Almost there..

Scientist_DFW

Hi everyone,

I've been lurking here for a while reading different people's journeys. I'm absolutely amazed at how well people do and how much they acheive once they have their LBM and set their minds to it. it just shows you what can be done.

Ok to my situation. Things aren't too bad but I thought I'd start a diary to keep myself focussed and motivated. I'm in quite a good job with a reasonable wage but I'm the only one bringing in money with my OH looking after my girls Curly and Cutie, one at school age, the other a toddler.

I had six months maternity leave starting the end of 2011 and managed to build up quite a CC debt during this time by acting as though I still had a full wage coming in when in fact the money was less than half what I was used to. I also managed to arrange a nine month payment holiday on my mortgage. This made financial sense at the time but really I should only have made the holiday six months. And psychologically it was not a good move because I spent much more money than I should have because I felt as though I was living mortgage free, when in reality it was just postponed.

At the beginning of this year just after my LBM I went into panic mode. Even though my CC debt is all on one card and is at 0% until 1st October because it was debt that I'd tranferred from another card, I panicked and felt it had to be paid off immediately. I started selling things around the house; jewellery to the gold/silver buyers, DVD/CDs to Music Magpie and general stuff to Ebay. I did make a lot of money and as each sale reached my current account I transferred it to the CC.

It was effective but everyone was worried I was going to sell their stuff if they didn't keep their eye on it. And they were right to be worried. To my shame I sold my mum's old wedding ring and, worse, a gold bangle that had been bought for Curly when she was a baby . At the time it seemed justified because I was panicking. Now I wish I hadn't done it but there's no going back because they've been melted.

Anyway, moving on. I'm in a fortunate position at the moment as I can volunteer to do lots of extra hours at work and it pays well. This will change in the future (next 6 months or so) as our hours and pay are changing (for the worse). So at the moment I am in overdrive doing as much as I can to pay off the CC before the 0% comes to an end. I'm in line to pay off £1350 at the beginning of July and the last ££s the next month.

Once the CC is gone I plan to turn my attention to my mortgage. I only pay what's asked at the moment - just under £350 a month. With the CC off my hands I should be able to make overpayments. I haven't decided yet whether to overpay when I can or to set a (smaller) regular overpayment for each month. My extra hours at work are irregular so I thought maybe overpaying what I can when I can might work better for me. I haven't reduced the term of the mortgage because I think it gives me more flexibility, knowing I can drop back down to the original £350 a month if I need to.

I've taken a look at the challenges on MSE and some appeal while others seem unachievable, if not completely mad . I'm going to get a lock up money box or one of those that you have to break to get the money out (to remove temptation for me but mostly my OH who has no hesitation in raiding my penny jar for a newspaper or pint of milk:mad:). Then I'm going to do either the 20p or 50p Challenge or the Sealed Pot Challenge.

So that's me. I'll post when I can/need to stay motivated.

Scientist_DFW

So here I am at work earning some cash towards my CC. And I've just been offered and accepted more extra work next week.

I don't know if it's the lovely weather we've been having recently or what but I feel very energetic and able to take on the extra hours, so I shall do what I can whilst I'm feeling like this, I'm sure it won't last.

Scientist_DFW

Took Curly to the cinema this morning for free - used my premier points. It's our monthly trip, I take my oldest girl to the cinema on the first Saturday after pay day so we get to have some mummy-daughter bonding. We also saved on the cost of snacks by buying at the supermarket and taking them in to the cinema hidden in my backpack.

Unfortunately, we're off to a birthday party this evening so had to go and buy a card. Whilst in the card shop I was persuaded by Curly to part with £5 for some soft toys. I didn't really want to buy her toys, least of all soft toys which are a waste of space and dust collectors but she was demonstrating her money saving skills. I told her if I bought her anything I wasn't spending more than £5 and she managed to find some toys that were £2.99 each but three for £5!

So we got to see a film and Curly got her toys, one of which she's generously given to Cutie, and we saved £14 at the cinema and £3.97 on the toys. Made for a fairly cheap bonding trip.

I've got some silver change for my Sealed Pot Challenge as well. Now all I need is the actual pot .

Scientist_DFW

Well, I've had an expensive weekend. The cinema, the party then food shopping and finally, and worst, hitting the M&S sale .

I don't think I'm going to make the £1350 payment to my CC that I was hoping to make at the end of this month. I put my sale shopping on another CC and will have to pay this off so will have less left for the main CC. I might have to stay away from M&S when they have a sale in future as I can't seem to resist. I saved lots of money but did buy things that I could've lived without.

Anyway, I've got more coins for my Sealed Pot Challenge. I won't receive the actual pot until Tuesday so the money is currently in a pencil case. I'm not going to count the coins as they go in so the total at the end of the year will be a complete surprise.

I looked into making overpayments on my mortgage and apparently the deal is that I can overpay anything I like without being charged a penalty and I can choose whether the term is reduced or stays the same and the monthly payments go down. I think I'm going to aim to have the term reduced. That'll force me to be serious about getting mortgage free rather than just cruising along for the next 13 years. I have to make an overpayment of more than £500 in one go for them to reduce the term. I may save the money in a separate account until it's over £500 then make the overpayment. If I can be organised and keep it up I could make two over payments a year. That'll mean putting £100 a month into a savings account. I'll aim to start this once the CC is off my hands.

I've got all these plans but I'm feeling impatient now because I only get paid once a month so everything has to wait. Well, as they say "patience is a virtue, possess it if you can".... I'll try.

elantan

Check an see what happens with the mortgage interest. ... If you have to wait 6 months to save £500 to just reduce your term ... You may be better off paying the £100 per month into it and make sure it doesn't decrease your payments that way eventually your term will still decrease ( you will pay it off faster) and you will get the benefit of lower interest the day after you pay in the £100

Just double check though your mortgage may be different from other people's

Scientist_DFW

OK, I've finally decided on a plan. I reckon I'm going to be able to pay £1026.68 off my CC on the 1st July and the last £600 on 1st August. So still in line to be debtfree by 1st August.

For the mortgage I re-read the information and it said that if I overpay less than £500 the monthly payments will be reduced at the next interest rate change. Well, I want the payments to stay the same and the term to be reduced so I take it this also will be applied at the next rate change - whenever that is, a long way in the future hopefully.

I had misread it thinking that I had to pay more than £500 for the term to be reduced but it actually said that if I pay more than £500 the term reduction takes effect immediately rather than at the next rate change.

So I'll be paying £100 a month straight off my mortgage the day after payday. Thank you Elantan for the advice.

I've also decided to do two versions of the Sealed Pot Challenge. The first is the normal 'put money in an actual pot' one. The other is to put money in an online savings account. I've decided to round down to the nearest £1 and transfer any money from my current account to an online savings account I've called Spare Change. I'm going to do this any time my current account balance isn't at some pounds and zero pence.

I'm going to see how I go with this for a while but eventually I have to build in a regular savings payment, say £50 or £100 a month, to pay for big things like holidays. We'll see how it goes.

elantan

just take baby steps it will all come together .. glad you re checked your mortgage deal

Scientist_DFW

I've had a very :money:couple of days. Firstly, I installed free Avast virus software on my laptop. I'd had McAfee cover for the previous three years as it was a deal that came with the laptop but it had expired 80 days ago! I knew it was expired and I kept meaning to renew it but the cost was putting me off. Then I was just browsing the MSE website and stumbled upon the free virus software list. So now my laptop is properly protected for free

Secondly, I found a plastic rocking toy for Cutie on my way in to work. I'd been meaning to spend a gift voucher she'd got for Christmas on a rocker but now I can use it for something else. There is just a scratch on the head. Apart from that once I give it a wipe over it's fine and she loves it

And lastly I've finally made use of the British Gas Homecare cover I've got by getting them to come round and fix the cold tap in my bathroom that hasn't worked for a couple of months. I've called them out to fix the boiler and/or radiators a few times over the previous few years but only a few months ago they phoned me at work and persuaded me to increase my cover from just the boiler and central heating to the drains and plumbing and home electrics as well. All for only £7 extra a month with a £50 excess. So I got them round to fix the tap and since there isn't a call out charge and it only took 20 minutes I don't think it can have cost too much. I'll have to wait until I get the bill. Next is to get them to fix the light in my living room which broke a couple of weeks ago.

I've put several silver coins into my pencil case - standing in for my money box which is due next week. And with my online rounding down of my current account I'm going to round down to the nearest £10. I've got two accounts, one for bills and one for spending so that could add up to a fair amount of money.

I worked lots of extra hours last month including both bank holidays so I'm due a nice pay day this month and I'm in line to have one almost as big next month with all the extra work I've taken on this month. The cycle will be broken in August unfortunately as I'm on leave for a couple of weeks but hopefully it'll resume again when I'm back. I'm making it known that I'm available for all and any extra work so long as I'm physically able to do it - for example, I can't do conflicting or overlapping duties.

Things are looking up

Scientist_DFW

Just coming to the end of one of my extra shifts. I've spent some time reading DFW diaries and feel motivated. Here are a couple of things I'm going to aim to do over the next few days:

1 - Check out the details of my first mortgage from about 12 years ago and see if I had PPI on it. It didn't occur to me before but it's worth checking.

2 - Get up in the loft and sort out some things to put on Ebay - there are a couple of minimalist living books that people have recommended that I might get to help me part with the stuff that is filling my loft - although a lot of it is OHs and he won't part with anything.

Got a busy weekend ahead so might not get to either of these but I'll try.

After catching up on some sleep I'm taking Curlie and Cutie to a Summer Fayre today. Then tomorrow there's a special service marking a Brownie anniversary. That'll be the first time I've been in a church for many years - so that'll be interesting. Then back to work again on Monday.

Scientist_DFW

Well so here I am back at work earning some more money to go towards my final CC payment at the end of July which, incidentally will be just a matter of weeks before we go on holiday. I'll be able to properly relax knowing my debt is clear but I must be careful and make sure I don't go mad spending loads just because I'll be debt free.

I didn't manage to do either of the things I was so enthusiastically planning to do. I think the mortgage had home insurance on it not PPI anyway so I'm not going to spend time looking that up. I read up on PPI on the MSE website and it said that mortgage PPI being missold was quite rare and usually it would have been missold if you wouldn't have been able to claim on it, for example if you were self employed. This doesn't apply to me. I think I'll leave well alone and move on.

I'm still planning on going up in the loft. I know I've got some things up there that I could put on Ebay but I'm not sure how well they'll sell or how much I'll get. I'm prepared to give it a go. The weather's supposed to be bad for a couple of days so it seems like a good indoor activity to get on with.

I've been a bit bad and visited the one day online M&S sale . It's always been my weakness. Strictly speaking I only bought things that I would have bought anyway. And managed to get cheaper. But I may have bought more than I should, for example, I bought Curly two pairs of casual shoes when I should only have bought one. But anyway, I put the shop on my M&S CC to collect the points and then tonight I've paid it off. That money should really have been used to reduce the big debt on my other CC but Curly did need shoes!


We're now less than ten days from pay day and I'm so looking forward to making a big payment on my CC. It's not as big as I had planned at the beginning of this month but somehow the calculations on paper never work out exactly in real life. There's always some expense that I haven't taken into account. But I'll still be able to pay it off in two payments and definitely before the 0% ends on 1st October. The only reason I'm rushing to pay it off before then is so I don't add to it when we're on holiday because then it would definitely go over the end of the 0% deal and I don't want to have to pay interest. It was bad enough having to pay a transfer fee to get the balance on the 0% deal in the first place - shame the days of free transfers are gone.

Anyway, back to work

Scientist_DFW

Oh yeah, I forgot to say I got my money pot (see my avatar) on Saturday so I've been putting coins into it. I don't know how many or what coins. I just grab what's in my purse at the end of the day and put it in. It's a lovely pot and it's going to be a shame to break it. I'm thinking I might keep going until it's full rather than break it at Christmas. In the future I might be able to be disciplined anough to put only £2 in. If I could manage that it'd hold £1000! Maybe one day.