Countdown from £28k...

IrishSean

☝ agreed, kids magazine are a fierce price! I had to ditch weekly auto-express when the kids were small; couldn't get time to read them even paying mail order price of just over a quid. 

ryanm8655

Will stick with chocolate next time

So...time for the debt update...

Have got rid of two more cards:
MBNA - £545.76
M&S - £834.01

So the total is now down to £13,222.38
Remaining balances (all on 0%):
Barclaycard - £4294.98
Tesco - £586.47
Virgin - £4420.64
Natwest - £3920.29 

That leaves me with £255.23, which is unallocated this month. I was going to transfer some of this to my nationwide account as an emergency fund but I am tempted to stick it on the barclaycard just to get the total below £13K.

Plan for next month's payday is to:
Pay rest of Tesco - £556.37 (after the £30 DD has come out)
Pay £100 into emergency fund.
Pay the left over money to Barclaycard (around £750) on top of the £500 DD. The Barclaycard should be gone by September and I'll just have the Virgin and Natwest left on longterm 0% at that stage.

Alternatively I could pay some of the £1300 to LISA but I think I'll get the Barclaycard gone first, then maybe do a quick blast of the LISA allowance before moving onto the Virgin and Natwest.

Have had some more news through the grapevine on the job interview front. Apparently they have allocated the posts and there is no reserve list, so either the person who said I passed got me confused or I've got the job. Not counting my chickens but fingers crossed.

IrishSean

Fingers crossed on the job front fella.

My mrs-suss-sus promo was a game changer for our finances; like a second p/t income

mrsmoneypenny90

Your doing really really well, imagine what you can do with all this disposable income once the debts are gone! You will feel so liberated 🙂

ryanm8655

Yeah, just had a bit of a daydream about what I could do with the money once it’s all paid off...

Think I’ll transfer the spare cash into my nationwide for now. Leave a bit of progress for next month.

Perhaps use proceeds of sales to pay down some more on Barclaycard.

Should be able to raise about £150 as an estimate.

And the good thing is I can stop buying fragrance samples now as John Lewis is open again. Can scratch that itch with their testers instead

PurpleFairy26

I’ve just read your diary from the start. You’ve done so amazingly well 😃 

Just a couple of general comments from me: 
🌈if you want to save you could open a regular saver and put some in there (it’s a set amount a month for a year) and you get the interest bonus at the end. If you need the money in the meantime you can always withdraw it (no interest) but you’d be no worse off than having it in your current account

🌈 if you like tinkering with numbers and to relieve some boredom I would definitely recommend setting up an excel spreadsheet with a full budget (including spends like presents, car repairs, car insurance) and think 
about setting a monthly amount aside for them 
- I appreciate that currently you can easily afford £30 birthday present here and there but doing this will help form good habits for when you buy your own place and have other commitments (council tax, utilities etc...)  Plus with pubs and restaurants opening again soon having a set aside entertainment budget may be useful. 
🌈 if you want to full on tinker you could do a budget sheet for what it *might* be when you went back to London 

best of luck in your journey. Have subscribed. 

ryanm8655

PurpleFairy26 said:

I’ve just read your diary from the start. You’ve done so amazingly well 😃 

Just a couple of general comments from me: 
🌈if you want to save you could open a regular saver and put some in there (it’s a set amount a month for a year) and you get the interest bonus at the end. If you need the money in the meantime you can always withdraw it (no interest) but you’d be no worse off than having it in your current account

🌈 if you like tinkering with numbers and to relieve some boredom I would definitely recommend setting up an excel spreadsheet with a full budget (including spends like presents, car repairs, car insurance) and think 
about setting a monthly amount aside for them 
- I appreciate that currently you can easily afford £30 birthday present here and there but doing this will help form good habits for when you buy your own place and have other commitments (council tax, utilities etc...)  Plus with pubs and restaurants opening again soon having a set aside entertainment budget may be useful. 
🌈 if you want to full on tinker you could do a budget sheet for what it *might* be when you went back to London 

best of luck in your journey. Have subscribed. 

Thanks for the reply.

Those are some really helpful suggestions going forward and also as a time filler.

I’ve been saying it for a while, ha but I think the allocating to pots is the next level in terms of the budgeting. I hadn’t thought about it in terms of giving me something to do in those lulls in the month though, thanks! T

I have just stuck £150 into my nationwide, which puts the balance up to £207.88. It’s harder for me to get the money out of there too as I don’t know where the card reader is to transfer it back. So can only access in a true emergency. Still leaves a bit of a buffer in my HSBC account too. Might be worth me doing another SOA and an aspirational one for post lockdown, as you say. The main things I could do with a pot for are car (insurance and maintenance) plus the presents. I was doing that for a while and did use for presents etc. but got out of the habit. 

SOA added to the to do list along with selling some bits.

My car insurance Is due in a couple of months but am unsure about paying in full. This is because I plan on getting rid of my car about 4 months later and IIRC they charge an admin fee to cancel when you’ve paid in full. At the moment I pay around £60/month (it’s a bit less as they knocked £5 off for the £25 rebate) but I’ll have a years no claims so should be a bit cheaper I hope...

Thanks,
Ryan

ryanm8655

A spend free weekend. 

Went to visit my uncle with the rest of the family, chauffeured there and then wined and dined all weekend. Drank far too much as it was my auntie’s birthday.

Came back with a hangover but also got a £25 amazon voucher and a nice bottle of whisky (it was my birthday earlier in the month), so I’ll use that to buy a tent for the camping trip with mates in a couple of weeks. A mini saving there. Still need a sleeping bag/camping mat though. Also have one more birthday in July.

Will get some things up for sale tomorrow.

IrishSean

I got my sleeping bags in tesco; they're great.

No point paying over the odds for occasional use & with camping stuff its more how u look after it than cost👍

ryanm8655

Thanks for the tip!

Have booked the camping in for the weekend for the 11th. Have a microbrewery on site, which is cool. £40 for 10 litres, which should do us for the weekend Looking forward to it! £14 for the pitch, which isn’t too bad. Near bridport so not far to travel either and right on the Jurassic coast so plenty of exploring to do.

Just need to buy the camping stuff now. Have had a look at Tesco and some bargains on there. Can get an air bed for a fiver, tents as cheap as £11 So should be able to get the lot for not much more than £20. Will check amazon as well, since I have the voucher to use but find amazon annoying for searching as there are pages of tat to work through. Could just save it to use for a birthday present. It’s my uncle’s coming up later in July.

Still no news on the job front but hopefully will hear this week, one way or another.