Tales from the city

ani*fan

These points from Eager _Elephant...

Eager_Elephant wrote: »

...payday comes and I move all my money around and then all my DD's go out and I update YNAB and that's it for another month.

...my current plan works for me and it will take time.

...I try not to dwell too much and just keep saving until the time comes.

Thanks for posting this. I so need some of your patience, could you send some over please?

Igamogam wrote: »

Yes I do FPL............and I have bonus of over £17! Never won anything I think the chances are better if there are more than one registration with your postcode - fat chance here as only 3 houses with our postcode :rotfl: I keep at it though as it free!!

Wow, that's a big bonus, you must have logged on lots. It brightens up my day though, with the prospect of a small windfall, even though I haven't won anything yet.

Well there's nothing much to report on the debt busting front. I haven't paid any more to the card, so I'm a bit behind on my plan, but there is the rest of the month to try and keep overpaying it. We'll see how it all goes.

Igamogam

ani*fan wrote: »

Wow, that's a big bonus, you must have logged on lots. It brightens up my day though, with the prospect of a small windfall, even though I haven't won anything yet.

I have taken up a couple of the 'offers' to bump it up - P*ct coffee is recommended

PositiveBalance

Hi ani!

Well, I started your diary last night and finished it today. It was addictive reading. You've had quite the journey! I hope mine goes half as smoothly!

Congratulations on your engagement and forthcoming wedding. :beer:

ani*fan wrote: »

Nice to meet you and thanks for the good advice about bank account switching. I'm not sure if I'd rather see the debts go down or interest building up. I guess I'm trying to think what the best thing is to do financially, which would undoubtedly be saving and accruing interest. But I have never been good at managing money and I don't feel very confident somehow.

I think we can all definitely agree that the above should be written in the past tense. And a past tense that ended in the past, not one that continues into the present. You *were* poor at handling your money but now, right now you are good at doing it. Do not confuse the two: an old purry furball can learn new tricks and carry on new patterns of behaviour. Your like a overweight person who lost a lot of weight but doesn't see that they are now a size 10 and keeps instinctively buying bigger clothes in the old styles that used to suit them/disguise their lumps and bumps without realising they have a new slimline figure.

ani*fan wrote: »

Things are getting tricky regarding the plan to pay off £1k per month. Both me and OH's employers have automatically enrolled us in the pension plan. Anyone else had this happen? It means we will lose cash at the end of this month and my employer has not even told me how much. We can cancel and get a refund, but we're also thinking a pension would probably be a good idea. We're not quite sure what to do so thinking about it.

I think you've done this but take advantage to the level that your employer will match at every opportunity - it's extra free money from your employer and more money for when you are older in general.

Have I understood correctly that you have definitely set the date for the wedding?

Now I'm up-to-date I hope to see much more debt-busting!

ani*fan

Hi there PositiveBalance :hello: Thanks for dropping by!

How funny to hear that you've read my whole diary right through. Obviously I do this all the time with other peoples' diaries, but to know you've done that with mine is strange but nice! I hope you found some inspiration or something useful as you read.

About me being good with money now...wow. Your words have had such an impact on me today. You are exactly right with your analogy about weight loss. I do still see myself as someone who is bad at handling money but the truth is, I've figured out how to do it. Like so many people on here, because we're still in debt, we still feel the 'weight' of that on our shoulders, as though looking at the consequences and trying to sort it out is the same as mindlessly racking up debt. Which it's not. I need to see myself in a new light. Thanks so much for pointing it out, that's a real help!

Thank you also for your comments about my engagement. Yes, we've set a date for the wedding, it's next October. :smileyhea :smileyhea We want our friends and family to come and take part, help us celebrate and have a proper 'do'. We have booked a local council- owned venue which is a tad unconventional but beautiful, has spectacular views and is also cheap. OH got her outfit second hand, just alterations to pay for, but it's lovely. I'm scouring the preloved wedding dress sites weekly for the right thing which will surely show up if I just keep looking. My future MIL has a friend who loves baking and will gladly supply a cake (or cupcakes, or whatever we decide on) for the cost of the ingredients. OH's previous employer is giving us a deal on printing out our 'save the date' cards and invites that we designed ourselves. So we're all over it, MSE style.

According to Brides magazine, (not that I read this, I just read the statistic online when I knew this was happening) the average UK wedding costs £24k. :eek::eek: That is just not possible. And having spoken to friends who are still paying off their weddings 3 years later, I don't want that for us. Fortunately, neither does OH, so we're on the same page. We have set a budget of £7k for a wedding with 80 guests and we're going to stick to it. I have every intention of reselling my dress after the day, I won't need something like that hanging in my wardrobe, so the final overall cost might be a bit less.

We have paid £450 of costs already. Another £600 is in a regular monthly saver; we add £200 per month which will earn £60 of interest before it needs to be used. OH's parents are contributing £1,000 which is just lovely of them. It's all coming together beautifully and will hopefully be one classy day. The best part is that no-one need ever know that everything was sourced so cheaply, except the thousands of people on here.

Given all of the above, I think it's about time I recognised that maybe I am good with money. Wow, who knew?

And yes, I went ahead with the pension at work. My employer contributes something huge like 11% which seemed too good an opportunity to miss. The debt overpayments will take a hit because of this, but I'll put all of that in a separate post.

Thanks again for dropping by, PositiveBalance. You've given me food for thought today.

hiddenshadow

£7k budget sounds reasonable - I think we spent somewhere just over £6k for 70-odd guests but we went cheap on quite a few things (I bought two dresses off eb@y for < £100 total, delicious curry buffet, no flowers) and expensive on some other things (rented an entire B&B for a week so family could have a proper vacation abroad for a few days, custom designed wedding rings). I definitely don't regret any of our spending 3 years later, though we could have gone super cheap if we'd stuck with immediate family/friends rather than extended family (my dad's side is quite large so that grew our guest list exponentially). Everyone raved about the food and the style of our wedding and no one asked where the flowers were or why they didn't get any favours.

Wow, 11% pension contribution?! That's brilliant. I managed to negotiate 7.6% contribution from my employer which is probably the highest I've ever had, which says something as matching is much more common/expected in US companies. Definitely don't turn down that free money, even if it slows your debt progress a bit. Future You will thank you.

ani*fan

I'm glad to hear other people have managed to do it cheaply, hiddenshadown. That's very motivating to know. And it sounds as if we all have different priorities too. I'm not so fussed about the ring, my engagement ring is the special one, I love it to bits. My wedding ring probably won't cost too much at all. And we really want a sit down, 3 course meal for everyone, which is where a massive chunk of the budget will be going. It's great fun to plan it all and decide on these things. We're getting organised early so we're not in a mad rush nearer the time and having to throw money at it just to get things done. When did you get married?

My pension is indeed a good one so I decided to go for it. Future me will appreciate it.

hiddenshadow

3 course meal sounds lovely/fancy.

ani*fan wrote: »

When did you get married?

Our three year anniversary is on Wednesday. We were going to the Crystal Maze experience in London to celebrate but couldn't book that until February so it's DH's birthday celebration instead. Haven't actually come up with a backup anniversary celebration, so maybe we'll just go out somewhere.

crazy_cat_lady

We're just coming up to our 4th wedding anniversary (end of this month) we spent £5.5k and had 55 day and 85 evening guests, and we got married at our local football stadium (dh is a season ticket holder). It was a very special day and I still remember it fondly now. I still have my wedding dress though - can't bear to part with it (it brings me great joy).

ani*fan

Thanks you both so much for sharing your wedding stories. I loved hearing about them. It's such an important thing and I really want it to be good, and not look cheap, while at the same time not going mad with spending. It would be so easy to do. Once you start looking into wedding things, you could really spend a fortune.

This month has really been very spendy, what with OH's birthday and various other things. I won't be anywhere near my £1000 overpayment. I've been offered a 0% transfer on one of my cards and am thinking about moving some of the target card over to that. Not all of it, I want some of it at least to get paid off. But my buyer for my expensive thing has not been in touch so I need to assume that sale won't happen. Which means I need another strategy.

My immediate plan is to keep paying as much as I can for now. I have until the end of this month to decide to transfer or not. I need to re-advertise the expensive thing and try to get it sold.

I have the morning off work but have assignments to get started. They're not too difficult, or too long, but i need to start getting them done.

Onwards to another debt -busting day.

ani*fan

So, I've done some thinking.

My debt is currently over 3 credit cards and my overdraft. All of it is 0% for the moment, but target credit card will start accruing interest in November this year. The other two are good until 2018. My overdraft, I recently discovered, is interest free until 2020. :j

The target card is not going to be paid off in time. This is due to me and OH's brand new pension pots losing us around £300 per month, but very worth it for the future.

Also, my budget was not great and did not include birthdays. We now have a new birthday savings account which is paid into monthly so this should be less of a problem in the future.

In the meantime, I have a plan.

I'm going to move £3,000 from the target credit card to CC (2). I need to do it now as the deal runs out at the end of the month.

This will leave around £820 to be paid off the target card, after this month's minimum payment. This is manageable before the 0% runs out.

The transfer will cost somewhere around £90. Seems like a bargain.

I like the idea of having the debt over 2 cards instead of 3. I spend so much time checking accounts and obsessing about it all that I think this would simplify things greatly.

After the target card is paid off and closed, which should take 2 months, I will then hit CC (3) which has a much lower balance, £1,700. If I sold my expensive thing, this could almost be paid off in full.

It could only be a few months until all my credit card debt is on ONE card. This would be fantastic, despite the fact that the balance will be enormous, somewhere in the region of £6k. But still, easier to only have one place to be putting any extra cash rather than wondering where it should go and who needs paying first.

I like my new plan. It's more realistic given the pension situation.