I'm Back - and better! Final Push to Go...

Exerbusi2

I thought I'd decided to not pay any more off the CC this month, but when I saw the balance was £4,353.30 I thought to myself "I can just pay off the £53.30 and leave a nice, round £4,300 balance", so I did that.

Total repayments in March are £370.

In April, I'm hoping to go way below £4,000. Possibly below £3,000, which could/should be doable.

zippygeorgeandben

Surely you'll hit that less than £3k soon because you have that £1500 coming in!
I tried making an extra Zopa payment today but they won't accept online as i've got my regular monthly amount coming out and can't do another at the same time.
Annoying really as I only use my salary to pay off during a month. I'll end up with a surplus this month. Not got my £2k yet! I'm trying to pay stuff off in the next two days which might normally come out in later months!

Exerbusi2

zippygeorgeandben wrote: »

Surely you'll hit that less than £3k soon because you have that £1500 coming in!

I won't use it all for debt repayment though - one of the considerations when you're self employed is you have to save for tax!

BUT...

I received a payment yesterday which was double what I calculated I was owed, which is fantastic. It means I've paid an extra £500 off the credit card today, meaning I've paid £870 off this month!

The rest of the money went into tax savings account.

New signature, I'm now in the £3,000's!

New CC balance is £3,800!

zippygeorgeandben

Good morning! Actually it's just hit the afternoon...
I'm loving the signature! Looks extremely clean with all those zeros, mine looks far too messy! I'll be changing mine probably over the next couple of days but there's not much to change really, just the BT to put on and the monthly debt reduction.
Off work now until Tuesday 17th April so woo-hoo! I've my holiday in Egypt to look forward to and won't be spending any money there. I love the first working day of the month now since trying to sort all debts out. I'm quite proud of myself actually. In March I had a surplus of £856.25 (plus £300 still sitting in cash on the bureau from the candle sales to put in the bank) so I'm planning on throwing about £500 of this on the Zopa loan whilst maybe building a little emergency fund in my bank account.
Have a good one!

Exerbusi2

It's quite clean - which is on purpose! I like to have the debts rounded down where I can. It's part of the minimalist in me!

Hope you have a fantastic time in Egypt and can enjoy the break. it'll be great going there knowing that financially, you're much 'cleaner' than you were before!

I have to re-assess my finances now I have had the extra money I didn't know about! Maybe the CC will be paid off and the bank balance significantly healthier within this calendar year!

zippygeorgeandben

Good evening to you all!
I like making things into round numbers too but with payments fluctuating etc. it never really works out. I've actually hardly paid anything off debts really for March, so my signature isn't anything to write home about which disappoints me.
It's because it took so long for Sainsburys to sort out my application, that I ended up overpaying £194 on the Virgin CC which they then credited back to my account so it means that I actually didn't pay anything off the Virgin debt. I've no idea what the official DD is with the Sainsburys card. I'm hoping to find out sometime this month!
I didn't manage to overpay the Zopa because it's processing the regular monthly payment. What I am going to have to do is perhaps use some of that surplus £856.25 during this month to overpay the Zopa.
What I do know though is that my bank account looks extremely healthy at the moment! In fact it's never been over the amount I can see now in a long time!
I'm going shopping tomorrow, I'm going to treat myself. I desperately need a new everyday bag for school. One which doesn't cost me that much because I'll only end up ruining it with leaking biros! I'm going to get some skincare stuff from Elemis too. I did well this weekend not spending money because I was tempted to get a takeaway (you know, you've worked hard, two weeks off, deserve to splurge etc) but I didn't do it which I'm pleased about.

zippygeorgeandben

Hi Exerbusi2 - hope all is well. It's only the 4th April but I've already spent far more than I intended this month. However I go away on the 7th and it can't come quick enough!
I spent about £65 in Boots on various stuff for holiday/beauty stuff, however I paid £360 into the bank in cash which was the remainder of the candle sales.
I also threw £550 at the Zopa today from the March surplus of £856.25. It 'should' mean that my Zopa debt is down to £3999.99 which will annoy you because it's not a round number with lots of zeros!
I did go shopping, treated myself to a complete new face care routine from Elemis. Not cheap at all but I used vouchers I had from last July.

Exerbusi2

Hi Zippy!

All good thanks - I'm mid way through my project and so far, things are looking great. Everyone is really happy and it's on course to be very profitable.

I've also potentially got another project that could be worth in the region of around £2k. I should find out in the next day or two if it's going to happen. That will pose an interesting dilemma...

I'll then have around £6k coming to me - more than enough to pay off my CC completely. It'll also allow me to put some aside for tax (yay).

However, I've got to pay my tax bill for last year in the coming days, so my cash reserves will be hit HARD. I'm debating in my head whether to spend £3k of the money on the CC bill, leaving me with £700 balance that I could clear in two months, putting the rest into savings.

OR...

Clearing the CC bill, leaving me with little money left over (around £1500 of the excess would have to cover savings money I used to cover mortgage etc whilst I was owed money), but the ability to put all of my earned money into savings now.

Of course all of this will only be a question to consider if this extra £2k comes off. If it doesn't, it's back to the original plan of £1500 into savings and £2k or so off the CC.

I'd LOVE the extra £2k - imagine I could clear the CC by the summer! A-M-A-ZING!

As for your month, yeah maybe you've overspent, but it's a one-off purchase for now. You've still overpaid on your debts and you've got a holiday to look forward to that's all been paid for! You're still doing well - don't lose sight of that!

zippygeorgeandben

Hey Exerbusi2 sounds like the project is going really well! Can I ask whereabouts in the country that you live? I know you've been to Bath but not much else about where you hail. Although my memory is so poor that you've probably said or hinted in a previous post.
I know that it is all 'ifs/buts/maybes' with the potential extra 2K. Personally, I wouldn't throw 6k at the CC, it wasn't part of your original plan and even though I know circumstances change (in your situation, for the better!) I think the tax bill should take preference. You say your cash reserves will be hit hard. Using that kind of vocabulary when decided to pay off the whole of the CC makes it sound a little more risky to me. Just my two penneth.
Anyway, my sister transferred me the £2k loan today and I'm repaying her £133.33 per month for 15 months. The plan is to transfer that straight to the Zopa loan and pay off a sizeable chunk. This would (with the extra payment I made today too) take this to under £2k on the whole loan. I think the monthly repayments would then be around £110pm. Whisper it quietly but there is a chance I could be paying this whole loan off by the end of the year. It's actually due to end December 2018.

Anyway, food for thought.

Exerbusi2

Hi Zippy!

The project has been better than expected actually. I was confident going into it, but it's exceeded my expectations!

So there's now no need for my dilemma - the £2k project can't happen. That's fine though, I've got a chance to run the same project I currently have going on again in October. If I can repeat the same model, I'll make around £2000 again. I'll have higher costs next time (my girlfriend will come with me, costing around £300), but it'll still be profitable!

I've got a new client starting with me soon, so that'll also be handy. If I divert all of that income into tax savings, it means I can pay the CC debt off sooner.

So, current state of play is this...

I've paid the £500 bonus off the CC, bringing the balance down to £3800.
I've put £1500 into tax savings account.
I'm due to be paid £2000 in April, which I'll probably put it all to the credit card.

If I do that, in May I'll be down to around £1800 on the CC and will have still managed to save a decent sum for tax!

At this rate, the CC will be gone in 2017!