Irishmanc's Debt free diary

irishmanc

Hello,

I am writing this down so it is clear in my head...

When my barclaycard bt (£2147 on 6% LOB) comes through (monday) to my virgin card I will be £651 in black. Virgin are offering me 0% on bt till December, so given the my limit is £2500 I could bt £3000 to my current account and from there pay into my cahoot loan (can't do it direct).

Cahoot loan currently stands at £8707.52. Today my cashed in my £550 worth of premium bonds, and paid it into my cahoot loan, bringing the loan to
£8157. The £3000 would bring this down to £5157. I expect my dad to pay the £5754 he owes me in March, which I will use to close this loan down, and use the excess to start paying off my a&l cc (0% offer ends in july, I know I wont be able to get another 0% cc to cover it).

Once this cahoot loan is finished with i will be left with an extra £177/month to reduce my debts, which will be:

Barclaycard 6% = £2422
A&L 0% till july = £3500
Virgin 0% till dec = £3000
Abbey fixed loan = £5236

My pay should be going up by £45 this month, which means in theory I will have £300 to throw at debts + £177 I would have been paying cahoot.

Its not much but it is a start!

x

irishmanc

Hello,

Back from Cape Town! Its been 3 months since I first started being a DFW, and I think it is a good idea to look back and adjust my SOA.

Incommings:

£1485.98 (after tax and student loan) salary/month 3% raise and 8 hours OT at £8 an hour every weekend bring my new incoming to £1716
£120 from OH for bills/month Now £150
£60/week for food shopping from OH Now £30/Week (we have cut down our weekly shop)
£20 Approx sales from amazon

Total incoming = £2006

Out goings:

DDs:
£762.22 Mortgage (Interest only 5.62 % fixed for 2 years) Mortgage term ended, remortgaged after base rate increase now £744.81
£32 Gas (Npower, recently switched from British Gas) Now £8
£17 Electricity (Npower)
£25 Water (£75 paid quaterly)
£25 Mobile (T-mobile contract finishes Jan, will close it) Now £5
£14 Mobile (3 mobile contract ends May, will change to PAYG) 3 mobile messed up and think my contract has ended, now on PAYG
£10.99 T.V License
£11.45 Contents Insurance (abbey)

£60/week on food Now £30/Week
£30/week lunch/magazine/maybe movie £20

cards/loan payments:
£141.52 abbey (£6K loan)
£175.77 cahoot (£9K loan)
£30 Virgin card (£1500 outstanding)
£0 A&L cc (£4K @ 0% till July 2007)

dads payments:
£70 house insurance This has been cancelled
£30 other house insurance

Total outgoings: £1704.65 Now £1399.54 (hope my math is right!)

Money leftover = £141.33 Now £606.46

Wow, if all my addition is correct I will have £600 to throw at my debts every month. What I have decided to do is pay £300 to my cc at the beginning of the month, and then depending on what has happened during the month (unexpected costs), I will pay my cc whatever is left at the end in a second installment.

I have been curbing my spending by avoiding shops at all costs, but get caught out when I go to take my CMA exams. I need to get a train, and the exam place is near a mall so I end up buying a magazine, some snacks, lunch, water etc...GR!!! Need more self control. But Rome wasn't built etc, so I will keep plugging away and hopfully i'll get it right soon.

x

DontDoDebtKids

Wow! Well done - that's a massive increase in "spare" cash to throw at your debts every month.

Keep it up!

Any luck on the lodger?

irishmanc

Hi there DontDoDebtKids,

I'm a bit in the air with regards to the lodger issue. The problem is my dad has agreed the sale of his house, and his wife want to move to the US but my dad doesnt. So it looks (scarily) like he will live with me during the summer months and in a fmaily home in Pakistan in the Winter months.

I will re-evaluate once I know more but for now no lodger. Boo!

x

irishmanc

Hello all! Well I have not been posting much at all, I have been busy studying for my CIMA exam, which went well, i'll find out my results at the end of July.

I thought I'd start with a review of my SOA:

Incommings:

£1533.79 (after tax and student loan) salary/month
£150 from OH for bills/month

Total incoming = £1683.79

Out goings:

DDs:
£844.4 Mortgage (Interest only 6.02 % fixed for 2 years) Turns out it wasn't fixed, but variable with 2% discount
£8 Gas (Npower, recently switched from British Gas)
£21 Electricity (Npower)
£25 Water (£75 paid quaterly)
£5 Mobile (T-mobile contract finishes Jan, will close it)
£11.37 T.V License
£11.45 Contents Insurance (abbey)
£30 Life/critical illness cover
£87 Council Tax

£30/week on food/mags

cards/loan payments:
£141.52 abbey (£6K loan)
£99.9 cahoot (£4.7K loan)
£30 Virgin card (£1.5K @0% till Dec 2007)
£5 A&L cc (£4K @ 0% till Dec 2007)
£5 Tesco cc (£2K @ 0% till June 2008)
£60 Barclaycard (2K @ 6.2% LOB)

dads payments:
£30 other house insurance

Total outgoings: £1444.64

Money leftover = £239.15

Its been swings and roundabouts really.

-Council tax payments started again
-Gas got reduced
-Cancelled Pru health insurance
-re-jigged some of cahoot loan/OD onto 0% cc

The OT I was getting has cooled off, I dont think I will be getting anymore. Lodger - Well my dad is heading to my bro in the US for 6 months from August so I will be putting my small room up for rent.

I have 3 main questions to ask:

1. I am in a deal with BOI with my mortgage, agreed Nov 06 (discounted variable for 2 years), can I ask them for a better deal? What if I find a better deal elsewhere, will there be a penalty for breaking out of my contract? This mortgage is crippling.

2. I am now a part-qual accountant (managerial level CIMA), and I have asked for a job review so I can get some more experiance to aid my studies. This went down ok, i'll be doing 2 days finance and 3 days business development. But nothing has happened. My boss is leaving and his replacements starts next month. I want to ask for a pay rise. When I started this job it was purly BD, and I had no CIMA. Am i justified in asking for a raise, and should I ask the new boss or the old boss?

3. Ok a biggie. I have relaimed charges from my bank. The customer services dep wrote to me a few weeks ago giving me the charges back. I forgot to tell the court as there was no mention of the court in their letter. Then this week I have had a letter from their legal department offering me my charges back with instructions to cancel the court case, which i then did. They have put the money in again. What should I do? Give it back? I am tempted to put in a savings account, that way if the ask for it back I could give it to them. But what if they dont ask for it back? How long should i wait??

irishmanc

Bumping to get some replies! Please help!

irishmanc

Hello,

Well I posted one of my above questions on the 'reclaiming bank charges' section, and the replies were more on the side of giving the double payment back, which I will do next week.

This month took out £100 on pay day to last untill the next payday (29th). I have £60 left! £10 went on the work lottery (£10 every 2 months), and the rest went on food, a train ticket to the chiropractor and 3.75 on a book (will put it on amazon once i've read it). I thought this would be easy, i though i'd have money left at the end of the month but I dont think I will.

I live alone most of the time and I find meal planning so difficult because I don't like cooking for one, I always cook oo much and end up eating it for days, or have loads of left over ingrediants whcihc I dont know wha to do with.

I am a poopie cook, I love eating ketchup with everything, I'm a pickie eater (too used to asain food, can't do pies etc), I just dont know what the answer is

I miss my mum! She passed away when I was 11, and the older I get the more desperatly I miss her. I could have learnt so much from her.

climbgirl

irishmanc wrote: »

I live alone most of the time and I find meal planning so difficult because I don't like cooking for one, I always cook oo much and end up eating it for days, or have loads of left over ingrediants whcihc I dont know wha to do with.

I am a poopie cook, I love eating ketchup with everything, I'm a pickie eater (too used to asain food, can't do pies etc), I just dont know what the answer is

The answer is....batch cooking! And I don't mean one dish which you're then going to eat for the next 7 days. Set aside a Sunday afternoon or one night after work and cook loads of different dishes, in bulk, do enough for about 3 weeks worth of meals. Cook things like stir-frys or lasagne or stews or soups or curries or anything that's going to freeze well (check Old Style Board for good recipes). These things can be frozen easily in small portions and then you'll have some variety to choose from.

I cook for myself and this is the best way I've found to get around the problem of eating the same thing for days. It is hard to get variety in your diet and keep the bills low if you're just cooking for one person. But I find if I pick 3 or 4 dishes and make each one with 4 portions, it'll give me enough variety to keep me happy for about 3 weeks. The missing nights can be filled in with a baked spud and beans or something simple like that.

it involves planning but that's what DFW and Old Style is all about really!