Living constantly in an overdraught. 15 January 2020 at 7:35PM edited 30 November -1 at 12:00AM in Debt-Free Wannabe 7 replies 864 views

antjai

Hi Forum. It's been a little difficult - but here I am. I have been living in a £2100 overdraught for the past year, getting charges. My salary falls short each month. Today I went over the overdraught so will be charged till next week till I get paid. This has been the final straw. I do not have an existing credit card otherwise I was thinking of getting a debt balance transfer card and pay it off at once so I can pay monthy on a credit card. I do not know what to do for the best. If anyone can help I'd really appreciate it.

Thanks a lot on advance :wave:

Willing2Learn

Hi antjai and welcome to the forum :hello:

We need to see your Statement of Affairs (SOA), so that we know your exact circumstances. Then we can give better advice, guidance and support. Please complete the online SOA form, then click on the 'format for MSE' button, and copy & paste it into this thread

WhenIam64

If you'd like advice on your spending then the Statement of Accounts is the way to go

I do not have an existing credit card otherwise I was thinking of getting a debt balance transfer card and pay it off at once so I can pay monthy on a credit card. I do not know what to do for the best. If anyone can help I'd really appreciate it.

I can confirm the madness of this approach. I spend about £1K a month on my CC and get 0.5% cashback in it - so £1k * 0.05% *12 = £60 in cashback. The £1K I would have used from my current account is in a savings account yielding 0.01% interest so a further £1 in interest onto the £60.

I would have spent the £1K a month anyway on normal spending but the CC companies are paying me to use their card rather than my own money. It is completely and utterly bonkers that you can make more from spending than saving.

The trick though is to keep track so you don't overspend your savings - which is what the SOA is for.

Naomim

Talking from experience, it's a terrible idea. I have £30k+ credit card debt and balance transfers to my overdraft certainly added a fair chunk to this figure. Until you complete the SOA and can see where your money is going, you will clear the overdraft with a cc then use the OD again and have both OD and CC to pay.

It's hard going but you have to budget to within your means to stay out of it.

Naomim

Unicorn_cottage

Antjai - welcome!

You will always get help here. Sending through your SOA will help us identify and suggest routes that are open to you. Whatever the solution you can do this.

Unicorn

antjai

Thank you all. I am just reading the thread before bed. Wasnt expecting a reply so soon. Going to complete that form for tomorrow after work. Thanks for all the replies

gettingtheresometime

What I did to clear my overdraft was to take my salary & withdraw the difference between that & the sum of the overdraft charges for that month, the amount that I decided to pay off that month and any direct debits/standing orders. I then lived on that money and that alone.

In addition to that I any money I got from eBay etc went into the account & wasn't touched so effectively was paying off the overdraft

middleclassbutpoor

When you complete your SOA.

You will need to ensure that you are spending less than you earn and creating a surplus which you can reduce your overdraft.

Until you have got the knack of doing this and budgeting, there is no point even thinking of debt consolidation through loans of transferring onto a credit card.

The only issue you may have is with the increases to overdraft interest rates of late, you will need to get quite aggressive with your SOA to make this happen.