Finally Debt Free After 34 Years, But Still Need to Live Frugally 24 September 2017 at 12:22PM edited 18 November 2017 at 9:49AM in Debt Free Diaries 14.9K replies 862.1K views

DebtBuster2017

Good luck, hope you achieve your goal of being debt free by Christmas

Sun_Addict

Doctors letters take ages. I remember having to get one to claim on holiday cancellation insurance 4 years ago when Mr SA first got ill. Don't talk to me about nPower - had loads of trouble with them 4 years ago, changed as soon as I could, think they paid me more in compensation for bad service than I used on fuel!

HairyHandofDartmoor

I am fed up with NPower. We seem to be constantly £1000 in debt to them, probably because they never send anyone to read our meter and then we're not paying enough :mad:. I'm submitting online monthly meter readings to them at the moment to try and avoid that happening. One of my ambitions is to pay them off and switch!

HairyHandofDartmoor

Thanks Debt Buster

beanielou

Happy shiny new diary

enthusiasticsaver

HairyHandofDartmoor wrote: »

Thanks parsniphead. It's exciting and yet a bit stressful to be so near and yet not quite there .

We've got 8 grand sitting in a savings account waiting to pay off the last two debts, hopefully, and I have to keep checking that it's still there and hasn't mysteriously disappeared

I'm also aware that neither of us has a pension now, so we need to build up some savings for our retirement in about 14 years time. Our mortgage should be paid off in ten years which will save £420 a month, so we could start saving that amount then. If we can raise our income and avoid impulse buys that will help too .

Are you able to join a company pension scheme or is it you or your DHs occupational pension which has been cashed in? You may want to look at SIPPS for either/both of you as much better return than saving in normal savings account especially if you have 14 years to retirement. HMRC will also add 25% to whatever you put in. An emergency savings account is more important first though.

Is it worth you posting an SOA to see if we can help suggest further savings?

HairyHandofDartmoor

We're both self employed es. It was a pension from a job my DH had years ago, before he become self employed, that he's cashed in for the F&Fs. We should have set up private pensions when we both became self employed, but never seemed to have enough cash, with three kids and an irregular income .

I will take a look at SIPPs for savings, thanks for the suggestion .

I do want to build up an emergency fund of £1000 too, so we're going to try and put £100 a month towards that.

EssexHebridean

Ooh - a diary! *Subscribed*

Fingers crossed here for the final F&F working out as you hope and you meeting your debt free by christmas target - hopefully the chase on the Dr's letter will have done the trick!

Scottish Power are the energy provider I would never return to - they were a nightmare as they muddled up our day/night readings and then took forever to correct things...!

HairyHandofDartmoor

Thanks Essex :wave: I expect most energy companies have their annoying habits, but I'm very ready for a change!

Today's Mr T shop was over my budget of £80 as it came in at £93 . When I looked at my receipt I'd picked up chicken breast instead of drumsticks by mistake, costing me £12 instead of £4 :eek: I'd have taken it back if the shop wasn't miles away! The packets were identical! I won't make that mistake again :mad:

DH didn't have time to chase the doctors note but I'll make him do it tomorrow.

On a positive note, the rain that was promised for 9.00am didn't arrive until lunch time and I managed to squeeze a half hour walk into my day before the rain came .

HairyHandofDartmoor

One of the things I would like to do today is to sign up with Clearscore and also get a credit report from Experian through the MSE free link.

I've already signed up with Noddle and on my report with them it records my debt with Hoist as being 'satisfied' with a zero balance owing :T & my debt with Barclays also says 'satisfied' with a zero balance :T.

However for my M&S debt it records I've paid 50% but still says 'default' and records a balance owing of nearly £5000 . This should get updated to say 'satisfied' with a zero balance like the others, so I need to keep an eye on this.

I didn't pay any of them until I had a letter agreeing to the full and final settlement and I'm keeping those letters very safe indeed, so if M&S don't update it soon then I'll ring them up and ask them to correct the information.

All the defaults were recorded as 2015 which is correct.

Have a good day everyone. I'm hoping for a NSD today.