Debt advice - newbie - Aqua credit card

pink_bride

Hello!

I've been lurking and getting info for a while now but this is my first post. Basically, I split up with my husband at the beginning of the year, left me with the house and our joint bills, I struggled to pay them all and I already had some existing debt. I've just moved back in with my parents to help me start a fresh and this morning I've created a big spread sheet of all my outgoings as I had not a penny to my name about 10 days after getting paid.

My debts are...
Littlewoods - £150 - Bal left £0 as I've just finished paying it off – woohoo!
Ace24 - £641.66 - repayment plan of £30 starting on the 1st Oct (going up to £60 a month from Feb) until cleared
Capital One - £250 - Bal left £174 - paying £35 a month for next 5 months
Moorcroft - Bal £109 left - paying £30 a month for next 4 months
Lloyds bank loan - £2k - Bal left £273.76 - re-paying £110 a month so only 3 months left
Aqua - Bal £1700 - paying min payment each month, £67 a month

I'm doing OK, it’s scary but I can see a light now. My main problem is Aqua credit card - it's such a high interest rate the bal isn't coming down, I'm not spending on the card but it’s not budging. My credit is really bad with all my missed payments so I doubt I can do a bal' transfer to another CC
Any ideas what I can do? I was thinking that once I’ve paid the Capital One, Moorcroft and Lloyds, I could use the money from those payments and pay off more, but the interest is still so high. I wasn’t sure whether or not to keep paying min’ payment, save the Capital One, Moorcroft and Lloyds money then pay off the balance but it’ll take me a while to save £1700!

Hope someone can help! Thanks in advance!

Oakdene

Someone far more knowledgeable than me will come around in a bit but I would say (from what I have read on here) try to make it minimum plus a £1 on the card.

pink_bride

Thank you - just £1 more a month or as much as I could afford?

Wookey

The best way is usually to pay of the ones with the highest interest rate first, that means you end up paying less interest and more eventually starts to come of the bottom line (debt) which means you get it all cleared quicker (usually referred to here as snowballing)

DebtBuster2017

Could you put the money that was going to Littlewoods to Aqua, on top of the £67.00 you pay them at the moment? I also have an Aqua card, if you have your account online with them they have a repayment calculator on the website. If you put in the amount you want to pay per month they will give you an estimated time that it will be repaid by. It's quite the eye opener!

EssexHebridean

Pay absolute minimums on everything aside from Aqua and throw every last penny that you can afford at Aqua for now. Where you ave specific payment agreements keep paying those as agreed else you'll risk losing the agreement, but as soon as you finish paying one of those, transfer the money that was going to that, across to Aqua too.

Close accounts as you clear them - particularly things like catalogue accounts where temptation might otherwise get in the way.

Another good trick for the time being - rather than allowing the payments to the aqua card to go out as "minimum payment" set the DD to a specific figure - so for example in your case you might set it for £70 - them make any other payments on top of that - that way even if you pay nothing else in any one month you're still paying an amount you know you CAN afford - and this method stops the payment falling over time and so having less impact on the capital balance, as it usually would. This ONLY works when you're not using the card concerned though!