New here, feels like confessional :-(

MUSTBEFUNNY_2

Hi and welcome to MSE

Just wanted to wish you luck:money: :j :T

blackangeluk

boo2905 wrote: »

Hi

I can't give you a massive amount of advice as I don't know much about interest rates etc

But - a couple of things that i've seen from your SOA

1) You've got Friends Provident Sickness Benefit and Friends Provident Accident and Sickness Benefit - is there a reason you need two lots of Sickness Benefit

2) You have Avon Accident and Death benefit and Friends Provident Sickness and Accident benefit = 2 different accident benefits.

3) You have Pet Insurance and Cat Insurance - are these not insuring the same pet twice?

4) £8.00 on the lottery - try taking this down to £1 if your intent on playing the lottery - that would be £28 a month towards a debt.

5) a lot of people will say to clear the loan payment protection as it is costing a small fortune and you may never need it. You have to question if it is really worth it and if you can afford not to have it for a bit then start it again when you are a bit better off. (It might be me being a bit thick but whats the difference between this and income insurance? Surely Income insurance would pay for the loan if anything happened?

6) What is the Norwich Union payment for?

7) Why are there payments to both Orange and TMobile?

You also need to work out and write down for everyone the APR of each of your debts and the minimum payments to each one. Also you need to acknowledge that you will pay extra money out for birthdays, food, clothes etc.

I may be wrong on some of the suggestions but hey. Hope some of it helps

Hi, thanks for your reply:-

1) We have two policies, one for me and one for DH
2) I could cancel the Avon Insurance and I will do it today, just had it forever and always overlook it.
3) We have a dog and two cats, dog is insured with different place to cats. Wanted to change cat insurance but he has had a lot of claims, without the insurance we would have had £1k vet bills :eek: so I think we are stuck with his.
4) Lottery was £8 per month but I'm going to reduce it to £4.00 - just incase.......
5) We had a lot of advice re loan protection, it covers the Northern Rock one, as the Income Protection only covers a percentage of our wage. Have thought long and hard about cancelling everything apart from Life Insurance and Critical Illness cover, but there have been a lot of redundancies in my industry recently and I would be up the creek without a paddle if I lost my job. Also DH was ill about 4 years ago and off work for 9 months and we would not have been able to pay the mortgage without his cover - basically I think I'm too scared to cancel it but I think I will try and reassess it and see if I could cover it. Another thing is a friend has just been diagnosed with a terminal illness, she has no cover and is about to lose her house and has 6 months to live..has made me think a lot.
6) No idea what it's for, will go and look :-)
7) Orange and T-Mobile are our mobiles, I am in a contract with mine until Sept so cannot do much about it, my standard fee is about £45, DH is going to look at his as he works from home so could really get a PAYG.

I have wrote down in my new "cash book" what I owe this month on cards etc, the min payment and how much quicker I can pay it off if I pay an extra £40 a month. Also, felt better when I thought the £120 I save on nursery can also go towards the debts - going to see how much that will reduce it.

Feel very less sick now, just been for a run with my best friend and decided to fess up to her - she was fab, very supportive and made me feel so much more positive.

Thank you :-)

boo2905

It's ok - as I kind of hoped it made you think about some of the outgoings that you have and how you could cut them down.

Like the Avon and Lottery - that means that your already saving £7.10 in about 10 mins! It's not a lot but it's a start and you can use that to put towards extra payments to your credit card or pay your catalogue - it's not a massive amount so it can be cut down almost without you noticing within 3 months.

Other ideas are to sell some things on Ebay to make some money and then use the https://www.whatsthecost.com website to create a snowball for yourself. It's pretty self explanatory but you put in all your debts and tell it how much you want to pay per month to them all - make sure you include your minimum payments in that amount. It advises you how much you should spend on each debt per month. You pay minimum payments on every debt bar one which you put all your extra money towards. once that debt is cleared (quicker than normal) you put all the money you were paying to that debt to the next one and so on. It's quite addictive watching how small payments make the Debt Free Date go down quicker.

The other place you could earn a bit of money is by looking for jobs on AQA which you can find on google. you have to keep looking out for jobs but you can do it in your own time - I've just found out I've got through the test stage. And another is yougov. You earn money for doing the polls they ask you to do.

Anyway, I hope that you don't think I was being critical of your spending before when I was asking questions - I just wanted to point things out to make you think about things and I wanted to help

I'm glad that your feeling a bit better - it's amazing how much better it is telling someone. Ive only told people on here and I feel so much better for it.

Good Luck :beer:

blackangeluk

Yet more good ideas!

CC1 - £3205.90 - 5%
CC2 - £1929.33 - 5%
CC3 - £5850.04 - 0% until Dec 07
CC4 - £6974.16 - 0% until Sept 07
CC5 - £1200.00 - 0% until Dec 07
OD1 - £ 459.13
OD2 - £ 399.32
Catalogue - £30.66
Next - £447.11

I'm back off to the whatsthecost website now. Realistically in Sept 07 our fixed rate mortgage finishes so I will remortgage and combine the current mortgage and 2nd charge which will be cheaper. I will not however include my other debts in that remortgage, as I feel the only way I can learn from my spending issues is to deal with them properly and that means pay them back.

In Sept 07 I have an extra £120 and then Sept 08 I have an additional £380, all of which I will pay debts off with.

I have seen various mentions to Olympics etc in people's signatures, are these other ways of making money.

Cheers for the advice re yougov etc, will go and look there too.

Just waiting for dreaded news re Car's MOT but today have sensibly cancelled a massage, leg wax and a meal out on the basis I cannot afford it and have saved myself (or rather my overdraft) about £100. I think by visiting this board it will make a huge difference to my determination to deal with my debts.

My other moment of glory today was to receive the Notice of Issue from the County Court against Natwest for Bank charges - that would be a huge help to paying things off.

Thank you all so so so much again, it is much appreciated.:beer:

chevalier

I think a lot has been said already, but I was also surprised by the amount of insurance and protection you have. It may be worth checking whether they would pay out if something would happen, ie if 1 problem arose, that you claim on two insurances, you may not be able to (might be in the terms and conditions)

Perhaps you could see if you could get one policy that covered all contingencies, it might be cheaper that way.
chev

blackangeluk

Just had to pop back. Went to https://www.whatsthecost.com and visited the debt snowball section. By paying back £500 a month to the debts and dealing with one at a time I can be debt free in 36 (yes 36!!!) months. I feel elated, I know I can and I will do this!!

Just had to post....again

Thank you for all the advice, I can assure you I will be back for more and hopefully be able to offer some advice as well. My mood is so much more lifted than last night

chevalier

ps for other places to get points or money here is a list of the ones I use sorry it is so long

https://www.lightspeed.com - this is a survey site, where you get points which turn into vouchers (you choose). May not help with the cash flow, but the vouchers could be saved towards birthday/xmas or given as presents.

https://www.caio.co.uk - survey site that gives money. A bit fits and starts ie no surveys for a couple of weeks, then three or four the same day.

https://www.yougov.co.uk - again paid surveys. However takes a while to get to the minimum payout level

https://www.pigsback.co.uk - this is a points site, ie they give you points for buying things via their site. BUT you also get points for signing up for news letters (some of which are even interesting!), and also for clicking on adverts with pink borders. I have spent NOTHING with them but got a £10 voucher through this week (only been registered since January). There is also a thread in the freebies section, which gives you all the daily answers to the competitions so you can have a better chance of winning on them.

https://www.mutualpoints.com - another points for clicks site. You can also buy things via their site and get points too. For a long time, I just clicked the links in the emails they send you, and that gets you 5 points. At 3000 points you get £20 I think. You can do searches via their site and that gets you points too.

https://www.quidco.com - this is a cash back site, so very good, for checking if any potential new insurers (ie if you have checked your contents insurance say and found a new provider), are offering cash back. Eg Lloyds was offering £120 cashback on new policies at one point (the offers do change). You can also get small amounts of cash again for doing searches via their site. You can earn 52p a day by doing this. Every little helps.

https://www.greasypalm.co.uk - another cash back site, where you can do searches and get small amounts of money. But it all adds up. I think you can get about 50p a day on there for nothing. Minimum payout is £20 I think, but you can sign up to survey sites via there, and get extra money that way for nothing.

Are you in the correct banding for your council tax? Again there is an article by Martin on the main website about how to go about checking this. If you are in the wrong band and due a rebate, it is for all the year you have been living in the house since 1991, so this can be several thousand pounds back.

boo2905

I'm really glad the snowballing thing has worked for you :dance:

Who knows - maybe even by paying an extra £5 here and there it can make the difference to when your debt free date is!

Ytaya

You don't seem to have included food and car costs in your list of outgoings? Treat them as budgetable items, not just costs that crop up as and when.

Check out uswitch to make sure you're getting the best gas, electric and water deals - and use Quidco for cashback if you decide to switch.

I don't know if somebody already suggested this, but consider a spending diary. Get a notebook and write down EVERYTHING you spend - even the Mars bars and cups of coffee. It's surprising to see where your money goes over the course of a month and gives you pointers as to where you can cut back.

Consider eBaying spare stuff - you'd be surprised what sells!

Good luck! The first step is the hardest, and you've done that bit by facing up to the situation

pavlovs_dog

with regards to the payment protection cover... im no expert on this, merely thinking aloud here.

but if you stand nothing to lose in money terms by cancelling your existing policy (eg lose the money you've paid in, get out charges etc) then it may be worth your while shopping around to see if you can get all the cover you need in one place. often, companies offer discount as an incentive to have more than one type of policy with them. is that something your home insurer offers for example?

or, depending on when your car/home insurance are due for renewal, could you 'tart' over to a new provider for everything (via quidco if possible) onto the most competitive rate for the cover you need?

hope that makes some sort of sense :beer:

as for the lottery... personally i think its a tax on people who dont understand statistics. you'd be better off sticking the money in a jar and using it to treat yourselves once every so often - at least you'd be guaranteed some sort of return for your money. i know we all have our vices, but the odds really arent in your favour with this one.