£12k in 12 months!!!

DebtFree2012

Hiya there
How ya doing poor thing. We have days like this but being heavily preganant makes it feel worse - all you can do is you best and look forward to LO arriving.

I often feel guilty that the first few years of my kids lives I can't give them everything I want to. Maybe when I am DF I won't feel llike that and I it just looks like the grass is greener,......anyway - my point is, we all have down days but we come out of them.

Even if you don't make up for it next month - you are doing SO well anyway.

Keep going and Mr T's will refund the diff I am sure, it was their error.

x x x

mrsspendalot

Halifax Online Statement checked

£3513.25 (inc. £44.18 interest charges) .... please Debenhams, hurry up and offer us a 0% deal ....

Minimum payment gone up £9 :mad: to £49.18 which I am guessing is because we started the snowball and only paid the exact minimum payment last month (£40.45), whereas we always used to pay more than the minimum. I really feel uneasy making minimum payments on CCs .... does anyone else feel like that??!

Also, how do you make your payments each month? Wait until you have enough to cover the whole payment you want to make, or pay small amounts each week? I receive income in various ways (some weekly, some 4 weekly, some monthly) and I find I really struggle to have enough in the bank at once to make the large payment as one single payment. I'm wondering whether making smaller weekly payments would help?

mrsspendalot

:mad::mad::mad::mad: DH just came back from post office and I've underestimated p&P for my ebay sales by £3.50 :mad::mad::mad::mad:

He's feeling really smug now because he always weighs everything first and I didn't :o:o:o

Oh well, won't make that mistake again .... in fact, in future I'll just let DH do the ebaying

I can feel myself getting stressed now .... might have to go and have a sleep.

On the plus, Tesco just phoned me to say they have refunded me the difference on the dishwasher tablets

DebtFree2012

Morning, that's good news about the refund from Tesco.

Not so good re P&P but we live and learn.

My minimum payments for my virgin CC shot up this month due to their new way of allocating the payments or something or other. There are loads of threads about it on here. Luckily the amount it went up is the amount rise I got this year so the raise went straight (or will do as it's this month) to debt.

At one point I couldn't meet my min payments and now I can and can pay slightly over. I feel sick when I think about it though. They are in control and I hate that.

As for how I make payments, I pay slightly over the min each month, round to nearest £5 and then the last few days before pay day I pay all the money I have left to it. If I "find" some during the month I pay that to it too, even pennies.

mrsspendalot

DebtFree2012 wrote: »

Morning, that's good news about the refund from Tesco.

Not so good re P&P but we live and learn.

My minimum payments for my virgin CC shot up this month due to their new way of allocating the payments or something or other. There are loads of threads about it on here. Luckily the amount it went up is the amount rise I got this year so the raise went straight (or will do as it's this month) to debt.

At one point I couldn't meet my min payments and now I can and can pay slightly over. I feel sick when I think about it though. They are in control and I hate that.

As for how I make payments, I pay slightly over the min each month, round to nearest £5 and then the last few days before pay day I pay all the money I have left to it. If I "find" some during the month I pay that to it too, even pennies.

Thanks ... perhaps I'll have to do something similar because I just find it a real struggle making just minimum payments, especially if it is going to mean that we pay more in interest the following month than the value of the payment previously made - it literally means we're not paying any of the actual debt off at all I think I'll try for the £5 round-up option. We were rounding up so that the payment always took the balance (before interest) down to the nearest £50, so the £3513 Halifax balance would be taken down to £3450 (meaning we would have to pay £63) - trouble is this can add up to quite a lot more each month to find unless we then reduce it off the amount we throw at the priority debt on the snowball .... hmmmmm ... will give it some thought. I guess it's a case of balancing the thing of following the snowball to the letter with feeling positive that progress is being made overall.

I got quite down about the money situation last night. I'm starting to wonder whether tackling this so full on right now is the best thing, what with my pregnancy hormones etc. Maybe we should have waited until after the baby is born. Thing is now, if we relax, we'll relax and then be cursing ourselves for not trying harder.

Cheque has gone in the bank this morning for one of my ebay sales, 2 still to pay. Just going to check online banking and update spreadsheet. Will report back later.

DebtFree2012

Aww I hate nights when you feel like that - hopefully it will pass - you will be all over the place at the moment with baby arrival imminent.

IMO the sooner it's gone the better but having said that, why not pay less but still something over the min so you are still paying it off but with some breathing space?

x

mrsspendalot

DebtFree2012 wrote: »

Aww I hate nights when you feel like that - hopefully it will pass - you will be all over the place at the moment with baby arrival imminent.

IMO the sooner it's gone the better but having said that, why not pay less but still something over the min so you are still paying it off but with some breathing space?

x

That is exactly my thinking - the sooner it's gone the better. I think that if we relax with the payment target, the money will get wasted on things we don't need. If I take my eye off the ball, we will relax the shopping budget, then we'll relax the clothes budget, then we'll relax the treats budget ... then before we know it we'll have wasted £100 without blinking and that £100 would have been better spent on debt. That is, I think, why I went for such a tight target in the first place. If it's doable on paper, it's doable, full stop.

However, the wage mess up this month hasn't helped, nor have the unexpected expenses. Then it is inevitable that during June I will have something I need to get for the baby or me that I haven't thought about yet (there's always something you forget!), plus parking charges for hospital, plus newborn photos no doubt .... so before I know it, I think June's plans will be messed up too.

I'm going to think about it today and decide whether to leave us a cushion. The last thing I want to be worrying about when labour starts is whether I've got enough in the bank after paying debts to afford the car park etc. If we don't use the cushion, then it can be spent on debt afterall - simple

The more I think about it, the less likely 12 months seems .... but you never know. If we miss it by a month or so, it's still going to be a huge achievement to have got it paid off.

rachelww1

Hi mrsspendalot. You're doing well with your payments so far, but I think that a cushion would be a good idea as you never know what's round the corner. Don't beat yourself up if you can't get it done in the 12 months, you've got a new addition to think about too. Just remember you've still all got to live whilst paying off the debts. You'll get there xx

mrsspendalot

rachelww1 wrote: »

Hi mrsspendalot. You're doing well with your payments so far, but I think that a cushion would be a good idea as you never know what's round the corner. Don't beat yourself up if you can't get it done in the 12 months, you've got a new addition to think about too. Just remember you've still all got to live whilst paying off the debts. You'll get there xx

Awww thank you!

Yes, there is bound to be some unexpected expense. I intend to breastfeed, but if baby doesn't take to it, I'll have to buy bottles and formula etc. I can't plan for everything, I just need to accept that. A cushion is probably the best thing for now - just to get through the birth and the first couple of weeks after.

I'm also going to slightly change my plan of attack with the shopping. I've been getting a weekly Mr T online shop whilst I can't physically get out to the supermarket. It suddenly occurred to me in the bath yesterday (as these things do :rotfl:) that I would be better off doing a fortnightly Mr T online shop - half the delivery charges!!! Doh!!! So simple. So I'm going to meal plan 2 weeks in advance, do a fortnightly Mr T shop and then send DH to the shop for bread and milk in between as our freezer just isn't big enough to store enough for 2 weeks. I did contemplate a chest freezer, but I don't really have anywhere to put one. Just logged on to my clubcard account and I have £14.50 in Clubcard vouchers, plus £6 they emailed me as a 'sorry we couldn't deliver when you booked' gesture. That will help with the food budget I've been round and looked at the absolute stack of toiletries and cleaning products I have accumulated ... apart from loo roll and shampoo, we don't need anything for at least 2 weeks! I can't wait until I can get out of the house again after the baby is born and bargain shop in town rather than having to buy everything from Mr T

mrsspendalot

DH has taken 2 office chairs from the spare room (aka the tip) to the 2nd hand shop and got £20 for them and sold something he no longer uses for his hobby for £15 :j

That will pay for swimming club tonight for the kids (£11) and the rest will pay for tomorrow's end of season football club presentation for DS1, so that's £35 I can scrub from my outgoings budget for the month

I can also now get into the spare room which is a novelty :rotfl: