Teetering on the brink

EatingBeans

Rounded off the day with another survey and listing another item for sale.

EatingBeans

Woke up to a refund of £80.38 from tv licensing - moved straight to pay off some of the overdraft. 🎉
And a message to say I will be getting a refund of £0.52 from the old mobile phone provider - every little helps right?! 😁

ellen_vannin

You are right every penny counts.Which reminds me -
If you have a Tesco clubcard filling in a survey on customer service every month gives you 25 points and the chance to win more.
Details usually on your receipt.

EatingBeans

Thanks @ellen_vannin I do indeed have a Tesco clubcard but had not come across that before. Something else to add to the list! 😁

Another Prolific survey completed at lunchtime and 2more items listed for sale. 

I’m not convinced about Swagbucks though. Seems to take an enormous amount of time for very little return. I’m not sure I will keep that up. 

ellen_vannin

As you settle in to new ways you will find what works best for you.
Keep going loads of info on this site.
I have always found everyone has a wealth of knowledge and eager to share.

DrunklMunkee

Hello @EatingBeans,

and congratulations on starting your diary. A huge step that will reap you nothing but benefits

Firstly, I just wanna say - your story struck a chord with me. maybe because I have 2 DDs of a similar age; or maybe because I too have a finance background (which is no pre-cursor to a debt-free life). but a chord was struck and i have logged back on to the forum after an absence of probably 7 or 8 years.

I just wanted to let you know some thoughts I had on your debts and the pending end of 0% deals.

Firstly - the Credit Card companies are duty bound to apply the payments you make to the debts in a certain order. Those debts that are incurring the most interest have to be paid first. I believe that this is a legal requirement (but happy to be corrected). So - your MBNA, for example. If you pay them £100 now - then they have to deduct that £100 off the £2500 balance first, before they start on the rest, as this is the highest APR.

With this in mind, and the fact that MBNA have increased your credit limit - then if you have any available money for over payments - I would send it to MBNA in the first instance. This may not be incurring the most interest currently, but reducing the balance on MBNA leads to my next step.

So, the next step,  if I were you - once the 0% offer on Fluid is due to expire - I would balance transfer the Fluid balance to (your now improved) MBNA balance. You will then have reduced your creditors by 1. woo hoo.

The temptation is usually then to close Fluid - but I wouldn't.
A ) because they might come back to you with more 0% offers which you can use later;
B ) it improves your utilisation percentages and improves your standing with the reference agencies - leading to better acceptance levels for other 0% offers
and C ) Fluid may increase your credit limit based on good repayment history.

Keep it open BUT - do not use it for anything other than future possible balance transfer options. What many people do is put the card into a tray of water and literally freeze the card. That way you aren't tempted to have a quick just-eat order on the card. By the time the card has defrosted, the pizza has gone cold.

Now that I have started typing - I just remembered - I do tend to ramble, so will let you think if the above is of any use, before I continue with the other little finance games I play to improve my debt free status.

**Spoiler alert** - my next priority would be that overdraft.

EatingBeans

Welcome back to the forum, and thank you so much for your reply @DrunklMunkee , I really can’t tell you how comforting it is for someone to come back with a suggestion that is so close to what I was planning. I had definitely reached the overwhelmed stage and had begun to doubt every decision I was making. 

Don’t worry, I have absolutely zero temptation to spend even a penny on the Fluid card. I don’t even know what the pin number is and the card is getting nowhere near my purse! I only opened the account very recently and it was just to give me a bit of wriggle room to shuffle back onto 0% deals on the cards I already have. It made me feel sick even taking it out but I knew I would pay it off before the 6months is up (even if that meant temporarily using my overdraft to do it - crazy I know!), then I’ll just leave the account open to help the utilisation ration like you said. I don’t even want to use that card for offers unless I absolutely have to as it currently feels like one too many credit cards to juggle. As it is the other three cards are actually made up no less than 20 different balance transfers all ending at different times and it is a headache keeping track! 

Tbh the only reason I am currently paying off the overdraft instead of the MBNA as you suggested, is I am waiting for my next MBNA statement which should confirm the increase in limit has been applied. I am slightly concerned that if they run a credit check and see the new Fluid card they might change their mind.  If I pay extra off MBNA now it is pretty difficult to undo without at least incurring a money transfer fee, whereas if the increase all goes ahead as planned then it is very easy to pay a chunk off the MBNA using the overdraft. Not that I am feeling a little anxious or anything! 

Anyway, I just wanted to say thanks. And do please feel free to share any further tip bits! I am definitely open to new ideas so feel free to ramble away! Haha 

DrunklMunkee

Aww @EatingBeans,

This is definitely the place to be if you are feeling overwhelmed. So many brilliant people with so many different experiences to pass on. Always the level playing field I revert back to

I understand what you mean about playing it safe before committing to MBNA, especially if you are worried about wriggle room. Like you say - make sure they have applied the credit limit increase before you over commit your cash flow, otherwise it could cause you more anxiety.... and we don't do anxiety... not any more.

So - as I implied - my next step (after MBNA - or while you are waiting for MBNA) would be the overdraft. 

Now this is because of my own personal feelings on overdrafts. I really dislike them, because I always feel like I have no control over them. With CCs - you know what your balance is & how much you are expected to pay each month; but with ODs you never know what the interest charge is going to be?!?, how much they charge for however many transactions?!?, when the charges will be applied?!? So in summary - I never felt in control of ODs and usually found that it was the charges that were causing me to go overdrawn each month. Plus the fact - that it is currently incurring the highest interest rate

So - what I did was open a separate current account. (I would suggest Chase - for reasons I will come back to below)
In the separate current account - I would transfer my budget each week or month (however long you are budgeting for) and conduct all my payments from the new account. This way - you only have one transaction incurring costs in your TSB account along with the interest, and it becomes easier to budget & repay the overdraft down each month, and hopefully more control over the charges incurred. All the while keeping your new current account in a positive balance with careful budgeting.

Now - I mentioned Chase above. This was merely a suggestion, but based on a few factors.
first - they don't run any credit checks to open the account 
second - they may offer you 1% cash back on certain spends (I think this depends on how much is paid in to the account each month)
and third, it is really easy to open savings accounts (yes - plural) that could help with budgeting. All on an App on your phone, which is quite simple to navigate & manage

But here's the thing - you have to keep it in mind that the main priority is to reduce that overdraft to ZERO, zilch, nada. Once you have it down to zero - then you know that the money in your current account is yours and yours alone. it is not somebody else's. It is yours :

And that is one more step towards you taking back control. You have now removed Fluid from your life; taken back control of your current accounts, hopefully moved some debt onto MBNA & a longer 0% time frame; and suddenly EatingBeans is bossing this debt repayment malarky

And the next step.... well the next step for me would be Barclaycard; but as it must be nearly my bed time - That'll have to wait 'til tomorrow.

YAY EatingBeans - You can do this. I really know you can

EatingBeans

Thanks @DrunklMunkee you are making me feel so much better.

I am fortunate that my overdraft doesn’t incur charges, only interest. It was an arranged overdraft from years ago and they just let me keep it. That said it is very high priority to pay off as the interest rate is 39.9%!

Thankfully I learnt a long time ago to separate day-to-day spending from an overdraft as it makes it insanely difficult to keep track otherwise and I used to just live in the overdraft. I now have 4 current accounts. One for salary/bills, one for things I actually spend on each month (groceries, petrol and spending money), one which is the overdraft and another which I have just dusted off and will become my burner account for bank account switching. Currently the overdraft account also houses my savings pots where I keep money put away for annual expenses but I have a separate log of what is still really owed on the overdraft vs what is in the savings pots (I use the Fudget app to keep track). I used to have the savings in an actual savings account but I am never going to get a rate anywhere like 39.9% for savings, so I figured better to house it in this account and reduce the interest I am paying instead. I don’t like doing it as I know the bank can reduce the overdraft any time (effectively swallowing my savings pots) but I think it is worth the risk for now. My focus after the MBNA shuffle is still to pay off the overdraft amount I owe and as the account moves back into the black and the money in it really reflects my savings pots, I will look for a decent easy access savings account to migrate the pots to. That’s the plan at least.

The Chase account suggestion got me thinking. My bills account currently gives me cashback on some bills but I’ve had the account for so long I can’t even recall what the deal is. I pay £2 for the privilege and get about £5 back each month so I always figured it was a good deal… but now I am wondering if there is a better deal I could get!  Something else to look into! Yay! 

I am curious as to why you would tackle Barclaycard next? 

Thanks again for all your time spent replying, it is appreciated. 

EatingBeans

Woke up to a refund of £2.22 this morning, this time from pet insurance. Also a sold notification for an item I listed yesterday! Only £4 but definitely an incentive to keep listing more.

I did however also wake up to an urge to treat my dd so she too wakes up to bonus funds. I transferred £5 and felt the warm fuzzy feeling I get knowing how happy this will make her and then realised this is clearly the dopamine hit that I am chasing. Normally I would do something like this and just ignore the expense, but this time, now conscious that the only things I have purchased this month has been for her, I took the money from my spending money pot. I am still happy to gift her the cash but I only have £15pw spending money so I need to be sure to prioritise. Absolutely determined to stay on budget!