My lightbulb moment

gallygirl

Welcome back!!!

Re paying off cards, if all the interest rates are the same it would be best to pay minimum payments on all and choose one to put all your spare money to. As soon as the card is cleared phone them up and cancel it (DO NOT ALLOW THEM TO TALK YOU INTO LEAVING IT OPEN 'JUST IN CASE'!!!!!!!). That way it will show as settled on your credit score (not that it matters because you will never use credit again, will you..........)

But Burtons at 25%........ :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: ouch!!!!!!

hypno06

Have you tried putting all your debts into the snowball calculator?

See https://www.whatsthecost.com and it will tell you what to pay off first, and how long it will take you to be debt free.

This little beauty has shown me that if I focus, there is light at the end of the tunnel. give it a go!

lynzpower

kev7n84 wrote:

|Had thought about it, i would lose sky sports but then i have friends who have it, im sure if i was to go over theres with a few lagers for them they would let me watch the football! I have to speak to my flatmate about it, what we were planning to do was cancel sky as its in my name, i;ll tell em im moving out so something, and then she would sign up in her name and get what ever offer is going... normally a few months for half price.

Does anybody know what channels you get on freeview?? Got sjy at the moment, bar sports i tend to watch bbc3, e4 more 4 and know i can get these, i do like uk gold ( royale ffamily and alan partridge), and my flat mate likes uk living for most haunted and derek ackorer (typo), however that wouldnt be much of a loss to me if that wasnt on ! ;-)

You wont get ukgold, but most hunted is on FTN? I dont know which channel it is but Ive dfinately seen it & we have freeview. that derek guy :eek: hes scarier than the show :eek:

kev7n84

I cant stand that derek guy, apparently he doesnt do that show now as alot of it was set up, he just does a very similair one now, which apparently is all real!

Thankyou Hypno, that calculator is great. Ive just put in rough estimates and i should have everything but my loan paid off in 14 months! i'll have to work it out properly later and have a set date to aim for!

oh and ali, i think i can safely say i will happily cancel my credit cards and will not listen to the 'it free money' monkeys in my head ever again!

kev7n84

well this is a huge bump, over a year old! To recap, i owed lots of money and buried my head in the sand and didnt bother doing anything. When my lightbulb moment appeared it was too late to think about 0% interest so had to concentrate on paying things off.

I did quite well, at east i thought i had, until i rediscovered this website, and saw my last post... everything but my loan paid off in 14months time... well its been 14 months and its not! i have paid off debt collectors and my natwest credit card, my bank account temporarily hits the black once a month until the bills come out and slowly creeps back down to the overdraft limit. Im not too worried about that as i pay all my bills on time and dont go past my overdraft.

What is worrying me is my Mint credit card, it went to triton credit services.
I owed £1600 pounds onit, and they wanted £265 a month or the full payment. I managed to talk them down to £50 a month, but it gets reviewd every 3/4 months. since then they've talked me into paying £120. In my head the most i can afford to pay is £100 a month, whilst i can scrape by paying 120 until i pay off my burtons card i really cannot afford anymore, however i know after my next payment to triton there going to ask for more. When ive told them in the past they tell me there has to be an increase or i can basically expect it to go through the courts. Now whilst im pretty sure if it went to court, i would end up paying them less, but i would like to avoid that, and i know the more i pay now the quicker the debt will reduce. to cut a long story short, what should i expect it i refuse to pay more than £120 a month? will they take it that far or will they just be happy with what there getting? I have to ring them tomorrow, to find out exactley how much i owe them and wether or not i'm being charged interest. i'm sure the increased payments will come up in conversation!

on the plus point i've paid off quite a bit of cash, and im using every penny i got at the moment towards debts. i should now be debt free by xmas. I did have a little lapse around xmas just gone. Firstly i borrowed £700 for a macbook (a stupidly overpriced laptop, but it looks nice) and then went to poland for a week with some friends... but im back on the bandwagon!

kev7n84

well this is a huge bump, over a year old! To recap, i owed lots of money and buried my head in the sand and didnt bother doing anything. When my lightbulb moment appeared it was too late to think about 0% interest so had to concentrate on paying things off.

I did quite well, atleast i thought i had, until i rediscovered this website, and saw my last post... everything but my loan paid off in 14months time... well its been 14 months and its not! i have paid off debt collectors and my natwest credit card, my bank account temporarily hits the black once a month until the bills come out and slowly creeps back down to the overdraft limit. Im not too worried about that as i pay all my bills on time and dont go past my overdraft.

What is worrying me is my Mint credit card, it went to triton credit services.
I owed £1600 pounds onit, and they wanted £265 a month or the full payment. I managed to talk them down to £50 a month, but it gets reviewd every 3/4 months. since then they've talked me into paying £120. In my head the most i can afford to pay is £100 a month, whilst i can scrape by paying 120 until i pay off my burtons card i really cannot afford anymore, however i know after my next payment to triton there going to ask for more. When ive told them in the past that i couldn't afford to pay more they tell me there has to be an increase or i can basically expect it to go through the courts.

Now whilst im pretty sure if it went to court, i would end up paying them less, but i would like to avoid that, and i know the more i pay now the quicker the debt will reduce. to cut a long story short, what should i expect it i refuse to pay more than £120 a month? will they take it that far or will they just be happy with what there getting? I have to ring them tomorrow, to find out exactley how much i owe them and wether or not i'm being charged interest. i'm sure the increased payments will come up in conversation!

On the plus point i've paid off quite a bit of cash, and im using every penny i got at the moment towards debts. i should now be debt free by xmas. I did have a 'little' lapse around xmas just gone. Firstly i borrowed £700 for a macbook (a stupidly overpriced laptop, but it looks nice) and then went to poland for a week with some friends... but im back on the bandwagon!

gallygirl

Good to se you back! Don't beat yourself up, maybe you just set yourself an unrealistic target?

As for the mac & holiday, well, we all need a break now and then.

However...... you're back now . Can't help re payments, however why don't you bung a new SOA on here & we'll see what we can find?

kev7n84

Thanks! i was worrying about this, as my income is now lower again, over the last couple of years i've took jobs for less and less money, yet the cost of living goes up. i was actually quite good at maths in school, obvioulsly haven'y quite worded out finances very well yet! anyway i cut and pasted my old soa, just put in new figures o see where i am compared to 18 months ago.

Income averages £190 weekly
Outgoings all worked out weekly.

Housing Costs
Rent £30.00
Council Tax £00.00
Electricity £00.00

Food £10.00
Cleaning materials £00.00
Toilitries £6.00
Newspaper/Mags £1.02
Alcohol £8.00
Other Small housekeeping items £0.00

Leisure
Pubs/Clubs/Cinema £25.00

Other
Clothing £7.00
WorkMeals £20.00
Household goods £0.00
Tv License £0.00
Telewest (phone and internet) £0.00
Sky £0.00
Loan £34.00

Now i also have a burtons card which i pay just over the min repayment on at £30 a month, £7.50 a week. mint as in post above im currently paying £120 month, £30.00 a week and also my mobile which is about £40 a month, works out as £10 a week and finally a loan from bank of mum for a laptop at 10 payments of £70 a month, 17.50 a week.

now by my calculations that totals £206.02.

which leaves me minus 16.02 a week!

now all the 'houslehold' things look small because a year ago i moved back home to dm (dearest mother, dunno if dm is a recognised term!) and pay 120 a month to her. On a few occasions i've had to borrow money short term but make sure i always pay back the the next payday or the one after.

they deficit is made up from pub and food at work money, i shave off that to pay the rest. The pub money is £25 a week, i know its too much, but being 23, if im not at work theres only one other place i want to be! and 18 months ago i was spending £40 so have cut down! my worst hit spot is food at work. £20 is too much, i know it is, ive only just realised how much im spending! daily it doesn't seem like much a few quid here and there, but over a week it mounts up.

I think my best option here (bearing in mind i always talk myself out of packed lunches) is not to take my wallet to work, sooner or later i'll become tired of starving and make a packed lunch? Ive put down £10 a week food budget, its not often this much, but working in a supermarket i tend too pick up essentials fot the family on a day to day basis, i.e. milk, bread, tea bags (im the only one who drinks them), hob nobs (yes there essential!) and odd things like bin bags when we've ran out.

im quite fortunate at the moment as my £30 a week keep, pays for food, rent, tv (virgin xl + sports movies package in m room get in!), council tax, electric, water, gas etc...

now i rung up triton today to see how much i owe, slighty less than i thought which was nice, and have worked out come payment time in october, i will be paying them my last payment of £120 a month an also my mum for the laptop = £70 a month. id really like to think that in that time i'd be able to pay off burtons and my overdraft too, leaving with only my loan at £136 a month.

I only have one answer to this. Last june, for about 6 weeks i worked nights at wilkinsons just stacking shelves. the pay was pretty shoddy for the time of night, but was better than most retail day time shifts. i left as i got offered a job at somerfield where i used to work as supervisor on a slighty less wage, but a few more hours evening it out. My thought is to write to wilkos asking for a job again, and hope that if i got one, somerfield would left me stay a supervisor but take a drop in hours. I'd willingly work 4hrs a night 5-9 giving me time to go home, eat and go to wilkos. id even be up for working sundays which pay no extra -( a bit of me thinks they'd be happy with this as evenings is the shift they have most trouble covering, and the manager is over his wage budget on a regular basis!

the only set back is id basically be working 6 days a week, inc nights doing betwen 55 and 65 hours a week. BUT by october id be debt free exc loan of 3000 with money in the bank, at which point i could afford to move out and maybe leave a job.

whilst the no debt idea is nice, the workng mon to fri 5pm til 7am (inc traveling) and sunday 9-5 doesn't i guess i have to somehow work out what i want the most.

wow thats a long post, does feel nice to get it all off my chest though!