Drop Debt Diva – ‘Plus-Sized Debts to Plus-Sized Savings’

Swinstie73

Well, in between having a nice bath, watching Gypsy Weddings and a wee stint on the exercise bike, I've been trying to tweak my spreadsheet (AGAIN)!

Went to mum's today after the nurse for my blood test. Starting to think it's new tabs I've been on that are making my hair come out - I hope so anyway, that way they can be changed or hopefully stopped. They are just my headache ones, wouldn't mind stopping them actually. Anyway, had a toastie for lunch (at mum's), didn't go food shopping as decided to make something from freezer for dinner tomorrow, when OH is down. Shake & Bake chicken, baked potato and veg, have already warned him not to expect anything spectacular.

It was baked potato, beans and a fishcake for dinner tonight, I'm going to turn into a baked tattie soon myself. So third day in a row of TNSD, yeah! I'm already declaring tomorrow one too, as I don't plan on going out to any shops at all. I'm also proud to announce that it has been 40 consecutive days since I have used my Visa card - that is a total record for me, last year in the first 40 days of my budget I had used it 5 times already. Now I know for a fact that I have used it more than this (per transaction), but last year I used it on 91 days out of the year, !!!!!!, that's on average every 4 days. Never again, in fact BC will be wondering what is wrong with me, ha.

Well, gonna pop off to bed now as starting to get a bit of a sore throat again, going to get a nice nights rest cos need to be 100% fit for work on Monday. Night all x

urg123

Wow Swinstie- I can really see the changes in your attitude to spending! You should be so pleased with yourself!

Urg x x

Swinstie73

Thanks urg, although I'm slightly worried that it's not my attitude to spending that has changed, but the mere fact that I've been off work sick for two weeks and had no inclination to shop. Although, I am going to do my best to simply stay away from shops i.e. on a Sunday when we go back to OH's, we ALWAYS end up at the shopping centre, mainly because there's been nothing much else to do in this weather.

It'll be all change though, I keep harping on at OH to get himself a waterproof jacket so we can go for walks even if it's wet. I'd buy him one if I wasn't trying to save money, ha! His birthday isn't til Sept but I could buy it as an early pressie I suppose. I don't mind walking in the rain if equipped for it. The last time we done a big walk it was a really hot day and I could hardly breathe, maybe rainy weather would be better. And the last time we went biking in the sun, I ended up with one burnt arm, looked pretty daft.

Anyway, managed to get some more 'stuff' put away today, it's amazing how much crap one can have, I've even found a cable with a plug that obviously goes into something and I can't for the life of me think what. Gonna have to keep it just incase. Also found six rolls of cellotape, all at various stages of use, crazy. The only thing that is working ok is my toiletries, need to score off another bath foam that I used up last night, also used some glyco cream last night before bed, that I've had for years. Probably no strength left in it, but hey ho, don't want to throw it out.

Well gonna have a wee bite of lunch, (been bad and had some chocs again), I'll be glad when they are all gone.

EssexHebridean

I sympathise on the decluttering thing - I'm starting to notice a real difference now, and will do some more tomorrow i think so I'll keep you company on it!

Maybe the answer with the debt being £100 more than you thought is to see how much extra you can pay to it at the end of this month when you know where you stand spends-wise? You might be able to blitz quite a bit off it.

Glad you're feeling a bit better anyway - see you back here tomorrow morning for a decluttering session then?! :rotfl:

Swinstie73

I'm here, I'm here - but can I have breakfast first? I am so not going to get up for work on Monday, I've been sleeping in everyday for the past week, help.

Good idea on paying the extra £100 Essex, I was sure I had enough to pay it but will be back at work next week and using petrol again, it's been a god-send not having to fill up the car the last two weeks.

Anyway, a question I'd like to have asked on the mortgage board (but I'm scared of sounding stupid), ok here goes.....

My mortgage is currently at £28.5K with 16 years left to run on it. Now with carefuly budgetting, and as my mortgage is really low, I could have my mortgage paid off in no more than 8 years and could even be as soon as 4 years, by making overpayments. This sounds fab to me, however:

Once we're married we're planning on moving as we want to stay in OH's town - he's at mum and dad's at the moment so staying there is not an option, so we would be looking to buy our own house and therefore substantially increasing the mortgage. Should we bother with overpayments if we're going to move anyway? I think it would be great to overpay and get the mortgage down, so we make more of a profit on it - OH is going to share all bills once he moves in with me - but now I'm thinking this is only a good idea if we were to live here for the 4+ years it would take to pay it off.

Second reason I'm unsure is that we could also SAVE tonnes in the time we are here, that was the plan originally to live at mines and save some more as we know the mortgage will increase.

I know if I was single and here on my own, I'd defo over-pay as I wouldn't be in the position to move to another house, so would probably stay here forever and having the mortgage paid off would be brill, but I need to take into consideration getting married. Oh my head is full of wee marbles - better go do some de-cluttering (after breakfast).

Swinstie73

Well not moved far today, went to mum's for a wee while to watch an episode of The Event that my sister had taped, now got the last two episodes to watch that I managed to tape - still totally lost with it.

Only positive things are I called to cancel my Debenhams CC, only ever used it for the 20% off they were doing at the time, also cancelled my Littlies Bingo as I very rarely played it, couldn't get onto the free scratchies anymore as I hadn't wagered £5 in 7 days so thought, toss it and cancelled it. Had put £10 in before Christmas to get the bonus £5 and had £15 of my own money (and £6.50 bonus), lost the bonus but hey ho.

Does anyone find it's the little expenses that creep on them? Bin was emptied today and cleaned, checked my spreadsheet from last year and I paid my £30 annual bin cleaning money on 5/2/10, so got that bill to look forward to, argh! It saves money paying it annual so that's a bonus.

Taking my mum tomorrow to see my wedding dress, I've got my shoes and also need a piccie of the dress for when I go for my underwear. Be interesting to see if it still fits me, ha. So, will take mum for lunch, will try and find somewhere cheapish but nice, don't do it very often so not bothered about the expense. Back to work on Monday so thought it would be the last chance to do something constructive, will be ok for work, but crazily have got the sniffles and cough again. Probably my own fault as I've been neglecting to continue with the paracetomal and lemonade.

Have also organised dinner, mince and tatties with peas, lovely. And hasn't cost a penny, even knicked a carrot from my sister!

Swinstie73

Ok, so I have updated my ticker (on page 1) and took off the £900 wedding money that I'll be transferring and technically isn't my own personal debt, and I'm at 91.6% paid, woo hoo!

Sorry, just had to share. OMG, I am sitting here constantly trying to find ways to pay more money to my debt to get it paid quicker, must remember that it's an impossibilty to pay it all off until I am paid again in February. Chill and relax Swinstie!

EssexHebridean

The Mortgage questionis an interesting one. My gut feeling is to say that, as per Martin's usual instructions, assuming that your interest rate on the mortgage is higher than the best interest rate you could get for your savings, then you should throw any spare cash once you have your emergency fund in place at the mortgage. Obviously I don't know your interest rate, but I've had a little play with my spreadsheet and reckon you're probably currently paying a bit over £200 per month? If that is correct, then to give you a clue how fast you could change things, if you doubled your current payments once OH has settled in with you, you would knock about 10 years off your MF date.

If it were me, I think I would initially look to get the emergency fund sorted, plus working out what all my routine spends were - so car expenses and other travel, annual insurances, that sort of thing, and would set up savings accounts with DD's feeding those on a monthly basis so when, for example, the TV license is due, you have the money there waiting for it. Once that is all in place, I would work out what my future plans for housing are, and then decide from there whether I would do better paying the current mortgage down in order to have more equity in the current property at time of selling, or whether it would serve me better to have less equity and more cash to put towards a bigger deposit on the next house. Hope that makes sense and isn't too much of a ramble!

Swinstie73

Not a ramble Essex!

My mortgage payments used to be £300 including mortgage protection but are now just under £200, think I worked out that my mortgage was coming down at the rate of £170ish a month, actually seems to have increased as it was only coming down at around £125ish a month. I have two rates (not sure what they are) as the second rate was for the 'extra' £14K I took out. When I spoke to the mortgage advisor about how much we could get for a new mortgage he was really surprised about the rate we could get, it was something to do with the £14K rate, which meant where we'd normally pay say just over £600 for a £100K mortgage, we'd only be paying just over £500 per month.

I do not have a scooby with mortgages, this is my first and only one I've had and I just went with it. The appealing thing is to gain more equity when it comes to selling BUT I also need savings for such things as my dental work. I already pay my tv licence monthly and put money away for car expenses etc. In fact I'm going to do another SOA to reflect my payments just now and see where my money COULD go after CC paid off. Thanks Essex, oh wise one!

Swinstie73

New SOA, what a difference from the last one, where my totals were my outgoings wer £1550 each month, wow sure makes a difference not having debt to pay off.

Monthly Spend:
£195.00 Mortgage

£ 75.00 Council Tax/Rates

£ 52.00 Gas/Electricity
£ 65.00 House Phone/Line Rental/Broadband/V+
£ 12.50 TV Licence
£ 22.50 Gym
£300.00 Savings (£150 – Wedding Fund/£150 Normal Savings)
£100.00 Food
£ 10.00 House Stuff i.e. window/bin cleaning etc.
£100.00 Petrol
£ 20.00 Clothes
£ 15.00 Hair/Toiletries
£ 10.00 Mobile Top Up
£ 10.00 Road Tax
£ 10.00 Car Maintenance/MOT
£100.00 Entertainment
£ 15.00 Odds & Sods
£ 30.00 Xmas/Birthdays
£ 30.00 Car Insurance
£1172.00

Annual Payments:
£150.00 House Insurance (approx) / 12 = £12.5 per month


Grand Total: £1184.50

Take Home Pay: £1497.56 + Approx £177 4 x a year for expenses

Debt:
None after 28/2/11

Extra money each month = £313.06

Obviously I still have next months payments to make but this is what it should look like from March wage onwards. I do have some future expenditures, mainly dental work which I've only had an estimate for and think I might be getting more work than anticipated, and also Honeymoon/Cruise money so possibly can't make any over-payments until the end of the year. Hopefully we will be in a position to move early next year - argh it's so frustrating not having a proper 'plan'!