Nibbling away at Debt....

Mice_Elf

Some very good points being raised here. I jot them down and then discuss them with my OH when he gets home and it is helping to see things in a different light.

Point of note - the wedding is off...cancelled....postponed actually until we are in a better position. We've already made the biggest commitment to each other of having a child so a change of name isn't a necessity right now. If necessary I can change it via deedpoll, but it's not a big concern at the moment. The money that was going into this account is now going towards the credit cards.

My OH's rail ticket is £426 per month season ticket. This covers him from St Neots train station to London and the tube to Canary Wharf. It currently lasts anything from an hour and a half upwards per journey. He has to catch the 6:53am train (latest he can catch) to be in work for half 8. Although for some reason the trains are currently going slower than before, so he now has to catch the 6:23 train to be in by half 8.

This is one of our biggest expenses, in fact after the mortgage payment it IS the biggest payment that we make per month. We've looked into buses but it is very convoluted and the few times he's had to do that due to trains being cancelled and the station running a bus service, it's taken him nigh on 4 hours to get into London in the morning.

We are going to concentrate on Barclaycard next and in fact I found a redundant savings account that I've had from a child but which I'd forgotten all about, so it's been slowly accruing interest, so I've transferred the money from that and as soon as it's cleared, it's going on B'card. It won't completely get rid of it, but it will lower the outstanding balance to about £150.

We're starting on my mum's loft tomorrow to gather together a load of stuff to Ebay or sell at a car boot or something. I know for a fact that I have a metal detector and a telescope stashed away in that loft that I obviously have no need for and it's just gathering dust. Anything I find in the loft that's mine will go in some way - whether by skip, Ebay or Freecycle, just to get rid of it. Obviously the more I sell, the better.

A couple of things that I've already put on Ebay have sold, so am just waiting for the payments to come through on that and then they will go towards first B'card to get rid of it and then SkyCard.

Also have a shedload of books that I will stick on GreenMountain, Amazon or car boot to sell and free up some space.

As regards the car, it's staying. I know that it will free up some money to get rid of it, but it's too necessary. I can't carry a 20kg bag of rabbit food, plus straw for the hutch, plus cat food if they have it on a BOGOF offer as they do sometimes, on a bike with my daughter (she's 20 months). Not least of which because it's over 35 miles to the nearest Pets at Home where they sell the big economical bags (£7.99 for 20kg) and I tend to incoporate a visit to PaH with other tasks that I have over in that direction.

That said, my parents do have a bike lurking about from one of my brother's old girlfriends, so I will fetch that back, clean it up, get a seat & helmet for my daughter and use that for all shorter journeys or journeys that don't require me to pick up a load of stuff.

Sent off 2 more application forms this morning for another 2 jobs, both part time, one of which I'd really like, the other wouldn't be a favourite, but would mean money coming in.

OH has written out his CV in preparation for job-hunting, although from the looks of various websites, the market is a bit dry for his type of work. Does anyone know how to write a really good CV? No matter how we re-work OH's it always comes out really long. For instance at the moment it's 7 pages!! Which is far, far too long to be useful as a CV. Ideally we'd like to get it down to 1 page of clear, concise job relevance, but either we cut out vast swathes of relevant job specifics, or it goes over 1 page. He is thinking of doing 2 or 3 different CVs incorporating different specifics, depending on what type of job he's applying for.

Good point on the combined telephone / broadband / Sky deal - will look into that and see if we can change it over. I know that when we tried to change from BT to Southern Electric, who were offering a deal if you took out all 3 utilities with them, we were tied into a contract with BT, so shall have to look at when that ends, otherwise we'll need to pay them nearly £300 apparently. So we found out when we attempted the switch and then received a letter from BT. Fortunately we were able to "switch" back to BT without incurring any costs as it hadn't gone too far, but will check to see when that expires.

We have rung Sky to cancel and they gave us a bonus of 4 months free, as we've been with them so long...so that's 4 months of savings which will go on the credit cards and in 4 months I'll ring them again and tell them that it's still too expensive.


I do have a Quidco account, but that relies on you buying things to get the discounts / money back and at present I am not buying anything....not a thing. Well no, I'll amend that - I did buy some cat food and milk yesterday, but it was as part of a Mystery Shop for which I'll be reimbursed. The last thing I bought before that was a £3 christening present for Sunday as it's my cousin's daughter's christening, so I purchased it through Quidco or one of the other cashback sites that was also offering a discount, so the total (with free P&P) was £3. Don't have any wrapping paper for it, but I'm thinking of making my own with some blank paper, stamps & ink that I have in my craft box upstairs.

I took the local free papers from my brother's this morning when I was checking on his cats and I'm now off to browse through them to see if there's anything else I can apply for.

climbgirl

Mice_Elf wrote:

As regards the car, it's staying. I know that it will free up some money to get rid of it, but it's too necessary. I can't carry a 20kg bag of rabbit food, plus straw for the hutch, plus cat food if they have it on a BOGOF offer as they do sometimes, on a bike with my daughter (she's 20 months). Not least of which because it's over 35 miles to the nearest Pets at Home where they sell the big economical bags (£7.99 for 20kg) and I tend to incoporate a visit to PaH with other tasks that I have over in that direction.

You could do it on the weekends when your husband's car is at home....This is what I mean about thinking outside the square. You can't just discard options because they seem pretty inconvenient, you need to think of all possible options. Ultimately of course, it's your call! But I do think drastic action is needed here and fast.

As for the husband's commute, you don't really have a choice - I think you said you live near Cambridge? Commuting to Canary Wharf is going to cost that much I'm afraid. The only thing I can suggest is to ask his work for a loan for an annual season ticket. They're a lot cheaper than monthly passes and most comapnies do an interest free loan, they just take it off your pay each month.

The only other thing is to move closer. The more I think about your situation, the more I think moving house and downsizing is a smart option for you right now. You could move closer to your hubby's work and save on his commute fares; your mortgage might be lower if you have a smaller house (or at least not interest only anymore!), and you might free up a bit of equity (if there is any!) to hit some debts. It's certainly worth considering if you have a large house and this option is open to you...

Mice_Elf

It is one option we're definitely thinking about. OH is picking up the property pages and we're looking on Fish4, RightMove and a lot of other websites to see what houses are like down there. We don't have a big house here really - it's a 3 bed-semi, but it is in a small village in a really rural setting - open fields and big woodland areas, so it's a sought after location.

We do have some equity in the house, so it is something that we're crunching figures for.

I'll mention the Work loan for a season ticket - I hadn't heard of that before. Thank you. We did look at buying an annual ticket but it's over £5000 which is a heck of a lot of money to find! It would save us nearly the cost of a monthly season ticket but we just don't have £5000 to spend on a ticket, unfortunately.