till debt do us part

Tondella

The talk talk deal is impressive and I will follow it up, the unlimited calls don't extend to mobiles though do they? As the bulk of my landline calls are covered by my orange deal, and I can get free orange to orange calls but can't call orange for free on talk talk I'm not sure it will make a big difference. I'm already on the BT £10 tariff, my only calls are for the internet connection, for which I can reduce usage by staying late at work and surfing for free.

I negotiated my last tariff with orange, getting them to give me a free handset and extra texts, I'm more than prepared to do the same this time around. I think the most savings could be made with OH's tariff though.

margaretclare

Tondella wrote:

definitely have no plans to elope, the most important part of this wedding day is for us to stand up in front of our family and friends and show our commitment to each other.

Yes, this is what a wedding is all about.

My present husband resisted getting married again after his 2nd divorce in 1999, but I wanted that public commitment in front of people. When he did come round to the idea of remarriage he thought it would be best to have just the simplest wedding possible (and it certainly would have been MSE!) with just us, the minister and 2 friends from church. I wanted a few more people than that. In fact a lot of family members couldn't come, so we compromised - had a nice simple wedding with more people than he'd envisaged, fewer than I'd thought of, but nevertheless it was joyous and meaningful. We had a nice meal for 18 of us afterwards in a local pub/restaurant.

Aunty Margaret

nabowla

Just had another thought. Has your fiance got a copy of the MOD & Forces Discounts Brochure? I haven't seen one for a couple of years but I think they are still being published - it's worth asking. The one I have (2002) has details of special airfares from companies such as Air Canada and Air New Zealand, discounts from leading holiday firms (eg Warner Holidays) etc. You might be able to make some real savings on the cost of your honeymoon without compromising on the location/making an impression in the Mess factor. After all, your fiance doesn't have to tell the guys that he got a really, really good deal on the fancy honeymoon in Mauritius/Barbados/wherever, just that he's taking you there :-)

Tondella

Oooh Nabowla you are on fire with these recommendations, I've never heard mention of it but will get onto straight aways!.

Update on non-wedding related stuff. The motorbike has been put in bike trader for July 27th edition so if anyone in the Hampshire area is interested in a mint condition, barely ridden, loved more than owner's girlfriend Kawasaki ninja 600r let me know!


We're going to speak by phone tonight (free orange calls) and get the details together on the cc debts so I can enter them in the snowball calculator and see where we are at present. Then will spend some time investigating credit scoring and current cc offers!

We've both applied for the free Experian credit record (on 30 day free trial) and I'll have a look at equifax for us both tonight too.

Tondella

Update

Tonight I've been working on getting the most up to date info on our debts and on doing my budget. Debt first, a total of £22, 797.45, split between ccs with 14.9% and 12.9% APR. Assuming that we do nothing but pay £1k per month off the debts will clear Oct 2007, with £4k interest paid, using the snowballing technique. If I put the last of my savings to the highest priority balance (£1200) that date immediately comes forward to Aug 2007. That's without us trying to move the debt to a lower interest rate (say even moving as much debt to the 12.9% cc). Two years is a long time but having looked around at other people's debt free dates I think we're really lucky.

I've also drawn up my budget, here goes

monthly salary: £1527

rent: £480
gas (london elec): £15 dd
elec (london elec): £20 dd
phone (BT): £22 dd
water (thames): £20 dd
(I haven't had my first bills through yet and so I'm not sure whether these amounts are over/under payments)
council tax: £31
TV license: £24 dd down to £10.12 in september
mobile (orange): £25 average, try to get down to £20 minimum tariff
food shopping: £216.50 (£50 per week)
eating out/entertainment: £86.60 (£20 per week)
travel: £15 per month bus fee, £30 for train home every six weeks or so
student loan: £55
fitness: £6.93 (£1.60 per week, at council run gym)
other fun: £60 (for my "treats" hair cut, and face cleanser)
Christmas & birthday savings: £25.83 a month
clothing: £80
newspapers: £6
contact lenses: £15.99 (going to cancel this as soon as I have my next contact lens test and then just order a batch of dailies as I rarely wear contact lenses)

savings to put towards debt repayment £344.02

fairylights_2

I've been reading this one with interest (and good luck with your wedding plans!) and had to respond to your spending on food.

How do you spend so much on food? We spend less than that for a family of four per month ... I think if you could cut that down to £100 over one year that would MORE than pay for your photographer! Or even halfway at £150 per month (which is pretty much what we spend now) then you'd be able to do put £600 towards the wedding costs.

We had a cheapish wedding, and the most expensive things our parents (both sets) helped out. If it's a family thing, have you asked them to help you pay for any of it?

Tondella

Hi fairylights, thanks for your input

Well the food quote is based on my current shopping bill, mostly performed at sainsburys or city-centre "metro" branches in London centre. That's normally £40 for weekend shop then another £15 top up for bread, milk, sandwich fillings in the week. Also included in there are bath stuff and household cleaners. There are some fruit and veg shops near where I live which I can investigate, but the only butchers for miles around is a chi-chi organic butchers that costs the earth. I tend not to eat a lot of meat, but do spend alot on veg and fruit. I cook most things from scratch and so it is not a case of spending a fortune on "ready-mades". Some of the total is due to impulse buys when OH and I shop at the weekend, like coleslaw, fresh juice etc and clearly that's one place I can immediately cut back on. I never usually shop with a budget or calculator (or list) so that's another way I can control the spending. I don't have a freezer though and so I can rarely take advantage of bogofs, unless it's something like avocadoes or grapefruit.

Any tips on how you manage to shop for four on £34 per week?

Tondella

Update on the debt situation

I'm mid-process of applying for a virgin 0% interest card, but apparently there's still some registered credit to my previous address that needs sorting out. I can't think what it could possibly be but I've ordered my experian record using the free online trial and will attend to it asap. I may need some assistance from you guys in working out what to do with it all, and with OH's record too.

My barclaycard 0% interest period is up on Aug 1st, I phoned them up last night and managed to negotiate a 6.9% life of balance transfer rate for £3k. So I'm going to transfer the remainder of the barclaycard debt off the card temporarily then put it back on with my other debt from egg, still leaving £1.5k for OH's debt to squeeze on too. I'm really pleased with this result as it hasn't generated a new credit card application, although I can't currently place my hands on the barclaycard which may put a temporary spanner in the works. I'm going to give egg a call and see if they can't do the same too. Barcalycard made me name a figure for the credit limit (it was previously on £700 because I fell into the trap of telling them how much I wanted to transfer when I opened it - never again!) so i just plucked £3k out of the air. Are there any existing egg customers who can give me an idea of what sort of limit I could reasonably request from them???

I've also got OH to transfer £2k of his 13.9% debt onto the 12.9% to bring that one up to the credit limit as a starter. Once we have sorted our credit records we can start applying for some life of balance cards. Any idea on how many cards applications are "reasonable" within a couple of months???

I've definitely ditched the idea of applying for a mortgage in order to pay off our debts. There's a very useful paragraph of advice at the bottom of the snowball calculator that warns against that exact thing. Working out our snowballing tactic has reassured me that repaying this debt is well within our means and so there is no need for such a desperate tactic. I think a worst case scenario debt clearance deadline of Aug 2007 is a good time to begin looking for a property.

Can anyone else suggest ways I can get the APR on the debts reduced and maximise the amount we have to put towards repayments?

fairylights_2

LOTS of careful planning! We do a two-stop shop - once to our local market for fruit and veg (and meat from the butcher) and then to Asda for the rest. I would avoid Sainsburys like the plague as they are SO expensive it's untrue. We sit on a Wednesday night and write out a list of meals for the week and then the shopping list from that. We buy ONLY what we need to make our meals and also make everything from scratch. If we buy meat from the supermarket it's generally in the afternoon when they're marking things down, but then we have a little freezer it can go into. We make our own bread, yogurt and ice cream, as well as all cakes and biscuits. We even make muesli bars for OH's breakfast to take to work with him. We're pretty conscious of bad things to avoid too, so no fizzy drinks in our trolley - we get two big bottles of squash that last us for the week instead.

If we go without a list we can spend a fortune, but with a list it takes no time at all and we don't look for anything else. The other nice thing with this is that nothing is wasted. We only buy the quantity of food that we need for each recipe and so nothing goes off and goes in the bin (a habit I'm ashamed to admit we used to have).

It's the easiest step in helping the budgeting get under control. If you're aware you impulse buy at the weekend when your OH is with you, shop before he gets there - one less thing you need to do together and it might save you a bit.

fairylights_2

Oh, and for cleaning products you only really need a few VERY cheap ingredients. Soda water (about 30p a bottle) and a towel cleans the windows better than anything else I've tried, and bicarbonate of soda and white vinegar will deal with pretty much EVERYTHING else between them. I'm not going to fill this board with recipes, PM me if you want me to explain any more