I have a lot to debt to clear... and no idea how to begin!

FinanciallyUnsavvy

glasgowsaver2011 wrote: »

You can take you Iphone 4 s

Sell it for 2-300 quid on one of the phone recyclers.

Buy a unlocked simple phone (tesco have these for 10 quid)

Sorted.

you have 250 quid in you pocket

I should hope I could get a lot more than 250 quid in my pocket if I wanted to sell it, but then I'd be selling my phone and still stuck with a £41 a month bill for nothing. I could have (perhaps should have) settled for a cheaper phone when the time came to upgrade my contract, but well, I'm used to a certain standard... aren't we all, isn't that why we're in this situation?!

Loubell83

FinanciallyUnsavvy wrote: »

I should hope I could get a lot more than 250 quid in my pocket if I wanted to sell it, but then I'd be selling my phone and still stuck with a £41 a month bill for nothing. I could have (perhaps should have) settled for a cheaper phone when the time came to upgrade my contract, but well, I'm used to a certain standard... aren't we all, isn't that why we're in this situation?!

It is SO why I am in the situation I am in! Maybe not to be encouraged though! I have made many cutbacks in other areas though to make up for this

By the way, if you still have the iphone4s box, I sold this on eBay for £12. An EMPTY box. You wuold be surprised what sells, I have sold a lot of old junk! As a previous poster says, anything unwanted you can music magpie as well. DVD box sets sell well on eBay I find.

glasgowsaver2011

FinanciallyUnsavvy wrote: »

I should hope I could get a lot more than 250 quid in my pocket if I wanted to sell it, but then I'd be selling my phone and still stuck with a £41 a month bill for nothing. I could have (perhaps should have) settled for a cheaper phone when the time came to upgrade my contract, but well, I'm used to a certain standard... aren't we all, isn't that why we're in this situation?!

220 for a 32 gig I phone 4s on the usual places.

You would not be stuck with a £41 phone bill for nothing.

you still get your minutes and texts.

Either way you are stuck with the bill.

This way you just get to make some money back on it.

£960 quid for 2 years is a lot, but this way you can recoup some of the money.

I have a sim only £15 a month 600 mins unlimited texts and put that in the very same Tesco phone.

Works fine for me.

:money:

FinanciallyUnsavvy

Okay, whilst I've had a quiet-ish afternoon at work I've been able to put some thought into my budget. Thank you all for your help with responses in the last couple of days - very much appreciated, and they've all given me a lot of food for thought.

I've downloaded the EEBA app (thank you Loubell!) and set up my envelopes with all of my outgoings. It's looking like this:

Rent - 375
Utilities - 170 (water, gas, electric, CT, TV licence)
Mobile phone - 42
Credit card/Littlewoods repayments - 200 (likely 50 to LWs, 150 to CC)
Savings acct - 50
Bus pass - 87
Broadband/landline - 18.50
Sky - 12.50
Cineworld/Xbox/Netflix - 27 (possibility of cancelling these anyway)
Groceries/general spend - 150

I'm hoping I haven't missed anything - if not, this means I'm managing to pay off more of my debt each month than I'm currently doing, as well as still leaving myself that should be plenty for food and outings etc.

Maybe I should use the money I intend to save to get the debts cleared quicker.. I assume that will be what everyone thinks is the best thing to do?! Maybe it would be, but I would like to start building up a "just in case" fund, or a holiday fund, or anything - just to know its there to fall back on.. otherwise the risk of me wanting to use my credit card is there.

Pay day is next friday, so I'm going to try to get through the next week without spending anything/as little as possible (so should hopefully have about £50 left over that I can chuck at my credit card or into my savings). So from pay day, I'm going to tackle this head-on!

Now I feel like I have a bit of a plan, I'm feeling much better about everything and actually kind of excited to be starting from scratch, so to speak. I'm going to take your advice with the batch cooking, and going to visit my local Lidl for the first time (!) to see what I can get there. I do often shop in Fulton Foods and the like though, which are great for dry foods and freezer stuff (birds eye chickens for £1 etc. instead of £2.50-£3 in the supermarkets). What I tend to do is just buy little bits here and there instead of doing a weekly shop - and it all adds up to more than it should.

I'm also going to have a scout around the house this weekend to see what I can perhaps list on ebay/amazon.

I used to do freelance admin work when I was a student, and this afternoon I revisited one of the sites I used to use to bid on a few projects - nothing guaranteed, but trying is a start. It's stuff I can do in my spare evenings and if I win any of the projects, it'll be a nice extra chunk.

So.. fingers crossed that it all goes to plan. Roll on pay day!

FinanciallyUnsavvy

glasgowsaver2011 wrote: »

220 for a 32 gig I phone 4s on the usual places.

You would not be stuck with a £41 phone bill for nothing.

you still get your minutes and texts.

Either way you are stuck with the bill.

This way you just get to make some money back on it.

£960 quid for 2 years is a lot, but this way you can recoup some of the money.

I have a sim only £15 a month 600 mins unlimited texts and put that in the very same Tesco phone.

Works fine for me.

:money:

I'll definitely be getting a £10/£15 sim only deal once my contract expires, but I would rather hang onto my phone since I know it'll last me until far after my contract's up.

As far as I'm aware, you can get more like £400 for them on ebay/amazon, rather than the phone recycling websites. The good thing about Apple products is they retain value well, so I can still probably stick it on ebay in a year or two's time and still be able to make £200 for it, should I want to.

FinanciallyUnsavvy

Loubell83 wrote: »

It is SO why I am in the situation I am in! Maybe not to be encouraged though! I have made many cutbacks in other areas though to make up for this

By the way, if you still have the iphone4s box, I sold this on eBay for £12. An EMPTY box. You wuold be surprised what sells, I have sold a lot of old junk! As a previous poster says, anything unwanted you can music magpie as well. DVD box sets sell well on eBay I find.

£12 for a phone box! Some people are mad! Good to know though.. thanks

I looked into Music Magpie before, and entered a random selection of my DVDs to see how much they'd be worth. Practically everything was worth 30p.. for the sake of £30 for 100 DVDs I'd rather hang onto them. I definitely will see if any of my boxsets are worth anything on ebay or amazon though, thank you!

pippitypop

Hey there,

Wouldn't bother with music magpie.. they don't give you a lot of money for your stuff!

As for credit card, definately check your credit report. My partner made 3 unsuccessful applications since end of January and was successful in getting credit on the 4th attempt which I thought he didn't a hope in hell of getting it!

Best of luck, sounds like you are a lot more positive about the situation

andy1886

Oompa_Loompa wrote: »

I'm curious how you make wine? Hope you don't mind me asking!! Two of you have mentioned it... do you needs lots of equipment or can you point me in the direction of a good thread?

Never mind wine , how do you make cider ?
My treat is a £1-50 bottle of Frome Valley sweet cider once a month , would love to know how to produce a little for myself but thought it was a very costly time consuming business with crushing apples etc .

January20

FinanciallyUnsavvy wrote: »

Maybe I should use the money I intend to save to get the debts cleared quicker.. I assume that will be what everyone thinks is the best thing to do?! Maybe it would be, but I would like to start building up a "just in case" fund, or a holiday fund, or anything - just to know its there to fall back on.. otherwise the risk of me wanting to use my credit card is there.

I know the advice given my ML on this website is to not save whilst you have debt, because you usually pay out more in interest on a debt than you would get in a savings account, however this is the one piece of advice I have always ignored because I have never saved for the interest paid and also, what happens when you have this unexpected bill and have no money to pay for it? Do you put it on credit? Decide not to pay it? In the grand scheme of things, not including your student loan, you don't really a huge amount of debt (under 5k - is that correct?), so I think it's a good idea to save a little every month!

Although, why you are carrying on with your netflix subscription is a mystery to me It's rubbish! especially if you are a film aficionado :D

mr2jay

andy1886 wrote: »

Never mind wine , how do you make cider ?
My treat is a £1-50 bottle of Frome Valley sweet cider once a month , would love to know how to produce a little for myself but thought it was a very costly time consuming business with crushing apples etc .

This is the one I am drinking this very second - TOFFEE APPLE CIDER :beer: (Taken from the Homebrewforum)

Yeast: Montrachet
Batch Size (Gallons): 1
Original Gravity: 1.060
Final Gravity: 1.000
Color: Caramel
Primary Fermentation (# of Days & Temp): 14 days @ room temp
Tasting Notes: Slightly sweet and intense flavour, rich apple/pear taste with Caramel/Biscuit/Toffee aftertaste

This is a cider based on the Brother's Toffee Apple that I've grown to love so much.
It's especially suited to the autumn, particularly during halloween or round a bonfire, but goes well in the summer too.
You can also heat it gently on the hob to warm the cockles after a hard day in the winter. Add a little lemon, orange and ginger, and you've got a great cold cure.
It's easy and inexpensive to make, so give it a go!

The reason this is brewed so strong is that I add appleade/lemonade in the glass to make the yield go further, make it sweeter and a little fizzier - if you're scaling up and don't want to do this, cut the honey a little!

4L 100% Organic Apple Juice
500g Honey
1 pack yeast of your choice. Popular choices are Montrachet, Champagne, Safale S-04 and Nottingham.
1 14oz tin Pear Halves
1tsp Yeast Nutrient
1 Vanilla Pod or Vanilla Extract

First, collect empty bottles, preferably green pints - enough for the entire batch.

Heat the honey in a relatively large saucepan, just on the edge of boiling (but not boiling) until it's dark in colour, and the smell resembles candy floss/marshmallows - around 20 mins.

Don't be afraid here - it won't burn the pan and stays very liquid, but it will froth up quite a lot.

Blend the pears using a food processer. If the pears come in flavored water or syrup, just chuck it all in, providing there's no preservatives. If they come in plain water, drain them first.

When Honey is successfully "burnt," take off the heat and allow to cool. Add 1 carton of Apple Juice and the pears, and stir thoroughly until all honey is dissolved and mixture is consistent. Blending in the Apple Juice and Pears while the honey is still hot will result in a cloudy "Scrumpy" type cider that will never settle. The choice is yours!

Add this mixture to a sterilized demi-john, top up with water or apple juice if need be, check gravity, and when cool enough add yeast and nutrient, and seal with airlock.

Add corn sugar/glucose or honey if you want it stronger. Allow to ferment completely.

When fermentation is complete, check FG. The honey is likely to have created some non-fermentables so it might be slightly sweeter than your usual fully fermented cider.

Rack into an identical secondary vessel passing through a muslin bag. The ingredients create a lot of gunk, so doing this increases your yield.

Wrap Vanilla in a small muslin bag, and suspend in the cider using fishing line. Check taste every few days until you're happy - the cider should be close to settled by the time it has taken the taste. Alternatively, skip this stage and add vanilla extract when priming.

When taste is to your liking and cider has settled, bottle into pint bottles, adding 1/2tsp priming sugar per bottle.

Bottle condition for 3 weeks before drinking. Store in the fridge and drink cool without ice - prepare second trip to the supermarket to make more. Just don't drive, whatever you do.