Fixing my mistakes

Caspeia

Payday today! Our money comes in multiple times a month: tax credits every 4 weeks, child benefit every 4 weeks. Theres two weeks between these so its like child benefit then 2 weeks later tax credits then two weeks later its child benefit again. I get paid weekly, husband has two jobs. One gets paid on the last friday of the month and the other one every 4 weeks on a thursday. It can be a bit difficult to keep track of where on earth our money is coming from.

So in feb we will get:
My pay: 1st, 8th, 15th and 22nd
Husbands first job: 22nd
Husbands second job: 7th
Tax credits: 11th
Child benefit: 25th

I have a spreadsheet that tells me how much I need in my bills account down to the exact day but I get so stressed out trying to balance it all.

I have Jan & feb spreadsheets done, going to try and get march and april done today. I need to fix febs one as normally I carry over around £300 from end of month to start of month but for some reason the number is sitting at £800!

Caspeia

My bill account spreadsheet is now updated until April. I've decided to set an amount from each pay day that stays in the account, everything else on that pay can be allocated to food, overpayments and extras.
I've increased my minimum DD's to £50 for each of the credit cards so without any overpayments my debt payments are £365.76 for the sofa, CC's and loan.

Not very debt free but I've booked a holiday. Before people shout at me, I have tried to make it as cheap as possible. I was originally looking for a caravan holiday in the UK but noticed sun holidays do campsites abroad. 7 nights in a eurocamp outside of Venice for £122.80 and I found flights with Ryanair for £256.62. I had to pick an airport 6hours away from home but even including the petrol and the hotel overnight on site I'm still cheaper than my local airport as they wanted almost £700 for the same flights! Total cost for holiday is £379.42 so far.
Just need:
1. a hotel near airport day before (roughly £30)
2. airport parking (£43.99)
3. insurance (roughly £15 ish)
4. extras from eurocamp (service charge = £52.50 and linen - unsure on price but seems expensive so might bring our own)
5. spends. (this is where I have no idea, going to look into what we want to do and how much it costs)

I've even scouted out the nearest Lidl (25 minute walk away or 10 minute on bus) we'll cook most of our food ourselves and have a couple of meals out in Venice.
I've paid it all in cash, no credit. Husband was paid a bit more than expected this month.

I hope to get the entire trip including everything for under £800. Should be be doable. The trip isn't for another 5 months though so just need to focus on money stuff now!

Caspeia

So sheepishly coming back here, paying off debt was going okay. In Feb I mucked up, I forgot to include my rent amount in my bills spreadsheet which is obviously our biggest outgoing so I ended up doing a money transfer to cover the cost
Apart from that I hadn't spent on the credit card in a while and I applied for a new job at work and I got it. Only issue was I have went from weekly pay to monthly pay and I just wasnt prepared for it. I had a weeks notice from my last weekly pay. I won't get my first monthly pay until the end of this month! I've ended up spending on credit card and if I'm honest using it as an excuse to go crazy.
Debt is now at £15 955.83.
I've downloaded an app to keep track of my purchases and everything in April will be tracked. Also everything will be paid for in cash, even my debit card will be hidden. No grand plans to overpay, I want to work out where my money goes first.
I'm tempted to delete my banking apps off my phone. my bank has a "get cash' option where I can get my money from the cash machine via my phone without my card. it makes it too easy to withdraw 20/30 almost daily

[Deleted User]

Morning Caspeia,

Sounds like you had a slight blip, it's ok, it still happens to me.

Keep going xx

Caspeia

Payday in two days, getting paid a little bit more than expected as I'm getting a months wage plus a couple of days in arrears. Just need to wait on husbands payslip arriving so I can make a budget for this month. My wage going forward should be the same each month as I'm now a salaried worker and no longer hourly paid. Husband is on a zero hours contract so it's more difficult to work out what he'll get. Some months they do a 5 week month, other time it's 4 weeks worth. It's a bit difficult to plan for! He has been getting full time hours though which is good.

My plan is to withdraw all our budget in cash, put cards away and only spend that.

Caspeia

I'm really shocked how much income we'll have this month. Need to double check the tax credits figures but I'm thinking its about 3.8k. I used to be paid weekly and have never added up all my pays before.
This won't be a normal pay month, I think normally it will be around 3k but still. Thats a lot more than I thought we brought in

Caspeia

I'm terrible at remembering to post on here!

In April we paid the minimums to our debts as I used our extra money to pay for my car renewal upfront. I was paying £72 a month last year but this year I've paid £499.86 for the whole year, that includes breakdown cover! I've also cancelled my AA membership which was £12 a month. These two combined came to £1008 a year so I've halved that cost!
I also bought both kids new clothes as they moved up in sizes.

This month we've managed to overpay a bit more. I've still got two DD to come off but when they do our debt total will be at £15 331.41 so a reduction of £624.42 since I last posted! I hope to get into the 14k mark in June!

I've done an overpayment on the loan for £205. This saves me £106 in interest and has taken 2 months off of the loan! It was a 60 month loan which I took out 7 months ago and we're at 50 months left to pay. I'm hoping I can focus on this to overpay as it pains me to see the interest added every month! Just need to work out what order I will pay everything off, will post in a separate post what is left on each debt and interest rates.

Our money situation will change over the next few months. Husbands second job is coming to an end in 2 weeks, so we'll get at least one more pay from that. He was only meant to be there 5 months and has actually been there for a year and a half!

I'm also stopping childcare over the summer holidays which will mean our tax credits will change. Daughters nursery is off so it makes sense for neither of them to go to childcare, son will start at the nursery on his birthday in September which is a lot cheaper than his childminder!

If we lose tax credits we'll be down £326 a every 4 weeks but no childminder means £656 less to pay out every four weeks so we'll still be better off. When he starts nursery up his fees will be about £360 every four weeks so we'll almost at the same point if tax credits stop (I have a feeling they will when we update them). I'm excited to have no childcare to pay out for 7 weeks, its our biggest outgoing by far!

Caspeia

Sofa: £654.64 (0% until its paid off)
Halifax CC: £4092.52 (0% until 12/01/20 then 19.45%)
Loan: £8693.09 (11.9% interest)
Tesco CC: £1249.05 (This starts charging interest next month, 25.49%. I need to try and change this card over to another 0% interest deal)
Lloyds CC: £642.11 (0% until 01/10/2019 then 26.45%)

Total: £15331.41

Caspeia

New credit card ordered for the balance transfer. 0% for 15 months with a 3% fee so around £37 for the fee.

My plan to is overpay the loan as much as possible since it has the most interest, I will also try and pay off the Lloyds CC before the 0% is up. Sofa will run its natural course and the other credit cards have £50 DD set up to pay them off

Caspeia

My 2019 goal:

The highest my debt has been is £15955.83, by the end of the year I want to have paid off 50% of it. So just shy of 8k. My goal is to pay off 8k by the end of the year. It might be impossible but hope I can give it a good go!

Current stats:

£624.42/£8000
7.8%