** Wish I was a money fairy **

Housework*Fairy

End of month update.

DH and I have different paydates. I get paid every 25th into the bills account and he gets paid on the last working day of the month into the spends account. It's slightly confusing me having two 'ends of month' so as of now I am going to class 24th as my 'end of month'. It does mean I cheated somewhat though in February.

Bills account:
Start of month: £1738.25-
End of month: £1700.15-
Underspent by: £38.10

Spends account:
Start of month (27th Jan): £1369.36-
End of month (24th Feb): £1383.45 (including £135 still to debit)
Overspent by: £14.09

This completely amazed me but I'm very proud of my little self given that I knew it would be a very expensive month.

I cut my grocery bills right down. As I have 'cheated' a little bit by bringing the end of the month forward there were only three 'big shop' grocery bills that month just short of £150. I have now devised a 4-weekly meal plan and have got into a habit of ordering on Friday for Monday delivery. I buy 'treat' stuff from Home Bargains and went and spent £13 and still have quite a bit left ten days later.

Did manage to pay in £106 in extras though which was mileage cheques, paypal and money for some extra work or I would have been much more overdrawn,

In total I spent £576 on 'extra' stuff I wouldn't normally have to pay out for in a month. This included:
A round of drinks when the in-laws took us out for lunch: £13.90
New shoes for DS1: £14.00 (third pair this school year!)
DS2 and 3 friends to soft play for his birthday; £16
DS2 birthday present: £100 (although we did say we would put his birthday money towards this, and the £65 is still in a cupboard)
Husband's birthday night out: £100 (although it was nearer £80)
Remainder of DS1's school trip: £135
Tickets for John Bishop: £90
Passport for DS1: £49.50
Uniform for DS2 (growth spurt): £14.00
Extra interest for going overdrawn in November: £12.00
Some new clothes for DS2 (growth spurt): £13
I caved in and bought a book for my kindle: £4.99 (have been dead good mostly sticking to freebies).

The school haven't cashed the cheque for the trip though yet.

This month I need to find the money for DS1's spending money for his school trip which will be around £150. I hope he doesn't spend this though, he is away for 6 days and 2.5 of this is travelling!!

Also need to pay my newspaper bill as I haven't paid that in ages too, and I got a shock this morning when I asked how much it was.

Hope I haven't added it up wrong and get a shock next month lol

mooomin

Two suggestions....

1. Bind DS1's feet

2. Cancel the newspapers. They're expensive and unnecessary. If you had to go to the shop and hand over the money every day would you?

Thus ends the tough love for today

Housework*Fairy

Right, I've been faffing about for far too long now and I need an idea of how long it will take me to pay off these cards so I have done a snowball at long last. It's not entirely accurate because I couldn't work out how to include overdrafts in it, and similarly my catalogue so I bunged that down as a fixed payment but that is the highest interest rate anyway so will be the first to be paid off.

I haven't been overly ambitious with my figures and have kept the minimum payment (£350 per month) as the amount I can snowball.

So with this in mind total debt is around £17210 (CC only) and it will take 72 months to pay it off :eek: which is actually less than I thought (I'd guessed 10 years).

So schedule for payments from March wage:
Catalogue: £64.25 (estimated catalogue DFD January 2013)
Natwest (mine): £92
Natwest (DH): £40
HSBC: £42.88
Nationwide: £30.88
Halifax (Mine): £40.00
Halifax (DH): £40

Had some good news from Nationwide as I applied for their 17-month 0% balance transfer card and was accepted with a credit limit of £2800 which gives me enough to nicely clear my Tesco credit card of which the balance never seems to reduce by much (*probably because I never pay any extra to it *)

Also snowball has worked out the Halifax payments at £40 but looking at last months payments one of them is usually around £38+ and the other usually £35+ so I will put the extra few quid towards my catalogue.

So - I shall update my snowball as the month goes along :-)

mooomin

Can you clear the catalogue with one of the credit cards then BT it to the new card?

Housework*Fairy

I don't know - can I?

I thought a card had to be a super balance transfer one to clear overdrafts or catalogues? Or is a catalogue the same premise as a store card / credit card??

mooomin

No idea but it's worth checking, no?

Housework*Fairy

I shall indeed ask when I ring them to do the BT

Lemon_Tree

good idea FF, i hope you're able to do it HF. well done for doing your snowball HF now you know how you're going to tackle your debt and the difference it will make. I've been playing with my mortgage accounts (we'll have 2 with the new house) to see which one we should pay extra towards. It's sad but it's a fun game.

Housework*Fairy

Woohoo - I phoned Nationwide and they confirmed that they could pay off the catalogue (they send a cheque directly to the catalogue company however) so as I know it is important to get rid of the catalogue due to the high rate of interest, I have decided to BT that and pay off in full the HSBC credit card which is around £1685, so paying those two off is roughly the same as paying the Tesco card off.

Anyway - as a result my DFD has been brought forward by 1 month (71 months instead of 72). :T

As the rest of my CC's all have the same interest rates (16.9%) I can start cracking on paying off the Tesco Card although the snowball for some reason has put DH's Natwest Card as the 1st card to pay off....

My repayment each month will be £350. I can stretch to £400, which will mean I can be credit card debt free in 58 months but let me not run before I can walk :-)

So now I am looking forwards to next payday so I can start typing in repayments on my snowball

Housework*Fairy

So, the statements for the credit cards are starting to come in. I had three today; Tesco, HSBC and one of the Halifax Clarity Cards. I've amended my snowball accordingly as I'd put the balance of the Clarity Card at £3200 and it's slightly less by £250 or thereabouts, which is good. When I put that into my snowball calculator it's already knocked another month off my DFD to 70 months :j and takes my total owed to now under £17K :j and that's without doing anything as painful as making a payment hah-de-hah

Just awaiting both Natwest cards, my clarity card and the new Nationwide statement, however I did notice that my HSBC card hasn't been paid off yet so the balance transfer hasn't gone through yet.