Mrs Messy's debt diary

MrsMessy

Good news today - we got the PINs for the M&S card we have applied for - so I guess that means we're going to get it!!! No idea till it actually arrives what the credit limit will be though. Looking forward to cutting down those APRs!

MrsMessy

Great news! We got the M&S LOB card with a £6,000 credit limit, so although it's not quite enough to cover the 3 higher rate debts, it's nearly there.

So we have PAID OFF A DEBT!!!! By paying off the 22.8% 10-year loan (£1398 balance outstanding) with the Capital One credit card, and once that goes through we'll transfer the whole Capital One balance (will be around £3500) to the M&S LOB card at 3.9%.

After that we'll transfer as much of my Egg card balance to the M&S card as we can.

I did a couple of snowball calculations which showed that just transferring the debts to the M&S card like this will save us £1700!!!!!! And brings forward the debt-free date by 6 months. HOORAY!

chevalier

well done on the moving around of money. Sounds like things are going well for you.

Just curious, if you are home educating your children, do you not get ANY help from the education authority? If you don't do you think your local school might donate any books that would otherwise be chucked (not the best I know but just a thought).

chev

MrsMessy

No, no funding available from the LEA. Which is a good thing in one way because if they funded us, they'd think they could tell us what to teach and how, which is one of the things we're trying to avoid!

It is a good idea, though, and I might ask the local schools if they're getting rid of any stuff, but TBH I find charity shops have quite a good selection of useful stuff!

Dumyat

you can get some of the freeview channels through your sky box.

MrsMessy

Thanks - forgot to mention that we've just given notice to cancel Sky so after Feb that's £21/month we'll be saving.

beverleyhills

MrsMessy wrote:

Newbie here!

Student loans @ 2% or something like that - £5000'ish. However I do not currently earn enough to have to make repayments on my student loans, and anything I have not repaid by the time I am 50 (another 7.5 years!) will be written off :T
I am not planning on paying these back!!!


Who funded your student loan?

You want to make to make a sizeable contributions to charities each month.

MrsMessy

Are you suggesting I should feel any worse about that than all the hundreds of thousands or millions of people who received full maintenance grants to go to university in the past?

Banks have funded my student loans - I don't owe them any favours. What I am doing is what I am allowed to do by the loan agreement I signed when I took them out.

I would rather give any money I have to those in sickness and poverty than a bank.

The loans company only takes account of my personal income - the charity contributions are paid out of my husband's income.

MrsMessy

I've just come across this thread again after 2 years, and thought it would be fun to update now that things are looking so much better!

I managed to get all the credit cards onto either 3.9% life of balance or 0% cards, and snowballed and paid them down as quickly as possible. We were doing really well and it looked like they would all be cleared by May 2009.

To reduce my husband's travel expenses to and from work (35 miles e/w), it seemed to make sense to stop using the car that only did about 30mpg, buy a car that did about 70mpg and use the savings in petrol money to pay for a one-year loan to buy the car, and then after that we would be better off! All went according to plan until the said little car had its windscreen badly cracked by a flying stone, and without windscreen cover on the insurance policy and a new one costing at least £1000 (odd little foreign car!) it all went kaput. So although the loan payment finished in November, DH had to stop using the car in December when the insurance ran out, as the car will not pass its MOT.

However on the advice of an IFA we rejigged my husband's pensions and were able to take a lump sum which means all credit cards are now paid off! Our only outstanding payments are £104.81 at 5.9% for the original car loan which has just over 2 years to run. I will be getting a settlement figure (it'll be around £2600) to see if we can do anything about it, but in the meantime for the first time ever we are able to save £400 per month and actually build up a little security behind us.

Kimonokawaii

CLAPTON wrote: »

your charitable donation of £124 per month is actually costing you £152 per month as you are borrowing this money at 22.8%.
in other words you're paying 340 per year in interest to borrow this money

now wouldn't it be better to use this money to clear this debt asap and then rather than contributing £124 to charity and £28 to the banks you could then contribute all £152 to charity.

I think I need you to come and sit on my shoulder Clapton!! :A

I used to make regular charity donations but have stopped and I now take part in sponsored events to raise money instead! Currently doing a swim challenge for charity :T Maybe you could switch to fundraising too?