Ditching the Debt

GinoOhGinoGinelli

Hello everyone, I hope you're all having a good week.

While I wait to find out what's happening with the big refunds I'm due, I'm having a think about money making and money saving ideas.

I've already used some of them up unfortunately - PPI claims, YouGov (which took me almost three years!), and 20Cogs. I was doing Pinecone surveys for a while but there was a problem with my login and I ended up not being a panel member anymore.

I've done a couple of focus groups in the past, and I'd be keen to do more in the future. I event went along to one and they had too many people so I got paid and was allowed leave!

I'm on the TV viewing panel and should accumulate vouchers over time just for watching telly, which is nice! 

I briefly tried matched betting and am tempted to give that a proper go but I need to do some more research first. I'm not sure if it would have any impact on future credit searches for trying to get 0% transfer cards.

I've also done some pet sitting in the past, which I just loved. I'd really enjoy doing that again as I'm a huge animal lover. I'm going to look into the Government policy about being allowed to earn up to £1,000 tax-free per year by doing a side hustle that I read about recently. Definitely want to check the small print on that first though.

My other idea is selling on eBay, but I got totally messed about last time I tried to sell anything so I'm a little wary. I reckon I have a few things that might sell for a small amount though. So maybe a (very early) spring clean and declutter is in order!

LittleMissDetermined

I had a similar experience with eBay last time I sold so I just sell on local Facebook sites now.

You seem to be organised already and it’s good that you are also focusing on the positives too.  I would 100% recommend some kind of spreadsheet to track your income and expenditures, you’ll be able to see where you end up frittering money on what’s not needed, and you can tot it up for the month which will have a bigger impact. 

I’ve subscribed to cheer you along, good luck on your journey!

LMD x

GinoOhGinoGinelli

Thanks very much @LittleMissDetermined! I agree, selling on FB is usually much more straightforward. I quit FB a couple of years ago but wonder if my partner still has an account...

I have a spreadsheet that plans out all my income and expenditure but I think your idea of tracking my actual expenditure is a good idea. I've tried to cover everything but I'm sure there will be things I'm missing unless I track all the money I've spent each week/month.

jokono

Hey Gino, happy new diary!
£30k is a lot and it can be really overwhelming, but you've already done the most difficult part - face up to it, write down and have a plan in place.
Spreadsheets help, I have two - one with all cards listed and balance each month so I can see how much it's going down and estimate where I will be at the end of the year. The other one is monthly again, a list of income, fixed outgoings/pots and then all the debts listed again where I decide how much goes into each of them out of what's left. Make sure to have a spending budget here as well, a realistic one to get you through the month.

I had the 9months Fluid when I started with a really small limit, I don't remember if I worked out the fee would be smaller than the interest saved (you might want to do that) but I went for it. I think they increased my limit as well after a couple of months so I was able to transfer more. The APR was really high after the deal ended so I made sure to pay it all off in time. I don't know how much you pay off every month, but you must get more offers soon, C4pital1 is the next one I got I think. I now have two cards on 0%, both with hefty balances, the 0% ends in September but I'm obsessively checking new offers almost daily.

Good luck, you can do it!

GinoOhGinoGinelli

Thank you and Happy Friday @jokono!

I think my new spreadsheets are very similar, so that's really reassuring! I just need to ensure I am realistic about the extra bits and pieces I could be spending over the course of the month. While I feel I've included everything, I'm sure I've underbudgeted in some areas so I'll need to keep a close eye on that.

It's also really helpful to know about the Fluid card, and that they increased your balance. The chance of that happening makes the card more appealing!

I haven't updated my spreadsheet as I was expecting to be able to pay off a couple of big chunks this month and then re-allocate all my debt spending. I am due fairly big tax and pet insurance refunds that haven't come through yet, which is really frustrating. I think I'll just make the planned payments as usual and once I know what's happening with the refunds, I'll re-do my budget and balances. Hopefully, I can then apply for the Fluid card without it spreading all my multiple minimum+ payments too thinly if that makes sense.

LittleMissDetermined

I’m always re-juggling my spreadsheets, I find it strangely therapeutic  

Hopefully your refunds will come through soon

Tiredbutdetermined

Hello,
Your total might seem overwhelming but you seem to have a good, positive plan going forward and any possibility of moving to lower APRs will be a huge bonus.
I have cut down massively in the last 10 months but January has been my first month of budgeting and I have massively under budgeted in a few categories too but sometime you just have to go with it and refine the process month by month

jokono

You're just starting, I think you'll need a couple of months to see how it goes and what needs changing. 

@LittleMissDetermined you find it therapeutic, I worry I'm obsessing over it too much. I love it, but it also gets me down sometimes, mostly around the middle of the month when nothing happens.

astrocytic_kitten

Hi Gino, happy new diary! I’ll be subscribing to cheer you along. It sounds like you’ve got a solid plan and are taking control of your spending - love the list of positives! I found my diary here to be really helpful when paying off debt, especially when it hit the long slog stage.

GeorgianaCavendish

Hi Gino, well done for starting your diary and doing those difficult first steps of getting everything under control!

You are making loads of positive changes and you will start to see the benefit of these quite quickly, so don't feel like you need to do everything in one go. 

I had a similar amount of personal debt to you at the beginning of 2017 and I didn't qualify for any 0% deals initially. After a few months of making overpayments, I did qualify for a 6.9% balance transfer rate with one of my credit cards so any progress that you can make will help in the mid-term. After a couple of years I started to see the 0% deals coming through too, which really helped me to make inroads into the credit card debt. 

How long have you got left on your loans? I found it quite motivating to plot the course of my future loan repayments on my spreadsheet so that I could see where I would be in a few months / years time. And then I would try to forget about them in the short term, it might be possible to refinance them down the line but for now just make the payments as needed and concentrate your efforts on the credit card debt. 

Some MSE activities I do are surveys with Ipsos I-Say, Prolific Academic and YouGov - none of them are massive money spinners, but it is a good way to fill in time that I would otherwise be scrolling mindlessly on my phone. I tried Swagbucks a few weeks ago but I found it so time consuming and complicated that I gave up! I'm also registered with a bunch of focus groups and I probably get onto 1-2 of these a year - it is definitely harder now that they are mainly online, when they were in-person I would get 3-4 a year as it seemed less people could be bothered to apply. Other easy wins are cash back sites like TopCashBack and QuidCo; and receipt apps - I use Shoppix and Storewards and there are others out there.

Good luck - you can do it!