Savings or Debt Clearance

CandyCupcake

It was 3% BT fee, so around £45.

Oops yes, Barclaycard should now be Halifax!

Agh ok, so now the situation has changed you recommend saving the money initially? I really need to have more will power to not spend it!! But I understand your logic, plus it will accrue a small amount of interest whilst in savings. I think I would feel better seeing the balances go down on the credit cards though... decisions, decisions...

CandyCupcake

Thanks Essex

EssexHebridean

CandyCupcake wrote: »

It was 3% BT fee, so around £45.

Oops yes, Barclaycard should now be Halifax!

Agh ok, so now the situation has changed you recommend saving the money initially? I really need to have more will power to not spend it!! But I understand your logic, plus it will accrue a small amount of interest whilst in savings. I think I would feel better seeing the balances go down on the credit cards though... decisions, decisions...

If there is ANY chance you think you'll spend it, send it straight to the card. The "Save then pay off" method only works if you KNOW there is no risk of you spending it and leaving yourself short to pay off!

CandyCupcake

Think I'm going to stick with the 50/50 approach! It's easier to cut the credit cards up so that the money can't be spent. Right now, I'm not sure how much I trust myself not to spend the savings (even though I'm really really really going to try!!).

getmore4less

Good practice for future displine.

Have a saver just for the CC money net them off against each other to see the debt going down.

Do what works for you.

enthusiasticsaver

Personally I would calculate how much to pay to Halifax monthly to clear it in 12 months. If just shy of £1600 including BT fee that should be around £130 a month. That way you know it will be cleared within the deal period. Any extra put to savings.

CandyCupcake

This is great advice Enthusiasticsaver. At the minute, our basic budget won't allow for a monthly payment of £130 However, with overpayments I'm certainly going to use this as a minimum amount to aim for. The budget planner I use, from MSE, shows us as having £38.61 "spare" each month after making minimum payments to the credit card. So I'm going to make sure that this gets sent to the credit card at the end of every month too.

EssexHebridean

Candy have a think about where else you can earn oddments of extra money as well - anything you buy online, check whether you can go through TCB for cashback. Online surveys maybe? There's money in those, even if not megabucks. All those little extras can go straight to the debt!

I bought a couple of big ticket items a few years ago - I had the money saved to pay for them, but instead bought on my cashback CC before transferring the combined value to a 0% Balance Transfer card, keeping the money I had saved in the bank. As soon as the card arrived I cut it up - as I wasn't going to be spending on it. I then set the DD to pennies above the first minimum payment level - so that £28 paid out as standard every month without dropping as more payments were made. Everything else on that card was paid off in 20 months by surveys, cashback etc, I never paid a penny of interest and was left still with the majority of the original sum in the bank. There are ways and means!

CandyCupcake

I do use TCB, I have about £5.00 in there at the moment as I'm not the best in remembering to use it! So definitely need to get into the habit of that.

I've tried surveys in the past, but I get bored too quickly that I never make anything from it. I can certainly try and spend more time bet matching so I can get closer to the £400 a month profit. Some people can make £1000+ a month, so definitely the potential to earn more if I put the hours in

getmore4less

Stoozing.

is all about borrowing money cheaper than you can get from investing it.

Just because you start with debt does not negate the principle.

A lot of people saved a lot of money on their mortgages.

If you cashback you can stooze.