£50k to zero - made it across the finish line

One-step-at-a-time · 30 November 2019 at 7:27PM

Thank you Buffy!

It's a big old slog, this diary. TL;DR: current me is fixing past me's mistakes and trying to take care of future me with better decisions

I've been slacking off a bit over the last couple of weeks, but I do have something to report, I have a new credit card! Now, before everyone rolls their eyes at me, It's 25 months at 0% with a 1.5% transfer fee. It will take ALL of the remaining interest-bearing debt (3.9%), see it over the finish line, and save me around £600 in interest. To celebrate, I will be cancelling a card I had been hanging on to in case a transfer offer came up on it.

Still waiting on that £500 payment, but on the bright side, have been offered a bit of part-time admin work by a friend. It won't be more than a few hours here and there but it's in an area I really enjoy, and won't feel much like work

One-step-at-a-time · 1 December 2019 at 11:25AM

We have a really busy week next week and aren't at home much, so today it's time to get on top of cleaning, washing and meal planning. Yesterday was a bit of a write-off as I was feeling very under the weather, but a really good sleep has helped enormously on that front.

Updating my spreadsheet today with this month's balances and card info, I noticed that the TOTAL debt including the mortgage is now 57652.56. This is so encouraging! Three years ago the card debt was higher than the mortgage debt. Once the CC debt has gone we will be overpaying the mortgage but concentrating on house maintenance (a few things are already long overdue but not critical) and savings.

One-step-at-a-time · 14 December 2019 at 5:10PM

There has been a bit of a saga with the BT card. After 2 weeks nothing had showed up, so I used live chat then phone helpline - both totally useless - and finally traipsed to a branch with photo ID to find out what had happened. Although I got the completion screen, the application had got 'stuck' and they now need to complete it manually. Same terms, just a delay to getting things through so worst case I will have to do one more payment at the 3.9% interest rate. A pain in the bum as I was hoping to have it all done and dusted before Christmas and be on autopilot from this point onwards, but at least it's getting sorted.

One-step-at-a-time · 14 December 2019 at 5:56PM

Ooh and I forgot to say - BCard are now giving me offers again! It's been ages since the last one, and now happily I don't need them as soon there will be nothing left bearing interest to bounce! They're not the best, at 0% for 2 years at 3.4% fee and 6.9% lifetime of balance, but getting the offers is another clue that things are moving the right way.

One-step-at-a-time · 20 December 2019 at 5:14PM

My balance transfer card has arrived, so I can now get everything moved before Christmas- hopefully this means no more interest payments until the debt is gone!

Drawingaline · 21 December 2019 at 1:28PM

Fabulous news!

One-step-at-a-time · 22 December 2019 at 1:03PM

Alas, not so fabulous! This specific company's online banking registration is completely and utterly broken. It's a multinational megacorp, and yet by far the worst customer experience I've ever had. I'm IT literate with no issues preventing me from using any of the many forms of communication I've had to use to contact them over the last few days, and I can't help but wonder how many people experiencing this have just given up. BT completion will now be into January, that's if I don't reach breaking point and tell them where they can put their card! :rotfl:

Drawingaline · 7 January 2020 at 10:14PM

Oh no!!! Not good. You would think they would fix that. I organise bt in no time at all, all through banking apps, never had an issue.

One-step-at-a-time · 13 February 2020 at 10:49PM

I've been offline for aaaages! Nothing troubling, just a long and sanity-saving internet break. Still chipping away - the balance transfer I was having issues with due to the horrendous online banking setup finally went through, and everything that's left is now at 0%. Debt is almost 54% paid at this point. The DFD is still well in to 2022 but the 0% deals should pretty much carry us through now. Updates from hereon in will be pretty infrequent unless something major happens!