Slowly but surely!

Positive_Thinking

Finally, I think I can see things starting to turn around! I have two more payments left on a loan which will free up £300.00 a month to put towards other debts. Today I got accepted for a balance transfer credit card. It's a relatively low limit of £1,500.00 but that will clear one and a half credit cards and save me a load of interest. When I get the card through I'm going to do the snowball calculator and see how quickly I can get myself debt free. I'm 40 years old and am ashamed to say I've been paying off one debt or another since my early 20's

Time to break that cycle!

January2015

Positive_Thinking wrote: »

Finally, I think I can see things starting to turn around! I have two more payments left on a loan which will free up £300.00 a month to put towards other debts. Today I got accepted for a balance transfer credit card. It's a relatively low limit of £1,500.00 but that will clear one and a half credit cards and save me a load of interest. When I get the card through I'm going to do the snowball calculator and see how quickly I can get myself debt free. I'm 40 years old and am ashamed to say I've been paying off one debt or another since my early 20's

Time to break that cycle!

Good luck. My advice is to make sure you cut up the credit cards (all of them) so that you cannot use them again. This advice is from me as someone who has done the balance transfer route to debt freedom and then run up debts on the {now} empty credit cards again.

Positive_Thinking

January2015 wrote: »

Good luck. My advice is to make sure you cut up the credit cards (all of them) so that you cannot use them again. This advice is from me as someone who has done the balance transfer route to debt freedom and then run up debts on the {now} empty credit cards again.

Thank you, and good luck in your journey too. I can honestly say I've stopped using the cards now. I intend setting up a direct debit for the new card to be cleared before the offer term ends. In the meantime the extra £300.00 will be put towards the other debts. I have a rough plan in place, just need to make sure I stick to it.

MallyGirl

Positive_Thinking wrote: »

In the meantime the extra £300.00 will be put towards the other debts.

the extra £300 minus the minimum payment to the new BT card - you must factor this in. Set up a DD to pay this automatically so that you don't forget as this would lose you the promo rate

EssexHebridean

Brilliant advice above - and congratulations for making the decision to get yourself out of the debt-loop!

A diary on here is a great way of motivating yourself to stick to a plan. It's a bit like attending a slimming class - you feel a sort of duty towards everyone else to not let the side down! :rotfl:

If you do decide to start a diary it might also be worth putting together your Statement Of Affairs (SOA) - if you post it into your diary then others can see if there are savings anywhere that you have missed which might get you to your Debt Free Date soon, and even if you don't it'[s a brilliant way of getting all your figures in one place. The SOA link can be found at the top of this board, in the "Sticky" thread there.

OneLife_OneShot

Good luck!

Positive_Thinking

Thank you! Yes I will be setting up the DD straight away. At the moment I pay £90 per month on the two cards that I want to transfer. This will be paid instead to the balance transfer card which should be more than enough to clear the debt within the term offered. I do have wiggle room though if I have to pay extra.