Paying the car tax via EBay, and other shenanigans.

roxy7699

You've done great since you started. I also used collect+ then read all these reviews slating them. Safe to say my parcels were delivered ahead of time.

mfmaybe

Thanks Roxy. Posted another today with them so hope it's as good as you've experienced.

So was going to post last night, except went to bed to do it on ipad, and the cat plonked herself between me and the ipad - no typing allowed!

Today is payday :j So it's time to have a look at the results of my first "month". It's a biggie....are you ready....drumroll please.

The OD has gone down by £41

Told you it was big news!:rotfl: Now it's not so bad as it looks. I've mentioned before that I put most of my spends on to a points credit card, and then pay it off in full. So within the last month I still had quite a big catch up to do - and will still have a little bit of it next month. But the really postive thing is that, in my fancy spreadsheet, I have a calculation of "True spend". This includes everything I've put on the cards, as well as proper bank spends such as cash withdrawals and DDs etc. Well this came to £700 or so less than my salary, so that's great news. OD still isn't going to look fab for a couple of months as I have a tax bill to pay, and want to pay off the 0% credit card as it's due to run out soon. But even though things are tight I feel a lot more in control.

So good news - got paid £30 more than the previous month (assume my tax code has changed). Got paid expenses that aren't due to be paid off my credit card until next month, so could use that to pay most of my tax bill before I get a penalty. Someone owed me £125 that I had forgotten about. They paid today so I have put it in my proper savings account until I decide what best to do with it.

Current forecast for the next month looks like £250 off the family debt, £100 off the 0% card and that would leave me £78 over on the overdraft. So aim is to get that back to in line by using less than budgeted on food, lunch etc. Reason it's not going down more is due to having to pay £500 towards our home insurance this month, because we haven't saved up for it again. So annoyed at this. Did a quick calculation on our house account yesterday, and figured we really should be putting enough away each month for the gas and insurance as well as the monthly DDs, from what we already transfer. But I guess we use it up with the other house emergencies (eg, £200 roofing repair in January) that we also haven't provided for. So need to be start transferring a little bit extra each month towards emergencies, and then hope for none!! I also need hay this month so that's another £160.

Last thought on this very long post. I have decided I have to start paying off my family debt, even though it's "free", because I've had it for about 8 months already. This means my overdraft is going down the least - and that's the one with the interest. So am now looking into a 12 month 0% BT card so I can pay off OD instead of the credit card balance. Fluid (?) have one on MSE that is a 0.75% fee, which would be less than one month's OD interest. Seems sensible, so long as I stick to the budget plan. I've never heard of that card though.

Had an idea of something else I can list on fleabay last night but need to wait for a free listing. Really need to get my thinking cap on now though!

mfmaybe

Well I did an "eligibility check"on their website (no credit search) and was told I wouldn't qualify for that card, but would for a 2.5% fee card. Not sure the logic of that - it can't be credit related as no search at this stage (and anyway I'm usually a high scorer). So I assume it was the relatively high value (£4k) that I wanted to transfer - even though it was a low % of my income. So I guess it was a profitability thing rather than a risk thing; but who knows?

Annoyingly I got a targeted Tesco mailshot in the post a while ago offering me free BTs if I applied by post. I decided not to at the time and am now regretting that! Will have to sell another £40 of stuff a month to pay the OD interest - I'm really not sure I have that much clutter, the car tax is going to be hard enough.

EDIT - went on to Tesco website, found a 12 month v low fee. Applied, accepted, more than enough to transfer my current card balances. By not having to make these large payments in the next couple of months I will effectively pay off my overdraft so no further interest. Will take a month or two to fully run through though, and will have to be equally disciplined to keep it tight.

On the plus side, reading another thread on here reminded me I had a onepoll account; logged on today, did a few surveys and am at £6.20. Some way to go before I get to the payout level but might be a cheeky extra payment at some point. :T

cazmanian_minx

Good news about the transfer Re: the budgeting - have you come across YNAB? http://www.youneedabudget.com/ You do have to pay for it (after a free trial) but I find it *immensely* useful in working out what I've spent and what I haven't and budgeting for annual spends.

mfmaybe

Thanks Caz, I've seen it mentioned a couple of times. I will have a look, but I think my main problem historically was the IVF which isn't in many budgeting tools! I'm pretty good on spreadsheets so I think I'm happy with the budget now, I've just been too lazy to use it properly in the past. It's the danger of having a good salary and thinking you don't need to be careful with money - trouble is the expenses usually go up with the salary. But I'll look into your suggestion because heaven knows all help is welcome.

cazmanian_minx

With this you can add as many different categories as you like and call them what you want, that's part of what makes it so useful.

mfmaybe

cazmanian_minx wrote: »

With this you can add as many different categories as you like and call them what you want, that's part of what makes it so useful.

I've had a quick look and it uses the same principles I use, eg Master categories and sub categories. Doesn't seem to do anything my 12 tab spreadsheet doesn't, but I can see for someone not as addicted to pivot tables and complex formulas, it would be incredibly useful. My comment about the IVF was more related to the sheer cost and number of attempts. As soon as we knew we needed it we got on with it, unfortunately it was around the same time as our wedding and honeymoon so we had already committed out savings. Hopefully those circumstances will never arise again!

mfmaybe

Well almost a NSD today,but had to make a strategic purchase! Took cash out of the bank for our gardener. However because we pay him an amount ending in £5 I had to get change from a ten pound note, so bought a pack of caramel digestives. I'm sure milk or something would have been more useful but the biscuits won't go to waste :rotfl: The rest of the change will go towards next month, so I can take £10 less out of the bank.

I know that having a gardener doesn't sound very MSE but let me explain . We have a garden of over half an acre. OH and I both work full time. For 6 years we've done it ourselves - well, he cuts the grass, I do everything else. However it was so soul-destroying as all I did was pull weeds, and I'd have to do it all the time. So we have a guy coming in now for 6 or 7 hours a month to do weeding. It's already paying dividends as in the nice weather on Sunday it meant I could actually do projects and enjoyable stuff rather than just spend the whole time pulling out weeds. We chose a gardener over a cleaner because the house can only get so messy; but the garden just keeps on getting worse. We share the cost and I really feel like it's going to make me feel less burdened.

In other news, I realised I didn't really have a suitable lunch lined up for the office on Friday. I'm working at home tomorrow so that's easier; but planning ahead I realised I could use the leftovers I was going to have for tea tonight, and cook something else tonight! Focussing on not spending on lunch and coffee is a key thing for me. Someone bought a coffee today and the smell made me really want one, but I resisted. :A

Tesco application still says being processed, hoping it will go quickly as really would like not to have to make any payments to my other cards this month (the debt one or the monthly use one) which would help the OD on it's track towards 0. I've been thinking about how best to utilise this and realistically, once the OD is zero, I should start to build up savings/pay off my family debt, and make sure I've saved up enough to pay the card off by the time the 0% ends. But once the card is issued and I see the transfers happen, I will reassess my budgets. My main rule is that none of the "spends" will change, each spend category remains the same, the only categories where I will shuffle things about are in debt repayments vs savings. I am pretty stubborn so not worried about running up more debt. I also realised today that IF my next IVF works I need to save for maternity. But that's a pipe dream just now and my focus is just on generally improving my position, not a specific savings purpose.

What else? Oh yes my email came in from BT about my quarterly bill and I realised just how expensive it was. Have seen a very good deal for EE customers (which OH is) that would save us nearly £300 a year, plus we get a £100 amazon voucher. So emailed OH and he is going to apply. Means we need to pay the line rental up front but the refund from BT should cover a good chunk of it anyway. No idea what their customer service is like but it's a big enough saving to make us take the gamble. Actually living rurally the biggest issue we have is with the line itself (trees lying on the line, for example) and I think that's still BT Openreach we'd deal with for that, so shouldn't make too much of a difference.

Did a few surveys on onepoll, now at £6.55. Off to check TCB too as I have a couple of outstandings on there to chase.

Gosh that's a lot. Amazingly, I did also manage to do some paid work today :rotfl:

mfmaybe

Hurrah, checked my online banking just now and credit card at zero - both the debt one and my usual spends one. The debt (£1600) is just my share, OH also has £1600 to pay. He's said that he'd still rather pay me his share soon, so that will go into my ovedraft, and coupled with me not paying my share yet, my overdraft consequently goes down £3200. The other card has £1000 on it, most of that was coming out of our house account so again I'll transfer that over into my overdraft. Tada, 0% overdraft - kinda . Only thing is, we were planning on paying the debt off over the next 2 months so it's not immediate, but still worth it I think. Now need to re-jig the spreadsheets.

Yesterday I tried to log on to T*sc0 from work and because it didn't recognise the computer it wouldn't log on. When I googled, I found loads of reviews about how terrible the security was, eg if you clear your cookies it then doesn't recognise the computer again. One thing I read also mentioned a very sneaky credit card payment date of about 3 weeks after opening the account. And sure enough, when I logged on today, the first payment is due on 11th March. I'm glad I checked as I would have assumed it would be 7 weeks or so - ie a month until the statement and then 3 weeks until payment. So I've set up the DD for the minimum so hopefully I won't get charged any late payments!

Good news so far today, a new DD for insurance on my flat, which I thought was £23/mth was actually only £11. Onepoll is at £7. Have a payout due of nearly £8 on TCB, but unsure whether to take it as Amazon vouchers or cash. I get a 5% bonus with Amazon and need to buy conditioner from there (a not too expensive organic one) but already have one gift card of nearly £4. If I just take the cash it could go in the car tax fund. I will have a think about anything that I really need to buy just now, and if nothing then it can come out as cash.

Decisions decisions. Off to play spreadsheets. And maybe do some work :rotfl:

mfmaybe

Just popping on briefly. Continue to record NSDs where I can, at least in terms of lunches. Have been pretty good on the food budget and continue to trickle the fleabay sales in. Might have some IVF expenses coming up soon, but they are something I refuse to worry about. Had an annoying call about our broadband, looks like we will struggle to get a good deal because our exchange hasn't been upgraded. The logic of this defies me....