Paying off credit cards transactions 1 by 1!

Penguin8410

I've just come up with a way of paying off my credit card debt which i feel makes more sense to me and makes me more focused. I'm sure others are doing it too but i thought i would post just incase it helps someone else!


I've made a spreadsheet and written down every transaction that makes up the amount I owe on my barclaycard. I've categorised these into food, shopping, nails (i'm a technician), outings, petrol & adhoc.


I tend to make the set payment i can and then as I don't have enough money to make any other significant payments throughout the month I haven't been bothering. Using this spreadsheet though I can pick a transaction and then pay that specific transaction off. So i've only got £8.43 I could spare until payday but I looked and paid off costa @ £3.40 and Amazon @ £4.99. That's then 2 transactions gone off my spreadsheet and I feel like i'm actually paying off the specific things i've spent the money on rather than chunks of money being thrown at it as a whole.


I've then got another page on the spreadsheet where I'm moving the transactions too so I can see how much I've paid off.


This might or might not work for you, but I just wanted something to help me visualise where the smaller payments are going too rather then think oh £10 is nothing off £6k


Hope this might help someone!

katie4

Penguin8410 wrote: »

I've just come up with a way of paying off my credit card debt which i feel makes more sense to me and makes me more focused. I'm sure others are doing it too but i thought i would post just incase it helps someone else!


I've made a spreadsheet and written down every transaction that makes up the amount I owe on my barclaycard. I've categorised these into food, shopping, nails (i'm a technician), outings, petrol & adhoc.


I tend to make the set payment i can and then as I don't have enough money to make any other significant payments throughout the month I haven't been bothering. Using this spreadsheet though I can pick a transaction and then pay that specific transaction off. So i've only got £8.43 I could spare until payday but I looked and paid off costa @ £3.40 and Amazon @ £4.99. That's then 2 transactions gone off my spreadsheet and I feel like i'm actually paying off the specific things i've spent the money on rather than chunks of money being thrown at it as a whole.


I've then got another page on the spreadsheet where I'm moving the transactions too so I can see how much I've paid off.


This might or might not work for you, but I just wanted something to help me visualise where the smaller payments are going too rather then think oh £10 is nothing off £6k


Hope this might help someone!

what a fab idea! I'm going to start to do this thanks!

Dobbibill

This is a good method to continue to use when you are DF and intend paying your CC off in full each month.

Everytime you spend on your CC, move the amount for that transaction to your bills account - have a DD set up to collect the CC paying in full and the money will be sittng there for it. (Even better if it's sitting in a high interest account).

This then reports to your CR - use, pay in full, repeat - demonstrating good management of credit.

Well done

Penguin8410

thanks Dobbibill i will definitly continue to do this when i'm debt free too!


hope it helps Katie4!

Suseka97

Well done you. It also helps keep you focussed on what is outstanding and may help minimise your future spending too. It's all too easy (and I appreciate sometimes necessary) to use a credit card - but the interest charges are simply dreadful. My concern is for those who only ever pay/can pay the minimums. MSE has a calculator that goes to show how long it could take people to be DF doing that - scary numbers in terms of years !

Hopeless_Case

What a great idea

Rachel24

That's an amazing idea thank you!

Ogden

This is a great idea! And once I’m DF (nearly there) I will set it up

Drawingaline

I did this last year, would look at my statement and cross them off one by one as the money became available.

Now I use ynab and the way credit cards work in that is that when you spend you categorise the transaction and ynab moves the money from the category you have spent from to the credit card line, meaning it is no longer available in you category to spend again.