The long and winding road to debtfreeness

Ammeretto

So i went to crossfit on monday. It was fab, but i'm still in pain today. My thighs hurt soooo much.
It hurts to stand up, walk and sit down.
IT should be better tomorrow but i'm going to cross fit again after work so will be aching again on Friday.

Had the results from my blood test today. Everything was normal apart from the test for B12. I have to go in tomorrow morning for another blood test.:(

It looks like i might have overestimated the amount that i thought OH would get from his shares if the company is sold.:(
We are now looking at around £6 to £6.5k - which is still a fantastic amount.
Obviously it all depends if the company is sold.

Ammeretto

It's been a busy and quite expensive weekend.
Took DS2 and my sister and two of her kids to margam park on saturday.
It was lovely but i forgot the new parking season had started so i bought a season ticket - £28. We were also there a lot longer than we expected to be so we ended up buying lunch in the cafe. £9.10 spent.
Sunday Me and OH took the kids to the bridgend county fair. It was free entry but i spent a fortune on rides, food, sweets etc. OH bought some local craft ales. Spent a total of £46 :eek:

Driving home from work on friday and my car beeped at me and told me i needed to check tyre pressures. I filled them up and all was good. Sunday on the way back from the show and it beeped again. OH took a look and there was a screw in my tyre.:mad: The only place open was kwik fit. They managed to repair it rather than fit a new tyre but it still cost £25.

DS has been struggling in school with his reading for quite a while. He has loads of help in school and we read loads with him. We mentioned our concerns to his teacher and she shared the same view so he was out forward to be tested.
We found out thursday that he has been diagnosed dyslexic.
I'm relieved that we now know what is causing his difficulties with his reading and we can find ways to help him. He asked me if it would go away when he gets bigger. I explained to him that it wouldn't as it's a part of him, and that its not bad it's just his brain sees things in a slightly different way.

Chandelier.

Sorry to hear about your boys diagnosis of dyslexia. At least school have been proactive and it's been spotted earlier on. Hopefully you'll recieve help and learn ways to support him as much as possible.

It also sounds as if you had a great weekend minus the tyre issue. I am quite guilty of unexpected spends on weekends... and maybe some week days;)

Ammeretto

Thanks for popping in Chandelier.

Yes it's good that it was picked up early. I think we were lucky he was tested now. His teacher was saying that quite often requests for testing are postponed until the child is in at least Year 4 (ds2 is in year 3). I think that the fact that he has had so much help in the past two years with one to one reading, lexia etc and he was still not improving despite being really good at all his other lessons (he's in the top set for maths, does really well in science) led them to believe that something was off, so they agreed to test him.
The school are going to draw up an IAP for him and we can look at ways to help him at home.

I am kinda gutted for him. I love to read and always have done. It makes me sad to think that he might not get as much enjoyment out of it as he finds it so hard. He loves books. He always want to get books from the library but when it comes to read them he struggles so ends up getting frustrated. He will quite happily sit there and listen to me read to him or listen to an audiobook though.

The weekend was good. It was nice to get out as a family on Sunday too, especially as DS1 (who is 14) is at the age now where he quite often would prefer to go out with his friends.

Ammeretto

The past week or so has been quite quiet.
Just plodding along, going to work and crossfit.
Spent some time at the library with DS2 looking for books that are dyslexia friendly.
The Summer reading challenge starts on Saturday so we will prob end up there again.

I was panicking a bit as the renewal for our car insurances came through and the quote was for £712 (for both cars) :eek: (up from £550 last year) and i only had £550 saved.
We had a look around and managed to get insurance for the both cars for £400. :j
£100 has been moved to the summer holiday spending pot and £50 has gone in the christmas pot.

Ammeretto

forgot to add

the last of our monthly payments has gone out so July debt total is now £18,900 - so £700 paid this month.

Balances are now
MBNA - £2,900
Halifax 1 - £1,600
Halifax 2 - £960
Creation - £4,200
B/Card 1 - £5,555
B/Card 2 - £3,695

Ammeretto

Its been a spendy few days.

On the weekend i bought a two month subscription to Nessy - An online reading program that was recommended to help with DS2 reading. - this was £30 so not too bad. If he likes it and it works i will do the yearly subscription which is £108.

I paid £360 (comes out of the cruise budget) for the gratuities on the ship, a drinks package for DS1 and some tickets for a show for me and OH ones night.

I paid £70 (again budgeted) for DS2 swimming.

On Friday I wanted to take the kids to Margam but the weather was awful so we decided on Techniquest. DS1 didn't want to go so i took DS2 and his friend. It cost me about £40 by the time i paid for entry, lunch and parking but the kids had a great time.

Today it was £135 on school uniforms and shoes. :eek: but again budgeted for.

We have noticed recently that the ceiling in DS2 room has been sagging. We were hoping that it would be ok until next year when we were planning on redoing his whole room. Well today we noticed that it had gotten a lot worse and as OH tried to fix it part of it came away. We ended up having to rip the whole thing down. We are going to have to redo the whole ceiling. Fine i thought. I can jiggle the budget and get enough money together to do that, however we have also decided that we would knock out the old chimney breast that is in his room. We were planning on doing it next year anyway and we didn't want to do the whole ceiling now only to have to redo it next year when we do the rest of the room.
however doing the chimney breast also then means that we will have to redo the flooring.
We are not entirely sure how much we are looking at but we need to get plasterboard and insulation for the ceiling, flooring and then we would need a plasterer to come out and skim the ceiling and the wall after we are done.
We ended up speaking to OH parents and they have lent us £1k - i'm hoping that this will be enough.
So tonight DS2 is sleeping on his mattress in our room as it's far too dusty in his room and he is likely to be there tomorrow night too.
Tomorrow we will make a start on pulling the chimney breast down and get the plasterboard up on the ceiling.
His parents aren't in any rush for the money back but i'm going to look at trying to pay £150 to £200 per month back from October

Ammeretto

Also forgot to say.

OH had an egg credit card that was converted into a barclaycard.
We were talking with his brother about PPI and he mentioned that egg used to add this on.
He rang up and it turned out that they did. We opened the account in 2003 and we had obviously noticed the PPI so we had it cancelled in 2004. We put in a claim but i don't think it will be much as we only had it for a year.

For years i had a mothercare card. I didn't think that there was any PPI added but on the off chance i rang up to find out there was. I had the card from 2003 till 2011. Again it probably won't be much as i didn't use the card that much but i put in claim.

When we did the PPI claim on our loan years and years ago we didn't think to look at credit and store cards - though to be honest back then it was mainly centered around loans.

Ammeretto

It’s been ages since I last posted. I have been reading though just never seem to get around to my own diary.
August summary…
Fitness – I have continued to attend Cross fit and I really enjoy it so I will continue going. I haven’t lost any weight but I have lost inches.

Holiday – We fly a week Friday – I’m so excited. I really need to start getting thing together now though. I need lists, lots of lists. I’m hoping to pack on Sunday

PPI – We are still waiting to hear back from Barclaycard and mother care about the ppi claims I put in. It’s only been 4 weeks though so they still have time.

Finances – Due to Summer holidays August has been a spendy month. We have spent a total of £300 on trips, days out, caravan etc. £285 on clothes and shoes (mainly school stuff but a few bits for the holiday too) £175 on meals out (including my birthday)
The majority of this was actually budgeted for.
The big spend was on DS2 room. We have spent in total around £1500. OH parents lent us £1k so we had to find the rest. He had his whole ceiling ripped down and replaced and skimmed, the chimney breast taken out and the wall skimmed, new floor, skirting board and architrave, paint, coving, lights, blind, bed, wardrobe, desk, drawer unit and rug. His room is now pretty much complete. It was worth it to see his face. He was so chuffed.

The extra spend on his room did mean that we paid less to the credit cards this month. We paid £365 and the debt reduced by £300 (£65 was for B/T fees)
Total for August now stands at £18,600

MBNA - £2,250 (BT to B/Card 1)
Halifax 1 - £0 (B/T to B/Card 2)
Halifax 2 - £940
Creation - £4,150
B/Card 1 - £5,965
B/Card 2 - £5,295

In really good news the company that OH works for has been sold. This means that we will receive money for the shares that we held.
We think it will be around £7,800 after tax and NI. We are hoping to get it sometime this month.

I will be using £7,500 along with our budget c/c payments of £600 this month to pay off the debt. This will see us reduce the debt to £10,500 by the end of September.
OH will no longer be paying into the share save scheme so he will have an extra £300 in his wages. The plan for October onwards will be to pay £1,050 per month to the debt which will see it clear in 10 months – July 18.

There is one thing though that might cause us issues.
We have been given the opportunity to buy OH grandparents’ house (they are moving) at a reduced rate - £30k below the market value.
This house is bigger than ours – 4 beds with a garage and a conservatory. The mortgage will be £40k more than our current one.

I have spoken to the bank and after having a quick look they said it is highly likely they will give us the second mortgage. The monthly cost will be around £475-£525 (depending on what product we go for) so not too much more than we are paying now.
The estate agent said we should get £650 - £695 per month for our current house. This is enough to cover the mortgage (£435) and any other costs. The market is really good at the moment where we live and houses are rented with a week or two. It’s close to good primary and secondary schools.
We don’t really need to do too much either to get it ready to rent. Probably spend around £2,000 – (bathroom, 2 windows and painting)

So if we do decide to go for the new house then we will need to spend £2k on our house getting it ready to rent, stamp duty and solicitors fees for the new house. The new house doesn’t need anything done to it apart from painting to our preference.
I will probably just pay the minimums to the c/c for a few months (£200 – they are all on 0%) to cover those costs plus build a small surplus in the rental account to cover emergencies. I will look at increasing the c/c payments again in March, so we will be looking at a DFD of Nov / Dec 18.
This is still all wishful thinking at the moment because the purchase on OH GP new house needs to go through plus we will need to complete the actual mortgage application with the bank and hope they say yes.

Whew what an epic post.

Ammeretto

Evening.

been a busy and spendy weekend. My Dad was down from scotland so we spent some time with him
We went out for a meal on Friday with my Dad and my sister and her three kids.
Dad snuck off at the end of the meal to pay the bill. :mad::)
We spent quite a bit on Sunday getting the last few bits we need for the holiday. Im taking a break from packing right now.
We are flying Friday - i can't wait. First time abroad in 10 years and its DS2 first time abroad too.

We had a letter from Barclaycard for the PPI claim. £550.32. a lot more than i expected.
I banked the cheque today and as soon as it clears it will make a payment to the barclaycard.

The share money is not as much as we expected but it's still a great sum.
We received £1552.50 today so i paid £1100 off b/card 1 and £425 off b/card 2
We are due to receive £4,050.26 within 14 days
we should also get an additional amount of either £650 or £1012.55 - this is in dispute at the moment.

Im looking at being able to get the debt down to about £11,600 this month. :j
Thats £7k off - that's almost 9 months of payments

right - chill out now for another 30 min with a cup of coffee and then back to packing