Getting it together...one £ at a time!

Homegrown0

Just had another little bit cleared in PA so am now up to £11.61 -not had a peep from them today though, so things must be quiet...

Will check up on Onepoll and VO later if I get the chance.

Homegrown0

Soo...after pondering and doing some working out, I decided to move what's on CC3 to another CC which has 0% until September next year. I'll still be making the payments as planned to clear this off (£150-200p/m) but it makes sense to do it at 0%.

New balances (including the BT fee) are:

Loan: £8,948.97 / £15,792.30
CC1: £0 / £4,804.97 (new consolidated amount, after BTing CC3 for 0%)
CC2: £4,301.14 / £5,031.14

Total: £18,055.08 / £25,619.44

This month, there'll be £526 to the loan, £50 to CC1, £60 to CC2 and an overpayment of £150 to CC2. Total to be paid in September should be: £786.

I'll need to rejig all my long term figures and projections now that CC2 and CC3 have been put together. The spreadsheet was looking a bit messy anyway, so i'm hopeful that I can tidy it up and get it straight to move forward.

Right, off to do some spreadsheet magic before my eyes start crossing!

Scott-Weiland

Homegrown0 wrote: »

Today isn't a NSD because I'm working from the office, so £7 was spent this morning on my return train fare. I brought in my breakfast and lunch today though, so I'm minimising spends as much as possible

After reading another diary yesterday, I was thinking about re-evaluating my life insurance. We have about 6 different policies between us for life insurance/ assurance/ mortgage payment protection insurance...etc but with only critical illness cover and not serious illness cover. I think we could get much better cover consolidated into one policy for more or less the same price (and if I get any cashback then i'll be delighted!) so need to get onto looking at that one.

Work is still crazy, busy, hectic with lots of plans and strategy being drawn up for the future, which is both exciting and brain-frying so I'm really trying to get my mojo back so that I can whizz through some work.

I've not been so keen with the exercise this week, only managed one class out of three that I'd normally do, so i need to do something this weekend to balance it out. Was thinking if it stays dry on Sunday then I might take my boy down to the park on his bike and he can cycle while I run. 5k should do it and make me feel less guilty about not doing much. My eating has been so-so and I've avoided the temptation of takeaways.

Topcashback
After my post yesterday about having £36ish available for cashing out on TCB, I went online to turn it into Amazon vouchers but they're retaining £7ish for my account fee. I was a bit annoyed about it, but it turns out it's because I've not actually cashed out for over a year and they can't take my account fee until i cash out so this is for 1 whole year and part of another year...or something...

Anyway, I cashed out £29.98 to a Amazon gift card so just waiting on that coming through and I've still got £16-ish pending, which is of course excluding the £80 that I was supposed to get from the car insurance that I'm now cancelling.

I just remembered that I've got some mileage and overnight travel allowance to claim back for a recent work trip, so i'll do that this afternoon to get the ball rolling. Possibly about £50-60.

Re your life insurance i would pop on top cashback they have an offer at the minute with Beagle Street and payouts range from 35pounds upwards.

Re topcashback i would bin the top cashback plus i have used it before and the cost of it is not really worth it.

Homegrown0

Thanks Scott, I have just disabled the auto-renew. It's paid now until January 2019 but after that I won't resubscribe. You're right, after reading up on it, it's not worth it. I don't know how i ended up being a plus member anyway, actually!

Interesting about Beagle Street, I've seen them advertised but don't know much about them. We have so many policies so i need to get them out, review what we're covered for, review what we actually need to be covered for and see if I can bundle them into one all-encompassing policy. Make life a bit simpler!

Homegrown0

Well, as i mentioned last night, I wanted to completely overhaul my debt record/ projection spreadsheet to take into account all the rejigging and changes to what we're paying going forward. Again, this is flexible, but based on my plan of action, it should look as follows:*

THE PLAN

• Overpay £200p/m minimum into CC1
• Loan will be paid off in January 2020
• In February 2020, clear off CC1 with funds freed up from the paid off loan
• CC1 cleared off in February 2020
• From March 2020, allocate all available funds to CC2 (should be approx £800p/m)
• CC2 cleared by May 2020
• Debt free by May 2020.

*this is without taking into account any potential changes in income, extra funds, bonuses etc that we may get...similarly also not taking into account anything drastic happening or changing...

That's 20 months left of paying this big chain around our necks! I'm scared to even start thinking about how much spare income we'll have once we have cleared the decks. And what we'll be able to do with it by saving up for things and having some savings behind us for 'just in case'. I know that we will go back into debt at some point in the next few years (we have a large home improvement plan in the pipeline) but it'll be controlled debt and will add value to our home. It'll also not eat up almost all of our disposable income!

SAVINGS PLAN
Factoring the above overpayments, we should still be able to save £200-300p/m into a savings account which will help with things like our holiday for next year. And I need to bear in mind that I'm continuously saving with the credit union on the side (£50p/m) which I'm treating like a bill rather than savings. So we are building up a little fund which I'm hoping will go towards emergencies and also a holiday for us for next summer. It's all but been confirmed that we'll get a bonus at Christmas this year too, which will hopefully go towards a holiday too. Any additional income from PA, surveys and husband's extra jobs will either go towards getting us through expensive months like December where we do a LOT more stuff, or it'll be put into the savings account.

Anyway, this stuff has been playing on my mind quite a bit over the last week or so, so i'm happy to get it figured out and down in this diary. Somewhere to keep coming back to - keeping the momentum up!

redofromstart

ooh Beagle Street. I did the research into payout percentages and they were one of the top ones (so less likely to try and find an excuse to refuse to pay out) and for us they asked no difficult questions unlike my previous one where I had to fill in mountains of things. I've been with them a couple of years now, the cashback tracked but took about eight months to come through, rather than the six when it was due which was frustrating.

Poor you on the crawling things, I lost all my stocks to mice one year and have never bulk bought dry stuff since.

Homegrown0

That's good to know! If i can get organised tonight, i might dig out all my paperwork and see what Beagle Street have on offer. Based on what we're paying per month right now for all of our insurances, we'd be looking at £350 cashback which is not to be sniffed at if they offer good coverage.

Oh yuk. There's nothing worse than little creatures coming in and spoiling your food. I had LOADS in there too, orzo, rice, pasta, macaroni, spaghetti, dried cous cous, lentils... I won't be making that mistake again!

Homegrown0

Spending wise, not a lot to report today - spent £2.47 in Tesco on grapes and arborio rice (since the horrid dried food beasties wasted my stocks). Having risotto for dinner tonight so it's a no brainer.

Also spent £3 on soup and a sandwich because I left my lunch at home this morning. Not too bad considering!

Didn't get round to looking at my insurance docs last night so will try again tonight. It was after 9pm when I sat down last night and my brain was fried so no chance I'd have made any sense of insurances.

I'm still feeling under the weather and like I'm on the cusp of coming down with the cold but hasn't come to anything yet. Just feeling yuk in anticipation I think!

6 days into the month and my spending less resolve isn't doing too badly.

WelshKitty85

Just caught up on your diary and am squirming at the thought of the little creatures :eek:

We rented out our old home too. It got too small for us but we couldn't get a new mortgage at the time as I was a student. I found it really stressful every time tenants gave notice. We only charged enough to cover the mortgage and fees so never managed to build up a contingency fund. We sold it when we bought our new home in November and it's a huge weight off my mind.

Homegrown0

Thanks for stopping by WelshKitty - believe me, i'm still squirming too! Yuk...

We were in a similar situation regarding the old home, although we did get a second mortgage of course. These last tenants are the first ones that have stayed longer than 6months. We have had couples split up and move out and several couples move out to buy a house so it's been tricky. Not only that, but we need to pay the letting agent £200 everytime we get a new tenant and the rent we charge covers the mortgage and factor fees (just) so we take a hit on this every time.

My husband is really keen that we keep it (he's not the one having to deal with the letting agents and the money stress though!) because if we can keep it let then it'd make a nice pension for us one day. But that's a long way off for us yet, so we're keeping our options open. I'd quite like to just get shot of it!