The 300k debt-free diary!!!

lunar

Keeping my fingers crossed for a good offer on your house. Good to see your totals coming down, and the 0 balances in your sig. I would also love to be rid of mint for christams as im giving them loads of interest at the min, but i think i will be rid of it by doing balance transfers as i dont think i will find £8500 by then!

Glad you had a good holiday and coped with the in laws staying. I love your diary as you have made so many changes.

pandapaws

Thanks Lunar! Although I haven't managed to make many changes this past month except ones for the worse as regards spending! But having taken inspiration from the post in Chocoholic's diary showing her spending for last month I've decided to really try and keep one myself for October, and I know that the results will be scary! That's next on my to-do list today and I WILL NOT PUT IT OFF ANY LONGER!!!

Slight change of plan with the Mint card, as DHs Virgin card (on a 0 balance for a while as we transferred the balance to the Citi loan we pay £310 a month for) wrote today offerint 0% until next July. So, rather than paying Mint off when the 0% expires on 1st Dec, I'll transfer it and try and pay my own Virgin CC off instead as it ends on the same day (although as £10k is owed on that one, chances of doing it by Xmas are zero!). Just a shame that I can't transfer Virgin to Virgin! Although they did send credit card cheques too - might look into that...

Nothing heard from the bloke who looked at the house. Agents spoke to him yesterday but he was busy and asked them to ring back. They haven't been able to speak to him since, so not looking promising. We're trying to decide now if we should just drop the asking price to £249,950 to get loads more interest. Hate this situation!

Off for my blood tests today (the ones that screen for Downs etc), so fingers crossed for that. I felt the baby move last night for the first time - very, very faint, but I definitely recognised the fluttery feeling! Hoping they'll do a full antenatal check today as I haven't had the opportunity to hear heartbeat or anything yet. Oh, and the Dyson man is coming to repair the washer which may or may not cost £85, depending on whether I can pretend it's still in warranty (it's about 8 yrs old!). Other than that a boring day!

chocaholic110

How did your appointment go? Did you get to hear the heartbeat?

kassytbag

hi, just been reading your diary - u are an inspiration:T by the way what is the snowball calculator?

fc123

Hi, the house buying board seems to have loads of "property pros" on it.....copy the post about asking price onto there they have all sorts of tips + you can put your rightmove link on to get their opinion on price etc..........moving to save on the commute is a priority before new baby comes......i dropped 22hrs p wk motorway driving 3 yrs back and it changed my life!!

Good luck

pandapaws

chocaholic110 wrote: »

How did your appointment go? Did you get to hear the heartbeat?

Appointement was fine, thanks! The heartbeat was really loud and clear! Only thing (skip immediately to next post if you're not pregnant!) is that they found high levels of protein, blood and leucozytes (?) in my urine so that's to be sent off for analysis. Not too worried as I think I might have had those last time as well and all was fine. 17 weeks gone - where has the time gone?!

pandapaws

kassytbag wrote: »

hi, just been reading your diary - u are an inspiration:T by the way what is the snowball calculator?

It's basically just a website with a sort of spreadsheet on it. You put all your debts, monthly payments and APRs into it, and it calculates the date that you will be debt-free. It also gives you an idea of which order to pay them in (when you pay one off, the money you were paying to that one can go towards another instead etc).

See SouthernScouser's really useful post at http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=107280 for more info, and the link for the snowball is:

www.whatsthecost.co.uk/snowball.aspx

Thanks for posting! Good luck!

pandapaws

fc123 wrote: »

Hi, the house buying board seems to have loads of "property pros" on it.....copy the post about asking price onto there they have all sorts of tips + you can put your rightmove link on to get their opinion on price etc..........moving to save on the commute is a priority before new baby comes......i dropped 22hrs p wk motorway driving 3 yrs back and it changed my life!!

Good luck

:beer: Thanks, that's what I want to hear!!!

I originally asked about dropping the price on the house buying board, and gots some really good info.

The verdict generally is that there's nowt wrong with the price or house as it is, but the market round here is so slow. I think that we'll give it until next week and then drop the price. If we don't move I'll have to give up work for a while, and that would be a disaster!

Fingers crossed!

Shineyhappy

My Oh has just bought a new place and paid 250k plus 5k fixtures and fittings thus escaping the stamp duty barrier. You can get up to 10k I think in fixtures and fittings if you can show you are leaving things behind.

pandapaws

We were hoping to be able to do something like that - thanks for the info about the 10k limit, wasn't sure if there was one.

The problem we've got, is if we want to grab attention we'll really have to drop to 249,950 as I think a lot of people don't look at anything over 250k, so how do we then get them to offer more for F&Fs? For 250k, I'll be stripping the place bare!!!