£26 a week - is it possible????

tyllwyd

greenwichgirl wrote: »

No tricks, no self-deception, just plain old spending of £3.50, leaving me £148.50 for the next 27 days.

Fair enough, if you went on a night out and all you spent was £3.50 then you did really well!!:j

tyllwyd

So maybe the problem is not really your day to day spending and budgeting, which you can get sorted by being organised, but how you are going to fund the legal bills and other expenses.

If it could go as high as £20K, from where I'm sitting you need to start planning now to decide where the money is going to come from - if you start delaying solicitors invoices etc, things are going to get very difficult. And running up credit cards is going to get very expensive unless you can get good deals. So what is the plan?

daphne67

Hi guys,

Oh god i so want to get rid of my overdraft. it is £1450, and at its limit. i have 10 days till payday. i am with abbey, and they are crap, i have just opened an account with allience and leicester with the hope that i could start again and set up a dd to abbey to pay off my o/d! i suppose that is out of the question. in the past i have taken out loans to pay them off and of course the o/d gradually crept up again. i live on my own, earn less than my o/d and don't go out!

how do i go about paying it off gradually? do i try and reduce the o/d by £50 every 2 months. oh god christmas is coming and i am going to have to say the same to everyone as last year"don't buy me anything, cos i can't afford to buy you anything"! any suggestions?

daphne x

Emmzi

Don't BUY things. Make things! Search old stylefor what to make!!

Get the bank to reduce limit each month- then you'll have to stick to it!

tyllwyd

greenwichgirl wrote: »

Day to day spending is a problem as I do need to kill the overdraft and credit card but I was kind of hoping that the legal bills wouldn't hit until after court and then I was just going to take an unsecured loan out for the lot, I am holding back as long as possible on taking the loan out as obviously the sooner I get it the sooner I will have to start paying it back.

Fortunately my friend who owes me 340 quid (plus the 20 quid just leant him for the weekend) has had a bit of a bonus at work and can pay the full amount back on Monday (his payday) and having jiggled my spreadsheets that means I should only have to find another 100 quid from somewhere before my payday instead of panicing about finding 400 quid. Phew!

That's good news about the money back from your friend, at least.

I can't help thinking that you are finding it so difficult at the moment because in the last month or so you've mentioned here a £1000 bill for a holiday, £600 for your solicitor, £1000 or so for court valuations - if you are trying to pay all of that out of your current account, you are bound to struggle. Are there any more bills that are going to have to be paid cash before you are ready to take out your loan? What about interim bills from the solicitor?

If you are going to have more cash to find, maybe you need to think in terms of getting a 0% deal on a credit card, and sticking all your living expenses onto that for the next few months, so that you can build up a supply of cash to pay these bills. Then when you are ready, you can take out your loan to pay it back. (Of course the risk is that you will overspend on the card, or struggle to get a loan at a decent rate when the time comes, so I appreciate you might not agree with me.) But if you don't do something along those lines and you can't pay these bills on time, aren't you risking lots of penalty fees, or problems with your solicitor etc?

Crown

Hi GG,

I dont know if im missing something but if you are aiming to be debt free in 5 months then why are you considering a loan? If it is to clear other debts then you are just shifting debt and not clearing? I also think I may have missed what is happening in regards to court?

I apologise if its me as I only rolled in about an hour ago after a night out and I think I am seriously in need of sleep

tyllwyd

Sounds tough! I'd got it into my head that you had six months or so before it went to court, but I can see I was wrong about that, so I guess you are right and your immediate problem is trying to survive until the right time comes to take out your loan. I can see that taking it out too early might be a mistake, because if it turns out not to be enough you might struggle to raise the extra. I suppose the loan doesn't have to be flexible as such, as long as you don't lose out too much by repaying early when you sell your flat.
Hope next week is a better one for you!

duchy

And the good news is the month is FAR more than half gone-you're on the home stretch and next month will be FAR better. Where is the holiday to and is October save for spends month ?
I refuse to take offense at your zone 2 comments I may live further down your line so should-but hey I can cope with a bit of carrot crunching in exchange for cheaper housing (and I always get a seat on the train) !!
Did you sort out the dvd deal ?
I'm enjoying your diary btw you write like I think

ebonylight

blimey GG you've had a rough month, i dont know, everyone elses problems always make mine seem stupid.

i too have had to live off £86 pounds this month , i get paid on the 21st (dont know why, stupid date to be paid on!) so ive only got a week left. i'm doing really well, spent the total £86 but not borrowed off OH like last month

Not going out is the hardest thing, it seems if you want to see your firends these days you have to spend money, whether its lunch, or catch up over a drink, or cinema (even on orange wednesdays)

i hate having to say no to my friends, i end up getting left out so now people come to our house, we had a wine and DVD night last night, two friends came, they brought the wine and DVD we provided a tv and warm house

In_Search_Of_Me

Well done for efforts so far BUT why are you lending someone money who already owes you money and hasn't paid you back!! You really need to think of you and stop doing this. It sounds as if you're having a mare at the moment and the mre stress you get rid of the better! Big hugs for you & keep up the good work!