January 2015 is the beginning

January2015

Hello Diary

Well I am feeling rather chuffed with myself. I have gone through and itemised the food in my freezer, and then done meal plans for the next 38 days:eek:

I don't need to buy any meat or fish until 24th December:j:j:j

We are away for Christmas Day and I don't plan to buy any meat until Boxing Day. So I am hoping the freezer will be nicely empty ready for those Boxing Day reductions :rotfl:

So now, I am going through the larder to see what 'staples' I need to buy to cover the next 38 days and I will make lists of the veg I need to buy each week.

I am aiming for a grocery budget of £100 or less between now and 24th December. I cannot see why it would need to be higher than that. I've checked and we have the main 'groceries' to last till Chrismas....these include

• meat
• coffee
• tea
• sugar
• laundry powder
• loo rolls
• kitchen rolls
• washing up liquid
• cleaning fluids (bleach, lemon liquid etc)
• gravy granules/stock cubes
• spices
• Squash drinks
• Pasta
• Toothpaste/shampoo/smellies

So what I will need to buy as and when required:

• fresh fruit and veg
• dishwasher tablets (Lidl's cheap ones;))
• bread
• milk
• butter
• eggs
• cheese

I know I've probably missed some stuff off, but I will try my best to stay under £100. That's about £2.63 a day over the next 38 days (by my reckoning).


Sounds daft but I am so excited to see if I can do this. This is mini, personal challenge:rotfl:


If I can achieve my goal, I will spend the balance of my usual monthly allowance on filling up the freezer with reductions purchased over the Christmas holiday. Then perhaps my challenge will begin all over again;)


Wish me luck:beer:

January2015

So - had to do a budget review today because one of my creditors 'sold' part of the debt but kept the other part. What the heck ?????

It was an energy account and they 'sold' the gas but get the electric. Anyway, phoned up SC to let them know and because I am adding a debt (?????) had to do full budget review. The fact that one debt practically halved and a new one added and total came back to .....wait for it.....exactly the same as before adding the debt didn't matter....whole budget review needed

Anyway, it was quite timely - but I had been putting it off. Some things have gone up (house insurance, car insurance, energy bills) but by juggling other costs managed to retain monthly payments at the same level.

On a positive note, budget review now not due until next November - but I expect I will review it about April time when council tax, water rates change and also, if we get pay rises :rotfl:, that's when they occur.

I've sent off a CCA request for one of our credit cards. The account goes back to late 90s and it will be interesting to see if they can locate the required documentation. Will keep you posted with progress:D

January2015

Quick update and say I am doing so well with my freezer food challenge. Haven't bought anything except essentials. Living off the cupboard and freezer.

January2015

Hello diary

It’s that time of month again – yes DMP payment day. Another payment and another chunk off the debt balance.

I am so pleased:j:j

So tomorrow will see the 10th payment to our DMP. Those months have literally flown by. I don’t want to wish my life away but I hope the next 96 months go by just a quickly.

We repaid 9.17% of our debt – doesn’t sound a lot, but putting that into pound notes means we’ve repaid £8.627.15 (which sounds much better ). It would have been more but some creditors continue to charge interest – you know who you are Barclaycard!

So we still owe 90.83% of our original debt total. Ok – I will put that into pound notes as well. Gulp….£85,528.85 (which sounds much worse:eek:). However, I must say I never thought I would feel so good about ‘only’ owing £85,528.85. Change of mindset now I am on DMP. The lovely thing is to watch that number reducing instead of (as prior to DMP) ever increasing. Mind you, I never watched it increase – I never dared look at it. Now I am obsessed with checking it regularly.

So, what’s been happening in the January household? Well my car is broken and sad – again. Flipping thing is more unreliable than reliable. I’m cadging lifts to work for a while though – the car will have to sit alone and idle until end of January because I just can’t afford to fix it at the moment. Apparently it’s something to do with the engine management system – whatever that may be but it's going to be quite an expensive fix (have a quote, DH getting some more quotes).

Never mind. I keep thinking I’ve spent x pounds on the car and I know the car so it’s worth keeping because I could sell it and buy something which looks ok but turns out to be an even more expensive to keep on the roal pile of junk:rotfl:. I’m sure there will come a point when my car just falls apart. Till that day I guess I just keep putting sticking plasters on it. For goodness sake the law of averages must mean it has to start being reliable at some point soon.

I can hear the cries of ‘but if you can manage without a car until the end of January, do you really need it’. Yes, I do need a car. Part of my salary is a car allowance. I am required to have a vehicle to use for my employment. I’ve managed to juggle meetings and appoints for the next 8 weeks to ensure I can cadge lifts with other people or have people meet me at my work site. However, this has taken massive amounts of organising and in the long term is not feasible. Good job I have an understanding manager.

I know I can talk to Stepchange and temporarily reduce (or miss) a DMP payment. That will be the absolute last resort. We don’t want to do anything that may extend our DFD. I’ve managed to secure some additional hours again through next month, add those to the extra hours worked last month and car repair costs should be achievable.

Christmas pressies almost all bought (been buying slowly throughout the year). :T:T:T



I can’t stress enough – despite flipping car problems – life is so good in January household. DMPland is the best place to be.

Happy December everyone :beer:

January2015

Well, decided I HAD to get the car fixed. Something wrong with the electronic ignition/starter thingymajig. I was expecting a HUGE bill. It wasn't good, but it wasn't bad. £120 including parts, labour and VAT.

It's lovely to have my car back - little things

January2015

Hello Diary

Once a month visit time

Ten months into DMP and we are sub £85k and have paid off 10.12% of our debts. I am so pleased with our progress :T

In general life on DMP is good. Bad news is that just before Christmas my job at work was identified 'at risk', which means it possibly won't be there from 1st April aka redundancy. I had some very down days over Christmas but it's just a job and I'm now looking on the brighter side - can't quite see over the hedge to the sunshine just yet but I'm about to borrow a ladder from someone to give me a lift up

I've finally CCA'd our one pre-2007 credit card debt. It's a big one of over £11k. It was over £12k when we entered the DMP. They have responded with current T&Cs, which I am advised is not compliant. Lots of help from this forum (special thanks to Sourcrates and very special thanks to Fermi). I've now written back to let them know they are non-compliant and until they are the debt is unenforceable. We are letting the January payment through SC go through whilst we await their response. If they find the paperwork (which I hope they don't) the debt will be unenforceable until they do. Therefore we will {temporarily} remove it from our DMP. We will, of course, put it back when they find the paperwork. I am counting my chickens on this one because if they can't find the paperwork (which dates back to late 90s and a previous credit card company) then our debt balance will drop to approx £74k and our debt free date will come forward to October 2021 - removing a whole 2 years 2 months off our DFD - how good would that be

The downside of removing this debt through unenforceability is that we may have to fly solo with our DMP as SC may not be happy with removing a debt because of unenforceability. I will talk to them and see what can be done, but if we have to go solo then we will be almost one year into the DMP and I think we are disciplined enough now to go it alone. Watch this space for updates on the unenforceability saga.

So I go from being in the doldrums about work to being excited about the CCA non-compliance being confirmed. My poor DH thinks I am turning bi-polar :rotfl:

To everyone who reads this - I wish you a happy new year - and if it's not quite debt free then at least I wish you a happy debt busting new year. Take care everyone -x-

Brogden

It sounds as though you may be on to something really good here Jan .

I was looking at this 'unenforcable' issue myself and have joined in somebody's thread on DFW to try to clarify a few things for myself. If I am honest I don't think I will get anywhere at all with mine which are much more recent but for the sake of it, I'm going to have a go. :cool: !!

I did at the same time chance on your recent DFW thread. Your thought process and feelings on this subject seem to be exactly the same as mine. We are to a degree uncomfortable with the idea but we need the resolution that is quickest and best in the interests of ourselves and families. We are also aware of the fact that we have been 'pawns in a game.' We were lent money when we shouldn't really have been and we have been literally caned with interest which actually increases the moment we are seen to be struggling.

Remember we are flesh and blood. The bank is a company. What is a company? It is an entry in a register and a few pieces of paper, that's all.

All the very best with it - it sounds good !!

January2015

Brogden wrote: »

It sounds as though you may be on to something really good here Jan .

I was looking at this 'unenforcable' issue myself and have joined in somebody's thread on DFW to try to clarify a few things for myself. If I am honest I don't think I will get anywhere at all with mine which are much more recent but for the sake of it, I'm going to have a go. :cool: !!

I did at the same time chance on your recent DFW thread. Your thought process and feelings on this subject seem to be exactly the same as mine. We are to a degree uncomfortable with the idea but we need the resolution that is quickest and best in the interests of ourselves and families. We are also aware of the fact that we have been 'pawns in a game.' We were lent money when we shouldn't really have been and we have been literally caned with interest which actually increases the moment we are seen to be struggling.

Remember we are flesh and blood. The bank is a company. What is a company? It is an entry in a register and a few pieces of paper, that's all.

All the very best with it - it sounds good !!

My fingers are tightly crossed for you Brogden

I really am counting my chickens in our case. Our card dates back to 1998 or 1999 and was with Abbey and transferred about 2003 to MBNA. DH never had to sign any paperwork - from memory a new card just arrived with a separate notification letter.

As you can probably tell I am a bit nervous - but don't let on to my DH. As far as he is concerned this will be a breeze, no problems, it's all sorted Uncomfortable ? Actually yes that sums it up well. We are trained to pay what we owe and this does feel a bit like cheating. However, you are right I'm not cheating any one person - and I like the thought of it just being an entry in a register

I did say to my DH I think if we succeed this will become what's known as a toxic debt, i.e. an asset MBNA has that once had value - or was perceived to have value but is now worthless; or at least has a reduced value which is [STRIKE]hard[/STRIKE] impossible to establish. (I nicked that quote from this site )

Anyway, our letter was posted via recorded delivery yesterday. I will update my other DFW thread when I hear back. Keep me posted with your progress - and I really hope for positive outcomes for both of us :beer:

Brogden

I think the debt 'asset' of the bank is considered toxic from the time it becomes 'delinquent' and that sounds like a naughty schoolboy :rotfl:!!

So the banking crash of 2008 was brought on by banks selling parcels of high risk / delinquent debt between each other? I don't think anybody knows but maybe that brought down one or two.....Gordon Brown admitted he didn't understand how it worked. What we do know is the crash was brought on by gargantuan self-interest, greed and recklessness, whatever form that took

It is worth bearing in mind when we have to make a decision on how we treat bankers fairly !!

Looking forward to you posting your good news.

January2015

We've decided to move to self-managed DMP regardless of the outcome of our case with MBNA and CCA request.

I've spent this evening filling in the NEDCAB information to help us to do this. I'm thinking of offering all creditors £1 per month for 3 months to build our emergency fund back up (because we had emergencies this year that have used it all up ) but not sure about that yet.

What I am sure about is that BC are going to get £1 per month until they default us because they are the only creditor not to have zeroed interest (2 accounts as well).

So NEDCAB stuff all ready to print off - we are just waiting a week or so to see if we hear back from MBNA because we need to know whether or not to include them in our self-managed DMP.

New Year, new start on DMP front. Life is good