301k in debt and morbidly obese - things aren't great!

MrBloater

Bloater stats Aug 2011 - Dec 2013

Mortgage: down by 16.6k to 204.7k. And LTV now approx 78%. YAY!
Unsecured Loans: down by 25.1k to 2.2k. DOUBLE YAY!
Overdraft: down by 3.3k to 0k. TRIPLE YAY!
Credit / Store Cards: up by 2.5k to 50.7k.

Which is pretty much what I was expecting - taking the Mortgage and Loans out of the equation what has to be focused on now is getting that 50.7k monkey off my bank. Taking into account the considerable drop in salary I had this year I'm very happy with how things are progressing. Naysayers I'm sure will want to sour the cream but nothing's going to stop me looking sunny side up.

Plans
- Austerity drive on grocery shopping will continue. Ruthless purge of excesses and wise use of vouchers will continue. Alcohol can go and do one; I didn't touch a drop yesterday and I'm certainly not planning on buying any. There's a bottle of rum in the cereal cupboard if I get totally desperate. Yo ho ho.
- Am knocking the HD package on the head from Sky so that'll be another 11quid to chuck at a card. Kids want the kids TV and I cannot prise the Movies away from Mrs B but I'll give up my beloved F1 cos that's the way I roll. Boo hoo hoo.
- Will climb back on the ebay horse to try and rid myself of remaining vinyl / toy cars / anything of value, once I've sussed out how to rip myself off by getting the postage wrong. Moan moan moan.
- Use the snowball calculator to make sure we are paying off the highest interest rate cards first. Have a list of all of them now and some are pretty eye-watering.
- When the phones come up for renewal I won't be upgrading and will just go to a tenner a month PAYG contract but to be fair we don't spend much on them already as we hammered down a decent deal at the last renewal.
- Be more careful in my car - the total debt would have been somewhat lower if I hadn't have had to compensate the driver whose paintwork I scratched and hadn't had to pay the stupidly high excess when my airbags went pop. All in all those two little adventures added up to me being at least 600quid worse off.
- Keep on smiling and being the best Dad, Husband and Son I possibly can.

Hope everyone has a nice Boxing Day.

ampersand

Bonjour Mr Bloater -
I read some of your Thread way back when. At times, like ani26, felt some critique-y reaction to what I read, but know also that my Bus Pass ancience and status as unpaid-up Member of the Precariat is at considerable remove from the Bloater situ. In common, survivor and lateral thinker, and have certainly dwelt stratospheric levels 'higher' materially in former lives.

I part company from ani26 here: 'You can have dreams but only if they are realistically within your reach. You can only have what you can afford[/I].' Disagree with first. The second sentence you thoroughly know, if not always ingesting it as one of your 5-a-day. Dreams constitute another 1 of those 5. Everything in its season, in due proportion? Thus, the ideal, but we are human, with the glory of a unique mind, imagination, language in the luxury of a lifespan's orbit, each one of us.

It is all a Great Game.

Away from metaphysics, this went in NZ family crimbo box, mint from Church fête:
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15772973-fifty-sheds-of-grey. I, too, have 2 sheds, stuffed, to be replaced by workroom/storage/escape space this year.

I do hope little bloaters are fully womble-trained. You also. I usually gain +1000 Mr T pts per qtr this way. Worthwhile. Ditto a My Waitrose card each for you and Mrs B. Free daily hot drink[sit in or take out], in house monthly mag and Weekend paper, plus daily newspaper with £5 spend[of which paper's cost forms part]. Waitrose is also splendidly haggle-able, in the nicest possible way. It can become a small beacon moment some days, as civilised space, read of other daily journals, pause, reflect, plan.

re: Bay of Flee. Haven't touched it as seller for many long whiles. Increasingly know people who use Facebook as free listing tool. Worth investigating?

On this St Stephen's Day, blue sky and sun are out there. Mr Bloater also j'espère. lit. and fig.

gallygirl

Not very pretty in black and white , but better than the "la la la not listening" technique :T.

So, snowballing is a truly wondrous thing :j. When do you anticipate card no.1 will be paid off? That's when the fun really begins . What about the unsecured loan? Are you paying a lot off that every month? May be better psychologically to get rid of that even if it's a lower APR as that would be a whole debt 'class' gone?

I too part company from Ani. Where would life be without dreams? The clever part is getting them within reach (without just bunging on the credit cards ).

Happy Boxing Day.

PS was thinking about you last night as little relative got some Peppa Pigs for Xmas .

martinbuckley

MrBloater wrote: »

Bloater stats Aug 2011 - Dec 2013

Mortgage: down by 16.6k to 204.7k. And LTV now approx 78%. YAY!
Unsecured Loans: down by 25.1k to 2.2k. DOUBLE YAY!
Overdraft: down by 3.3k to 0k. TRIPLE YAY!
Credit / Store Cards: up by 2.5k to 50.7k.


- Am knocking the HD package on the head from Sky so that'll be another 11quid to chuck at a card.

Good to hear everything financial is on a downward spiral. However Didn't you ring sky and cancel HD in Aug 2011 - you said so in your opening post.

Try ovivo mobile - they have a tariff which is free (200 mins, 300 texts, 500Mb data) once you buy a sim for £20. You even get £18 of it returned as phone credit if you keep your old number. I did this in August and still have £18 credit.

Keep going with the running though - 6K+ runs must result in weight loss eventually.

ani_26

MrBloater wrote: »

Bloater stats Aug 2011 - Dec 2013

Mortgage: down by 16.6k to 204.7k. And LTV now approx 78%. YAY!
Unsecured Loans: down by 25.1k to 2.2k. DOUBLE YAY!
Overdraft: down by 3.3k to 0k. TRIPLE YAY!
Credit / Store Cards: up by 2.5k to 50.7k.

Which is pretty much what I was expecting - taking the Mortgage and Loans out of the equation what has to be focused on now is getting that 50.7k monkey off my bank. Taking into account the considerable drop in salary I had this year I'm very happy with how things are progressing. Naysayers I'm sure will want to sour the cream but nothing's going to stop me looking sunny side up.

Plans
- Austerity drive on grocery shopping will continue. Ruthless purge of excesses and wise use of vouchers will continue. Alcohol can go and do one; I didn't touch a drop yesterday and I'm certainly not planning on buying any. There's a bottle of rum in the cereal cupboard if I get totally desperate. Yo ho ho.
- Am knocking the HD package on the head from Sky so that'll be another 11quid to chuck at a card. Kids want the kids TV and I cannot prise the Movies away from Mrs B but I'll give up my beloved F1 cos that's the way I roll. Boo hoo hoo.
- Will climb back on the ebay horse to try and rid myself of remaining vinyl / toy cars / anything of value, once I've sussed out how to rip myself off by getting the postage wrong. Moan moan moan.
- Use the snowball calculator to make sure we are paying off the highest interest rate cards first. Have a list of all of them now and some are pretty eye-watering.
- When the phones come up for renewal I won't be upgrading and will just go to a tenner a month PAYG contract but to be fair we don't spend much on them already as we hammered down a decent deal at the last renewal.
- Be more careful in my car - the total debt would have been somewhat lower if I hadn't have had to compensate the driver whose paintwork I scratched and hadn't had to pay the stupidly high excess when my airbags went pop. All in all those two little adventures added up to me being at least 600quid worse off.
- Keep on smiling and being the best Dad, Husband and Son I possibly can.

Hope everyone has a nice Boxing Day.

Naysayers think you've done well, Mr Bloater. Take a pat on the back. It's not that bad. I think we all know it's the credit cards which are your nemesis. CUT THEM UP. :rotfl:I expected the cc debt had risen. It's madness to consider buying a £600k house with that amount of cc debt, apart from nigh on impossible? Your priority unsecured debts are the ones with the highest interest. Which needs you to sit down and find out. Seriously. Then prioritise. Just think how much you've paid for the goods you've had, if you need an incentive.


I note you're keeping quiet on the weight loss which probably indicates a small weight gain, given your sudden enthusiasm again, for running? :whistle:


Well done with the alcohol, keep it up.



Everything in moderation, including dreams?

gallygirl wrote: »

Not very pretty in black and white , but better than the "la la la not listening" technique :T.

Too true............................:D

chevalier

I think that those are good global goals, now to get some tighter focus.
so which card are you going to pay off first. the one with the highest interest or the one with the highest balance.

I know that one poster on here, every time they didn't buy the bottle of booze, they immediately paid the equivalent off their card. That way they paid off a card in a shorter time, and had the motivation of knowing that if they didn't buy the booze they could see a decrease in the card there and then.

just a thought
chev

ani_26

chevalier wrote: »

I know that one poster on here, every time they didn't buy the bottle of booze, they immediately paid the equivalent off their card. That way they paid off a card in a shorter time, and had the motivation of knowing that if they didn't buy the booze they could see a decrease in the card there and then.

That's a great idea.


Over to you, Mr Bloater?

Vikipollard

28k of loans and overdraft paid off is outstanding Mr B!! Very well done ~ you should rightly be happy about that


Here's hoping 2014 is the year of the Adam Visor sale

patman99

Well done on reducing your loans by over 90% & your overdraft by 100%. Ok, you have increased your cc debt by 5%, but this is still less than the drop in the other areas.

As you free-up money from loan payments, you can divert some of it to over-paying the highest % cc to get it paid-off and cancelled.

Since 2011 you have come a long way. As for getting shot of Sky HD, you should be able to get a cheap FreeviewHD box to plug into your TV to enable you to watch F1 in proper 1080p HD on the BBC (rather than in 1080i HD on Sky, which is actually not a 1080 line picture, but a 540 line picture).

As for the little Bloaters, well, there is 'Citv' & 'Cbeebies' for free.

Netfli & LoveFilm have a good range of films on (and if you use a program such as 'DNSSwitcher' to fool them in to believing that you are a US-based subscriber, you can get all the latest films BEFORE Sky (and in HD to boot)).

Igamogam

Dream on Mr B...............because they cost nothing and dont need to be done 'in moderation'

Tend to agree with Patman on the TV thing - CBBC Netflix etc

Oh and its free listing everyday until 5th January - use Royal Mail website to get your postage sorted