Divorce debt be gone!

biggerpickle

 I've "saved" nearly 200 quid today - I had worked on the £3k cash drawdown on my credit card to pay for the last big repair to be a 6.9% fee but it's 6.9% PA so shunting that to a 0% card a couple of weeks later cost  me £15 interest not the £200 fee I'd thought! I won't clear balance in time for 0% to run out but it stalls paying interest.

I have all my credit card debt now on 0% now for another 6-12 months which in the circumstances isn't bad at all. Obviously having no debt would be better but repairs and furniture all were needed. Not to mention divorce costs.

backinbusiness

Hi @biggerpickle. Subscribing and following as someone from the been there, done that camp. You seem to have a solid plan, so good luck. I'll be following with interest. BiB x

biggerpickle

Thank you BiB!

Payday so service charge (£383), half term holiday (£159) and penultimate BNPL (new oven, very much needed to feed the teen monsters as the old one conked out pretty much when I moved in) on Very (£23) all paid today. This is a minimum payments on credit cards / klarna month and they will filter through during the month. 

Schools out for the summer so big food costs the next couple of weeks before the monsters go to their Dad's for 3 weeks and then beans on toast for me til they're back!

theoretica

Longer term, but worth really planning what to do with your pension cash.  For instance any you pay into a formal pension would benefit from an income tax bonus (or pay your salary into the pension tax free and repay yourself form the savings) - and would increasing pension payments let you get any more free money from your employer?

One bill which looks low is your petrol - have you run some scenarios about living without owning a car, but either renting one when needed, or joining a car club?

biggerpickle

theoretica, thanks for the prompt about pension / cash. I have a small pension pot through assorted minimum contributions as I merged 5 pots last year (all part of my exit / sorting out finances strategy) and when everything is settled with new place, I will look at moving some of the cash into my pension. 

I bounce back and forth with the car - it's primarily used for school runs and kids sports as well as holidays (eg camping). And fetching / dropping stuff kids have forgotten at exh! Car clubs are sparse in the part of greater London where we live. For now, the convenience outweighs not having one.

Lonelygambler

Welcome to the forum. 

I’ll be following along 

LG 

biggerpickle

Review of all the numbers now I've paid bills / DD's pending from July's salary (and added up holiday spends  ) and things are going in the right direction with approx. £540 paid off.

Tight this month but hoping not to have to dip into savings as like I said before minimal grocery shopping the next 3 weeks, going to be some interesting food combos to optimise this and what's in the cupbaords already but I'll survive. Son#1 needs new school shoes and backpack but ex will get one lot of that, son #2 seems to be OK so hopefully anything there can wait til next payday.

Aimingforthegoodlife

Best of luck on your journey, great everything is on 0% and getting rid of the solicitor bills!

Sarahwithlove

Sounds like you have a solid plan in place. But I agree I would look at your pension options, could you pay extra contributions from your salary and use some of lump sum to pay off a debt for example or Overpayment to the mortgage. How many years do you have until pension age? Never good idea to have it as cash as if you ever need care it just ends up paying for that instead. 

biggerpickle

Two positive money thoughts today - am on a tracker mortgage so that should be lower in September (yet to have notification from lender though) and I expect that it'll be about £18 less and am changing jobs in Sept so will stop union payments as joined purely to be part of payrise negotiations group at current job, £17 saved. That £35 probably won't go on debt, just make each month less tight and reduce the risk of dipping into savings.

Sarahwithlove will be looking at pension situation in coming months once new job and couple of other bits gave settled.