amount is around 1900 and that means it would only make sense to borrow 1900 * 21.8 / 35 * 0.75 = 880 to repay it early. You'd need more than that so it's too soon to think about doing this for HFC 2. And the interest rate on HFC 1 is enough higher that getting rid of that one first is the better choice anyway.

Robflh

Hi x_raphael_xx

Congratulations on reducing your debt.

As it has been a while since you tried to obtain a credit card and your finances are looking a lot better, why not try again for a credit card.

I believe Mint and Capital One have a %0 offer at the moment. I am out of work and both of them gave me a credit card.

Go to www.creditexpert.co.uk and sign up for the 30-day free trial. You can then see your credit report and for a small fee, you can also see you credit score.

Send me a private message with your score and I will tell you if it is similar to mine. If it is apply for both of them. To be able to pay off the HFC loans you will proverbly need two credit cards.

Do not forget to cancel the 30-day trial before it runs out.