My SOA and debt diary

Ignatius_A

OK : action plan so far

1) Clarify price of school meals
2) Work on price of Virgin Media
3) Reduce church spend to 30
4) Investigate gas/electric prices again
5) watch for insurance renewals and renegotiate
6) visit entitledto.co.uk to see about any additional entitlements
7) Investigate income increase schemes
AQA/82Ask/pigsback?/quidco/opinion sites, mystery shopping
8) Progress fees recovery through Halifax - DPA request delivered 13/6 40 days=23/7

Thanks all

Shineyhappy

Have a nosey at these two threads:

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=454491


http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/forumdisplay.html?f=37

These should help. I would ask your wife to have a look if she is at home all day she might want to help financially and feel she is earning her keep. Besides you cant do everything! You can both join Pigsback and if you refer a friend then you get five pounds worth of Piggy points when they claim their first reward. I would set up a junk email for this sort of stuff as you can get points signing up to emails and if they go to specific address it can be easier.

poppy10_2

Yep, that's something your wife could do to help out, and it might even lift her mood if she feels she is doing something productive with her time rather than just watching Virgin TV.

Ignatius_A

Ignatius_A wrote: »

OK : action plan so far

1) Clarify price of school meals
2) Work on price of Virgin Media
3) Reduce church spend to 30
4) Investigate gas/electric prices again
5) watch for insurance renewals and renegotiate
6) visit entitledto.co.uk to see about any additional entitlements
7) Investigate income increase schemes
AQA/82Ask/pigsback?/quidco/opinion sites, mystery shopping
8) Progress fees recovery through Halifax - DPA request delivered 13/6 40 days=23/7

Thanks all

Progress

1) Clarify price of school meals

Seems right - it's just over £8 pw per child, so that's £64. It needs to cater for school snacks/drinks (provided in classroom) and also for 5 week months, so it's probably about right.

2) Work on price of Virgin Media- in progress
3) Reduce church spend to 30 - done
4) Investigate gas/electric prices again - not started yet
5) watch for insurance renewals and renegotiate -

not yet (sept and dec for car insurances)

6) visit entitledto.co.uk to see about any additional entitlements - not yet
7) Investigate income increase schemes
AQA/82Ask/pigsback?/quidco/opinion sites, mystery shopping


ongoing. From what I've seen so far, I'm unlikely to have the free time required for AQA/82Ask.


8) Progress fees recovery through Halifax - DPA request delivered 13/6 40 days=23/7 - still awaiting statements/fees list



I have also done some credit card shuffling:

1) Moved 4100 debt from marbles (19.9%) to MBNA (0%, 12 months)
2) Moved 1250 debt from marbles (19.9%) to Halifax One (6.95% LOB)

I'm waiting to move about 1850 debt from marbles to Barclays (assuming I can get the 6.9% LOB deal) until after the next statement, to give us a little bit of 'manoever money' whilst i'm getting everything sorted (sorting out things spent last month that shouldn't have been so we can get to a point where the budget lines up with the money.)


Current situation:

 
[FONT=Fixedsys]           Balance    Interest  Min Pmt   Act Pmt[/FONT]
[FONT=Fixedsys]Marbles      5700       19.9%      114       185[/FONT]
[FONT=Fixedsys]OH O/D       1000       15.9%                 20[/FONT]
[FONT=Fixedsys]H/fax one    1236       6.95%       38        40[/FONT]
[FONT=Fixedsys]Joint O/D     450       9.9%                  15 (inc 10 account fee)[/FONT]
[FONT=Fixedsys]MBNA         5973       0%          25        25[/FONT]
[FONT=Fixedsys]Un.loan     12500       9.9%       259.10    259.10 (Fixed)[/FONT]
[FONT=Fixedsys]Fam.loan    10400       0%         200       200[/FONT]
[FONT=Fixedsys]           =====                  ======    ======[/FONT]
[FONT=Fixedsys]           37659                  636.10    744.10[/FONT]
 

So, I'm actually DEEPER in debt (due to balance transfer fees) but paying it off quicker due to the interest rate drop)


Some good news came my way this week though - A guy in my team at work is transferring to another section. This is likely to leave us quite short staffed with plenty of opportunity for overtime - maybe time to negotiate working 8/6 rather than 9/5 when the additional workload kicks in
:beer:

One other thing I need to do though - apparently OH's overdraft facility comes to an end at the end of this month.

Are they (halifax) likely to do a payment plan for her or will they just turn around and start charging over-overdraft fees & making complete a***** out of themselves?

I know, we need to talk to them about it & quickly. Anybody have any prior experience in this?

Shineyhappy

Have you spoken to your wife about helping with some of the computer stuff? I know you said she was disabled but I would still want to help in any way I could if I was physically disabled and stuck at home.

lynzpower

Ignatius_A wrote: »

Progress

1) Clarify price of school meals

Seems right - it's just over £8 pw per child, so that's £64. It needs to cater for school snacks/drinks (provided in classroom) and also for 5 week months, so it's probably about right.

2) Work on price of Virgin Media- in progress
3) Reduce church spend to 30 - done
4) Investigate gas/electric prices again - not started yet
5) watch for insurance renewals and renegotiate -

not yet (sept and dec for car insurances)

6) visit entitledto.co.uk to see about any additional entitlements - not yet
7) Investigate income increase schemes
AQA/82Ask/pigsback?/quidco/opinion sites, mystery shopping


ongoing. From what I've seen so far, I'm unlikely to have the free time required for AQA/82Ask.


8) Progress fees recovery through Halifax - DPA request delivered 13/6 40 days=23/7 - still awaiting statements/fees list



I have also done some credit card shuffling:

1) Moved 4100 debt from marbles (19.9%) to MBNA (0%, 12 months)
2) Moved 1250 debt from marbles (19.9%) to Halifax One (6.95% LOB)

I'm waiting to move about 1850 debt from marbles to Barclays (assuming I can get the 6.9% LOB deal) until after the next statement, to give us a little bit of 'manoever money' whilst i'm getting everything sorted (sorting out things spent last month that shouldn't have been so we can get to a point where the budget lines up with the money.)


Current situation:

 
[FONT=Fixedsys]          Balance    Interest  Min Pmt   Act Pmt[/FONT]
[FONT=Fixedsys]Marbles      5700       19.9%      114       185[/FONT]
[FONT=Fixedsys]OH O/D       1000       15.9%                 20[/FONT]
[FONT=Fixedsys]H/fax one    1236       6.95%       38        40[/FONT]
[FONT=Fixedsys]Joint O/D     450       9.9%                  15 (inc 10 account fee)[/FONT]
[FONT=Fixedsys]MBNA         5973       0%          25        25[/FONT]
[FONT=Fixedsys]Un.loan     12500       9.9%       259.10    259.10 (Fixed)[/FONT]
[FONT=Fixedsys]Fam.loan    10400       0%         200       200[/FONT]
[FONT=Fixedsys]          =====                  ======    ======[/FONT]
[FONT=Fixedsys]          37659                  636.10    744.10[/FONT]
 

So, I'm actually DEEPER in debt (due to balance transfer fees) but paying it off quicker due to the interest rate drop)


Some good news came my way this week though - A guy in my team at work is transferring to another section. This is likely to leave us quite short staffed with plenty of opportunity for overtime - maybe time to negotiate working 8/6 rather than 9/5 when the additional workload kicks in
:beer:

One other thing I need to do though - apparently OH's overdraft facility comes to an end at the end of this month.

Are they (halifax) likely to do a payment plan for her or will they just turn around and start charging over-overdraft fees & making complete a***** out of themselves?

I know, we need to talk to them about it & quickly. Anybody have any prior experience in this?

In terms of the bank account, id be tempted to open a new one with an interest free overdraft. ( smile is good, alliance & leicester also pays 50.00 in quidco for opening it) and matches the OD at 0%

Ignatius_A

lynzpower wrote: »

In terms of the bank account, id be tempted to open a new one with an interest free overdraft. ( smile is good, alliance & leicester also pays 50.00 in quidco for opening it) and matches the OD at 0%

Interesting idea.

Do they give £1k overdrafts without paying your salary in? There's nothing currently going into this account apart from a little cash to keep the overdraft interest under control.

lynzpower

Ignatius_A wrote: »

Interesting idea.

Do they give £1k overdrafts without paying your salary in? There's nothing currently going into this account apart from a little cash to keep the overdraft interest under control.

Ah. good point.

the smile one is 500 OD for free for a year.

the A&L one needs you to pay stuff into it.

Ignatius_A

Ok, so this week I dealt with the OH's cancelled overdraft - Halifax had decided that they were no longer going to offer us an overdraft or an overdraft extension.

Fortunately, they WERE prepared to offer me up to 4000 overdaft on another account - so I took 1000

The result is instead of this being an unapproved overdraft on a cardcash account (APR 28.9%):eek: it's now an approved overdraft on a current account in my name (APR 15.9%) This leaves me in a situation where I can shuffle more priority (APR 19.9%) debt from another credit card onto a lower interest card. (assuming I can get the barclaycard 6.9% deal when I ask)

If I hadn't been able to move the overdraft, i'd have had to use a lot of the credit card allowance for the overdraft debt. As it is now, we're in a similar position to before Halifax started being funny with my OH. We've applied to have the other account closed - which is a step forward.

On other fronts, I've applied to 3 mystery shopper agencies. No jobs yet but I keep checking.

poppy10_2

Well done, keep it up!