smartbear's road to debt freedom

chevalier

good to know that you have checked the utilities and insurances. Nice when you can save a bit there!

smartbear1

Thanks everyone. Lots of encouragement there and advice. Intend to check out a diary or two over the bank holiday.

Appreciate the advice scarcat but I don't want to take out a consolidation loan. It looks likely I will be made redundant in March 2010 and don't want to take out any more debt now - even if its cheaper. I hope to shift money around to secure the best deals once I free up one of the bigger cards.

I'm with savingholmes with the satisfaction factor. Clearing the Santander card first gave me just the boost I needed to start snowballing. Tesco's is the highest interest so that's where I throw the lion's share of the cash. I'm aiming to get that off for next March, so at least thats one less min payment to worry about if i come out of work.

Scots you will do just fine if you start a diary. It really helps and I find having the debt figures in the signature keeps me focused on making sure debts go down rather than up. It's a great buzz to show people you can do it and they can see the difference too.

Keep debt-busting everyone!

savingholmes

Good luck with the snowballing - it really does work!

smartbear1

smartbear1 wrote: »

Can't wait to see the MBNA statement and wondering what difference the £7 a week standing order has made on that one?

Amazing difference making the weekly standing order to MBNA. Check out the balance in the signature - well happy!:rotfl:

smartbear1

Good news with MBNA but bad news with Santander card.

Bad news is they won't let me balance transfer any monies to the card, only at 18.9%!!! Yikes. Disappointed there is £500 limit there I can't use to transfer with and they told me if I dont' use it in 6 mths I wlll have to pay a dormancy fee. Cheek!!!

smartbear1

A sad day for money saving... unfortunately having read Martin's article on student loans, it now looks like the deferrment threshold has been dropped on my mortgage style loan from £2245 09/10 to £2204 for 10/11.

This means from December 10 I will commence repayment of student loan as I'm £50 a month above the new threshold. This is the lower part of the loan payment and the higher part will be with Thesis starting in Feb 11. Last time I paid the loans they averaged around £140 a month.

I guess that's goodbye to snowballing the higher priority credit card debt at the end of the year.

A real shame cos I was making good headway and had plans to clear the Tesco card by end of Mar 11. I will be paying off debt which is 4.4% the lowest of all my debts. How crazy is that???

Not sure what to do now.... feel like crying but won't give the government the satisfaction. Need to take stock and have a think about how best to tackle this. I will probably be able to defer the loans again because I will most likely be made redundant at the end of Mar 11. I suppose that's something or if I get a new job before then I could make sure its under the repayment threshold.

Really do need to think about this?

savingholmes

hi smartbear - could you look at the Make £10 a day challenge on the DFW board for ideas on how to make more money...?

My OH left college about 5 years ago and they hadn't taken any money until this month when suddenly out the blue we were down £100!! You have left me slightly worried now they might take more than that next month!! Really hope not.... They may push back our DFD (excluding student loan) by at least a month.....

It is what it is tho - and now you need a cunning plan on how you are going to overcome this temporary set back.... memorygirl's diary is great for inspiration on making your money stretch and DFW style hurdling!

smartbear1

Thanks Holmes.

Had a look at £10 a day challenges and I'm considering how I might make cash. I currently do online surveys and get a cheque every now and again for £50. Need to review ebay, cos whilst I use free listing days I find some of my items are not selling. Might try a car boot to get rid of all the surplus items but my mates tell me they are not doing so well on the boot sales. Hopefully the xmas shopping months will be better for me to sell items.

I've had another go at budgeting and I've done a month by month forecast this time to show everything i can think of. No more hiding the little thingsI pay out for. I've created an excel sheet which will track all my receipts for petrol, shopping, etc and make sure I stay on my monthly budget.

I'm determined to control my expenditure alongside the monesaving and hopefully this will mean I can still throw a little extra money at the debts whilst making the student loan repayments when they kick in. It also means I can identify the months when I need to vary the £7 standing order I set up for MBNA and throw it at Tesco instead.

I'm still considering using my £750 overdraft to make a big payment off Tesco to get that balance off as quick as possible. It would cost me £5 a month to be overdrawn instead of the estimated £20 monthly interest on Tesco card? Need to think about that one because whilst its a short-term fix, I would need to reduce the overdraft. The monthly budget i've set up could help me to reduce it. Needs some careful thinking....

savingholmes

I probably would use the overdraft if it was going to save me £15 a month

I find the gambling loopholes together with cashback sites work well... I could send you a pm on it if you want... Bingoport and woohoo bingo both pay out amazon vouchers - they have worked wel for me too - again I could refer you (and explain the process if you wanted)

smartbear1

Yes Holmes I'm happy for you to send a pm. Be interesting to learn more.

Made £2 on a survey today and they are coming in at least once a week now. I don't qualify for them all but it keeps my interest going and I enjoy them.