Sorting myself out!!

djdestiny

I thought I'd start a thread for myself to keep an eye on things, and for anyone else who fancies following my progress.

I don't mind admitting, I'm terrible with money!
I've had bad credit for as long as I can remember, and when I started using the internet in 2000 I quickly realised I couldn't buy anything online or use eBay without a credit card.
I thought my luck was in when I got accepted for a Capital One card with balance of around £300.
Being my usual self, I filled it straight up and then got behind on the payments, which then started snowballing big time!
I think at one point I was around £2000 in debt, mostly from late payment fees
I set up a plan and got on top of that, and over the next ten years or so, I kept it in credit and payed on time. Of course they kept upping my limit, and I'd fill it up even more. I must of been a dream customer for them!
By now I also had a Barclaycard CC with £1500 or so limit, which was also quite full.
I also had a £10000 loan that was taken out when I sold my house with my ex, who since split up with and after some time found out she had not been paying her side of the payments.
That defaulted with a CCJ and was now at approx £13000.
The only good thing to come out of that, was now there was no interest building up, but the downside that I was having to pay it all myself. I was paying the minimum every month of £80, so knew it was going to be many years until that was cleared.

At some point around 5 years ago I made a huge mistake.
I desperately needed some cash, and had just found out I could withdraw cash on my credit card. Oh dear.
I only took out £20, but as I later found out, I would get totally hammered on cash interest until the normal balance was cleared. This really angered me, because it was my fault of not checking what the implications were first!

Then last December I received an email from Barclaycard offering a balance transfer. This is something I was aware of, but had never really looked into or taken much notice of.
So a quick bit of research showed I could transfer some balance away from the dreaded Capital One card and help get the damn thing sorted out! The cash interest was a massive thorn in my side :mad:

So I decided to apply to transfer as much as I could to my Barclaycard, which had a zero interest offer for 6 months.
At this point (9-12-14) I owed £3285 on Capital One (£4000 limit) and £1263 on Barclaycard (3580 limit)
The minimum payment on my Capital One account was £191 a month! :eek:

I had not missed any payments on my Northern Rock loan, so that was ticking along nicely and had dropped to £5366. I had been lucky in that I got two refunds knocked off my balance for approx £3000 between them, due to some wording being wrong on my statements/letters. That was rather handy!

So, 19-12-15 I did a BT for £1900, a nice chunk to drop the balance of my Capital One card, which made a big difference to the interest/minimum payment straight away.
I now had a challenge, to get that damn balance to zero before my 6 months of free interest ran out. My balance was now approx £1300.
Quite a task, as I knew I could never afford to pay around £220 a month for 6 months!
I gave it a go, and with two weeks left, I still had £500 to clear
So I bit the bullet and sold some hifi gear that I didn't really use, but didn't want to sell. With two days left I very happily payed the remaining amount to clear it zero. AT LAST!!!!! 15 years of crazy debt finished

That pretty much brings me up to date.
My Barclaycard balance is currently £3014.
The payments that went to my Capital One card have now been added to the Barclaycard one, so I've doubled my payment to them now to £85 a week.
Northern Rock balance is currently £4876, which I'm paying £85 a month to. The CCJ for that is long gone, so happily chipping away at it now with no interest

So I estimate that in 9 months my Barclaycard will be clear, then the payments from that will be added to Northern Rock payments, making a massive £400 a month at that point!
That will be around March 2016. By then the balance will be approx £4100. 10 months of £400 a month will clear that, so my target is to have that paid off by Xmas 2016.
If I manage to do that, I will be VERY pleased

enjoyyourshoes

Debt is the symptom, work out what the problems and resolve this.
Then work tirelessly on reducing the debt and not adding to it.
You need to have an epiphany to make the long term changes required.

djdestiny

Capital One balance is still zero, Ive not spent a penny on it, and that is a huge step for me!
Usually as soon as I get a bit of balance I'm itching to spend on it to treat myself to some gadget or other.
I must admit, the first week or so was really hard, but I forced myself to be good as I knew I would regret it. Ive not had a single urge since.

I've got some big overtime coming up at work, so should be able to knock a fair bit off the balance in the next 3 or 4 weeks

Barclaycard:
18/6/15 - £3014
3/7/15 - £2466

djdestiny

I see loads of other diaries are getting lots of comments, advice and replies, am I not posting enough 'chat' or something?!

rockm87

Hi
well done for getting to grips with your money and setting yourself a goal!

Have you thought about putting together a SOA? to see if you could make more savings and boost your pay-off power?

If youre capital one balance is zero why dont you close that account? If youre worried about emergencies, how about setting up an emergency fund?

djdestiny

It's not costing me anything to keep it open, and is a decent amount if such an emergency comes up.
I'd rather have that sitting there for now and put all spare cash towards clearing the barcleycard rather than towards savings. Once all my debts are clear and I've built up some savings I will then consider closing it

Gretchen2012

Hi DJ well done on your progress so far. I will be subscribing and follow your progress. I've too noticed that some diaries get loads of response. Mine has had a bit off some lovely people but sometime feel like in talking to myself lol. I do like to keep posting though as it keeps me focused.

djdestiny

Yes, without wanting to offend anyone, a lot of these diaries seem to be more chat than debt stuff!
I suppose it helps people focus in different ways, so thats fair enough

Personally, my drive is seeing numbers!
My next goal was to have my Barclaycard down to 2k by the end of the month, it is currently at approx £2200. I get paid on Friday, and the magic £200 will be paid on, and probably a bit more too, so thats another goal sorted.
Ive done a lot of overtime this month which has helped me knock £1000 off the balance in about 5 weeks, I won't normally have the chance to do that much overtime, so took it while I could.
This weekend alone I did a 12hr shift on Saturday for £15 an hour and 10hrs on Sunday at £20 an hour. So thats a nice £380 extra on top of my weekly wage

djdestiny

Well lots happened over the last few months, which threw my plans some what!
A new sofa was needed, so that was £1600 on my barclay card, then I was off ill for 2 weeks with a planned op on my nose.
That wasn't too bad, but then 5 days after going back to work I fractured my arm and was off for another 6 weeks!

By now my card balance was £3700.
A few weeks ago I was rather lucky in having a PPI claim readjusted totally out of the blue and got £600 for that, which went straight onto my card.
It's currently at about £3050.
This morning I've received another out of the blue letter for my other PPI claim for £1100!
I will be paying the majority of that only to my card too, so that will near enough take me back to where I was at £2000

wishus

Welcome back! July must have been a bit quiet round here!

Shame you had some setbacks, but well done on getting back on top of things.

If you need help or advice, putting up a SOA will usually bring a few helpful comments!