Silly student debt diary

greensalad

Just got a refund from a dress I bought before Christmas. Used it to buy all the new drink stuff I want for my birthday cocktail party. That's another planned spend I've been able to bypass, so I won't be dipping into my paycheque

Got £180 set aside for various savings this month. When the £90 comes in from this design job I'll add that to the pot.

Lets hope! Feb is going to be busy for me, I've got Valentines, friends staying, visiting family etc

beckie89

greensalad wrote: »

I'm not really using anything in particular at the moment as I'm too busy to take on lots of work. At present some work is coming from an old colleague (who left to have a baby and now helps run the marketing on her sister and partners businessess). I did both websites for her when we worked together so now I just do updates, she's just asked for a redesign.

The other is a contact through a web forum who is local.

However I have used PeoplePerHour before - I submitted an awful lot of things and never got a response but then I finally got chosen for something and it turned into a regular income stream (about £60 a month worth of leaflet design) so you can find work via PPH. I ended up giving it up in my final year of uni because I couldn't keep up, wish I had it back now!

Having a good presence on Twitter also helps. Getting involved with web design or print forums so you can be there as "the designer" is also good. You just need to let everyone know that you can do that sort of stuff. Before you know it people are saying "oh my niece is a designer!" or whatever. It works!

Thanks! I am starting to get things through word of mouth and I have retained some contacts from my previous job which is handy. Hopefully will get a little bit extra in!

greensalad

beckie89 wrote: »

Thanks! I am starting to get things through word of mouth and I have retained some contacts from my previous job which is handy. Hopefully will get a little bit extra in!

Also make sure you have a website or some sort of online portfolio so that people who recommend you can have a view of your work beforehand. Much more convincing than "Oh I know someone" is "Oh I know someone who designs and here is all her work!"

Facebook page for your design work can also be great at letting friends and family who you might not speak to regularly know that you do design work.

greensalad

Wahoo one week to go until payday!

This is my planned spend for payday:

Transfer £732 to utilities for bills etc
Transfer £200 to groceries account. £40 of this is money I owe BF
Buy £147 flights for our holiday
Pay £116 to the SLC to repay
Use the £180 I have stashed to put into my Barclays OD (£500)
Transfer remaining £298 to my Natwest account so I can "live" out of that account for this month. Therefore I won't dip into the Barclays OD.

So only a small dent in the debt on payday. SLC has to be paid regularly and the £180 I want to put in my Barclays OD to see if I can clear my smallest debt

Then when second payday comes around (I've invoiced them so hopefully soon) I can put the majority of that towards debt repayment.

Coming up in Feb:

Valentines dinner. Should be able to budget this out of our groceries account.
Drinks festival with a friend and a hotel in LDN. Why did I agree to this? Oops. Too late now. Budget of £85 for everything.

greensalad

Been a pretty good weekend and not too expensive!

Just did Music Magpie on all my old DVDs, and Zapper for loads of books. Got £21 for the DVDs and £58 for the books! Courier collecting DVDs on Tuesday. Will have to wait until next weekend for the books because I can't carry them to the courier shop and BF is away with work until Friday night.

Will need to give BF £20 for his books. But the rest is mine. So £60 for debt repayment, very pleased!

Plan of action for Wednesday (payday woop!)

£732 bills/rent
£160 joint spending account
£147 for my flight for holiday
£75 saved for spa day
£116 to SLC debt
£40 to give to BF as I owe him some
£30 set aside for my birthday dinner

Remaining £193 will go to my Natwest account which I don't usually use. I will be using the Natwest account to "live" off so I can pay off my OD on my main current account.

When second job pays I can top up my living money on Natwest account and sort out the rest of my debts being paid off. Going to be a good month and I'm being a really good budgeter. I want to get to the point that I can start using YNAB, at the moment I really can't because it just can't handle me having an overdraft. So I really want to clear it.

helpme_115

Wow excellent stuff, do u have the new NatWest clear rate card? Saves me about £50 a month in interest! (Yup I work for natwest\rbs but love the product)

Ynab is fantastic. Have u tried using it but just living with a minus budget until the overdraft is gone? So pleased with the software, has helped me save loads just by showing me a different way of budgeting

greensalad

helpme_115 wrote: »

Wow excellent stuff, do u have the new NatWest clear rate card? Saves me about £50 a month in interest! (Yup I work for natwest\rbs but love the product)

Ynab is fantastic. Have u tried using it but just living with a minus budget until the overdraft is gone? So pleased with the software, has helped me save loads just by showing me a different way of budgeting

The Natwest I have is a graduate account, so it's got an overdraft but it's interest free. I want to clear the OD eventually and just cancel the account as all our other accounts are with Barclays.

Also I tried YNAB with minus numbers and just could not make it work for the life of me. So I'm just trying out the old fashioned way, good old pen and paper! It's going OK

greensalad

Really happy with just how little I've spent over the last few. I'm not even going to do a Monday review, because there is hardly anything in there! £1.88 at the supermarket and £2.50 at Asda for a few days worth of salad. Very happy.

Ordered our big shop, food for a week including meals for my while BF is away. Some mixers for when the party happens on Saturday. All good.

Also ordered my new SIM for new phone contract. £7 a month for 12 month contract. Covers the tariff I need and includes 0800 numbers which helps us out massively as we do not use a home phone! My average bill is about £16. So this is a really good reduction.

anothermoneysaver522

Enjoying reading your updates. Have subscribed! xx

greensalad

Just submitted another TWO estimates for design work. It really is flooding in, but I need to get on it quickly and get it done.

Now have £90 confirmed in work, another £110 just submitted and waiting, and estimated another £400 which I am calling up about next Monday to chat through the project.