This time I'm sticking to it!

rdone

Received a cheque for my husbands SORN car and it's cleared in our account so have added that to the Sains card.  We sat down at lunch and worked out that at our current rate of pay we'll have it all paid off by December 2022.  Which currently seems a very long way off!  However as we're both WFH at the moment and saving over £300 a month on petrol let alone eating out and general spending, we're hoping to put a lot more towards the balances and that this will be sooner.  Our savings pots are starting to build and are going to be handy to put towards what we'd normally class as "normal" spending, and then the extra towards the CC.

Lots and lots of sums this morning which I'm going to outline here:
Sains card
Want to pay by Oct 2021 as that's when 0% deal ends.
Currently pay £150 towards it.
From December will pay an additional £150 a month (HSBC card will be paid off)
Which means between now and Oct we need to pay an extra £1,901.93.

Virgin card
Current deal ending in July 2021, will need to BT then
Once the extra £1901.03 has been paid off the Sains card all additional monies will be put towards this card to get the BT figure as low as possible so the transfer rate is as low as possible.

Lots of sums done this morning but they're all good.  Nice to know when we can stop putting additional to the Sains card and move to virgin.  Think I'll set up a nice colourful ss with charts and percentages so we can see it all clearly.  I'm a visual person so helps me to see things like this.

savingholmes

Fabulous savings and payments. You are truly on a roll and it is good to hear you so motivated to clear debt.

rdone

All going well and have managed to add an extra £500 to the Sains card this month.

A small change to the above is that we've opened up a high interest (well, as high as you can get atm) savings account which we're putting all extras into rather than putting them on the card.  We calculated we should have about £40 extra in a years time and decided all helps with these balances so it's worth it.

So I'm still going to take it off our total debt as the money is locked in these savings accounts and the only way we can get to it is if we completely close the account.

In other news our savings are starting to creep up which is good.  Our spending has been much more mindful although looking at our spending spreadsheet we have seen it creep up a little in the last few weeks so need to be careful.  It's why I'm loving this spending diary, we wouldn't have noticed that otherwise

rdone

I balance transferred the Virgin card to a Natwest deal as it was 0% fee and gave us 8 months longer to pay it/get it down further to pay as little fee as possible. So that's all of Virgin and I maxed it out by moving some of the Sains card too.

New balances:
HSBC: £795.32 (will be paid off in Nov, deal ends March)
Sains: £4481.93 (will be paid off Oct 2021 at the latest, deal ends then)
Natwest: £8310 (deal ends Feb 2022, hoping to have paid off as much as possible, if not all)
Savings accounts (spare cash & extras): £525

Also won £30 on the lottery last week
We never ever do it, but the cashier thought the lady in front asked for a lucky dip so printed one but didn't, she didn't want it and I felt like I couldn't leave it there.  Glad I didn't!

savingholmes

Glad it worked out for you. Keep plodding. One day you will look up and the balance will be halved, thirded and gone.

rdone

Been a little while since I've posted and we haven't been very moneysaving recently... we booked a trip to Spain and as we arrived at the airport the government made their announcement!  We decided not to go and went to Italy instead.  The lovely yellow and blue airline we all know so well refused any sort of refund/flight change... we thought we were covered with their "move your flights for free" scheme but apparently you have to move your flights 7 days before, so not really much use!  Car hire was cancelled but paid a £40 fine, two of the three hotels we were staying at refunded so we lost £56 on the other.  Plus we then flew from a different airport with a different airline (used a voucher from a previously cancelled flight so at least it cost us no more and the voucher is now used!) and so had to pay for car parking there too which was £103.  So a total loss of around £400.  We use the holiday parking site often so I've asked if they'll provide us a voucher out of good faith so fingers crossed there!  The hotels in Italy were a lot cheaper than Spain so I think overall we won't be down as much as the £400 and in all honesty I don't want to work it out... we had a lovely time and through lockdown we have extra savings so we can cover it.  Just sucks that it'll cover it and not go to the CCs!

All is good on the CC front, balances are coming down and we've put extra into the savings accounts each month to go towards the balances (as above).

rdone

Okay, I worked it out.  We spent about £110 more than we'd intended to in the end as Italy was cheaper.  So now I feel good.  Sounds better than £400!

savingholmes

Great result. Hope you had a good time

rdone

Hi all!  It's been a while since I updated here.

I posted this on 2nd July and thought I'd compare where we are now.
rdone said:

New balances:
HSBC: £795.32 (will be paid off in Nov, deal ends March)
Sains: £4481.93 (will be paid off Oct 2021 at the latest, deal ends then)
Natwest: £8310 (deal ends Feb 2022, hoping to have paid off as much as possible, if not all)
Savings accounts (spare cash & extras): £525

Today:
HSBC: paid off in full
Sains: £3,581.93
Natwest: £7,580.17
Savings accounts: £1,155.45

So we did have £13,587.25 in July (not including the savings) and now we're at £11,162.10 so we've paid £2,425.15 in 5 months.  I'm very pleased with that.  Especially with the additional money we've managed to save. 
Last month we sold my DH car as we haven't used it since March.  We put it to SORN and cancelled the insurance back then too but we finally took the plunge and have become an official one car household.  That money is sitting in it's own savings account a minute just in case we need to buy another one at some point and we can use the money for it.
We managed to pay all of Christmas off without an issue as we'd saved all year for it so that was a nice feeling, we've also spent very little this month due to lockdown so I think we'll be able to double the savings accounts come next week.  I don't like to transfer money to our fixed savings until we get paid.  We're good at not spending it if it's in the account and then we have access to it in case of emergency.  Our debt has built up from going on holiday too often!

savingholmes

Good progress. Heading in right direction