To remind myself how far I've come - my debt diary. - SOA added

hypno06

My faith has been restored

chocaholic110

Just got our gas and electric statements after having the meters read last week.

The electric says we owe them £55 and they are raising the monthly DD by £11 to cover that.

The gas said that we owe them £162 but they were not changing the monthly payment. Bit strange I thought, but ok. Until I re-read it and it actually said that they owe us £162!!

So we owe them money and they raise the payment; they owe us money and they do nothing!?! I know that people say you should build upa bit of credit in the summer for the winter months but we got through the winter with the payment covering the amount used.

Thinking I might phone and ask for the credit balance to be repaid to us - that could be £160 off a credit card!

hypno06

I would definitely ask for that money back - you could make far more use of it than they can!

I had a huge gas/electric bill this winter just gone - due to me working from home for the first time I think, so am still catching it up. We got our latest bill in this week, and we are almost there, but then we have been paying a whopping £149 a month so I would hope to be almost there! We are making changes to avoid the same thing happening this winter so hopefully can lower our payments soon to something more friendly!!

chocaholic110

After reading through Martin's article on mortgage exit fees and looking up our old mortgage provider on the mortgage forum's successes and failures thread I decided to chance a call to our old mortgage company to see if we had overpaid any mortgage exit fees and were due to get them refunded.

The very pleasant lady on the phone confirmed that we would have paid an exit fee and thought we might get something refunded but said she didn't know how much and would have to pass it onto another department. She confirmed our bank details and said we should hear something within 14 days.

Fingers crossed!

chocaholic110

Got cheque from My Shopping Rewards in the post this morning - £22.40. Need to go and pay that in today. Also ordered a £10 Boots voucher from Pigsback - can go towards my Christmas voucher envelope.

Registered OH's new Alliance and Leicester account for online banking - bit scared that he might go overdrawn in the transfer between accounts as he gets paid weekly and we need to "save up" during the month to pay direct debits. Hoping that once online banking is properly set up then I will be able to see which direct debits get transferred as it happens.

Still waiting for my ebay buyer from the weekend to pay for their item. I wouldn't mind but it's sold for £59! I have some money in paypal ready to transfer but don't want to do so until that money is paid too as I'm too tight to pay the 25p charge for transferring less than £50!!

Need to go into the nearest town today. Apart from paying in the cheque, need to buy milk and bread and take library books back. It's also market day so will look to buy some soft fruit and salady type stuff.

chocaholic110

Excellent! The overpaid gas money is in the bank today. :beer:


Also the rest of my ebay money has been paid. Have tried to transfer it to my new bank account though and it is just showing as Pending rather than Completed. Any ideas why?

hypno06

My paypal account shows pending until the cash is cleared in my bank, so I wouldn't worry about it. Good news on being able to transfer a reasonable amount!

I am tantalisingly close to being able to order £20 vouchers off pigsback, I too will be adding them to the present stash! Hurrah for pigsback!

chocaholic110

Isn't it always the case??

Postman brought car tax renewal forms this morning; I had thought it was due end of September, grr!

chocaholic110

Mixed sort of a day. Got £43.19 cheque from Freefivers and a £ Amazon evoucher from Lightspeed, but paid £60 to have my hair cut and coloured. I did budget for £70 out of this month's pay (and I haven't had my hair cut since February :eek: ) but I then used the "spare" £10 to buy fish and chips for myself and kids because, erm, hypno made me

Not sure about the hair. My lovely hairdresser suggested making it more low maintenance ( a kind way of telling me I leave it too long between appointments and it looks a mess) so suggested putting the highlights more underneath and darker around the parting so less regrowth would show. It's nice but the words "Liz Macdonald" keeps springing to mind...argh!

Anyway i'm sure my mum will tell it how it is when I see her. She doesn't shy away from telling people they look terrible / fat / are wearing an awful outfit when she needs to. Lovely OH will tell me it looks nice because he has learned always to say that regardless of what he truly thinks!!

chocaholic110

Oh and more ebay stuff sold today. I put two very similar bundles of girls' clothes on, same size, very similar items. One sold for £17, the other only for £3.41 - why is that???

And DD's sort of gymnastic leotard with the washed off sparkles sold for a very pleasing £10.59 - I was expecting £3 or so!