Help needed please

TeamNicholson

Hey Nicandan, first of all well done for taking the first steps to sorting out your finances. One wee suggestion i'd make is snowballing. Snowballing is a technique for repaying credit cards and instead of making overpayments on all cards you channel all your extra cash into one. Visit the website 'whats the cost' and click snowballing for a better explanation (sorry wont let me post link)

mrsb83_2

Nicandan wrote: »

Yes i agree it is low, but we both pay £12.50 a month into a service plan this covers our service and mot each year. I work in a car dealership so fortunately both our plans are discounted down, so we are lucky in that respect. Tyres etc are also heavily discounted

That's great! I hate spending money on cars.

camuk81

Nicandan wrote: »

All of the accounts are current and sadly all too close to their limits, i mentioned i have already started paying more than the minimum, even though it might only be £5 it's a start

Well done, by making a start on overpaying you are already improving your file. As you can see by signature I have a large amount of debt and already my file is getting better. This look better on paper and show you are working hard.

As regards LLoyds have you though about changing banks and starting afresh.

My bank recalled my overdraft and put it onto a loan refusing to lend any more but I had to get watertight with 24 hours! It hurt a lot!

Try looking at a basic account elsewhere and see rather then living in the overdraft permanently can you overpay £25 a month to clear it off. You don't need to keep reducing each month then

lbeadl

Just a quick thought on 'snowballing' overpayments you're currently making, I couldn't understand snowballing, or the point in it, until I tried it myself, how someone expleined it to me was like this...

Rather than over pay by a relatively small amount on several cards, which doesn't show big balance reductions instantly, use that total £51 over payment to throw at one of the Aqua accounts until it's gone and carry on paying the min on the others, then use the minimum Aqua card payment + the £51 overpayment to throw at the next highest interest rate account until that's gone, then use that minimum payment, plus the additional you were throwing at it onto the next debt, and so on, and so on.

I was doing the same, lots of little over payments here & there, and found it really disheartening not to see the balances going down, but doing it this way, you see bigger chunks disappearing from one debt, so it spurs you on to keep going.

I managed to clear 2 debts this way, eventually ended up in a DMP due to my OH losing his job, which in hindsight, was the best thing to happen anyway - we're actually happier now - our debts are controlled & affordable, and OH is setting up his own business so is much happier & more relaxed!

Nicandan

lbeadl wrote: »

Just a quick thought on 'snowballing' overpayments you're currently making, I couldn't understand snowballing, or the point in it, until I tried it myself, how someone expleined it to me was like this...

Rather than over pay by a relatively small amount on several cards, which doesn't show big balance reductions instantly, use that total £51 over payment to throw at one of the Aqua accounts until it's gone and carry on paying the min on the others, then use the minimum Aqua card payment + the £51 overpayment to throw at the next highest interest rate account until that's gone, then use that minimum payment, plus the additional you were throwing at it onto the next debt, and so on, and so on.

I was doing the same, lots of little over payments here & there, and found it really disheartening not to see the balances going down, but doing it this way, you see bigger chunks disappearing from one debt, so it spurs you on to keep going.

I managed to clear 2 debts this way, eventually ended up in a DMP due to my OH losing his job, which in hindsight, was the best thing to happen anyway - we're actually happier now - our debts are controlled & affordable, and OH is setting up his own business so is much happier & more relaxed!

Thank you very much for your advice, i hadn't thought of doing it that way, this definitely seems to make a lot of sense, i will put the figures into the snowball thing and see what results it comes up with.

Only through reading these boards did i realise that by only paying the minimum actually harms your credit file, hence paying that little bit extra, so trying to achieve two things at the same time.

Nicandan

camuk81 wrote: »

Well done, by making a start on overpaying you are already improving your file. As you can see by signature I have a large amount of debt and already my file is getting better. This look better on paper and show you are working hard.

As regards LLoyds have you though about changing banks and starting afresh.

My bank recalled my overdraft and put it onto a loan refusing to lend any more but I had to get watertight with 24 hours! It hurt a lot!

Try looking at a basic account elsewhere and see rather then living in the overdraft permanently can you overpay £25 a month to clear it off. You don't need to keep reducing each month then

Well i opened an account with the Halifax around 18 months ago (i didn't realise they were part of the same group):mad: and started having all my wages paid into that account, i only have the child benefit paid into the lloyds account now, i still have a couple of d/d on the lloyds a/c which i now need to move.

I have recently opened an account with Nationwide but they have only given me the cash+ account, i opened this account just to see how bad i was rated credit wise and this obviously was my answer :eek: so now i am even more determined to get a grip of all of my finances as i would love one day to move house and obviously with things as they are no mortgage company would even consider me as things stand and it's very frustrating as i would love to live closer to my family!

I am in two minds as to whether i should close the halifax account and start a fresh with the Nationwide, i don't owe Halifax anything but as they are linked to Lloyds.

Decisions.....I guess i am looking at around 36 months to turn all of this around, hopefully that is realistic.