A Diary of Reinventing Ourselves

sugarcube84

Well done keep it up. Have a look on the old style board they had some great ideas for saving money like adding soda crystals to your washing powder and stardrops for all your household cleaning. I found the amount I spent on cleaning products/washing etc went down drastically with no discernible difference and lots more space under the sink!! The only thing I found I couldn't live without is bleach spray for keeping my grout white in the bathroom.

Gettingtherequickly

What a great discovery on balance. Just think, you started the year by thinking you owed £31k, by the end of the year it will easily be down by 1/3 and with not a great negative impact on your lives, in fact, it will be the opposite. You are slowly working towards the end goal as a couple, this partnership will only get stronger and you will reap the rewards of financial security allowing expensive (ish!) treats without being in debt.

Well done so far, in the words of Prof Brian Cox, "things can only get better!"

getmore4less

Compound interest.

All compound interest means is interest on the interest.

So with savings if you leave the interest you get in the account it compounds on the next cycle getting more interest.

With debt if you don't pay the interest, on the next cycle you pay interest on the interest.

in both cases if you take out/pay the interest there is no compound interest.

Most credit card companies changed the min payment so it covered all interest and charges to avoid any compounding.

the banks and CC companies only make money from compounding when people don't pay.

Wiki is quite good at explaining some of these things the concepts are relatively simple and loads of calculators around to do the work(the real maths can get a bit tricky)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compound_interest

if you want complicated try mortgages and amortization

Willowpop

mumtoomany wrote: »

Hi FT. Re dishwasher tablets, have you tried e-bay? If you are willing to buy a job lot, you can get them for about 4p per wash. Less if you buy the broken ones, (when I've bought these they are mostly whole ones). M2m.

I second this...in Jan 2014 I purchased a 10kg tub of 5 in 1 dishwasher powder from ebay for about £17.
It's lots of powder left from the manufacture of big brand tablets as far as I know. I still have about a quarter of the tub left!! I have a slimline dishwasher so use half a tablespoon in each wash and my dishes are sparkling. DEFINITELY cheaper than buying tablets in the shop!

Forward_thinking

Hi everyone. Been quiet today but that was due to BT taking off TWO HOURS of my life!!!! The most frustrating conversation ever!!! Spent half hour changing my plan after holding for what seemed like ages. The guy got everything wrong including the phone number!!! So I had to ring back and they insisted we needed to cancel the whole thing and start all over again. They put me through to someone who could help and then after hanging on for five minutes I got cut off. So I had to start all over again. And so the saga continued.

Anyway, a great outcome. They are giving us free calls for three months and so with broadband will be £35. It then goes up to £45 a month but we were paying £59 so it was worth the pain. I did ring around but it was all coming out similar and we would have incurred an exit fee.

So that's two suppliers checked and changed. I have to admit I am finding it terribly time consuming. Husband still feels I am not reading the situation right and that all these savings are simply a few hours extra at work. I did try explaining that this wouldn't work as he has no acknowledgement or respect for money at the moment and so any extra cash earnt would just be spent. I jumped out of the car at that moment so hopefully he may have had a couple of minutes to reflect on that. Probably not but there's a chance.

I spoke to OH about the interest and said we really need to look at getting that down. He was rather grumpy but said he has been thinking about it and there may be something he can do. But that will probably take another few weeks. I know he has another two credit cards with little on them (the £700 one and one we use for monthly spending and then pay off). They have quite high limits but this is all confusing to me. OH says even if we do a balance transfer we would get charged £2,000 just to move it. Is this right? I have no idea and he knows it - sadly. If we got accepted for a 0% cc do we have to pay over a grand to move our debts across?

I do feel we are making progress. I have a new found respect for money. Just sent the children into the shop with £1 between four of them - told them to get a multipack of something. They were shocked that that was all I was giving them and yet came back quite pleased that they had found an offer for a pack of 4 ripples. I think they got more satisfaction out of being able to do this than just walk in with a note as we would usually do.

Plan for tonight is to trawl through the bank accounts and take note of some of our spending habits. Then to revise the SOA - I think I have made enough changes to justify the time on that again. Still lots more work to do on that but it is going to take time. I'm realising that now.

OH and I have decided to do an Iceland shop once a week online, a weekly visit to Sainsburys for the things we can't get and a mid-week top up with cash if necessary. I am taking over all kitchen/bathroom supplies - soap, dishwasher powder (thanks for the ebay tip), nappies etc.

One thing I suspect will cause me a headache is the income each month. OH said we do not take a fixed amount and it varies from month to month. I would much prefer there to be one fixed amount so I can allocate as appropriate. I think it will be easier to keep track by going into the company accounts and having a look around.

So. That's it for now. I know the debts weren't as high as we thought (27k instead of 31k - no comment). However, at the moment we are hardly paying anything off as things stand. Also, we owe our parents 18k so it's still extremely bleak.

Dad has told me to forget about the 8k loan - that he gave it as a gift and would be insulted if we pay it back. I told him we really would get it back to him one day but he said absolutely not and we would fall out if we even tried. Tricky one - I'm not sure whether I should accept this kindness and factor it out. I don't think I will - I think I will still hold on to this debt as it's not fair that we don't pay them back. They have been absolutely wonderful and I want to thank them.

Right, off to clean the house. My whole day seems to have been taken over by BT. Hope everyone else is having a great day.

enthusiasticsaver

Forward_thinking wrote: »

Hi everyone. Been quiet today but that was due to BT taking off TWO HOURS of my life!!!! The most frustrating conversation ever!!! Spent half hour changing my plan after holding for what seemed like ages. The guy got everything wrong including the phone number!!! So I had to ring back and they insisted we needed to cancel the whole thing and start all over again. They put me through to someone who could help and then after hanging on for five minutes I got cut off. So I had to start all over again. And so the saga continued.

Anyway, a great outcome. They are giving us free calls for three months and so with broadband will be £35. It then goes up to £45 a month but we were paying £59 so it was worth the pain. I did ring around but it was all coming out similar and we would have incurred an exit fee.
Excellent but OMG 2 hours :mad:
So that's two suppliers checked and changed. I have to admit I am finding it terribly time consuming. Husband still feels I am not reading the situation right and that all these savings are simply a few hours extra at work. I did try explaining that this wouldn't work as he has no acknowledgement or respect for money at the moment and so any extra cash earnt would just be spent. I jumped out of the car at that moment so hopefully he may have had a couple of minutes to reflect on that. Probably not but there's a chance.

I spoke to OH about the interest and said we really need to look at getting that down. He was rather grumpy but said he has been thinking about it and there may be something he can do. But that will probably take another few weeks. I know he has another two credit cards with little on them (the £700 one and one we use for monthly spending and then pay off). They have quite high limits but this is all confusing to me. OH says even if we do a balance transfer we would get charged £2,000 just to move it. Is this right? I have no idea and he knows it - sadly. If we got accepted for a 0% cc do we have to pay over a grand to move our debts across?


No, there is normally a percentage cost to move balances across which can be anything from 0 to 3% usually. Presumably not all your £27k debt is on one credit card so assuming a 3% balance transfer fee on £10k that would be £300 which would soon be cancelled out from the savings on paying no interest.
I do feel we are making progress. I have a new found respect for money. Just sent the children into the shop with £1 between four of them - told them to get a multipack of something. They were shocked that that was all I was giving them and yet came back quite pleased that they had found an offer for a pack of 4 ripples. I think they got more satisfaction out of being able to do this than just walk in with a note as we would usually do.

Plan for tonight is to trawl through the bank accounts and take note of some of our spending habits. Then to revise the SOA - I think I have made enough changes to justify the time on that again. Still lots more work to do on that but it is going to take time. I'm realising that now.

OH and I have decided to do an Iceland shop once a week online, a weekly visit to Sainsburys for the things we can't get and a mid-week top up with cash if necessary. I am taking over all kitchen/bathroom supplies - soap, dishwasher powder (thanks for the ebay tip), nappies etc.

One thing I suspect will cause me a headache is the income each month. OH said we do not take a fixed amount and it varies from month to month. I would much prefer there to be one fixed amount so I can allocate as appropriate. I think it will be easier to keep track by going into the company accounts and having a look around.
Is your OH self employed?
So. That's it for now. I know the debts weren't as high as we thought (27k instead of 31k - no comment). However, at the moment we are hardly paying anything off as things stand. Also, we owe our parents 18k so it's still extremely bleak.

Dad has told me to forget about the 8k loan - that he gave it as a gift and would be insulted if we pay it back. I told him we really would get it back to him one day but he said absolutely not and we would fall out if we even tried. Tricky one - I'm not sure whether I should accept this kindness and factor it out. I don't think I will - I think I will still hold on to this debt as it's not fair that we don't pay them back. They have been absolutely wonderful and I want to thank them.

Right, off to clean the house. My whole day seems to have been taken over by BT. Hope everyone else is having a great day.

Answers up above in red. Good plan to get your kids to become more money savvy. Great life lesson. I also like your new plan for grocery shopping.


I would say that when we have gifted money to our daughters it is done to make their lives easier and help them out and we never gift anything we cannot afford so if your dad is adamant he does not want the money back then I would accept it gratefully.

matchboxfull

Good work FT.

With regards to the variable income, we are in this position. My advice would be to base all your routine outgoings (including putting something aside for Christmas and birthdays etc) on your OH's minimum normal income.

First of all you will feel like this is impossible, and it may well be without slashing some more costs or (more likely) reducing that debt some more. But in the end it is the only way you can be truly honest with yourselves.

The alternative is to base it on his average income and effectively always be borrowing from your future selves. If you have enough of a slush fund this works, but you don't seem like you're in a place to sit on a slush fund (no offence - we aren't either!)

Any extra money you get each month, over and above his minimum income, can go towards debts, or to buy something nice, or a combination of the two.

LittleDutchgirl

Hi FT
On most balance transfers you will pay a fee upfront. It is usually 2-3% and it should save you a lot in interest. It is definitely something you need to keep an eye on as you manage to get the balances down. However, I'd suggest try to get some of your debt onto 0% and then chuck as much as you can at the highest interest. I found that clearing one card lead to some great offers though these have slowed down now I've paid off my debts. If you've been paying more than the minimum each month then you'll look good to cc companies. Of course they are hoping you'll slip and start spending again so they can make money from you but that isn't going to happen is it?

Two hours on the phone to BT is a nightmare but if you think about how much money you save in a year it probably isn't a bad rate of pay. One suggestion is to note down (spreadsheet?) how much you are saving so that when OH raises the teaspoon issue you can point out how much you've saved and will keep saving each month.

I also found it hugely motivating to keep tabs of your debt going down. There are bound to be some tough times and I found it inspiring to look at my spreadsheet and think what I'd managed to accomplish in the past year.
Good luck
LDg

brizzledfw

Good work. You're doing great

getmore4less

if you moved all £27k to another card I would estimate the BT fee to be around the same as one months interest two at the most, typical high rate is 3% £810.

I think hubby just plucks numbers out of the air when he does not know the real answer rather than say I don't know.

Your two cards(virgin and Barclays) typical BT fees for them are under 3% some are as low as 1%

not a recomendation but you can see some of the BT fees on comparison sites eg:
http://www.moneysupermarket.com/credit-cards/balance-transfer/.


I would point out to hubby that some of the savings you are making have you earning/saving more per hour than he makes.

If between you you spend 1/2 day each(8hrs) cooperating to get the interest down to zero on your £27k you would save about £800 for each hour in the first year thats a fairly good return on investment