Getting out of this debt sharknado

Treadingonplaymobil

I am impressed at the headlamp/wiper replacement! It wouldn’t even occur to me to do it myself, whereas once upon a time I did all the everyday maintenance for my car. A good reminder that I am quite capable of doing it too!

The wind had been crazy, I was staying with friends two nights ago and I thought the roof was going to blow off their house!

EmmaMicawber

Well done on the current / previous car maintenance honeysuckle and treading. Mine also needs an oil change but I don't want to risk a drive swimming in oil so I'm leaving that to the professionals.
Until last year we just put our cars in for servicing at the main dealers which usually came to £400-/500+ each time but we spent a lot less than that last year.
Good to hear your DD is enjoying uni life honeysuckle. I can't believe they're halfway through the year now!

EmmaMicawber

Paid in Week 4 - £524
Total paid in 2018 - £2,733
£ to target - £27,267

The last payments of the month have gone out and confusingly I seem to have paid more off our total debt than expected which on the one hand is really good, but on the other I need to allow enough for the year's big expenses in YNAB so I'll have a proper look at the budget when I do my monthly summary on the 31st.

Positives this week:
I made just over £10 on surveys. Although this sum is tiny in the scheme of things, I find it a good reminder of the value of money. I'm less inclined to think something is "only a fiver" if I've taken the trouble to earn that small sum with surveys/ ebaying or whatever.
I read a good book on finding work with some pointers on how to address a long time out of the workplace and worry about referees- OH teases me that I will be the world expert on the subject without actually having a job
Good session volunteering.
Roofer coming next week- won't have to pay him until after payday!

Challenges coming up:
My car's MOT is next week. Fear of the unknown..... It seems fine but has done nearly 100K miles so who knows.
DD has started house-hunting for somewhere to rent with her new friends next year. It seems that parents often act as guarantors, but it looks like a bit of an expensive minefield.
OH's credit score is still "poor" so he probably would fail the credit check. And it seems we could be liable for the rent of all of them in the house if it's a joint tenancy which on the houses they're looking at could be £4000 per month :eek: (DD is in a very expensive city)
Apparently the alternative is paying 6 months' rent up front- that would only be £3500 then!!
This is all new to us- there should be a parents' guide given out via sixth forms to warn us of all the expenses of your child going to uni.

Job: 3 days to pizza delivery application

Honeysucklelou2

I've been shocked by the huge rents being asked for houses that are specifically advertised as student housing. My DD1 has been looking around for a few weeks...

You're right, a guide to the costs of uni life would be useful ( and be able to plan for ) at about GCSE results time!!!

EmmaMicawber

I hope your DD finds something she likes (and that you don't have to stump up too much cash!). My memories of my shared student house are of no central heating, slugs in the kitchen, no washing machine (let alone a dishwasher), and woodchip wallpaper everywhere. I don't think they do those any more!

EmmaMicawber

Yay it's payday! So time for a quick summary of January before I send today's money to the various YNAB categories for February.I've rearranged the credit cards in a countdown style so there'll gradually be fewer and fewer in the list. I've also taken the loan off completely as it's confusing me! It will just get paid off in the background every month and by 31st December 2018 should be at around £9000. I've rounded everything to the nearest £10 so my Maths might not add up perfectly!

Total paid off debt: £2733
Total paid off credit cards in January: £1900


Credit card summary- new balances:
9. American Distress £520
8. More Bl**dy Nights Awake card 1 £2250
7. They're Your Master card £3630
6. Tox-co £4410
5. More Bl**dy Nights Awake 2 £4800
4. Sin-tan-debt card £4950
3. Martin Lewis card £6960
2. They're Your Master card 2 £11,380
1. American Distress 2 £17,150

I would love to get rid of American Distress 1 in Feb :j It will be touch and go as I "overspent" on paying off debt in January (what larks!) due to being over-optimistic about OH's bonus and my job-hunting. Being a bit more sensible, the February target is to commit to pay at least £1500 off the cards and start to build up my emergency fund again.

joeyjimbles

Agree totally about the costs to parents handbook being needed - maybe we should write one - DS1 is going into a shared house next year (Year 2) and we have to be guarantors but it's 'only' for his room and that's more than enough. They didn't run a credit check on us however, just asked for a whole pile of guarantees and we had to pay a deposit and a month's rent to secure it.

EmmaMicawber

That's good to know, thanks joey. It sounds as though we're going to need around £800-£1000 for DD's upfront payments, assuming we can act as guarantors. In which case I'll reluctantly revise the credit cards target downwards to minimum payments for Feb, which is around £1100. I'll put the rest to one side until we know what extra financial support DD will need to reserve a student house and hopefully get back on track in March.
I can feel another round of ebaying is needed!

EmmaMicawber

Paid in Week 5 - £142
Total paid in 2018 - £2,875
£ to target - £27,125

It's been a bit of a meh week this week. Only one card payment was due and I daren't pay any extra this month as I need to save for DD's uni house deposit.

The highlight was my car passing its MOT with no repairs bills needed!

I have to admit my mojo has disappeared a bit this week mainly due to the realisation we'll need to find quite a lot of money for DD in the next couple of months, and I'm so sick of the rubbish spouted by those who are supposed to know about this stuff (including Martin Lewis who holds a special place in my heart for soothing students and parents into a lifetime of student debt- he was even employed by the government to do it I believe!!)
The utterly cr*p weather and ongoing lack of job don't help .

But I'll keep posting as it helps keeps me focussed. Now where's the chocolate hobnobs....

EmmaMicawber

The sun is shining and I'm over my PMT so feeling more optimistic again. I've added £288 to the emergency/DD deposit fund, partly from another bank switch and some TopCashback money which has come through.

I currently have a bit of a dilemma with DD. She called bemoaning the fact that she can't afford a ticket to an event her uni friends are going to as she hasn't been paid for her latest work hours yet. They are likely to sell out soon.
She didn't ask to borrow money and I didn't offer at the time but it's preying on my mind. I don't want her to start on the same slippery slope of borrow now, pay later as we did but feel a bit sorry for her. A big challenge is that her uni seems to have a lot of students from wealthy families.

My OH has a good salary by most benchmarks, we have just lived beyond our means so are in this mess. But a LOT of DD's friends are wealthy Londoners, one of her best friends' parents made £2,000,000 (yes- that's million) last year so I'm slightly worried that her view of normality may be getting skewed. But I don't want her to be tempted to get an overdraft to pay for the ticket.

Aargh, I have the money to lend her but don't know if it's the right thing to do. I did lend her some just before Christmas, to buy presents, which she paid back as soon as she was paid but had said it was the last time and that she should build up a bit of a buffer.