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

remote_control

That's a great update! 
I can't think of anything to ebay but challenging myself to find one thing this weekend

One-step-at-a-time

Cheers @remote_control, hope you had a good weekend!
It's lovely and peaceful today. DH was up early today for a job (despite covid decimating his industry he's picking up the odd day here and there) so I did an early start for work and am now having a leisurely coffee break. I love starting a couple of hours early if I'm feeling alert enough, I have some of my most productive days this way.

V-day was blissfully uneventful - neither of us are fans of mandated commercial displays of affection so we had a perfectly normal day of cooking and eating together, listening to music and chatting. It still seems to be working for us after 24 years!
Time > stuff, always. Saddened to see the seemingly endless social media parade of gratuitous buying and attitudes of entitlement.

I've barely given a thought to the spreadsheet the last couple of days. It would be kind of nice to knock out another £140 by the end of the month and get to £7500 before the next round of payments, but I haven't invoiced for the latest side job yet and am not expecting to do so for the next few days as there are still a few bits to finish, so I'm not holding my breath. It'll get there soon enough!

One-step-at-a-time

Trundling along happily this week. £15 more off the cards yesterday courtesy of eb4y payments, and coming to the tail end of the latest job so should be able to invoice for that soon. We didn't have the brackets we needed for the radiator shelf so still need a solution to that; there are some we both like in an ebay shop that are very reasonable so that might be the first thing for next month's personal spends.

Currently waiting on my credit report update (due on the 21st) to see if it's registered the two closed cards yet. Balances seem to get updated every two months rather than monthly; the last check date for some is still early December and the others are early January.  I think one of the closed cards should have dropped off, and the balances on the remaining ones will be more reflective of the actual numbers, though it will probably still be lagging behind by more than £1k.

Once that comes through I'll do a soft check on the Santander site and make a decision on whether to apply for their zero-fee 18 month BT card. Can't remember of I posted about this before or not (and am too lazy to read back and check!), but we've been talking recently about changing the plan and  applying for this in order to set lower monthly payments, put more in savings and get more deferred maintenance done whilst still paying everything off at 0%, and the last check I did indicated that I would be eligible for a limit of around £5k.  This would allow me to shift CC4's balance and get it closed (it was opened just over a year ago purely as a BT card). It's a weird thing to be thinking about potentially pushing the DFD into mid-2022 when we could be shot of it all within 7 months, but the increased freedom of choice (and the knowledge that we could overpay any time we liked) is appealing too.

remote_control

That makes total sense and I would probably do that if you can get the card with 0 fee. We have £5,000 of savings and £12,000 of debt on 0% cards. We're hoping to do some zero fee balance transfers this year as I'd really like to keep a savings pot of £5,000. For us coronavirus has meant we have saved lots and paid lots off the debt - £15,000 in 2020. I definitely want to go abroad as soon as we can though!

One-step-at-a-time

You're doing incredibly well @remote_control! I was really chuffed that we managed £14k last year - DH had a grand total of around 5 days' work in 2020 but even with one income it ended up being our best year for debt repayment. It just felt more urgent to hammer away at it as much as possible, and we didn't allow ourselves much scope for saving other than trying to keep an emergency fund of sorts.
I miss travel desperately, but we're looking at Feb 22-ish for our next real holiday. That's provided things improve significantly and we're not still in lockdown or barred from travelling to the country in question of course!

Sarahwithlove

I think it depends what the fee is like. If you can get 0% then I would tempted to do it as well as long as you have job security. 

Drawingaline

I think it isn't a bad idea. Delaying maintenance can sometimes cost more in the long run and now the debt is at a much more manageable level it makes sense to action some now before it gets worse.

One-step-at-a-time

@Sarahwithlove I'm only considering this card because there are zero fees. With savings I will be putting away around 75% of what would be going towards the debt anyway, so if things took a downward turn we would have something in backup.  I've attended strategic planning meetings in the last week that have given me confidence that work is safe 'til at least the tail end of 2022, and due to length of service SRP would be at the max payable if my job folded. If I get turned down for the card we are simply back to plan A of paying everything off faster (this plan is also not taking into account any work that DH manages to get this year; we're basing everything we do on one income), so I don't feel that this would be at all risky - certainly not as risky a position as I was in 4 years ago when the whole house of cards could have collapsed

One-step-at-a-time

Drawingaline said:

I think it isn't a bad idea. Delaying maintenance can sometimes cost more in the long run and now the debt is at a much more manageable level it makes sense to action some now before it gets worse.

Exactly! We have bits of garden fence that would need a miracle to get through another year intact...

Sarahwithlove

Sounds like it's a no brainer then to me I would be inclined to go for it.