Does Little & Often Really Work?

RobertoMoir

moments_of_sanity wrote: »

We have a large amount of debt on CC's and are now starting to try and repay it - I paid the minimum payment at the end of last week and had £10 spare today so I paid £5.00 each on the two largest credit cards (so £5 each).

Does it make a huge difference in the long run, it certainly doesn't feel like it's making any difference as I made the payment tonight!?

It won't make much of a difference yet, because you've done the little but (from what I see) not yet done the often. If you can do both then you will see the debt come down faster than you think.

Rather than spread your 'extra' payments around, it might be worth looking at the "snowball" method - concentrate on one debt that you can pay off the easiest with the 'little and often' method and put all your extra payments into that so its paid off as fast as possible, then concentrate all your 'extra' on the next debt to pay that off... each time you'll have more "extra" money to pay off the next debt because you'll have the money that was going on all the debts that are now paid off... does that make sense?

DevonGirl

Does anyone know if little payments are allowed on a DMP? I realise any extra monies are supposed to be spread across all debtors, but if I had small amounts, say £6 here, £2 there, could I pay these into some of my smaller accounts, and then go online once a month and change my totals on my CCCS DMP page? (I have to do this every month anyway as 2 of my creditors have not frozen interest, so my CCCS statements never match the amount I owe on the c/c statements). Any advice?
Thanks
DG

mooomin

Check out the Payment A Day thread which helped me to pay off over £9,000 of debt in 25 months :money:

It's proof that little and often does wonders

GraciesGran

I've always done it for both clearing debts (all gone) and saving. It seems so painless but when I look at the results I get a lovely warm/smug feeling. I have to admit to also being one of those people who pick up pennies they find laying in the street.

Amy0x

moments_of_sanity wrote: »

We have a large amount of debt on CC's and are now starting to try and repay it - I paid the minimum payment at the end of last week and had £10 spare today so I paid £5.00 each on the two largest credit cards (so £5 each).

Does it make a huge difference in the long run, it certainly doesn't feel like it's making any difference as I made the payment tonight!?

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Well say you owed £200 on a credit card. Payed £5 off... You now owe £195. It all adds to paying off so yes it would make a difference, however you will need to be careful as my o/h has a store card - minimum payment £6 a month, and certain charges added on is £3 which means he is only paying £3 a month off a £200 bill.... Which would take forever.

If you mean you are going to pay £5 off extra whenever you have the money on top of your minimum payment and will be paying £5 frequently then the bill will be gone in no time!

Good luck
x

moments_of_sanity

I looked at the snowball calculator yesterday and couldn't believe how little time it would take to pay off (gave us the advice to start with DH Egg card as that is the highest interest). Even overpaying by £40 per month and keeping the repayment at £205 per month without reducing it will clear the card in a few years!! :j

Start as I mean to go on so I have paid £20 off each of our Egg cards as I am going to pay £40 off each per month - paid £25 this month so far and hopefully that will reduce the debt.

Am a little bit peved though as I have cancelled the Egg DD's, that way Egg suspend the account and you can no longer use the card (removing temptation) and they have charged us £16 failed DD charge - they never collected the DD as we had cancelled it a week before it was due!! Hey ho, at least that will be the last charge they make the rest will be us making overpayments, so onwards and up!!

Checked all my credit card balances tonight and we have cleared over £100 off them in just a month - not a lot I know when you consider how much we owe but really feel like we are getting on top of all of this now!

We have also finally managed to rent out DH's shared inherited property for £1,000 per month - 10% agent fees and then the £900 split between DH and BIL so £450 a month from that and Nationwide have let us take the mortgage on interest only so another £299 saving there. We are going to Centreparcs for Xmas (was supposed to be last year but MIL terminally ill so moved to this year) and we have a balance of £823 to pay, we were umming and ahing about whether to go or not but really feel we need to do something nice for us this Christmas (MIL died in our house and DH doesn't want to be here for the first anniversary).

By Xmas we should be able to see a huge dent in our debt!