azjh77's debt diary...

azjh77

Seriously thinking of moving:-

Our house is worth about £155/£160K, and our mortgage is for £62k /(£70 K including our secured loan) The houses we have seen are about £55/£65 K (they need 'TLC' which means they have crap kitchens and are badly decorated but I can live with that!) so....

155K House
- 70K mortgage
- 7K Loan (One with my Mum)
- 4K rounded up a bit, Credit cards
- 5K Fees, moving, odds & ends hopefully not this much!

69K To buy new house OUTRIGHT,

Making us TOTALLY DEBT & MORTGAGE FREE!!!!!!!

However, our current home is, how can I put this, ummm, a pit! I don't not let people in it as it is so untidy, I am a total pack rat and need to clear this out. This may be the final motivation I need to clear the house out, I have had depressive episodes which hasn't helped, and I only have one foot at the moment as my right is bandaged up after an operation on Wednesday (which involved a sharp knife, my toe and a subungal melanoma, oh flash backs!)

So today and tomorrow will be spent collecting all we can fit in the car for a boot sale on Monday.

Once we are tidy, we can start looking at doing some of the cosmetic work on the house (like covering the children's 'art work' on the walls!)

But here's the other problem, well not problem, but my brother has suggested it and I wondered what fellow DFW think. I put a post on the 'house' board, but didn't get much of a response.

Right, My bro thinks I should use my equity and take out the £65K for the new house on my current mortgage and buy the new house with the cash, then rent out this one. He has a point, if we move out of Bristol we will never be able to afford to come back at the current prices, and the rental value of our house would cover an interest only mortgage. But I would then have a £135K mortgage & still need to pay my cards & 'Mum' loan.

Perhaps we should wait till we've paid some more of our debts off?

Oh I am so confused!! And if my toe turns out to be cancerous, I should stay in this area to complete any treatment, but in all honesty I can't see us having the house ready to sell/rent by the end of the year anyway, which means I'm trapped here, which makes me even more depressed....I'll stop now, see if I can milk this 'unable to walk' thing and get OH to get the kettle on!!

If you are still reading this...thank you!

Seaxwyn

Hi azjh - sympathies re the foot - OUCH! - hope it recovers quickly and the biopsy brings good news.

Only you can decided what is the best option for you. There's no rush, your sore foot means you can't start work on the decoration yet anyway so take your time to think over how you'd actually feel

- if you were living in a cheaper house, debt-free
- if you were living in a cheaper house with bigger debts but bigger income and the knowledge your own house was there for you when you wanted it

If you imagine you you'd actually feel, you should get a good guide from your gut instinct as to which is the best option for you. Worrying won't bring the solution any closer so don't do it.

Rest up and don't worry too much.

azjh77

Well surprise, surprise, My brother went out and got smashed on Sunday, and was to 'ill' to do the boot sale yesterday. SO now I have a living room packed with black bags of waiting to be sold.

We have decided we def. want to move. and hope to put the house on the market before June 1st. (avoiding the HIP pack)

Now we need to have a HUGE clear out, but now we have decided what we're doing, we are quite motivated.

Off to the doctors today to have my toe looked at & rebandaged, hopefully this time small enough so as I can out a shoe on!!!

I aim to fill 3 black bags with rubbish today and throw them out...it's a start until I can walk properly..

azjh77

Oh my but I have been lax on this diary!

Firstly good news on the foot front, it isn't cancerous, 'just' a bone deformity which I will have to have removed (hopefully not the whole toe!!)

We were doing well on the tidying front, but just as well they're stopped these HIP packs as we still have a lot to do on the house.

The MOT came to £360 !!! Luckily OH's nan sent us £300, but we have still had a bad couple of months as I was off work for 4 weeks with the foot thing and they didn't pay me! So we were a bit short. We had to use the credit card to buy food - all the bills were paid though.

On the plus side, my gas bill has been reduced to £10 per month, and I had a huge credit which I used towards the electric. And the best bit? Woolwich/Barclays have decided to give me back my fees!!! I got the letter yesterday and to start with I thought I would have to go to court (TBH I would have chickened out and left it at that stage!) but they offered me £1430 !!! I was dancing (well hopping!) around the living room!! This should get us straight for a while , until I can re-sort our budget. Now we need to get on and tidy this house and sell it!!

Feeling a bit better now - (that holiday my Mum paid for helped too!!) just need to keep on top of things. And it's all thanks to Martin!! This site is a God send!!

azjh77

I did this yesterday and I am now more depressed than ever!!

£355 - mortgage - have to pay that one!
£131 - Secured loan - stuck with that till 2013
£150 - Council tax + arrears + court costs!!
£ 10 - gas has gone down!!!
£ 46 - Electric hasn't!
£ 56 - Telewest - wheres that tenner off they promised me?
£145 - loan to Mother - 3 years to go....
£ 37 - b/- & c/- insurance
£ 38 - Car insurance
£ 9 - LOTRO
£ 50 - Petrol
£ 50 - OH's Card - which we've had to use for food!!! - hadn't used for 5 years!
£ 45 - My card

£1122

You will notice there is no cash for xmas/b'days (and Hannah is 6 in 2 weeks and the baby is 1 in July ) or that ever so important part of any budget ....FOOD !! (Don't get me started on the cost of nappies!)

Anyway the depressing bit

£390 - My wages
£550 - Child Tax credit - taking into account Ethan will be one and it will go down
£217 - Child Benefit

£1157

Leaving us...£35 a month for food !! (mind you it's an improvement on the £13 we had at the start of this diary!!)

We have already 'spent' our Windfall :-

£1430....thank you Barclays!!!

£ 620 - O/D with Woolwich - our first debt cleared!!
£ 270 - Towards Council Tax or they are sending the boys round!
£ 141 - Water bill - they want half now!
£ 100 - Mum - she paid for our MOT LAST year!
£ 100 - Put in the bank to cover d/d and o/d fees

£ 1231

Leaves us £199, which we will splash out on food for 2 months!

Never mind, I can always [STRIKE]pinch [/STRIKE] ahem 'borrow' some of Hannah's birthday money on the 19th. AND we have a Wiggles concert to look forward to next Tuesday!!!!:j

So not so depressed at all now, see talking to you lot DOES work.

azjh77

Had the worst weekend ever! Sent OH to the shop with 40 pence in 2 p's to buy the milk, talk about scrapping the bottom of the barrel! So I phoned the bank today to check my balance (I was sure I had a tenner in there but the ATM wouldn't let me have it!!) only to be told I had £1430 !!...and not only that but it went in on the 7th!! We've been bleedin' starving and that cash was sat in the bank!!! Went to Tesco's and blew £100 on food (and new school tops, socks and a little suit for Baba to wear to my Brother's wedding) I also got to use some vouchers I had for extra points so I earned about 450 points on my club card.

So now my Woolich/Barc Over draft is cleared !!! My first debt gone!!

We now need to motivate ourselves to tidy this pit that is our house so we can sell it (Bristol is a popular area apparently! Houses are still)

And today we go to see THE WIGGLES !!!!! I'm more excited than the kids, I've bagged the aisle seat so I can 'jump' Murray if he goes walkabout!

I intend paying the council tax/water bill and tomorrow will give Mum her £100, and that will be the cash pretty much gone...fun while it lasted!

Get to change my signature now and cross off my first debt!:D

:j :j :j :j :j :j :j :j :j :j :j :j :j :j :j :j :j :j :j :j :j :j :j :j :j :j :j :j :j :j :j :j :j

azjh77

okay, have tried - as per the shuffle thing in Martin's book-

Lowering rate on CC - done that
'They' won't increase rate, so I can't move anything about yet
Tried getting a new card - not allowed

So considering...'spending' the £600 overdraft (which has a 10% APR) and using that towards the CC with 22% rate. Now of course, I will have lost one of my 'paid debts' but long term will be paying less interest if I bring the MBNA card down by £600 -poss. might do £500 actually and leave my self £100 spare just incase.

Also thinking of opening a new A&L account online (quidco cash back!) which offers a 0% o/d for 6 months (reverts to 7% ish) which would work out cheaper in the long run too...but will they accept for an account?

Bought my Brother's wedding pressie today, and need to wrap up Hannah's stuff while she is at school for her birthday tomorrow. Only a quilt cover with Dora on, but I've a few odds and ends lying round that I could wrap up to make it look more!

Started doing my Christmas list too, Will need £300 for xmas, based on 26 people (have got al the cards & wrapping paper that I bought cheap in Jan sales) which is £60 per month, which I don't have spare, so I will need to start doing those boot sales and get that e-bay thing going...if it ever stops raining I will do a boot sale! I have all the stuff sat here waiting for me to do it!

Need to buy a few sweets for Hannah's party today, but should hopefully be saving some cash this week...and then on 1st July is my Little Bro's wedding! ahhhhh...will need cash for the bar, can't get away with one coke all night, like we normally do!

azjh77

Finally managed to do a boot sale and made about 35 quid (no pound sign again, damn American keyboard!) I think next time I need to make the kids clothes more prominent and hang some of the better stuff. Sadly the car tax is due and we need all the extra cash for that. We had been hoping to get enough to hire a skip to we could clear upstairs and the loft out. I've written our online house ad and need to put it on soon (ie: before September 10th) so we really need to start sorting the house out. Some good news -in a round-a-bout way! - is that Barclays have realised I'm paying my Credit card off. My fixed monthly payment is way more than the minimum one and so they have now decided to up my credit limit. So now I can move some of the balance from Paul's higher interest card over, won't actually be saving any money in the sense that I will continue my payments, but interest wise/long term we will. All our efforts are currently on sorting the house out, selling it and moving to Wales....not that my Mother is very happy about that, but I need to think about us and our financial situation. We can't afford to live here much longer, especially when the fixed rates end next August and our mortgage goes up.

azjh77

I made the woman at Abbey cry! She was so upset that she can't help us! The only way out is to sell this place and start again.

We are going to have to get the skip/kitchen on the credit card - which we will pay off when the house sells (not ideal I know, but we can't afford to live here anymore)

We've put the house online...so we're 'on the market' as it were, albeit with an obscure site which doesn't seem to advertise very well.

Looks like we'll be busy this week....