Joining the club

yellowmoon

Thanks for the encouragement Kazonline. I'm still sorting and thinking of lots of things I can do. So far . . .

Cancelled advantage gold at £15 pcm for normal current a/c at Natwest.

Applied for A & L premier account with 0% overdraft matched to Natwest account - If this works out I can soon pay my £4,666 Natwest loan 6.9% off with my free overdraft.

Worked out that Natwest loan total was with all the interest for the full term so adjusted the current balance to state what it is now if I pay it - in line with the other figures. Thus reducing my debt total ...nice !

Swopped 5.9% to 3.9% (new M&S card) for £6,000

Cancelled NTL dial up £14.99 pcm which I didn't even know I had !!!!!

Reduced Gym membership from £40 to £25.

Checked out council tax banding - not likely to be reduced unfortunately.

Recorded spending in a book and made myself a super-duper spreadsheet for tracking my bank (and all money flows) for the next 6 months. Including a prediction of debt reduction if I stay on track - looks hopeful.

Had a serious look at the possibility of paying everything off in 2 years but too scared as I still want to go on holiday and spend at Christmas. But I have readjusted my target date to Dec. 2010 ! So that's 3 years rather that my original 5.

Looked into lots of earning/paying less ideas.

Managed to call in a couple of debts from friends.

I have also been looking at my mortgage. The snowballing site and the mortgage overpayment predictors have shown me that I'd be better off paying money into my mortgage rather than some of my debts which are at a lower rate. So from April I plan to add £100 overpayment to my mortgage. This will mean less available to pay off my smaller debts but appears to be the most sensible option financially. It will take 7 years off the term of my mortgage!

Finally, seem to have made a very healthy start to being debt free. Long may it last :T

Still looking for more ideas.

yellowmoon

I received all my details for my new A&L a/c this week and my online PIN today. I was very pleased to see that they had already matched my old overdraft limit on my Natwest a/c. I only sent the proof on Wednesday. It then took only a couple of mins to transfer £2500 from A&L to NW. Thus now at o% not 16.9%. Pleased as punch today!! :j

bobbie78

HI Yellow Moon,

You seem to be on the ball right now. I hope you went through quidco and got your 50 quid cash back when you got your A&L account. That or I think someone said halifax are doing 100 quid cash back but I'm not sure about the overdraft on that one.

Anyway do you have any dvds? I have made over 100 quid listing dvd's on amazon, takes no time to do as you don't have to upload photos or anything, you just get an email each time one sells. I've sold ones I thought no one would want, there are also threads on selling things on ebay that you might have just thrown away before.

Make sure you keeping up with the spending diary and writing down every penny so you can see if it is going on 'proper food' or take aways, so you know where else you can try and reign in that spending that got you to here in the first place. I only know as I spent 4 quid in starbucks every day on top of getting a 3 quid sarnie somewhere else and didn't even think about it now spend 4 quid on lunches for whole week.

saxmund

Yellowmoon, I recently upgraded from NTL dial-up to broadband and they said that they automatically cancelled my dial-up - which they did. I did have to hassle them to get the paid-in-advance portion of the last month's dial-up credited to my account, but that's a slightly different matter. I suggest you gassle them for a refund.

On your gas and electric bills which you were underpaying - have you got online accounts with the providers? They normally charge you lower rates, and it makes it easy to go online every now and again and check that your payments are keeping up with your usage.

yellowmoon

Thanks for the ideas folks. Unfortunately I didn't see the quidco link to A&L until a week after. I only joined Quidco last week - I was really angry with myself!! I will have a look at my DVD's though and hassle NTL big time. I emailed Npower saying I do all my stuff online now and got a reply saying "current customer cannot move to online accounts." So when it's save to swich again I am going to another supplier who can give me an online account - so there Npower !

yellowmoon

Thanks for the ideas folks. Unfortunately I didn't see the quidco link to A&L until a week after. I only joined Quidco last week - I was really angry with myself!! I will have a look at my DVD's though and hassle NTL big time. I emailed Npower saying I do all my stuff online now and got a reply saying "current customer cannot move to online accounts." So when it's save to swich again I am going to another supplier who can give me an online account - so there Npower !