emmy's debt diary

emmamcr

Today was a huge milestone. I paid off the first £200 into my highest interest Credit card (Barclays). It feels fantastic to be in control.

I really need to work on following my bank account and working out how much I can transfer at a time. I have an interest free £1000 overdraft which is currently maxed out, and I think I might try to get it down to about £500 so I have a bit of leeway with transfers. What would be awful is if I transferred money into a CC and then an unexpected bill caused me to go over my O/D limit.

The Barclaycard only has £1000 on it, so I should pay it off quite quickly, but I'm not sure whether I should then Balance transfer some money onto it (if they have a reduced rate) or whether I should just close it.

The weather makes a NSD pretty likely today likely

tryhard_2

hi emma
well done on overpaying and good luck in your dfw journey

GettingThingsDone

Hi Emma - good luck! It's great being in control. Have you tried the snowball calculator?

emmamcr

Thanks
The snowball calculator is my new best friend . I'm on a mission to beat it down:T

bobbie78

HI Emma, well done on making your first over payment. We have similar levels of debt so I'll keep an eye on your progress with interest. You might want to sign up to the Olympic Challenge thread for lots of ideas and motivation to make extra money by July.

Also you might want to include your SOA in your debt diary as a fresh set of eyes might stop you paying too much for something, or missing something out of your budget which you wouldn't want sneaking up on you in 6 months.

emmamcr

Thanks Bobbie

I will certainly consider the Olympic challenge, though it looks quite hard!

The SOA is quite difficult. I am a SAHM, and my husband pays £1500 into our joint account to cover the bills, mortgage and direct debits, and then pays me £1500 for housekeeping. He isn't interested in the debt reduction, and won't be proactive on changing insurance etc, so I'm doing the debt reduction from the housekeeping money:rolleyes: I'm hoping that as renewals for car insurance etc come up I can point him to Confused.com, but it's slow steps. He would definitely not give up Sky etc.

While I have only just made my first overpayment:T , I stopped using credit cards a year ago, and have done bits and pieces over the last year, such as remortgaging. We are actually quite frugal as a family, the debt was predominantly due to me having to stop work suddenly due to one of our children being seriously ill..of course it wasn't so easy to stop all the financial commitments!

However, I might try to do a SOA of some sort, as he might get a lightbulb moment at some point!

emmamcr

Monthly Incomings:

My salary (housekeeping, bits of work)- £1820
Partners input into joint account: £1400
Benefits - £600 (includes disability benefit for child)
Dh keeps a fair bit of his salary, I would guess about £1000, which he spends on car magazines:mad: I think he pays the broadband and someother expenses too, but I'm not sure what!

Total - £3820

Monthly Outgoings:

Mortgage/Rent - £710
Council Tax - £85
Gas - £66
Electric - £22.50
TV License - £11
Sky £45
Phone - £25
Mobile phone:£25 (for 2)
Food (including school meals) - £400
Car Insurance - £76
Petrol - £50
Life Insurance £40
Miscellaneous DH expenses £200



I wil do a spending diary to identify other spending, but we have 4 children so there is a fair amount on clothing, activities, school trips etc to consider.
My youngest child is disabled and we have to keep the house warm for her, which is why the gas bill is so high. I have found school dinners to be worthwhile as it means I can provide sandwiches or soup for dinner rather than a big meal!

I figured it would be better to pay into credit card debts and then use them at christmas rather than keep the money in my current account as it will be stop interest being owed all year. I estimate Christmas spending to be £1000, though I will definitely reduce it if I can.

bobbie78

That is a perfect start it really is. :T OK things you might want to add on (or get DH to swear he will pay for so you don't have to include them in your money)

Childrens birthday pressys / parties (for your kids and the ones they are invited too)
Car Tax and Mot / maintenance

If you start planning for xmas now (sounds crazy I know) then you should be able to budget for it. If you sign up for pigsback (see this thread from the freebies board) you might be able to make 100 quid in vouchers to spend for xmas, also if you buy anything check if you can get cash back from quidco.com - there is a quidco thread somewhere as well which is useful and shows which deals you can get nice amounts back from. Obviously don't sign-up or buy anything that is going to cost you money unless you were going to buy that anyway or it is a false economy. My Tesco is still selling wrapping paper and some other xmas pressys for under 50p so you might still be able to get a few things for next year now, but obviously don't go mad.

So if you work out an amount a month to squirrel away for these kinds of things then it shouldn't get to the end of the month and end up having to tap hubby for money (unless you want to to get him more involved).

Depending on how much time you have free (not much I'm guessing being a mum) there is a website called aqa which is a text messaging service where by people text in questions like how high is the moon, and you could do it from home on your computer and answer these questions. There are a few people that do it on here but as soon as they put new vacancies up I'm sure you'll see people talking about it again as it seems to be a popular way to make money from home as I believe you set your own hours etc. You just have to register as self employed and put some money aside for taxes potentially depending on how much you end up doing, but there are lots of people who do this who could advise you more if you're interested I'm sure.

OK I'm off to tesco's really this time, the main problem you are going to have is these boards are very very addictive and it seems to be partners end up getting involved as they come hunting for their other halves to see what they are doing on the internet on that money site again, until they too see how addictive it can be.

OH another thing - sorry I'll stop soon - do you get tesco points or anything? could you get the car mags through subscriptions using these points? or look on the freebies board or quidco to see if you can subscribe and get cash back if he gets the same ones a lot? OK I'm really going now. :rotfl:

emmamcr

Thanks Bobbie

I renewed our insurance today. It's due in February and our renewal came through at £1000 for Buildings and Contents......

I went through Money Supermarket, got a quote of £588 for both, with £50 cashback from the Post Office and another £22.50 from Quidco!!!!!

An instant £500 saving, but even better, as it was so little I paid it in a lump sum, whereas normally I pay monthly at a huge rate of interest, which costs me £200 a year, so a £700 a year saving!!!!!!

I checked the t&c over and over and they are better than our old policy....I might just treat myself to a bottle of wine!!

If you haven't checked your insurance costs I really urge you to do it. I was with the AA and mistakenly thought they were akin to Money Supermarket, when clearly, they aren't.