Can anybody help me please??

EagerLearner

Hi there & well done on posting your SOA - here are some ideas:

MOBILE - Re the mobile phone, even if you are in contract, you should still be able to reduce your tariff before August - call them up and ask for a lower one that will suit your budget better and just be disciplined with using it. Does the landline at your house have any free minutes at all?

BUS PASS - Instead of monthly bus pass, can you buy 3 monthly, 6 monthly or even yearly? I buy mine yearly and the difference this makes to the cost is huge - I get 3 months free that way and only pay the equivalent of 9.

Have you joined Pigsback and all the other cashback sites about? You can earn enough in cashback cash, and vouchers, to put towards Xmas in vouchers rather than real cash, then use the real cash you have been putting aside for xmas, to pay off your debt sooner.

Have you considered ho wmuch you spend on food etc and tried to reduce this? The Old Style board has lots of great tips.

Maybe download the spreadsheet in my sig - this will help you monitor what you spend - like a spending diary but on your pc. It is mostly for 'frills' spending but you can adapt it to however you want. It also has a section for debt, but you need to add the interest on separately.

Hope this helps & good luck!

chevalier

I note that you say you are overpaying on the capital one debt, to get it down quicker, but it almost definitely will not be the one with the highest APR. This will either be Welcome finance or the Provident. I would suggest overpaying the provident rather than capital one
chev

Adrasteia01

KayJ066 wrote: »

Thanks Everyone.

My loan is 60.8% apr and i have 21 months left
My argos card should be paid off in 8 months, same with my provident.
Credit card will be paid off fully in 3 months if i pay 50 a month on it.

The studio catalogue is in my name but my ex-boyfriend did it and all the stuff he ordered was for him, do i still have to pay it?

Hi Kay

With your loan at 60.8% you must be paying an awful lot of interest on your loan and not making much headway.

I think the best thing you could do where this is concerned would be to take a loan out with another company (with 8 or 10% APR if you can get it) and use that money to clear the Welcome loan entirely. Possibly one or two of your other creditors as well if they have a high APR. It would probably save you hundreds in interest and pay your debts off faster.

An important thing you would need to check first though is that Welcome don't charge penalty fees for paying off their loan early. They may do but it might still work out better to change - it's worth some investigating.
If you can pay it early, then do it. They are completely ripping you off. Have a look at the loan section of this site to read up about them and what offers are available through various banks at the moment. If you have savings, I would recommend using most of them to get rid of your debts (especially the Welcome loan).

If you take out a loan or credit card in the future, always read the details of what they're offering you. I recently transferred my debts from a 17.9%APR card to a 9.6% card as I felt the first bank was ripping me off. Lots of cards offer 0% APRs for a limited period - 6 or 12 months, although there are sometimes fees for balance transfers to these. 0% means no interest for the set period. You can get loans from around 6% APR and up. If your credit history is poor then banks and credit companies are less inclined to give you a decent interest rate, but never, ever, get either a card or a loan for over 20% APR if you can help it. Ever. Anyone who tries to charge you that is taking the p*ss.

The higher the APR the more interest you are being charged, and the more money being wasted. It is worthwhile to try and get the best deal.

Tamara

KayJ066

Thanks everyone,

I have no savings, at all, i don't think anyone would give me a loan, i think my only option is to be in a debt management program.