Pay off £20,000 (ish) by Xmas 2008

mbaz

I would love to join this challenge!! I have absolutely no idea how I will do it but as my debts stand at around £17000 if I can pay them off in a year I will!!! What ideas do you have for rasing the cash to pay off the debts so I can steal some!

pandapaws

Well, nothing to report so far other than the fact that I almost spent £80 on a stereo that we really don't need until I remembered:

NO FAFF!

Having spent the morning signing up DH for Pigsback for a few quid, listing a few items on Ebay, and spending over an hour getting my home insurance renewal down by over £100 with cashback, to go and spend £80 on a load of crap would have been such an example of the way I waste pounds while faffing about to earn pennies.

So that's the first good thing to come out of this challenge so far! I might keep a tally of the stupid things I stop (or don't stop) myself from doing over the year too. In fact I won't mess about, I'll start now: Panda 1 - Faffs 0 !

Good luck and keep going everyone! Taxi, how did you manage such a huge payment?! Well done!

taxi73

Hi Pandapaws..well done on not spending the money...thats fab news...
The Egg £1k overpayment was quite easy as I had about £900 across savings accounts so added another £100 out of my normal bank account...
The barclay one was a real struggle this month...I get £150 board off my daughter p/m..my DH gets a pension of £140 from a previous job(he's not old it's because he had an injury)...the rest is our tips and any other money I can lay my hands on spare...bits of change etc...£33 from the woman that peed in the cab..etc..
thats how I did it...

andan

Hey everyone, welcome to all the new people and well done taxi73 on paying off the Barclaycard, it's great when you see debts go down. Well i have managed to put an extra £100 into my isa allowance, so that's £200 so far. It's nice to see my savings going up for a change instead of living frugally and seeing no returns for it.

Well done everyone on their success so far, with Christmas here it's tempting to get buying!

taxi73

Well done andan..we'd all be rich if it was savings our money was going into rather than debt...can't wait until I can do that..it must feel great saving and an ISA is the best place to put it...

Determined_2b_Debt_Free

The 'Stop Faffing Around' challenge seems like the perfect place for me to start - I'm the ultimate faffer and time-waster. I've been practising with the money saving idea for a while but feel I need a bit of extra help to reach a big goal.

I'm not sure £20k is even within my reach in a year but I like to aim high :-)

I'm going to try everything, I don't spend that much as it is so there might not be much I can cut but I'm going to discipline myself. A few ideas already:

Make my lunch
Plan my food shopping better and freeze extra portions
Ebay
Mystery Shopping
Extra work (here and there when I can manage)
Sell a car
Buy only what I need (I like the green side of this too)
Cash back websites

I'll be keeping an eye out for other useful tips on here too!

Good luck everyone!

poorandindenial

Hello

I am loving the idea of working together to each pay off £20k in a year so am going to sign up for the challenge (if you will take a slacker like me). I am quite competetive and don't like to let the side down so hopefully this will help me take charge of my money wasting ways.

If you look at my signature it looks like I have made about £2k of progress on my debt, but the reality is that my faffing and wasteful ways have meant this happened two years ago and it has remained static since.

I will do a proper tot-up of my debt over the weekend and then hopefully I will be spurred on to doing something sensible about it.

First step - transferring the balance of my rip-off-rate barclaycard that I have been meaning to transfer for ages to sensible card. (or more accurately have transferred to sensible cards many times and still racked up again - this time the card gets shredded). I am about to get a non-consolidated lump sum from work so that should help me onto an even keel for the month as well as pay off a bit and to prepare me for the challenge ahead.

My username might look a bit negative but I chose it to remind me that the reason that I am poor is because I have been in denial for too long and need to wake up and smell the (from now on made at home and not purchased on the way to work for £2) coffee

Good luck all, lets stop the banks making so much money off of us.

Pollydaydream

Hi all and welcome to everyone joining.

You are all really keeping me on the straight and narrow. I have the mantra "stop faffing" running round my head all the time. It's not showing in any extra money at the moment, which is a bit depressing, but I am getting more organised, which hopefully will mean more time for making and saving money.

Have a good day everyone.

Polly

hypno06

the good habits you are forming will start to follow through and will soon show up in your signature.......keep going, you are doing really well so far :T

penguin83

Woohoo paid off my GE Loan at the end of last month and have today had a letter from them stating that I am now 15.71 and in credit and they will send a cheque out. Every little helps! x x