Geriatricmum vs inner voice: A monologue

Geriatricmum

enthusiasticsaver said:

Geriatricmum said:

enthusiasticsaver said:

Thats a good start to your diary.  Love the introduction and the constant battle between the inner voice and your  brain.  

Tackling the Barclaycard given that is the most expensive card and building up some savings for emergencies seems to be a good plan moving forward. It must be tricky keeping track of all those different 0% deals as well. 

Inner voice told me to make a spreadsheet! So I asked my husband to make one ha! I was going to pop a screen grab of it on here but it doesn't seem to work, there's colours and everything, DH is so talented.

I love spreadsheets.  Even better if they are in colour.  Is that to flag up when the deals are up? 

Did you manage to pay the car repair bill without using the credit cards?  If so that is a positive but if your grocery budget has taken a bashing I guess juggling money for January may be your only option.  That is why you need an EF but you were so unlucky to have an emergency on the first month of trying to get sorted.  

Yeah, it's got different coloured cells for when the 0% ends. I might add how long it'll take me to pay off the debts at current levels. I'll try and add a screen grab of it when I have time.

I paid the garage with money from our joint account which includes grocery money. I'll see what impact the tax rebate has once the cheque clears, so far this week we have bought milk and bread only and used food we already have to make meals. We'll see what happens! 

Geriatricmum

MFWannabe said:

twiggy86 said:

Sorry I'm siding with the inner voice! I have been back here a few times and had the same view as you - i.e. debts being priority 1. However this time around I saved up my emergency fund first and I feel in such a better place! Yes it was hard not seeing the debt numbers go down whilst I was saving up the EF, but I feel like I have so much more control of things now I have it. 

Me too! Even if it’s a few hundred pound to start off with 
You’ll feel so much better having something to fall back on 

I might pop my vinted money in an EF. I sold another two items today! 

Spendless

That's a good plan. Buy any groceries needed with the tax refund and start an EF with Vinted money. 
You will start to get your dopamine hit from doing things like this.  

enthusiasticsaver

Think of it as a challenge to get as close to payday as possible purely on what is in your bank account and selling stuff.  

Geriatricmum

Spendless said:

That's a good plan. Buy any groceries needed with the tax refund and start an EF with Vinted money. 
You will start to get your dopamine hit from doing things like this.  

Thanks!  

Geriatricmum

enthusiasticsaver said:

Think of it as a challenge to get as close to payday as possible purely on what is in your bank account and selling stuff.  

I'm on it! 

enthusiasticsaver

Or shopping from home and being creative with what you already have in your fridge/freezer and store cupboard. I am still using up Christmas food and running the freezer and larder down so just pick out a few key ingredients and try and concoct a meal out of that.  We have had some strange meals over the last few days

Geriatricmum

I've had to log into the website to get images to load on here, won't work on the app! 

This is the spreadsheet DH did for me, each box horizontally represents a month so F is January.
He's arranged them in order of when the 0% deals expire(d), so I know which balance my payment will be going to. 

I've gone into a repayment calculator as instructed by inner voice and this is what it's come up with for Barclaycard and Mbna - which I will tackle after Barclaycard is given the boot.

£280 a month for Barclaycard is not realistic for me.
I have £225 on my Mbna available for a balance transfer 0%/12months with a 4% fee.
I think I should just get the Barclaycard balance lowered, but inner voice thinks I should hang fire a few months and take off a bigger chunk. My minimum payment for Mbna is around £130/month.

Is inner voice correct, should I be patient? 

enthusiasticsaver

Goodness my mind is exploding just looking at those.  Am I right you just have the three cards but MBNA  and Virgin have several deals going at the moment?  Barclaycard is the one with no deals and charging 31.07% interest? 

When you say £280 is not realistic where has that figure come from? 
Do you pay £130 a month to MBNA and how much to Virgin? 

Have you done an soa to decide how much available you have to put towards debts?  

Sorry for the questions but my simple brain would struggle to cope with all the different deals all finishing at different times.  Surely a deal of £225 for 12 monhts is not worth bothering with on the MBNA? Or should that be £2250? 

enthusiasticsaver

My way of dealing with that would be to decide first of all how much you can afford to repay monthly.  How much are minimums? 

Tackling it in the order you have decided sounds sensible as Barclaycard is most expensive and even after deals finish MBNA is cheaper than Barclaycard and Virgin the lowest interest rate of them all. If you have £225 available on MBNA a 4% fee is £9 but I guess it would save you almost £70 in interest if moved from Barclaycard. Hmm maybe it is worth doing.