£15,000 to 0

Silver_Queen

EssexHebridean wrote: »

If it is in any way advertised as a "month" rather than "to the end of the month" then I should hope that they do the decent thing and refund you. Fingers crossed anyway!

As you say otherwise at the least get your moneys worth from it!

I think that treat to yourself to reward you for the payrise (and for being brave enough to go in there and make your case for it too - well done you!) is a great idea particularly as it will actually cost you so little in actual money! :T

Thanks EH! Luckily for me, a very very nice and grovelly email resulted in me getting the £55 refunded back to me...phew!

Hope you're doing well :money:

Silver_Queen

enthusiasticsaver wrote: »

You do seem to be struggling a bit with the budgeting.

Lending to your sister and OH probably wasn’t the best move considering you are also in debt. Can they not access credit?

You need an emergency fund and that overdraft gone. You will be charged for it a certain amount after graduation and they are not cheap.

Lending from and to family members can be a nightmare. Loads of stories on this forum about relationships breaking up and people left with debt owing. No one thinks it will happen to them but personally unless you are married it is not a good idea to lend to each other. That is my cynical view having seen a lot of people who have had their fingers burned.

Thanks enthusiasticsaver. The money lent to my sister was to help her with her stamp duty/solicitor's fees for the purchase of her first property, it has actually been paid back now (she paid it to my parents and my parents took the amount off the loan that I had from them for my postgrad). The money I lent to my OH was because he moved across the country, partially to be with me and partially to start a job closer to his career of choice. He did not/does not get paid very well so it was a struggle for him to save enough for the moving fees/deposit/first month's rent. He is now paying this back at £150 per month. I would rather incur a relatively small amount of interest rather than see my loved ones in trouble.

I have a £2k overdraft and £1k of it became interest-charging in June last year, the other £1k of it will become interest charging in June this year. The reason why I borrowed from the interest-charging portion of it in November last year was so that I could buy a year's season ticket when I moved house, up front, which saved me £300 over the year. It has had the unfortunate effect of leaving me in the interest-charging portion of my OD (which I had naively hoped would not charge interest as this is what my friends have experienced) but the interest I have paid in total is less than £30, and I'm back firmly out of the interest-charging part of the OD. So overall it still saved me about £270.

Sorry, that was very rambly! Hope it made sense :rotfl:

Silver_Queen

Not quite the end of the month yet but I thought I'd do a quick round-up anyway as I'm bored and can't imagine anything changing much or at all between today and tomorrow.

Debts
1. Parents loan 1 - £11,300
2. Parents loan 2 - £250
3. Overdraft - £1,000

Total: £12,550

Accounts
1. Nationwide +£500
2. Help to Buy £0
3. Natwest (dormant account that I've resurrected) +£150

Surveys
1. Prolific £3.35
2. Onepoll £25.25
3. Populus £21

Other
1. OH owes me £1,035 and will pay me back £150 + £35 this month to start with.

Silver_Queen

£250 paid off to the parental loan yesterday, my debt total is now £12,300. Inching closer to the sub £10k mark! Can't wait!

EssexHebridean

Ooh well done - always exciting as a milestone heads into view isn't it! :T

Silver_Queen

A productive Saturday afternoon switching my resurrected bank account to a different bank for £125 bonus, which I should receive in April around my birthday! I will then stay with this bank for 6 months and most likely leave then as I'll get another £100 (plus I'm planning to switch to another bank that pays another £125 bonus...). Thanks MSE for the tip! Although I don't like that it's called "bank tarting" and will resolutely refuse to call it that :rotfl:

lonelyrat

Well done on the switching! Great minds think alike clearly :rotfl:Bank tarting really doesn't sound appealling. I feel we need to find something that sounds a bit nicer than that!

Silver_Queen

I'm considering opening another bank account to do the Halifax switch as well, it looks like I don't actually need 2 direct debits from it (unless I want to earn the £3 per month...which I wouldn't say no to). Does anyone know whether a standing order counts as a direct debit in terms of switching accounts?

Having a bad start of the week at work - just want to chill out and do nothing. Can't wait for the weekend already.

I have worked out that I can pay back my parents an extra £300 this month, which would bring my debt with them to a nice round £11,000 total. Will pay them back the next time I see them.

Started doing receipthog and shoppix after seeing someone on here talk about it. Seems interesting so far.

Totals

1. Natwes t (OD account -£1000
2. Parental loan 1 £11,050
3. Parental loan 2 £250

4. Boyf owes me £835
5. Onepoll £27.45
6. Prolific £3.30 with £2.90 pending
7. Populus £24
8. Receipthog 185 points
9. Shoppix 1580 tokens.

Things are looking fairly decent. I'm thinking of setting myself a tough goal to be debt free, I'm so sick of being in debt! I want to move on with my life and start saving for a house.

EssexHebridean

Keep doing what you're doing, but just make extra bits of cash where you can and make savings where you can too - better to do that than to set an overly tough goal and burn out on it.

If you really feel the need to do something towards your future goals right now, why not stash aside your survey money into that HTB ISA? You'd still be paying down the debt but also be starting to build a pot of savings and that might be just the boost you need to make you feel as though you're getting somewhere?

lonelyrat

I work for a bank and we wouldn't count a Standing Order and I'm pretty sure other banks will be the same unfortunately. I just saw that Halifax incentive and thought about you and bank tarting :rotfl:

Sorry you're having a bad week I always find a bad start to the week usually means a bad week in general for me. Fingers crossed you aren't like me and yours picks up

Good news on getting the parent debt to £11,000 :cool: :cool: Getting close to 10!

Let me know how you find Receipt Hog/ Shoppix. I keep meaning to download them and try but I'm quite lazy to be honest... It would take little to no effort but still somehow seems like hard work haha!

I feel you with being tough on yourself. There's a little part of me that's annoyed at myself for Copenhagen. If I hadn't booked it I could maybe be debt free a month earlier... BUT can't change it now and I will very much enjoy it. Me and OH were looking at houses and flats today and it's making me feel more motivated I think. Still a very, very long way away but I imagine it's going to feel so good when your money is going to savings and your own future rather than just debt.