MaccaHallam's Debt-Free Diary

MaccaHallam

London 2012 Rant

I noticed a tweet about London 2012 tickets being on sale in Germany from a travel agents called Dertours. The tickets are on sale to anyone in the EU and found a few tickets going for €32 each, not too bad. I selected tickets for the Mixed Doubles Badminton and Volleyball. Costing €64 in total.

They add €12 shipping fee, expensive but something I could probably live with that. I went to the next page to find there was another foreign shipping fee of €37! So a total of €49 to send 2 tickets from Germany to the UK. What do they do? Hire someone to fly over and hand the tickets to me personally? Absolutely ridiculous. :mad:

I really want to get tickets other than Football tickets for the Olympic games but I'm not that desperate and I refused to be ripped-off by companies trying to make a quick buck so sadly I didn't go through with it.

Banking

I've been checking my accounts this morning and I have 42p left in my main Santander account, payday is tomorrow :j It's been a long month without being paid as I got paid earlier in December because of the Christmas holidays.

I've transferred £75 to my NatWest Debit account and £20 to my Barclays Debit account. These will be actioned tomorrow when there are funds in my account.

As of 25/01/12 here is an update on my accounts:

Santander Debit (MAIN): £0.42
NatWest Debit: -£1,463.88
Barclays Debit: -£499.92
Halifax Debit: £0.04
ICE Cashcard:£9.07

Barclaycard: £1,349.46 - Min Payment £30.36
NatWest Credit: £830.00 - Min Payment £0 no new statement
MBNA: £209.24 - Min Payment £25.00

The Main one I need to concentrate on is the MBNA account, that has the highest APR. NatWest and Barclaycard are 0% although NatWest is ending in the next few days so I need a new Balance Transfer card so will search for that shortly.

Not quite sure how much I should be getting paid tomorrow but it should roughly be around the £1,200 mark.

MaccaHallam

I've been to topcashback and requested a payment for £26.12 so that should arrive in the next few days.

If anyone is interested in football below the Premier League, The Sun are doing the 2 tickets from £9.50 promotion again. Click the link for more info.

2 football tickets from £9.50

They've got a couple of Oldham games in the promotion so will be using this.

MaccaHallam

I've spent a lot of my time off seeing where my finances are ahead of pay day tomorrow.

I've bought some rail tickets costing £42 for next month as I'm going to see my dad near London. The tickets cost less than driving there on my own and I can relax on the train as I'm going down. I also used TCB and Virgin Trains to book the train getting 2.02% back from what I've spent.

Tomorrow I might be booking flights for my trip to Poland in June, hoping the prices will have stayed the same overnight. Really looking forward to going!

MaccaHallam

The big day has arrived! :j

It feels like I can breathe again as I have received £1,210.48 salary for the previous month.

Transfers have been made to my Natwest Debit £75 and Barclays Debit £20

The DD for my internet service from O2 for £6.95 has also been paid.

I've made a payment of £31 to Barclaycard which is a few pence higher than the minimum payment and made an initial payment to MBNA for £50. I plan to pay more off this account this month. I just want to see how the month is going first so I don't stretch myself. £46.51 has been paid to Very.co.uk as well.

MaccaHallam

Balance Transfer problems. I've applied for 2 cards now with Virgin Money and Nationwide and both have rejected me. My NatWest CC is no longer 0% and I need another card. I don't want to be rejected again as it looks bad on your Credit File, any advise at all at what to do?

MaccaHallam

It came about on another thread that I need Car Brakedown Cover on my car as I've never had it before and thankfully I've never needed it. I did some research on here and looked at various articles and I have opted for a years cover with Green Flag's Recovery Plus.

It would have cost £77.38 if paid in full but I wasn't sure if I could do that this month so have gone to pay in installment, first payment of £7.13 and then 11 further payments of £7.08 which brings the total to £85. I used TCB on the purchase so I should get £25.25 cashback eventually although they have warned it might take a few months.

An extra but necessary payment and at the best policy and price for me. At least I hope it was!

Flights to Berlin in June have been booked with EasyJet, I used 3000 Nectar points which gave me £15 off the flights. Only booked them one-way as my friend is booking them the other way. The price on the website was 2x £32.99, then they applied the new £9 admin fee that replaces the card fees but because I was applying through Nectar they then charged me £4.95 to use my card!

How does that work? Feel a bit cheated about that.

Total price for 2 seats came to £79.93. With the £15 off I paid £64.93. The prices for the return journey are roughly the same, just waiting to hear on confirmation.

Glad it's booked now, really looking forward to going now, staying over in Berlin for the day and then getting the train to Poland and exploring there. Should be good fun!

MaccaHallam

The day after payday is when the majority of my DD's are paid.

The finance on my car for £132.64.

Sky TV subscription £32.73, down from £51.75 and a Sky Protect scheme of £8.25 although I had cancelled that the same time I'd reduced my subscription so I need to phone Sky about that.

£22 for contact lenses from Specsavers.

£10 to a fund to pay for a player's wages at Oldham Athletic. I think this is something that can go at this moment in time. Need to pay my own debt rather than pay someone else's wage instead!

I also spent £1.79 on a couple of grocery items before a bigger shop at the weekend.

MaccaHallam

Transferred £20 into my NatWest Credit account in the morning. Really need to sort a new 0% account to transfer this to, will try to sort this out in the next few days.

It's my mums birthday next weekend so selected a card online with Clintons, selected the nicest I could find that could be personalised which cost £2.79 and used TCB to get 33.33% off that price.

Earned 100 clubcard points for getting a car insurance quote through Tesco, think anyone can do this if you supply your clubcard number when quoting.

After watching Liverpool beat Man Utd on telly I went to get my haircut £7.50, pay for some petrol to keep me going over the next few days at work £20 and then did my shopping at Tesco, using a £5 off a £40 spend and comparing prices at mysupermarket I spent £36.73, got another £5 off £40 spend valid until 5th Feb.

Not a bad days efforts I think!

MaccaHallam

Today's spend has been higher than I planned it to be. I'm in a syndicate at work and the person running it is off for part of the month so was collecting for 2 months which came to £9. I had my weekly weigh-in that cost 50p. Then I spent on food and drink which I wasn't planning to. That came to £5.39 in total.

I'm in work until 8 tonight and the airport is really quiet tonight. I'd love to get myself out of here!

MaccaHallam

not the best of days unfortunately. Last night was supposed to be the night booked their trip to Wembley. 2-1 down going into the game last night that cost £12 to get and then £2.30 on food and drink. We played really well, had so many chances but we couldn't score. Then the killer blow as they scored right near the end of the game to seal their place at Wembley instead.

Absolutely gutted but I guess I'm lucky only to have things like this to be gutted about, others have it much worse and it will save me money as I won't buy a ticket for the final now or pay for transport, accommodation etc! Every cloud...

It was my last day in work and I spent £2.99 on food. It's really quiet at work at the moment, hope it picks up soon. I got 2 newspapers as well so I can get cheaper football tickets for a couple of games later in the season 60p.

I commiserated after the loss at the football with a Meal from Domino's costing £15.99. Will go for a huge run today to compensate!

I earned interest of 62p from my Santander account as well, better than a slap in the face.

Money is looking really good so far this month, still got plenty of money left and I think I'll have enough spare to pay off my MBNA account. Going to wait to later in the month when I know for sure.