My Graduate (Post-Student) Debt Diary!

System

Yeah maybe focus on minimum payments on your 0.00% card (watching out for the dates they switch over to interest and get that overdraft paid off.... You've got 5 months until September.. How much can you realistically throw at it a month?

MrJester

>12 Months

sauceoclock wrote: »

Yeah maybe focus on minimum payments on your 0.00% card (watching out for the dates they switch over to interest and get that overdraft paid off.... You've got 5 months until September.. How much can you realistically throw at it a month?

I'm in the middle of a transition between jobs (YAY!) but its likely going to mean I have to be careful with money as I might not get another paycheque for 1.5x month. I'm going to confirm with the new HR and all but its highly likely.

I've got £400 in savings that I am certain will become part of my overdraft killer. But yeah I need to be able to get it down in other ways. I can maybe get another £200 by selling my bike, so there's £600. Which would bring it down to a point where the daily fees are reduced anyway, but still I do want to get rid of it by September if I can..

Gonna be tricky couple months to stay afloat during this transition and most likely only after that I can look at using wage to pay off the OD

MrJester

>12 Months

Felt like doing an update..

I paid off a friend recently about £80. Which is nice to get that off your conscience, and tick off one of the debts forever. There's a fair few other debts to family/friends, but y'know one at a time and whenever I can.

I found out in my transition between jobs, I'll get another paycheque in a couple weeks just after I leave my current job, which won't be a full month pay cheque, and I won't get paid from new job until near the end of June.. BUT hopefully it shouldn't be too much of an issue and I shouldn't have to dip into those savings.
I've found a new way of budgeting, I basically put £100 on a Mondo (prepaid card/app) per week and do all my spends on that, everything else is covered by direct debits - but I have very few debits anymore at all. This limit means that end of each week I'm saving a fair bit, previous weekly spending would be easily £150. So for example right now with about two weeks till payday so about £200 of the budget and I actually have £500 left in the bank. So going to stick to that as tight as possible and it should mean a healthy amount to keep me good between paycheque issues!

Looking to the future, need to get rid of my overdraft by September, and also balance transfer my barclaycard around the same time. Current thoughts are that I'll be trying to get the overdraft down as best as possible on my own with pure cash, currently looking like i'll be able to throw £600. but that leaves £900 to pay off.
I can of course just deal with the overdraft fees, but I'd just rather use this as a butt kick to get rid of that big overdraft and then probably SWITCH banks to a decent bank and start getting that free switching deals and monthly cash back etc! I earn decent now but my debts screw that over.

My MBNA card is auto upping my limit this month by like 2k, and I haven't denied it because I think when september comes around I'd probably do a balance transfer from the Bcard to it, and maybe also there'll be a money transfer opportunity if i need it, or either/or.

If I think about debts too hard.. It can really get you down. Im still committed to being free of it all though, I've learnt SO MUCH and especially that I'm not someone that likes to be in the debt of other people or companies. I want to have my own money and secure my own fortune from good money management!

With moving job ill be on slightly more money, and particularly I'll be guaranteed the same wage each month because I'll get sick pay which has really screwed me over in the past by losing pay.

MrJester

>12 Months

Soo it has been a while since an update.

One is managing money pretty well, even though I had a less pay cheque from my last employer. My weekly budget of £100 has helped that tremendously, so I just end up with more leftover towards the end of the month. Budgeting ftw! I haven't had to borrow any money or etc

I have transferred all my debts into one place, on one card now, on a very low yearly interest rate around 4%. I can now just clearly see my most important debt in one place, and throw money at it.

This also removes my overdraft from my bank account as I got a very good money transfer deal with that too. Which has enabled me to do a bank switch service and earn a free cool £125! Which just means some more free money to throw at the debts.

I may try pay off some more friends with money I owe them once my next pay cheque comes in, funnily enough its exactly £125 that I owe a couple friends so might just pay them back straight away - then its two more debts written off!

and so as of very shortly I should be in real good money situation, able again to throw a big amount towards the debt chunk each month. Right now I'm thinking 100-150 each month by direct debit, and throw extra cash at the end of each month. With my budgeting system I should have 420 leftover at the end of each month, so I should be able to do this especially since i have very little direct debits going out at all...
I worked out I have to pay around £200 a month to it to get the first balance transfer on the card paid off before the 0% period ends. Which I think is doable, just need to stay focused with it.

Its all up from here, hopefully!

System

I wonder if you still come on here? How you getting on?