PigginSkint's DFW Diary

racer256

Not bad? Thats brilliant to bring down your DFD to 4 Years is an achievement you should be proud of. I cleared £2500 of credit card debt in 6 months it can be done. Have faith in yourself when you are Debt Free be proud.
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PigginSkint

Well it had to happen! The Comic Relief cheque has cleared! So I have had to transfer some money over from my other account to cover it. Typical! Oh well, at least I haven’t got that hanging over my head any more. I can’t remember if I ever mentioned how much DS raised - £47.51. This was a combination of a sponsored silence and selling cakes.

I didn’t get round to doing any of my jobs last night – well apart from putting my Avon order online. I spent the rest of the time watching telly and lurking on MSE! OH didn’t get any of his jobs done either as he went out at 5pm (just as I got home) and didn’t get back till 10.30pm – he had a jamming session with a friend and his new toy! (OH’s new toy!)

I have an absolutely splitting headache today so I am not much use to anyone at the moment. I was tempted to phone in sick but there is important stuff I have got to do today and tomorrow, plus I have booked Tuesday and Wednesday off next week. I’ll just have to muddle through somehow!

PigginSkint

racer256 wrote: »

Not bad? Thats brilliant to bring down your DFD to 4 Years is an achievement you should be proud of. I cleared £2500 of credit card debt in 6 months it can be done. Have faith in yourself when you are Debt Free be proud.
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Thanks Racer! Well done to you as well for clearing £2500 in 6 months. It's amazing what we can achieve once we set our minds to it! And it just goes to show, little things make a big difference!

PigginSkint

Hi All
Still didn’t do any jobs last night! Oh well, after today I shall not be at work until next Thursday so I’ve got 5 days to get stuff done!

I am going to have a not very DFW/MSE lunch today… I am going to buy a sandwich! This is because I just could not be bothered to make anything to bring in – I have had a headache for about 3 days so I just didn’t feel like it! In my defence I would like make the following points:
• I do not buy lunch very often – I almost always bring something from home.
• Our canteen is very cheap so it won’t cost me very much money.
• It is only a sandwich!

I have checked my bank balance this morning and my payments to Avon and Amex have gone through so I now have £5.90 available balance until payday. Luckily there are no more bills to go out before then. OH will be doing the shopping for anything we need!

I finally got my P60 yesterday so added to the list of jobs now is completing my Tax Credits form and sending it off.

I was playing around with some figures yesterday and the one thing I was doing battle with was the finance for my windows. I found out (from the Credit Expert Report from last November) that I actually started that finance in March 2004, so it is longer ago than I thought! The balance in November was £2152 and the term was 120 months. I put my current figures into the Snowball calculator – current APR is about 10% I think (though this is about to go up again because of the recent interest rate rise) and my current monthly payment is £47.45 (though again this is about to go up again). The snowball calculator came back with a date of March 2012 to finish paying for this but if the term is 120 months then the final payment should be about March 2014. Even by tweaking the interest rate slightly the date still came back as early 2012, not 2014. I don’t understand! Do finance arrangements work differently from a loan?

When I took out this finance it was on a flexible basis which means I can overpay every month by up to double the minimum payment, so I could, if I wanted to, pay up to an extra £94.90 per month. This would obviously reduce the term. Although I couldn’t work out accurately by how much additional payments would reduce term, because of the query over when I would finish paying it if I just carry on paying what I do now, it seemed to suggest that if I pay double what I currently do every month (that’s a big ‘if’ at the moment because we couldn’t afford to do that!) then it would halve the number of months it would take to pay it off! So I am wondering whether it would be worth paying an extra, say, £10 a month. I think I need to phone them up to ask them – it’s difficult to make guesses because they don’t send me any statements, the only communication I get from them is when the interest rate rises and my monthly payments increase.

Anyway, thank crunchie it’s Friday! Have a good weekend everyone!

PigginSkint

Hi All

I’m back at work so back at a computer! I have got a laptop at home but I haven’t been near it apart from to check my emails on one occasion and to update my Sainsbury’s online order on Tuesday.

It was nice to have a break from work even though we didn’t do very much (good money saving!). However we did have a day out yesterday – not very MSE/DFW but it is really quite rare that we do that these days so I suppose it can be excused! We had a day in Stratford-upon-Avon. The train fare was the only thing we put on the credit card - £16.95 for the 3 of us with the family railcard. Bargain!! OH got money out of the cashpoint to pay for the rest – food and drink came to about £35 in total (including icecreams - yum!) and then about £20 (can’t remember exact price) for the ‘Shakespearience’. Like I say – a one-off!!!

Just had my payslip – first month that I have to start paying again for my season! Eek! It comes as a bit of shock to the system after 2 months off!

I have been very naughty since I have been off work and not done any of the jobs that I planned to do – I really must get on and do them over the next few days. All I have done in the last week is get up to date with my washing and tidied the house (not a small job I might add!).

However, I have made one small change to aid my money saving. When I run my washing machine I normally press the Superwash button in but instead I have either been not doing that and running it on normal for stuff that needs a really good wash (e.g. towels, underwear, socks) or, and this is the big change, pressing the Quickwash button instead (for things that don’t need a lot of washing. This reduces the time that the wash takes by about 1/3 so saving electricity. For things that need hardly any washing I have been using my Quick and Cool programme which does exactly what it says on the tin! It pauses after the wash so you manually move the dial on to drain it, then it pauses again so that you can select what speed spin you want. Let’s see if it actually makes a difference to the electric bill!

Oh and one other piece of news – a breakthrough! OH has actually been heard to utter the words ‘we should sell that on ebay’ ! Wow!!!!! I have never known him willing to part with anything!!

I have finished reading my ebay book now, which I will be selling soon! It was a useful introduction but as it was an American author a lot of the stuff wasn’t relevant to the U.K. market. Still, I picked up a few useful tips.

That’s all for now. I’m looking forward to tomorrow though – 1st of the month means updating my figures and my signature and seeing how well I have done in clearing my debts this month. I know that I have achieved my current small target and it will be time to set a new one. What a difference eh? Actually looking forward to working out how much debt I am in now because it is falling fast!

PigginSkint

Something I forgot from my earlier post. Why is it that when you are doing really well something breaks?! In my case it is the toaster and the Sky remote control – both of which have decided to give up the ghost!! :mad: :mad:

Anyway I have suggested to OH that in the case of the toaster he tries changing the fuse first, then the plug. Only if they don’t work will I entertain the idea of buying a new one.

As for the Sky remote, we tried changing the batteries – no joy. So it looks like we have no option but to buy a new one. :mad: They have them in Argos for £14.99 and I have accumulated a lot of Nectar points so perhaps it won’t cost too much.

PigginSkint

Hi All

Well I’ve done it! Another target reached – my total credit card debt is now below £23,000! Woohoo! :j :j :j So I have now set a new one – to get it down to below £22,000. (see new sig below) Given the current rate of drop (for want of a better way of putting it!) I think this will take about 2 months to do. The other great thing about this is that I am still on course for my BIG target – yippee!! :j :j :j

I think I will have another play with the snowball calculator today to see what it comes up with.

I caught sight of OH’s bank statement yesterday evening. Yikes! Over £1000 spent in a month! :eek: I asked him how he could have spent so much in such a short time but then he pointed out that a (very) large chunk of that was vet’s bills, also he paid a large chunk off a credit card (mine!!) plus there were travel expenses and accommodation costs for when he was working away – I suppose that explains it! Also, it is good to see that he is actually paying for things out of his current account rather than using the credit card.

I think I shall email him a summary of the current totals just so that he sees how important it is that he keeps a handle on his spending!

I did about half of my Avon deliveries yesterday evening – lots of people weren’t in. I also picked up a late order from the last book from one customer who had been in hospital, and it is BIG - £45! Luckily with Avon you can always place orders from the previous book so this is great!

I was fretting slightly about today because we are going out to lunch for someone who is leaving – this is someone who sits opposite me in our office so I have to go really! What I was worried about was the cost but it turns out where we are going does lunch for £5 – phew! I thought it was going to be much more than that!

Well I think that’s all for now. Have a good weekend everyone!!

PigginSkint

Hi All

Hope you all had a good weekend.

On Saturday I bought a new toaster and Sky remote from Argos. I had tried changing the fuse in the old toaster but no joy. Anyway, the Sky remote was £14.97 and I bought the cheapest toaster they had which was £4.44 (no bells and whistles – it just toasts bread!). I had £5 worth of Nectar points which I used so I got both for under £15 – bargain!!!:T

I got round to doing a couple of jobs over the weekend (unfortunately I didn’t feel very well yesterday so I didn’t do a lot). I did my Tax Credits form so that has gone in the post this morning. I was going to do my passport forms but discovered some good news and some bad news. The good news is that as this is a passport renewal and I don’t look that different from my old photo I don’t need to have my new photo or form countersigned. The bad news is something that I had not even considered. As my name is different from that on my birth certificate I need to send my marriage certificate as well… and I can’t actually find it at the moment. I had already got the form to send off for a copy of it because I need an official copy to accompany my divorce petition, when I get round to doing it! So instead of doing my passport form I have had to do that form instead – I just need to get a first class stamp and then I can post it. It says on the notes that they will post my certificate back to me no later than 15 working days after they have received it. That means I should have it by the end of June. As soon as I get that I can send off my passport forms and that takes 3 weeks so I should get my new passport by the end of July. We go away on 15th August – cutting it fine but it should be O.K.!

I was going through some papers yesterday and I found the original credit agreement for my windows finance and the APR quoted on that is 22%. Now I am a bit confused about that as I keep getting letters when the interest rate goes up telling me what the base interest rate is and I found the one from February – the APR was 10.35%. So what am I actually paying? I think I am going to compose a letter to them asking for all the information that I need. If the APR is so high I wonder what the redemption penalty is and whether it would be worth using another form of credit to pay it off.

PigginSkint

Hi All

I paid some of my Avon money into my account yesterday. As I came away from the bank I was thinking to myself that there should have been more and I couldn’t quite understand it. Then I realised that before I had gone out on Saturday to try to do the rest of my deliveries, I had taken some of the money out and put it in a safe place so that I wouldn’t be carrying too much in my purse.:doh: I have got that ready for OH to pay in for me today.

I did some playing around with some figures using the Snowball calculator at whatsthecost.com yesterday. It would appear that I am paying about 22% APR for the windows finance because the number of months (94) it will take to pay if off seems about right. :eek: (I am going to send them a letter to ask though). Anyway I have worked out how much more quickly it will be paid off if we overpay a little bit every month. It’s food for thought but it certainly looks like we ought to try and pay a bit extra every month – I am currently paying £47.45 per month (we can overpay by a maximum of double the minimum payment every month). For example if we pay an extra £10 a month it would knock approx 2.5 years off!!! :T

The credit card bill came yesterday and it caused a very sharp intake of breath until I realised that the £285 that I have paid towards it for the flights isn’t showing yet – phew! OH has spent quite a lot on other stuff in the past month (some of it one-off stuff) but he is going to pay a large chunk off it again this month so it won’t be so bad. I have pointed out to him that if he doesn’t it will completely b****r up my targets and he won’t be very popular – I think he got the message!!!:D

PigginSkint

Hi All

Well today started out with nothing really to report. However that has all changed now! I have just had a phone call from DS’s school to say that he has managed to swallow something while out on the school field (no idea what), that he is really panicking and needs to go home. It would take me at least an hour to get there as I don’t work near home so I have had to phone OH to ask him to go and fetch him, because he is at home today and can get to him a lot quicker. There is a possibility that he may need it checking out so OH might have to take him to the local hospital’s minor injuries unit. I won’t know until OH has managed to get to him to assess the situation. As you can imagine I can’t really concentrate on work at the moment.

I have got to leave early myself today as I have got to go to physio, so you never know, I might see him at hospital. I hope he’s all right and I can’t wait for the phone to ring again to find out what’s happening.