Frugal, thrifty, make do, mend! Let this debt come to an end!

foxgloves

It's an amazing feeling to have actual savings, isn't it? You'll get used to the car, I'm sure, & the AC probably does just require re-gassing.
F

themadvix

If you don’t get on with NB’s dishwasher powder, I’ve found the smol ones to work well and they do well on ethics. They are £6.50 for a month’s supply but even with our small dishwasher they last us longer than a month. Afraid I don’t know how that compares to non-eco ones price-wise as it’s been a long time since I’ve bought any!

Congrats on the car and the savings!!

Moorviews

Congratulations on clearing your debts and having some savings to hand 🎉🥂 I hope all works out well with the new car too. We used to have one automatic and one manual gearbox car and I had to remember which one I was in!

Elisheba

Morning, frugal friends,

Just a quick update on here before I get ready for work.

I redid my sums regarding savings, and I was a little out before and it's about £6.5k in savings I have now. So £5k of that is in the LISA, and I opened a Plum ISA (which has the highest interest rate right now of potential  savings accounts) and put £1k in there. I'll put the remaining £500 odd in at the end of the month when I know exactly what's left.

The remaining money, which includes each month's expenses, and the annual pots money, I'm keeping in the 4% interest Cynergy account, and transfering over to my current account as I need it.

I should be able to filter at least £417 each month to savings from now on. Hopefully I'll be able to add a little extra each month as well from budgeting economies. I think I'll try and aim for it being £450 each month where possible, and that should motivate me to keep the spending reigned in.

I reread the info on how to get your finances in order for a mortgage. One of the things that apparently effects things is how long you have had you accounts for, so on reflection I've decided I won't change my current account to the C00p until after I've bought a house.

In regards to credit cards the advice is make sure the balance isn't over 25% of available credit, which obviously isn't a problem now I'm only using the Am£x for monthly spending paying it off in full each month. What it doesn't say if whether that debts being 25% of available credit takes into account bank loans, and if it does then it'll definitely go against me as my bank loan is high and I don't think having credit cards with limits adding up to 75% more than that will look very good. So I'm just going to ignore that as I can't do anything about it, and instead keep the Amex, and maybe one or two of the credit cards I've had the longest. So today I'll start closing the other ones. It'll effect my credit rating to start with, but hopefully should have evened out by the time I'm ready to get a mortgage.

In other news, I was absolutely fuming the day before yesterday when I discovered the Stevia sweetener I bought 1kg of online and which cost over a tenner is laced with sugar 🙄🙄🙄🙄. I hadn't even thought to check the ingredients when I bought it and it certainly wasn't clear from the product description. I'm thinking of writing an email to complain - what is the point of a sweetener with sugar in it? Thankfully when I tested my blood glucose the next morning after having used it it wasn't too bad, so no ongoing damage done, but honestly! So I now have almost 1kg of a product that is useless to me, and have wasted over £10 on it this month 😤.

MSE wise I think the last couple of days have been NSDs. I'm very much trying to live by the adage that the best way to be frugal is not to spend money. Oh and I checked the service history of the new car and it was regassed last year, so not much to be done about the air con not being very cold I think.

Oh and I had a bit of a fright when I had an email from WBAC saying the V5 I gave them hadn't been accepted by the DVLA as it was out of date. A phone call to the DVLA later though, and it turns out I did have a more recent one so I was able to do something online and it should all be sorted out now.

Right, definitely time to get ready for work now! Hope everyone has a good day and gets to enjoy the sunny weather 😁.

dawnybabes

How odd the regassing hasn’t worked - we did my sons on a groupon deal so was only £20 - might be worth getting it redone ? 

Elisheba

foxgloves said:

It's an amazing feeling to have actual savings, isn't it? You'll get used to the car, I'm sure, & the AC probably does just require re-gassing.
F

Yep, its blooming fantastic!  As I have been sorting out bits and pieces all week, I have been going back to check on the accounts with money in them like a broody hen on her nest    

Elisheba

dawnybabes said:

How odd the regassing hasn’t worked - we did my sons on a groupon deal so was only £20 - might be worth getting it redone ? 

I'll keep an eye out but I am loathe to spend money on something that may not do anything, as with it being regassed last year this is likely just as good as it gets. Also being rural I doubt I'll find any deals near enough may to make them viable.  Still, its worth keeping in mind.

Elisheba

themadvix said:

If you don’t get on with NB’s dishwasher powder, I’ve found the smol ones to work well and they do well on ethics. They are £6.50 for a month’s supply but even with our small dishwasher they last us longer than a month. Afraid I don’t know how that compares to non-eco ones price-wise as it’s been a long time since I’ve bought any!

Congrats on the car and the savings!!

Ta, @t@themadvix Its turns out I have enough crumbled power in the bottom on the tub (I cut tablets in half) for another 2 or 3 washes so haven't looked into NB's powder yet.

Elisheba

Moorviews said:

Congratulations on clearing your debts and having some savings to hand 🎉🥂 I hope all works out well with the new car too. We used to have one automatic and one manual gearbox car and I had to remember which one I was in!

Thankyou!!!!!!  It really feels like the start of a new era 

Elisheba

Just popping on quickly to celebrate the end of the awful credit cards!!!!!

So today I cancelled/closed - 

Virgin CC
Halifax CC
Nationwide CC
Lloyds CC
MBNA CC

And it turns out Tesco CC and RBS CC had already been closed - I think because I haven't used them in so long and probably forgot to give them my new address when I moved.

So I am left with Amex and a Barclaycard (the BC was one of the oldest I had other than RBS, which apparently looks good on mortgage applications, so I kept it), just for the cashback on the Amex and keeping the credit rating ticking over once it recovers from the hit of closing down so many credit lines all at once.  

Also closed an old RBS current account and ISA just to tidy things up.  

That was 9 credit cards I had - that's just insane isn't it?  And all of them were maxed out apart from the Amex just over 5 years ago, and I had a bank loan I was paying as well, and a catalogue debt, and some other stuff I can't even remember.  How much better is life now without all of that hanging over my head? Thank God for MSE and getting my finances sorted out - that's all I can say! I have had a few blips along the way and it could have been quicker, but I'm pretty much there.  Looking at my old s/s's it was all so complicated and I was losing so much money on interest, and was just dreaming of the day I could just fire money into savings instead of paying this and that off, and today is that day!

So I am breaking out the virtual champers, and pouring you all glasses! Thank you for your support over the years! Chin chin, everyone!