Small Steps Out Of Massive Debt!

Hiddenidenity

All so organised

Glad everything is going well and some good goals going forward

GeorgianaCavendish

Hiddenidenity wrote: »

All so organised

Glad everything is going well and some good goals going forward

I've got nothing on you when it comes to organisation But I am realising that my old approach of sticking my head in the sand and sticking everything on a credit card is not going to work the next time I'm faced with a bit expense, so I'm more organised than I used to be

My small goal for August is to get on top of the meal planning once and for all. We had a few lazy & bad planning days where food has been grabbed from the nearby Tesco, which makes it more expensive and far less tasty than going to my beloved Aldi

enthusiasticsaver

Sounds good GC. Saving for the TV should be doable in a few months and as you say if you just substitute the payment for the sofa for the current furniture finance which is paid off in two months it will not slow down your debt reduction programme. Having the long 2 years for the 0% is good too. While the 0% deals are good the balance transfer fees sometimes temporarily raise the debt as you have found this month.

I agree with tackling the MBNA first then Barclaycard? Not applying for new credit for 6 months is also a good idea.

db2016

hi again GC, happy to help on the anti virus, ive just caught up to date.

and i noticed you said you havent tackled mobile contract yet.. and this is for you, and anyone else who reads, hope its of use to someone who could save on this monthly outgoing

BUT, when you do, its worth noting that there is only actually a couple of networks (as in who run and own the towers you get the signal from) EE (which orange merged with) Voda, 3 and O2.

all the other companies you see basically use them companies signal etc and they just bill you, they dont actually run the towers etc.

Eg, tesco mobile, is O2 behind the scenes and Tesco just bill you and take care of the customer service.
big savings to be made, my mum is on £12.50 sim only (but even with her buying a 2 year old phone for £100, no need for her to be cutting edge), she saves hundreds than if she had went to O2 themselves! in fact last time i looked on T's coverage checker page, it actually takes you to O2's site because they provide the "coverage".

so if you know you get good signal on your current network, or indeed some people THINK they can't go elsewhere because they won't get signal and continue to pay high charges every month, you could look at your network (who gives you the signal) and see if there's a company that still uses them but bills you less!
HTH

add: - ive just found a list thats on wiki, so should be upto date, telling you the name of network and the companies signal actually behind it - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_Kingdom_mobile_virtual_network_operators

Orange_Ena

Wow, congratulations on paying off nearly a third of you debt, that's fantastic :T

GeorgianaCavendish

enthusiasticsaver wrote: »

Sounds good GC. Saving for the TV should be doable in a few months and as you say if you just substitute the payment for the sofa for the current furniture finance which is paid off in two months it will not slow down your debt reduction programme. Having the long 2 years for the 0% is good too. While the 0% deals are good the balance transfer fees sometimes temporarily raise the debt as you have found this month.

I agree with tackling the MBNA first then Barclaycard? Not applying for new credit for 6 months is also a good idea.

Thanks Enthusiastic! I'm very reluctant to take on new credit for the sofa but I can't see us doing it any other way. In hindsight, we should have started saving for a new one the first time we had to get this one repaired but at least everything else in our flat is either "new" (less than 3 years old) or not in danger of breaking! This is the last big purchase we'll have to make for a while, and as you say, I've already got £85 carved out of my budget for furniture repayments so I won't be reducing my debt repayments.

You are right, my plan is to tackle MBNA and then Barclaycard. If I eventually get to a position where my CCs were all on long term 0% balances, do you think it would be worth overpaying my personal loan or should I get rid of the CC debt first?

GeorgianaCavendish

db2016 wrote: »

hi again GC, happy to help on the anti virus, ive just caught up to date.

and i noticed you said you havent tackled mobile contract yet.. and this is for you, and anyone else who reads, hope its of use to someone who could save on this monthly outgoing

BUT, when you do, its worth noting that there is only actually a couple of networks (as in who run and own the towers you get the signal from) EE (which orange merged with) Voda, 3 and O2.

all the other companies you see basically use them companies signal etc and they just bill you, they dont actually run the towers etc.

Eg, tesco mobile, is O2 behind the scenes and Tesco just bill you and take care of the customer service.
big savings to be made, my mum is on £12.50 sim only (but even with her buying a 2 year old phone for £100, no need for her to be cutting edge), she saves hundreds than if she had went to O2 themselves! in fact last time i looked on T's coverage checker page, it actually takes you to O2's site because they provide the "coverage".

so if you know you get good signal on your current network, or indeed some people THINK they can't go elsewhere because they won't get signal and continue to pay high charges every month, you could look at your network (who gives you the signal) and see if there's a company that still uses them but bills you less!
HTH

add: - ive just found a list thats on wiki, so should be upto date, telling you the name of network and the companies signal actually behind it - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_Kingdom_mobile_virtual_network_operators

Hi DB, thanks for the link I was sure I mentioned this earlier in the thread but perhaps it slipped through the net, but I did sort out the mobile contract back in March.
I looked at Tesco Mobile (I like that they are basically own-brand O2 because I've found it the best for coverage where I live ) but I stuck with O2 because they price matched the Tesco deal with the right data package for my needs.

GeorgianaCavendish

Orange_Ena wrote: »

Wow, congratulations on paying off nearly a third of you debt, that's fantastic :T

Thank you! I'll be so hyped when I get to the 33.33% figure :T

GeorgianaCavendish

Not much happening today, I'm at that point in the month when all the direct debits have gone through and I'm waiting for the new statements to be generated.

Very quiet on the survey sites, but one of my friends has used my Prolific Academic referral link so that's good, I'll hopefully get a reward from that in the next month or so

drownindebt

Good stuff! Monday will show the final of my payments - can't wait!