Advice

chevalier

Having read through your thread, I will attempt to answer your original question.
https://www.quidco.com is a website, you join up to. There are two sides to it.
1) buying things you would buy anyway via the site. Eg if you house insurance (which seems very high) needs renewing, you have a look at a price comparison site eg https://www.uswitch.com and find out who is doing the best rate for you. Then go back to quidco and do the actual buying of the insurance via the link on their web page. You get your new (hopefully much cheaper insurance), but you also get cash back, up £100 because you used the link on quidco. You can do this for all sorts of insurances - buildings, life, pets, cars, and each one will give you a cash back sum. Which you can throw at your debt. I am sure you can get cheaper pet insurance than what you have currently.

By way of an example ref house/contents insurance, when I checked my insurance, the lowest price I got was for £140 a year, but the highest (using exactly the same figures) was £650. So you can see what a difference you might be able to achieve on this.

2) The other side of the site are click throughs. These are where you use a link on quidco, to 'click through' to a price comparison site eg Kelkoo, you do one search on there and that nets you 10p. You don't have to buy anything.If you did this religiously for the three price comparison sites that are listed on quidco this would net you just under £300 a year. For a minutes work a day.

They also offer links to opinion survey sites like lightspeed, and opinionistic. For each one of these you get a small sum to join up, then for each survey you do you get points (which can be turned into vouchers), or cash. Again by doing relatively little, you can earn a fair amount of money.


As regards other moneymaking schemes. Someone suggested mystery shopping. For this you sign up with a site, (there is a thread about this just type mystery shopper into the search box at the top), and then they give you assignments. It could be to check the customer service in a store for example. You will have to buy something, but you get the money back for this plus a fee for your time. This is not something I have direct experience of but I direct you to the thread on it.

You do not say what age your children are, or what your current job is, but obviously any extra work you can fit in around school is going to be a plus. I am assuming they are day children rather than boarders?

Boy do I go on. Will leave it at this for now. Best of luck with tackling your debts.
chev

whatatwit

Saz, I can't see that you have been on here since yesterday.

How are things and were any of the comments helpful?
I'm sure that sometimes posts come across as far more critical or abrupt than they were meant to be, or would be if they were spoken rather than typed.

I have sent you a PM. :grouphug:

saz2006

Hi to all that have given me food for thought.
My husband works much harder than anyone I know and derserves to be paid more quite honestly - and has a lot of responsibility.
Yes - it does seem human nature to spend to the limit.

I am very highly qualified but have had to take a year out as I was having treatment which was very strong and made me very tired and I couldn't work.

I am hoping if I do teacher training it will be in IT and Ill get a golden hello.

My dog has a chronic illness and I thank mentally often the person who advised me to get really good pet insurance as my dog has had to have numerous operations.

I think I have become lax at bugeting because one month to another is never the same and I don't know quite what to include in the budget as some is from last month and some the following and it gets so complicated.

I will be looking in depth at the comments. I may sell the endowments. Does anyone have any recommendations for selling these?

Thanks again for all the comments as they made interesting reading.

Now off to look at the PMs.

nearlyrich

Hi Saz glad you have come back today, don't worry about the negative comments, good luck with getting your budget under control.

Just on the subject of Sky Plus, you can buy a HD Recorder with series link so it's just as good as Sky, make sure you get one with Freeview built in.

jellyang

Your hubby could take a 'holiday' from his private pension. The pension provider will try to talk you out of it because they lose their cut. What he has in his pension pot will still be there & hopefully growing. You can always resume payments when you are back on your feet.

A pension will be no good to either of you if you don't survive the stress of your debt.

How old are your kids? can they get part time jobs to help pay their own mobile phone bills? They might as well get to learn about the big wide world.

I know what you're saying about moving kids school but don't reject the idea put it to oneside as a maybe.
My kids gave me hell when I uprooted them in their teens, they now thank me & understand why I had too.

Just another thought, where do you buy your groceries? When I was earning big bucks I spent a fortune in M & S etc , now its tesco special value. Its still food & lots more for your money . (still love your food M&S)

Hope this helps.

Jellyang

saz2006

Thanks nearlyrich the HD recorder sounds a v g idea.

I don't reject any ideas - I consider them all. I like the idea of a payment holiday for the p pension plan - I wondered if I could do that and also whether I could do that for the endowments if I don't cash them.

I just need to review every outgoing to get it cheaper which I am intending to do - it all takes time.

Will change the contract phones to PAYG when the years are up.

saz2006

sheraz2 wrote:

I know someone very close to me who paid off £70,000 debt in 16 months with an income of £5,000 a month (no interest, it was borrowed from family members). Living on bare minimum with a family and the kids never really noticed.

"The kids would never forgive us if we sent them to state schools"

Sometime I wonder how I survived :rolleyes:


Every suggestion you are given, you seem to knock it back or want a cheaper alternative. I could understand if it was neccesities that you want cheaper alternatives for, but Sky +

I went to a state school and so did my husband - I have nothing against them at all! Just some areas have far better ones than others.

sheraz2

Paige wrote:

One very positive thought is that by having high incomes we have the potential of clearing these debts quickly if we cut back and channel all of our energy into cost cutting Paige X

Jealousy? Negative comments?

WHat you said there was the first thing that comes to mind of all us 'jealous' people. Because of your high incomes, you have a much bigger buffer zone to cut down on spending and clear debts much quicker.

It just seems so much simpler to us 'jealous' people, cut spending on luxuries and pay debts of very quickly.

Also, I think it's quite sad that you associate high incomes with happiness. That because us mere mortals earn less that e must somehow be jealous.

Vickicb

I'm sure you know all this, but for the benefit of others trying to help you - If you are going to do a PGCE in IT you'll get a bursery of either 6K or 9K paid over 9 months, I got 6K and it was £667 per month tax free. I was also entitled to a student loan of around £4.5 which is much lower interest than your CC's/loans and so could pay some of that off (and you won't start repaying until the April after you complete the course). You'll start on at least £20K and this goes up by an average of £1.5K per year - more if you get a management role after a year or 2. Given that you're only getting £100 per month at the moment you'd be better off on a teacher training course. The golden hello does not come until the September of the 2nd year of teaching though.

saz2006

Vickicb wrote:

I'm sure you know all this, but for the benefit of others trying to help you - If you are going to do a PGCE in IT you'll get a bursery of either 6K or 9K paid over 9 months, I got 6K and it was £667 per month tax free. I was also entitled to a student loan of around £4.5 which is much lower interest than your CC's/loans and so could pay some of that off (and you won't start repaying until the April after you complete the course). You'll start on at least £20K and this goes up by an average of £1.5K per year - more if you get a management role after a year or 2. Given that you're only getting £100 per month at the moment you'd be better off on a teacher training course. The golden hello does not come until the September of the 2nd year of teaching though.

Hi Vickib - this is good news and I was struggling to find all this info in one place. Didn't realise that the starting salary is £20k - thoguht it would be aorund £17k. I may have to train on the job as doesn't seem to be any PGCEs in IT where I live. Can you recommend any websites for this info?
Thanks again.