New Year - New Start - Advice on current debt management

spangieuk

Hi

After a very difficult year (2016) I am in a place to approach my mounting debt.

I have started the year by being in the position that I actually know now what I owe - £28k. That was a productive New Years Eve.... And also an eye-opener.

I spent the next few days ringing up card companies, checking interest rates, dates that 0% ran out, how much I had left to spend on the credit card, and what offers they had available to me if I wanted to 'tart'.

I have now managed to get everything into a place (except my loan) where I am paying 0% on everything until Nov of this year.

I have a spreadsheet with all my bills and income/outgoings along with salary, family allowance, maintenance payments etc. I have tapped into every possible source of income that I can.

I have sold a car (only for 1k) and also have a yearly bonus payment at the end of March coming up, along with the possibility to sell some shares tax free in April. All the above should bring me in about 7k.

The money that I got for selling a car I have bought premium bonds with. It seemed to me to be pointless to spend it in paying off a credit card which I was paying no interest in, when I had potentially got the 'chance' to win something on it, but have the money available to me in Nov when my first card starts charging interest. I was planning to do the same with my bonus and the share money that I can get in April.

Is this the best thing that I can do with the money, or are there better things to do.

All my cards have minimum payments on them, (6 cards altogether) and the one that runs out first, I have increased the payment to £100 a month, meaning when Nov gets here, I will only have £300 to pay off it before moving to the next one.

I have reduced my sky to minimum package, removed my landline telephone, switched gas and electric, and also opened a new bank account to get a free £150.00. I am on a sim only phone now, so think I have cut back in many ways, including stopping smoking (since Christmas) and done dry January (which I actually plan to continue as I have noticed so much savings!).

I checked my loan, but I think because of all the credit cards activity over January, the eligibility checker now shows there being a 0% chance of getting anything, and my mortgage would need to go into negative interest at -0.65% to save anything on that.

I have spent most of January eating out of the freezer and just buying fresh veg as needed.

I didn't even spend anything in the sales!! This weekend is clearing the wardrobe and the garage and taking photos to ebay things (or local facebook)

Are there other things that I can do to get debt free quicker?

Really appreciate any ideas or help.