In need of encouragement...

IrishSean

Update:

Virgin didn't seem to give a monkeys about payment clearing a day late; they didn't even reply to my message seeking assurance my 0% was still in tact. 

Spending has become messy again altho we aren't squandering anything; just slipping a bit into the 0% OD. Am going to be pragmatic; if I can shift another £1500 to savings i'll have £8k total: goal was originally £20k by Christmas (*laughs to self, manically). 
Not sure what universe I set that target, haha.

Have some interest in this weekend's golf with penultimate golf bet that's non-redeemable since Jan still to go. Anything off that is going against my CC.
Only £900 left on DW 0% CC which will in effect clear itself as part of monthly DDs. I'll leave my OD until Halloween then do a hatchet job on it (pun intended), & cut it from £1500 down to £500. 0% expires 01/11 anyhow. 

With a slice of luck I could still be debt free by the autumn; would be ironic if an old golf bet went a way to clearing a chunk of my remaining £1428 balance. 
Hope your DFW journeys are going well & as always ta for reading (if not that riveting at the minute😱😂).

IrishSean

Virgin had e-mailed me to say payment received on the due date, texted on the 11th to say, payment overdue but if you've made a payment please ignore and marked my website enquiry 'complete' without reply.
I then got a call from a guy who claimed to be from Virgin; with my scam-sense twitching I  asked him to email.
Got an email yesterday asking my to call which was a bit concerning. 
Eventually got through yesterday & was told all was fine, no penalty fee or late payment on the acct.
It has focused my mind to clear the remaining £1428. 

I spent around £100 on home furnishings & DIY stuff yesterday; it's going to have to be a balance between overdraft management, savings, debt repayment, DIY & living costs and factoring in Christmas spend.

Without balancing month by month I am wondering the impact holiday, car costs and mid summer gambling slip had on the budgets. That aside what's spent is spent; I've had zero spend on me since early Sept with exception of a bottle of Russian Standard for occasional tipple during the golf. 

Maybe Ernie will be kind in Premium Bond draw in Oct, he's overdue even for a £25!

Continuing to skirt local lockdown postcodes here; feeling stoic about the winter but am thinking the nicer my home environment the easier future lockdowns will be. 

Can't be the only one in that boat.
On a positive my wife's colleague who races sports cars drove my Audi & said what I spent on interior & suspension  (£500 total; excluding service) was transformative; he was very impressed & said it is like a new car 😊

Ta for reading & stay safe in the coming weeks...

IrishSean

Outside painting done (what I can do b4 whole outside gets done next Spring but DW happy)
Bought another piece of trim for the car, will get it fitted early Oct, new grille to freshed it up again.
Still gamble free but current account is fubar'd in a most egregious way (yes, watched both Bill & Ted's with the kids😂). Looking at Oct & some of Nov to balance & hopefully not pay much interest. 
My golfer who was leading tanked in round 3 of 4 so no help with CC there.
Fed up at the minute & now heading into lockdown of some sort again; I've lived the Covid story since last Dec & even i'm baffled by the regulations now. It's tiring & tiresome plus we've what will feel like 6 months of winter to face. 
Must be Monday blues; going to stick to DFW tho as to derail now would only add the woes.

GL all & T4R

IrishSean

OK, feeling a bit inevitably stitched up.

I put all my savings & investments into premium bonds & learnt this morning NS&I are going to whack the rate again from 1.4 to 1% (after attracting billions of new money in😬😬😬)

For some1 on the 'unlucky' side of the fence i'm swinging again back to the idea of not just balancing the current account come Halloween but start putting would-be savings at my 0% credit card. 

As I said in previous post I was fed up yesterday but this now makes me feel it's pointless trying to make anything out of savings to help with debt (investments, as I predicted last month is risky given the mood of the markets; I cashed my shares in).

What are others doing, clearing debt, even 0%s given these abysmal savings rates?
(I have a healthy enough emergency fund)

Any advice welcome

BabyStepper

I now need to move my savings too. I'm so annoyed, not sure what the point was of NS&I promoting their savings accounts so heavily and then changing the interest rate. What a total waste of everyone's time.  

IrishSean

BabyStepper said:

I now need to move my savings too. I'm so annoyed, not sure what the point was of NS&I promoting their savings accounts so heavily and then changing the interest rate. What a total waste of everyone's time.  

@BabyStepper

I totally agree; I know the odds of 'earning interest' from premium bonds having read the excellent MSE page dozens of times; I was also (near enough) the right side of cashing in shares to lock in a good return.

That aside i'm not that impressed at feeling i've been taken for a ride by NS&I which is govt backed & not the same IMHO as profit chasing banks, plus they led joe-public to believe the govt needed cash via NS&I due to Covid spend.

After all the BoE BR was 0.1% when their rate was 1.4, so why the change now?! Have a feeling ML & MSE will question timing & motivations of NS&I given that ppl have spent 3 months moving to them.

Bringing it back again to DFW it makes me more inclined to wipe as much of my remaining £1422, most of which is 0% til July / Sept next year for the psychological boost & idea that being DF is better than being a 'rate tart' for what will be between nothing (March was my last Premium Bond win) and a miserly return of sub 1%. 

Good luck in everyone's dfw journey & if there's any way of beating inflation and earning more than the price of a postage stamp from savings to put to 0% debt then plz do post😊

Sarahwithlove

I saw that about premium bonds. I was gonna start saving via them but think I'll just pay off more on my card instead and have it cleared earlier. Not sure what best thing to do when comes to savings at the moment. 

IrishSean

Sarahwithlove said:

I saw that about premium bonds. I was gonna start saving via them but think I'll just pay off more on my card instead and have it cleared earlier. Not sure what best thing to do when comes to savings at the moment. 

TY Sarah
The irony is i'll prob end up leaving my savings in bonds in 2021 unless there's another purchase (still need to review pension house BTL idea again).
In the meantime I think it's back to DFW stuff as I did Feb - June; my issue is i've spent over £100 since summer doing MTs and BTs to have a mix of savings and 0% debt: with no intention of taking on new borrowing i'm in this bind of thinking that paying off @ 0% feels like it was a waste of money and a fruitless strategy.

I'm just feeling a bit down as even though my debt's low I still need to build savings spent over the years and it seems I'll get little to no help from savings rates (while overdrafts charge 40% against a base rate of 0.1%). Makes me mad.

Sarahwithlove

Yep I know what you mean. Mines all on 0% until Jan 2022 and I'm in same boat. Do I save with crappy rates or do I clear the debt and then overpay on mortgage? 

IrishSean

Sarahwithlove said:

Yep I know what you mean. Mines all on 0% until Jan 2022 and I'm in same boat. Do I save with crappy rates or do I clear the debt and then overpay on mortgage? 

I've been thinking about it over recent days. That pyramid of priority used to look like this for me:

Where I would put money after bills / household:
Emergency Fund including ££ for bigger annual outgoings
Debt with interest
Savings
Debt with no interest
Mortgage over-payment

Now i'm thinking there's sense in reversing the bottom 3: my caveat on that is that i'm servicing 0% so it clears before having to pay to shift again as it's usually more than a mortgage rate. 
Savings are going to be a lower priority for me; i'll invest in my home via DIY over coming 6 months. 

I should say, I don't have a mortgage which was 1 good thing (put cashed in pension against it) but a bad thing too as I used to justify spending some leftover on gambling which in part contributed to overspend and debt.

I know people have to look quite a bit into the future but as long as 0% ccs get cleared I think there's huge merit in overpaying mortgage. 10% is as much as most ppl are allowed or can afford but one thing ppl can do is put paltry savings against a mortgage 'between products'.

Also Nationwide ringfenced our overpayments which we could get back if circumstances changed, making savings in current climate even less meaningful. 

The psychological boost of not having a mortgage is great but i'm left thinking have we pushed ourselves enough for kids' futures plus if anything happened to us there's no mortgage to get payed off by insurer (we do have 100k life ins. each tho). 

As i've said before in thread my intention is still to put extra cash from 2021 into a buy to let if at all possible. 

T4R